Blog
Abubilla Music: An Update Guide for Newbies
Written by Jimmy
Wer’e in San Fransisco for the weekend, meeting great friends. One asked about the music thing, but in describing it, I realised that it might be worth putting together in one place a full background of Abubilla Music and the Abubilla Music Foundation and also a guide to the music. This is only for those that want more background.
Origins: Abubilla Music started in 2008 when Jimmy bought Pro Tools. Andy arrived as a Pro Tools tudor and stayed and over three years we’ve gathered a collection of musicians who formed the little house band, joined us as Discovery Artists or just chose to hang around to play on a couple songs and eat Pizza. Read here for more detail on our history. We now have a London and Spanish Studio (where we go for Spanish Jams and divide our time betwen ‘The Music’ and ‘Everything Else.’ A bit on each below:
“The Music”: Over the course of short history a couple things happened musically:
- Saturday Morning Canasta Club: We established a little house band called the Saturday Morning Canasta Club. We’ve produced four albums and a shed load of Videos. These are: Six Months of Saturdays, featuring The Knife Will Come, Misery Marmalade and Other Spanish Jams, featuring Immovable Thing, If I Were a Little Birdie, featuring Moneky Space Camp, , and King Henry’s Tears, featuring King Henry’s Tears and 71 Hours to Monday, Global Remix. Here are videos of the featured songs:
- Discovery Artists: We support a set of Discovery Artists, including Gus, Tati and Chris, and have released Gus’s album Discovry 1 and Tati’s album Graceless. A standout song on Gus’s album is Whisper and on Tati’s album is Wodwo. In addition, we are working on Chris’s album, including Cut My Hair. We also had Michael, take the lead in Footprints. Here are videos of these songs:
- Gigging: We started live performances, starting at the FlatPlanet, but then the Half Moon in Putney and the Leon in central London. These performances include the Saturday Morning Canasta Club and our Discovery Artists. Here’s an eamp For example lof Louise and the band playing Chamberlain in Munich. Here are videos of these songs:
Everything Else:
In addition to the core Music of the SMCC and our Discovery artists, we engage Abubilla Assistants, run our little Website, with a broad set of partners and have the Abubilla Music Foundation, the most important project of which is Singing Wells. Here’s a little bit on each of these:
- Abubilla Music Assistants: Our Abubilla Assistants are the heart and soul of our little Community. They order the pizzas and featch tea, run the website and are constantly dragged into the studio to work on songs. Below, you find good examples of the various projects our assistants lead, from Hannah working with her sister on the Smile Explodes video, to Hunter working on the Mah Knees and Aiden’s Dream videos. Enjoy:
- Our Video Partners: We also parnterships with other artists, most notably our partnership with Greg Barnes. Here he tells of doing the Footprints video:
- Our Website: We encourage you to explore the website, where we try to keep you loop on all the big things we’re doing and frankly all the little tiny things we’re doing for those that care. We’ll leave it to you to explore
- Abubilla Music Foundation and Singing Wells: We have a full Charity Arm, dedicated to supporting music projects in the developing world. Our biggest is The Singing Wells Project which we lead with Ketebul Music, our partners in Nairobi. Our mission is to record and share the wonderful tribal music of East Africa and where appropriate work with contemporary artists to bring the music to a new generation. We’ve travelled throughout Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda – here’s a good summary of our first year of operations (click here). We’ve also put together a great song list for you of our favourite songs to date (Click Here). Alternatively, you can watch some of our favourite videos below:
Closing: That’s it. thanks for the cuddle.