FABULOUS FAB

The Knocks

2012-02-08T20:22:00.000-08:00

These guys have so much music in them. Can't wait for the rest of the record. We had fun tracking these vocals. Kudos to A&M/Octone for signing a great band.

Universal Audio Apollo

2012-02-07T21:14:00.000-08:00

I had the great pleasure of being invited to test drive the new Universal Audio Apollo box. We had lots of fun tracking a song live thru it. Video coming soon.

In the meantime, if you have tech questions click here

More awards

2011-08-22T05:43:00.000-07:00

Freshlyground's 'Radio Africa' is nominated for yet more awards at the Afrotainment Museke Africa Music Awards:

http://moamas.com/
Best Group, Best Video, Best Album, etc, etc...
Do the world a favor and please go vote for them. Thanks.

The other fun part is that Les Nubians will be performing live during the ceremony as well as Blitz The Ambassador:

Yoohoo.

SAMA Awards

2011-06-03T07:51:00.000-07:00

It was wonderful to be able to share the stage with Freshlyground at the South African Music Awards last week. Their record 'Radio Africa' got honored for Best Engineer and Best AC Album. (It was also nominated for Song of the Year and Best Video ). I got to wear the spiffy Nelson Mandela Tshirt that the band got me while we were tracking the record for the acceptance speech.
The Best engineer award was shared with Keith Faqhuarson who invited me on stage to accept it with him.

We had fun making the record and we had fun last week in Johannesburg.

BECCA STEVENS BAND

2011-06-03T07:31:00.000-07:00

I am so excited to be able to share this musc with you guys.
This is an amazing record I had the great pleasure to mix last fall and that just came out on Sunshine Records.
I love it, love it, love it. Don't you?

LES NUBIANS

2011-04-19T11:35:00.000-07:00

Et voila. After mucho wait and anticipation the Les Nubians record drops today.
There are a lot of amazing tracks on this CD. The first single is Afrodance, produced by Moi and TimK (aka The Pure) on built on a cool accapella by Les Nubians and Piranha Head

Les Nubians - Afrodance from Nice Dissolve on Vimeo.

FRESHLY BABY

2011-04-15T10:59:00.000-07:00

I can safely say that the process of producing and mixing the Freshlyground record was a miraculous experience. Great people, great songs, great playing, great singing. We recorded this mostly live, 7 people playing together. This video gives a great taste of the vibe during the sessions.

Radio Africa has been nominated for 4 SAMA awards (South African Grammys), best record, best engineer, best video and best ac album.

THE DO. B.W.O.J

2011-02-16T06:41:00.000-08:00

I mastered their pre-release track called 'Dust It Off' for Dan and Olivia, a quick little thing that turned into a long collaboration mastering the whole record over a few weeks. Lots of back and forth looking for the perfect tone. No compromise. Sheer Beauty. The 'only_for–vinyl_with_no_loudness_competition_consideration' master put me back on the market for a turntable.
This is my favorite record in years and one of my favorites ever to work on.

How's this for a tease?

Will Knox. Cog In The Machine.

2011-02-12T08:59:00.000-08:00

The first Will Knox record was a beautiful experiment in creativity and flow. All live, no tricks, no editing, almost no overdubs, just music and inspiration. (And a few long days)
Produced and mastered by moi, mixed by Meredith Mc Candless:

To prove that it was not a fluke we just did a second one to be out very soon.

Waka Waka or The World Cup Song

2010-06-11T06:33:00.000-07:00

There is stuff flying around the internet about this and I get a lot of emails asking what the real story is, so here you go.

I was mixing Freshlyground's new record at FLUX in NYC in February after having produced and tracked it in Cape Town in January. We had submitted a song to FIFA for the World Cup anthem called 'Africans' (It was called many things that day, starting with 'Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah'), which we had recorded/mixed/mastered in one day in the middle of the tracking sessions in Cape Town, and had heard nothing of about it since.

It just so happened that my friend John Hill had written and was producing a World Cup song too, with Shakira, downstairs from my studio, in his room.

AND it so happened that since we had such an amazing time during the production and tracking phases of their record that all seven members of Freshlyground decided to come to New York to be there for the mix.

AND it also happened that John wanted to add more of an African flavor to his track.

AND is so happened that SONY/FIFA really wanted to feature duets between Western stars and African artists for this World Cup.

AND it also happened that the Shakira team had heard Freshlyground (Not sure sure which track, but probably the 'Africans' demo via SONY/FIFA)

So when John called one morning to ask if I had heard of an African band called Freshlyground, I said, 'Yes, I have, they are sitting right here in my control room as I'm mixing their new record'. What are the odds?

He came up with a really good rough of the track on a CD and Freshlyground listened to it, started jamming to it and came up with a bunch of ideas around the original track. Everybody bringing new parts, cool little riffs and I urged Zolani to write a little bridge kinda thing (That turned out to be a good idea).
John came back a few hours later, listened to them play the song live, loved it, asked if we could record it. Meredith Mc Candless and Mike Comparetto set the room up in record time for a seven piece live session, we were ready to go in under 2 hours.
The guys played a couple live takes over the guide track, pretty much nailed it on the first take. We did a couple choir style vocal overdubs too. John took off with the drive and the next thing we knew the song had been chosen to be the World Cup Anthem.

There is more to this story though.
First, the song was originally great. I knew right away that it had the potential of true universality. The production was punchy and fresh. It already had some African vibe to it from the intro and a really nice traditional guitar part on the chorus outro. The version that is being played in the western world is very close to that original track John gave us to work with. The bridge Zolani wrote really opens up the song and her voice is great duet material with Shakira's overall it's a really good pop song with lots of great musicianship, just the right amount of everything.

What most people don't know is that a few weeks later I got a call from SONY to make a more African version of the song.
So I went back and produced a version featuring a lot more of the Freshlyground material that we recorded at FLUX that afternoon. That's the version high up in the charts in South Africa and vicinity.
Zolani went back and recorded the verses and the choruses and I made it more of a duet, bringing Zolani in on the first verse and giving her most of the second verse. I also added the flutes, violins, organs and percussions from the live session so that all members of Freshlyground are actually playing on the track.
The new vocal session was done over Skype while Zolani was in Johannesburg and I was here working on the track in NYC. The engineer would send me bits of verses with bar numbers in the file name over Skype and I would drop them in ProTools as they went along. It was pretty surreal. Came out great though.
I sent the final mix (v1.1) to David Kutch at the Mastering Palace and it went straight to radio the day after that. See if you can find that version somewhere, it's pretty rad :-) The mix sounds huge too because I did not have the pressure to make it loud.

So whatever happened to ''Africans'? We were working very hard with Freshlyground to put it on their record untilt he last minute, but it just did not fit (Too popy?) so we discarded it in the end. (You should go and get Radio Africa asap)
BUT, the following week and after the news of the Shakira/Freshly duet, SONY decided they wanted to put the original 'African' on the Hello Afrika South African compilation CD.
Unfortunately, at the end of the original demo version, I had asked Zolani to sing 'We Are All Africans'chant style. Rings a bell ? So we changed that, since that line had been recycled into WAKA WAKA, and made another version called 'I Am An African'.
That is also a great track with a nasty afro-beat groove and wonderful lyrics.
See if you can find THAT somewhere :-)

Is that enough info?

Fab