Flying Visit

Tara and Maf popped round the other day, and brought along Beth Jeans Haughton (I mixed her first EP here a while ago) and her friend Dick O'Dell who were both on very good form. What a lovely evening. Pics by Maf

Lowland Three

And then yesterday the Lowland Hundred (hi Paul and Tim) came round to listen to their 3rd album on my big speakers. They brought Jony Mugwump along too as he is releasing it on his label Exotic Pylon. I really like their mixture of abstract noises and melodic vocals, a very unique combination indeed

Sweet Lord

I'm doing a bit of mastering at the mo, for example I'm working on Simon Lord's new album, which is a pleasure. He came round to have a look round the studio because as it turns out he's a bit of a synth-head - in fact his dad designed the mythical english analog synth the Skywave. He bought in cool vintage flyer he found in the loft:

Here is a video of him demoing it from a while ago:

Dukes of Analog

I've been mixing the Duke St Workshop's new single - giving it the fully analog treatment on the MCI

Tenchy

Paul made a flying visit last week, and bought me a brill book about science fiction books

Scanned

Hey Robin and Zarina nice to see you!

Karin and Kjetil

Also Karen Park and her friend Kjetil came in yesterday to play on some synths. I had set the big moog up to play a sequence, triggered by the DR55. Heres a test sketch I did:

Bonus Skor

It was really nice having Mike back in the studio. He's been working with Laura J Martin on a new EP, and I helped mix it on the big console. It sounds awesome!

Dreamy

I mentioned a few posts ago that the I Dream of Wires doc people came to the studio, well here are some nice hi-res pics that they took, from their Facebook page

Flat Battery

My entire studio stopped working temporarily this week. At the heart of the studio is my digital console (Mackie DXB) which routes all the audio signals to and from the computer and the patch bays and then to all the equipment. And at the heart of the console is a tiny little battery and it transpires that this battery had gone flat and therefore my studio stopped working! Because of one tiny battery!

Anyway, thanks to a call out from a Mackie tech everything is back to normal. So I had a nice evening with Phil and Pete just listening to music all night. I had forgotten how good it is listening to OTHER peoples music

Space Ship

Here is Jarvis Cocker at the Big Moog, making spaceship sounds
1st pic by me, 2nd pic by Sefa

Busy Week

Its been another really busy week at Bengestudios, with lots of interesting sessions and amazing people. Here is a gallery of pictures taken during the week, staring off with Sam Genders (Diagrams, who was in doing a cover version of Airbag by Radiohead (featuring another Sam on flugelhorn, 1st pic by Sammy G)

Second up was another day with John Foxx and Diana Yukawa, and we are nearing completion of that project

Then there are some pics of our mega two day synth-o-jam session with James Murphy (LCD Sound system) and the Dewaele brothers (Soulwax / 2manydjs). I love this job

Thumbs Up

This has been a week of visits (more on some of those later I hope) and yesterday David Dewaele and James Murphy came round. What nice people! Below is some of their iconic work

Hoodie and Moog

Heres another video that me and Sam made of us and Max playing the Moog Modular on one of Sam's new Diagrams songs

Sam's got a really nice blog here that you will enjoy looking at




Also, here are some pictures that Sam took of our session:

Studio Fellows

Neil Fellowes came down to the studio the day before I went away and took some shots. I had seen some of his work on flickr of an abandoned car graveyard and really liked the effect he gets. He thought it would be interesting to apply it to my studio - its like it had been sealed up for 100 years then he discovered it and took his camera along for the reopening. Im going to put them on my website when I get it ready, in highres - these blog versions are limited to around 500k each. All pictures (c)2011 by Neil Fellowes