Halfbrick, AKA Sam W Morris, is the lead designer and web chap at Prima Rosa, he also has a very important job of making sure all the music we release passes his VERY high standards! I know you want to know more about the man behind the design…

What do you do at prima rosa?

I’m the designer/webmonkey for Prima Rosa and quality control for the music! Like it says up there!

How did you get involved?

I’ve been doing bits and piece’s for Prima Rosa for a while now. I started off  as sound engineer on some early DCI tracks, but then everyone caught on to how bad I was at that so they let me push some pixels around for them instead! I met Ben while studying for my degree at dBs Music many moons ago now, and we’ve kind of been partners in crime every since. It’s great being involved as I love Prima Rosa’s output, and I get to hear it all before everyone else. What more could a fan want?!

What’s your design philosophy for halfbrick? Who has inspired this philosophy?

My philosophy is keep it simple keep it stupid – mainly because I’m pretty bad at drawing! But in terms of influences it’s a real mix bag, in my youth (I’m nearly 30 now! ) I was a full time skater and into my hip-hop culture big style, so street art has a massive influence over my work, I love bold lines and simple blocks of colour. Street artist like banksy, Sheapard Fairy, Buff Monster, Dalek and the 123klan.
In terms of designers I’m very much in the bauhaus/swiss school, Dieter Rams is my design hero (I also wish he was my grandad). Like dieter I believe design lead thinking can and will change our world for the better.

What projects are you currently working on?

I’m just in the early stages of a project working with COLLATONE. It’s a booklet website for his latest ep, a kind of online browse and listen. Should be good, watch this space. I’ve also just started up an ongoing personnel project called twelve[05] , the project consists of me taking a picture of what ever I’m doing at 12.05 pm for a year. It will be a strange cross section of my life, and maybe very boring! but thats a risk I’m willing to take.

I like that –>
twelve05.tumblr.com
www.collatone.com

Who is rocking your design world at the moment?

At the moment I’m kind of in love with Anthony Burrills , the paper stock he’s chosen combined with the wooden block letter press is so tactile and just has a real cared for feel to it. In todays throw away plastic/digital world there’s something very reassuring about his work.

I’ve also been digging Andy Gilmore’s work lately, he created the artwork for Africa Hitech’s album on warp records. His simple geometric shapes combined with the palette he uses really blow’s me away.

anthonyburrill.com
crowquills.com

Who is rocking your music world at the moment?

Apart from of course DCI’s new album, ‘Take Me With You’, I’ve been getting into Thundercat, Ghostpoet, Floating Points, The National and Gang Colours and I heard this new album by Crewsdon today that really got me nodding my head at my computer.

What’s the future for halfbrick?

Who can tell, I’m going to continue to try and work with cool people and to create cool things. That’s all I can hope for!

What’s the future for Prima Rosa, what’s your expectation of this label and music community?

Judging by what I’ve herd and seen lately I think Prima Rosa has bright future. I actually think in generally it’s never been a better time for independent music labels to push throughout to the fans out there. The internet and social networking in particular has giving consumers more and more choice and if you have a good story/product to sell they will find it and will propagate from there.  I see Prima Rosa doing some great new mix media/interactive realises soon as well and that’s really exiting for me!

halfbrick tweets at @halfbrick23
and blogs at  halfbrick.tumblr.com

Geek Out!! is where Prima Rosa peeps talk about some of the gear they have been using on projects released through the label… its the turn of DCI’s Mathieu Cook to talk about one of his favorite pedals…

Line 6 M9 Stompbox Modeler.

“Line 6 pedals rule! We’ve been using the DL4 delay modelers in DCI for years. You can get all sorts of characterful analog and tape delay emulations that you wouldn’t otherwise be able to use live without a bus full of roadies carrying around a whole load of cumbersome studio gear!! Most of our DCI tracks are layered up with delays from the DL4.”

“When the Line 6 M series stomp box modelers came out I was excited to discover that it contained not only all the delay emulations from the DL4, but also had all the effects from line 6′s modulation, distortion and filter modelers as well. In addition to this, there is a looper, a noise gate, various compressors and a whole selection of reverbs from the verbzilla pedal.”

“But, I have to say the main reason I couldn’t resist buying the M9 unit was the awesome new particle verb reverb effect. I knew there would be a use for it within a DCI track or two!! Its a strange reverb effect like no other,  almost like taking the melody of what you play, and then feeding it through a teleportation device. What you hear is the music in a vaporous form as it travels harmoniously through time and space behind the track!! Its hard to describe so heres an audio clip to demonstrate what I mean.”

