Urchin Studios

As the year draws to a close and the threat of mince pie related indigestion becomes ever more imminent, we at Urchin Studios would like to wish you a very Merry Christmas. This is both a religious and secular seasonal greeting, because as well as accommodating a variety of musical requirements we also accommodate a wide variety of religious and spiritual requirements (although plans to convert the live room into a multi-faith prayer room are currently on hold).

Anyway, in the joyful spirit of Christmas (or HumanLight in the Humanist tradition) we’d like to bring you a selection of the slightly more peculiar moments that 2011 has visited upon us.

Chris Coekin 

To put it mildly, Chris is one our more unusual clients. First of all, he doesn’t play an instrument. Second, he can’t sing. Third, he’s didn’t have any songs. In fact, he’s a photographer. However Chris wasn’t going to let this stop him getting in on the action, and so hatched a plan to construct a song using only sounds recorded in a factory. Not since Mayo Thomson of The Red Krayola informed us that he wanted to make ‘a wrong record’ (that’s a story for another time) has somebody presented us with such an open ended and conceptually off-piste challenge. Naturally, we obliged.

Using a diagram of the atomic structure of copper as a rhythmic starting point (as you do) and a 400 sample strong library of clicks, clunks, whirrs, pssstts (etc) we soon arrived at something bearing a striking resemblance to music. Given the distinct lack of melodic devices present in a copper wire manufacturing facility, Melodyne really was our best friend here. It’s also software that is mostly orange in colour, which fits in with the colour scheme of our new website.

Remarkably in the space of 3 days we managed to conjure up not one but TWO songs that stuck to Chris’ radical brief. You can listen to samples of them below:

Chris Coekin samples by Urchin Studios

The purpose of all this madness was in fact to accompany a photo exhibition called ‘The Altogether’, and if you happen to be passing the People’s History Museum in Manchester why not check it out? http://www.phm.org.uk/whatson/the-altogether/

The Host

We played host to The Host in late June of this year, and these boys hold the (dubious) accolade of being the only all French band we’ve ever recorded. Contrary to our expectations rather than wearing a host of stripy tops, smoking continuously and going on strike half way through the recording session they actually delivered some of the biggest riffs we’ve ever played host to. Bruce Forsyth hosted the session (ok, enough) and the boys enjoyed themselves so much they made a music video featuring our studio as it’s pivotal plot device.

Phi Yaan-Zek

Phi’s been coming to us for drum recording for a couple of years now, so we’re sort of used to his madcap antics. However, when he asked to book our studio for his birthday party we were somewhat perplexed – surely he’s not going to have everyone do karaoke… Well, not exactly. In Phi’s world the idea of a party game is to record something backwards, learn it, then re-record it and reverse it again. If you’re not quite following then a better explanation follows:

Backwards Birthday Party Song by Phi Yaan-Zek

After cake, fizzy pop, crisps and more cake we got onto some more sensible activities, including something called 'toning' which involved everyone going 'aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah' at the same time for as long as possible. As you do.

Also rans

We also learned the following things this year:

It's perfectly reasonable to use a didgeridoo in a rock opera...

...you can mic up the wall in our recording studio...

...people are now modifying Speak & Spells in the quest for new sounds...

...and Dan was in Emerson Lake and Palmer. Which was news even to him.

...and finally.

no December at Urchin is complete without a synth drenched Christmas single!

Merry Christmas!

Team Urchin x