Urchin Studios

2012 has so far played host to one of the busiest, not to mention most prolific periods we've ever had at Urchin; we've recorded no less than a total of 60 tracks over the first 6 weeks of the year. Phew!

However this exceptional daily average (1.428571429) songs per day for the mathematically inclined) has in now way impaired the quality of the output of the studio. Amongst others we've had the pleasure of playing host to the likes of Theme Park, Jodie Marie, Marques Toliver (more on him later) and of course Urchin favourite Lianne La Havas.

We've also added 2 new weapons to our arsenal of keyboards - a Yamaha DX7 and a full size Harmonium, the latter of which carries such a powerful physical and sonic presence it's likely to require the wearing of a cape to get the most out of it. It's also the first instrument we've owned to feature a built in mirror, which is useful in itself as Marques' bass player pointed out "it'ch so you can check you look shexy while you play". Thanks Bart (he's Dutch by the way).

And speaking of Mr Toliver, if you're not familiar with Marques' output you really should get familiar as his quite a unique talent. Originally hailing from Florida, his eclectic musical range fuses the vocals of Beyonce Knowles with the rhythmic elements of Kanye West and the string arrangements of Rachmaninov (really!)

Here he is on Jools Holland last year, check him out!

The album will be out on Bella Union later this year.

Dan