“I used this effect to create the soundsapes at the beginning of “the Hatch” on our new record ‘Take me with you’. I also added some slow post reverb flange towards the end of this section. This was also from the M9 in the form of the analog flanger model (based on the classic MXR flanger).”

You can here ‘The Hatch’ on the >DCI music page<

“So, some details on the M9… it has stereo ins and outs, 2 expression pedal inputs and midi i/o. It has 100+ effects assignable to 3 footswitchable internal FX units with 2 footswitchable models per unit. For more details see Line 6 website”

MC

NB we don’t get any payment for link throughs, we just write this stuff for fun!!

Andy Miles is the guy who put the finishing touches to the latest DCI release ‘Take Me With You‘ in the mastering studios Super Audio Mastering, based in Devon, UK… you may be wondering what goes on in these mysterious, allusive and magical studios… read on!!!!

What is your job exactly Andy, introduce yourself.

I am the Assistant Mastering engineer at Super Audio Mastering. SAM is a world class Mastering facility based in the Dartmoor National Park.

How did you get in to the dark art of Mastering.

Funny story really, I met Simon Heyworth (Super Audio Mastering Director/CEO) through my degree with Plymouth Uni. We were fortunate enough to have a day out at his studio finding out some of the things that are behind the dark art.

Simon offered a few days work experience to a student on the Sound and Music Production course at Plymouth Uni. Luckily I was chosen as that student. The funny part of the story is that nobody told me about it. I graduated in September 2009 and bumped into one of my old Uni lecturers on the way to work in Plymouth. He asked how the work experience went and I stood there looking very puzzled. He explained that I had been chosen to go to Super Audio MAstering and have a few days work experience. I immediately got in touch with Simon and he has not been able to get rid of me since December 2009.

Mastering is still a pretty specialist area, did mastering ‘Take Me With You’ give you any new challenges?

Mastering has its place in the production line in the music industry. Unfortunately nowadays many people don’t think Mastering is essential or try to accomplish it ‘on the cheap’. With the advent of DAW’s and affordable plug-ins one can achieve rather desirable results but it still won’t sound like a ‘finished record’. And that is what most of our clients say after receiving their Master, ‘Now it sounds like a record!’ Every new project is a new challenge which is one of the great aspects about MAstering. You don’t know what you are doing from one day to the next and every project has its own signal path which gives it the ‘sound’

What did you use to Master this record?

On this record I used a hybrid signal path digital front end (to tweak) and analogue EQ, Compression, Limiting amongst other things. The signal path is the core of every project. Working out the best sounding path can be rather frustrating as it differs depending on the music.

Whats a quick fix for self mastering?

Some people still use Finalisers but they have a very distinct ‘Finaliser’ sound. Others slam it through a limiter to boost the level with a little EQ. The things to remember are, that it is not only the equipment but how you use it and a Mastering Engineer is a fresh set of ears. A fresh perspective on a project can be an invaluable tool to creating a finished sound.

What music is rocking your world on a professional level at the moment and what music is on your iPod at home? Can you switch from being a fan to being a pro again?

My tastes vary so much with music that it is very difficult to pick just one thing. What I enjoy listening to the most in the studio at present is Porcupine Tree – ‘In Absentia’. It is a great example of a ‘loud’ record that isn’t too fatiguing and retains dynamics. The first track, the title track, has an amazing drum sound at the beginning and really rocks when the guitars kick in. It is Prog Rock bliss!

Find out more about Andy at Super Audio Mastering (SAM), Devon, UK. SAM WEBSITE

Dawn Chorus Ignites bring us the immense ‘Take Me With You’, a record which has taken a while to create but boy are we happy with the result!

So, whats the album all about?

More info here ‘DCI music‘

Tell us a bit about yourself, who is Alison Veazey?

I’ve been living in Devon for the last ten years with my two daughters and a black cat. I drink a lot of tea.

What inspires your work?

I can’t fail to be inspired living in south Devon! I moved here from the Fens, where it’s flat and bare, and I fell in love with the tight lanes and high hedges, where you just glimpse a slice of landscape through a gap in the trees, and then it’s gone again. So, landscape is often the starting point for my work, but it can end up having more to do with composition, pattern and surface. I can’t resist quirky architectural features – not all of my work is landscape-based.

How did you feel when dci first approached you about them using your art for their cover?!

