Abubilla Music

This Week in the Studio: 11.05.07 (and ridiculously good dog video)

Written by Jimmy

A wee bit of Opera, the introduction of The Richmonds, Hannah takes her first lead, two studios operating, Cecily takes a rest and the triumphent return of Louise.  A pretty good day at Abubilla Music.

The Music

1. Opera Anyone?  We started our day with 71 Hours to Monday, Global Edition, which will become our fund raising video/song for the Singing Wells Project.   We decided that any good song about hating Monoday’s needs only one thing to be perfect – Opera!   Jimmy met Camilla during one of his very rare visits to the gym (to earn dosh to support her Opera career) and being far more eager to strike up a conversations then die a slow death on a stair master invited her to sing on one of our songs (for more examples of Jimmy’s relunctance to embrace fitness, please look at item 6 in this blog – click here.)    Camilla did about 7 tracks, starting with mirroring the strings, then echoing the lovely African voices and filling doing a bit of beat box.  No, she didn’t do beat box.   Really beautiful voice and great attitude  – defined as being able to smile while staring into a coffee can (our voice shield) and trying to dodge smelly dogs winding around your legs.  So with drums from Campo Limpo Brazil, Swahilli from Ketebul studios, strings from London and now an opera singer, we feel we are almost done with this song.   But Jimmy plays a mean slide whistle and doesn’t have any performance credits!  And and speaking of smelly pets, this is officially my favourite youtube video of the moment: 
2. The Return of Lou!  Louise, the song writer of Let Love Shine and No Poetry and the voice behind No Bells and Chamberlain in Munich (oh and the star of the Knife Will Come Video)  returned to the studio after her title role in the Relunctant Debutante.    She  re-did her vocals for the global version of 71 Hours to Monday and added some great ’round and rounds’ to the 24 minutes outrol.  She then recording a song she had written when she was 18 and re-introduced to the world at our last Flat Planet gig, called One is Too Small A Number .  Wonderful simple song.    And here’s The Knife Will Come video, to welcome her back:
3. The Richmonds and Sisters:  Now, in between Camilla and Louise, we welcomed Michael and the Richmonds!  Michael is one of our Discovery Artists, and has formed a band with Tom (drums) and Doug (bass) called The Richmonds, which has a ‘The’ in the name.  this was very important to The Commitments, as some of you will recall.  And, of course, writing about the importance of the ‘The’, makes me think we need to hear a bit of the THE THE (see below).  Michael wrote a new song Sisters and Andy help them complete a demo version.  Our goal is to complete a Discovery Album for The Richmonds and Michael soon, so watch this space.   And now The The:
4. Hannah does Amy:  And finally, in the second London studio…. WHAT????????  Yes, we’ve expanded with a temporary studio in the fron room to complement the studio in the former cinema room which was the former parlour room.  St Kathy doesn’t really know about this expansion and wouldn’t approve, so shhhhh.   But I digress.   While all the work on 71 Hours to Monday and Sisters was going on in the permanent studio, Jimmy, Martyn, Rob and Hannah set up shop in the temporary studio and worked on Lie Here.  Hannah was given the following brief:  “Hey Hannah, we have the melody for chorus and we recorded the whole song a couple weeks ago, waiting for your vocals.  unfortunately none of us remember where the verses and chorus go and we never really came up with a melody for the verses.  Oh, and the verses are sort of rap lyrics but we’d prefer you not do rap.  Oh, and we’d like you to do this like Amy Winehouse.  Go!”   And then because the Headphone Amps all blew (wrong voltage, don’t ask) we only had one pair of headphones.   So we all stared at her while she sang over a song none of us could hear and we offered lots of helpful suggestions.   And Hannah, like Camilla, recorded with her lovely voice and great attitude, here defined as being asked to sing a song with no melody or song structure while being shouted at with helpful phrases like ‘More Amy.’    


And the original:

 

And Everything Else:   We had a Trustees meeting for the Singing Wells Project, ended up with 14 people walking around the house associated with either Abubilla Music or the Abubilla Music Foundation and blew a bunch of headphone amps.  Oh, and Jimmy made Sophie lug her cello across London and back for no reason which was really not very nice.  And we met Iggy who we’ll bring back in the summer…. But really we just recorded a lot of music.  

Jimmy