Urchin Studios

Please note: The following content may not be entirely balanced and the facts contained may have been correlated without any proper research to suit the bias of it’s author.

As anyone who’s visited Urchin Studios will testify, it is probably pound for pound the greatest recording facility ever conceived by any person ever. Within its walls no solo is too virtuosic, no ensemble performance too precognitive, no sonic achievement too technical. Dan has even occasionally been seen levitating in the control room during a particularly heady mix.

But some things are even out of Urchin’s lofty grasp, especially when you need to record a quiet cello, a grand piano and a loud drummer at the same time. That’s why Team Urchin headed for Strongroom for the tracking stage of Amber States’ second EP.

Yesterday we were very privileged to record ex-Spiders From Mars Legend Woodmansey who was playing drums on a friend’s project. Here he is back in the day with Bowie playing on The Old Grey Whistle Test:

Last week we had the pleasure of recording Scott Cousins aka Evan Jack. It was the first time we’ve worked with Scott, who is a guitar playing singer-songwriter from Wales who with his compadre Andrew Lyddon on drums make up the band.

In an Urchin first and with the spirit of “it bloody well can be done” which excites us so, we recorded the acoustic, vocals and drums at the same time. We’re happy to confirm that it can be done and is sounding great. We were obviously aided by the fact that Andrew is a delicate and sensitive musician and that fact that these two have played with each other loads and know the music intimately.

Let us introduce Lianne La Havas, the 21 year old singer songwriter with whom we’ve been recording with over the last few weeks. She sings, she writes songs, she plays guitar and produces some of the most intoxicating music we’ve ever had the pleasure of recording.

Urchin’s relationship with Lianne goes back a number of years. I first met her when I was playing in the Paloma Faith band in which, she was singing back-up and around then we recorded a few demos. We always kept in contact, became good mates and she decided (to our delight) to record her debut EP with me and The Cox (who I’ve decided needs a better nickname. Suggestions would be appreciated).

So all has been rather quiet on the blog front over the last month due an large flurry of recording activity which culminated in finishing off the tracking of the new Jim Kroft record.

Fot those not aquainted with Mr Kroft, he’s an artist that the studio has had a very close relationship with over the last few years with myself and Cox having produced his last two albums.

You can find out more about him here

We started recording this second record in January and that was the session which gave us the first single Memoirs From The Afterlife mixed quite beautifully at Konk by Rich Wilkinson.