Live from Three Kings in Clerkenwell. Robyn Hitchcock and friends played the Beatles album Revolver in honour of its 40th birthday.

The Guardian is running a daily look at pop songs from the past – The Sweetest Girl was chosen on Monday 17 October.

That’s nice. Read Nick’s personal digging in the past →

Remix time again:

Faithless:

And Green on Marx:

Found at the excellent music hosting service of SoundCloud.

Well… we suddenly had a budget and were working with all the best musicians, in the best studios, with the best engineers. It was amazing. Green was pretty great about allowing experimentation in the studio, and since he was the one with the checkbook, he was running the sessions. If you could come up with some Rube Goldbergian way to record something, which I usually could, he was game. Those records were basically recording school for us. We got to play with all sorts of ways of doing things, at great expense I might add. Those records took a very long time to make.

Interview David Gamson @ iZotope

For the more technical oriented fans among us, this is a very good read. And I must say I am of course a fan of Gamson’s work. For me Scritti without him is 50% Scritti. Miles Davis without a trumpet, that idea. I am also a fan of iZotope software. Ozone 3 David mentions in the interview I am using for years now on almost a daily basis like him.

I told this story a lot, but without people like Gamson I would probably never be aware that creating sound & working with – not in – the studio can open up new worlds. You want control over the machines, play with it and create something new; a slick total package which is unresistable.

Gamson is responsible for making me aware I can be an audio professional myself. Which I did. And yeah, I am so looking forward to the new tracks!

I like wordplay and clues more than straightforward narratives or confessionals. A sense of mystery.

Scritti Politti – eMusic Spotlight

(thanks Stephen Schwartz!)

David talks about Scritti, Roger Troutman and Meshell N’degeocello. It is from a ToddCast. Have a listen:

david_gamson-interview-2007.mp3

Just after Cupid & Psyche came out I started to experiment in the studio with synthesizers and computers (Atari1040st). Gamson’s production skills was definitely a huge influence. For sure Green also was an important factor on the whole sound, but I guess Gamson was the main factor behind the most popular Scritti stuff. I was an amature at the time (after many semi-pro years, I became a fulltime composer & sound designer in 2003). And lucky to have a friend, Conno van Wijk, who worked as a fulltime engineer for studio BMG, Voorburg/Holland, with lots of equipment I could use for free in the after hours.

When listening to Gamson’s other productions, I found out about Gamson’s special fingerprint. He’s using sequencing to create new sounds, not trying to imitate something a band would be able to play, but rather something only a computer is capable of. Detailed editing and synth programming.

His later work on Anomie & Bonhomie for example shows a different approach and added a more raw, groove oriented, more bandlike sound to Scritti. But even on Anomie you can clearly hear the production as part of the creative process instead of capturing a band in a live setting. On Anomie a lot of the parts are sampled and looped, to make the groove more consistent. Soundwise it sounds fatter compared to Cupid and Provision. And more dry sounding as well. The ending of ‘Brushed With Oil, Dusted With Powder’ sounds like heaven. I always love counterparts and M’shell’s bassline is just a perfect fit here. Based on loops, but the arrangement blows my mind everytime.

I remember reading about Scritti’s comeback (Anomie) in a newspaper during a flight to Lissabon. There was a photo of Green, all new and refreshed. And such luck that our hotel, Hotel Eden, was located on top of the Virgin Music Store. So that CD got stuck in the CD-player at our hotelroom. And while walking the streets of that great looking neighborhood Bairo Alto, the music was playing in my head. I can still remember thinking and analyzing that record while walking the streets of Lissabon.

A couple of days ago Douglas Rodriguez (he’s also a Propellerhead Reason software user and VIB-tester like me) has send us a couple of scans from a 1988 interview with David Gamson for Keyboard magazine. I found it a great read, mainly because the technical details behind the productions and Gamson’s approach to sound are revealed. Personally I am not so much interested in personal stories about musicians but far more interested in the process of writing and producing music. Because that’s were the magic happens.

Note: I needed to resize those scanned images for a quick view her at our website, but I have also included the larger versions into one zip, check it: Gamson_Keyboard_Mag_interview-1988

The Boom Boom Bap

Wood Beez

Note: If you want to share some videos with us, you’d better not use YouTube, because YouTube screws up copyright in a serious way. We can host the video here at Bibbly, but you might as well host the video at free hosting services like Blip.tv or, my personal favorite, Revver.com.

Direct link to the YouTube-video (via)