Abubilla Music

2013 The Strange Year in Review

Written by Jimmy

2013 has been an interesting time for Abubilla Music.  We are creating our best music in an amazing new studio, but are strangely quiet – no album yet, less blogs, no new Discovery artists…  Here is a very short summary of our ‘strange year in review.’

• January:  The US welcomed Obama for a second term and then the Congress promptly shut down the government.   HMV goes into administration and horsemeat is found throughout UK food chain.  We moved into our new studios on January 6th, after a month of very DIY building.    We love our new digs, but something about the old studio remains.  we have an ‘office’, a video room, an isolation room, a mixing room and full rehearsal/recording studio and yet for the most part we all congregate in the mixing room to play, to write, to eat… We have been so used to tight quarters that we find it hard to deal with our new space.
• February:     Richard III is discovered under a car park and the Pope resigns, while the ‘bladerunner’ is charged with murder.   Jen Lawrence wins the Oscar.  We fled the London cold for another wonderful Spanish Jam and we continued to rework songs for the ‘fifth album.’  Our fifth album will be a ‘chilled out, acoustic affair’ and so are all Spanish Jams dedicated to creating it.
• March:   Hugo dies, new Pope, Cyprus bailout.  Sadly, the studio was mostly closed due to travel, but Jimmy’s daughter Tory inadvertently snapped the album cover for our fifth album, while travelling through Brazil.
• April:  Thatcher dies and Boston is bombed.     Our best studio day, April 2,  combining Discovery Artist search with Singing Wells.   A great day.    Lots of recording for the fifth album.
• May:   3 young women escape from Ohio and Fergie resigns.  Horrible attack in Woolwich.   We hosted our Discovery Artist day at the Slaughtered Lamb. 
• June:  Snowden reveals all sorts of secrets.  Saatchi caught choking.    Back to Spain for more chilled our music.  Again, only sunshine and lots of music for Album 5.
• July/August:   Morsi disposed.  Andy wins.   George is born.  Chemical attacks in Syria.    It is  a sign of how quiet we were for the rest of the summer – our biggest event was the discovery of the Llama vs. Duck game.
• September:   Greenpeace advocates get arrested in Russia.   Iran gets friendly.  Bombing in Kenya.  We welcomed Hannah back to the studio after a year of travels and said good bye to Sophie who is off to the North for further studies.
• October:   Co-op bank guy is naughty and lost prophets guy is really disgusting.   Those guys that discover the God Particle get a big prize.  A lot time recording in the studio, including a new song ‘Reason to Believe’ that we wrote to justify Tory’s picture on the cover of the album.   Also, did a lot of work in the studio preparing for Womax.
• November:   Another big month of recording, focusing a lot of time on Starin’ at My Shoes, featuring Sammy.   Martyn and Toby (Ed’s son), slept a lot in the studio as well.  Also, spent a lot of time preparing for the Singing Wells trip to Central Uganda.
• December:  Men and women shown to have different brains.   Mandela dies.   More recording and a lot of work on preparing for Singing Wells 2014.

We’ve been very busy but we have so little to share yet.  Forgive us and in the meantime have a Happy New Year.