Surprised and flattered!

What artists are rocking your visual world at the moment?

I’ve always loved Klimt’s landscapes, especially where there’s just a little corner of sky and most of the painting becomes a dense area of pattern. Contemporary artists I admire include Francis Boag for the way he uses clashing colours in his landscapes, Jenny Wheatley, whose work is lively and colourful, and Kurt Jackson, for the way he deals with texture and surface in his landscapes. But if I could only take one painting to my desert island it would probably have to be a massive Rothko.

What music is rocking your audio world at the moment?

I’m loving the new albums by PJ Harvey and Tom Waits

What projects are you currently involved with?

I’ve recently done a joint project with my daughter, Jemima, based on Antony House at Torpoint. There are some beautiful gates there with lovely spiral patterns that appeared again and again in our work, and now I’m working on some ideas from a week I spent walking in the Lake District in the rain this summer.

What’s next on the horizon for the artist Alison Veazey?

I’m hoping to get some city air sometime soon, and take in some new architecture…

This piece was part of a project I was commissioned to do for the Royal Albert Memorial Museum in Exeter, When they closed temporarily for major refurbishments, they needed some artwork (inspired by the museum’s collection) that could be taken out to schools, and used as the starting point for art projects within school. It was important to keep the education programme going while children couldn’t visit the museum. My works were based on the architecture of the building itself.

More of Alison Veazey’s artwork can be found on her website www.alisonveazey.co.uk

PR

J talks to Prima Rosa about the mixing of Dawn Chorus Ignites latest release ‘Take Me With You’, a record which was J’s first project with the band:

What was your approach to mixing the DCI record ‘Take Me With You’?

My approach changed a few times during the mixing sessions.. at first I started in ‘default’ mix mode, which to me is make the drums heavy, then add/build from there.  I guess that comes from listening to and working with so much drum focused music. Anyway this approach wasn’t suited so I had to rethink things a little.  The DCI album is much more guitar focused than anything I’ve worked on before.. sure I’ve mixed lots of guitar bands, but the guitars are really the main focus point for DCI and therefore required special attention.

Getting to know the songs was key to getting the mixes on point, I’d start by listening to the ruff mixes the band had been working with.  Most of the tracks were assembled using a stereo out of Protools for monitoring, so I’d listen to this a few times and make mental notes on what I thought I could add.  It sounded to me like the tracks were recorded in various different places and at different times and this meant there wasn’t any real sonic glue between the instruments.. the timing etc was spot on, I’m talking more about a natural room sound.  The band and whoever recorded it had done a great job at capturing a clean tight sound, but there wasn’t any natural ambience to play with.. so my main mission was to explore different ways of gluing it all together using reverb/delay effects to give an impression of space.

I’d also have to mix the songs backwards, in that a lot of the tracks really hit hard and explode towards the end so I needed to save enough headroom for those sections.. I’d find the most full on section and start from there.  It’s probably the most dynamic thing I’ve ever worked on and that meant a lot of attention had to be paid to preserving headroom.  Trying to find the right balance between pushing the Neve desk enough to pick up an impression of it’s tone, but then allowing enough head room for the heavy sections.. this was probably the most challenging thing about mixing the record.  For example, if I wanted to add some grit to the drums, I’d do something like over patch the line outs of Protools into the Neves ‘mic’ inputs and distort the pre.. it sounds beautiful, but when the overall volume of the parts are so dynamic it doesn’t allow such controlled use, and therefore is harder to use as a static effect.

Did you have to tackle this recording differently being an instrumental piece of work?

Yeah, for the most part the instrumental music I tend to work on is electronic or has much shorter arrangements that rely on constant structure changes to maintain interest.  The DCI album is the opposite, structure wise it’s mostly long and drawn out, and I guess more reflective, although it can certainly get very heavy out of no where.  Because of this, I had to find a more natural sound that worked start to finish, with tracks that have lots of different sections, one after another, levels and effects can change section to section, but with the DCI tracks I had to find a sound that could stay static for a good 7 minutes.  Space and depth were two of the main things on my mind when mixing, everything needed to have its pocket and work collectively.

Coming back to what I was saying about dynamics, I certainly had to readjust my default approach when it came to sound processing. I like to use guitar pedals etc for colouring sounds and that was more challenging for this project as the levels weren’t as consistent as a typical always full on recording.. something could work for 5 minutes but then required a rethink for the last 30 seconds of a track.

What’s you view on how its turned out?

I’ve just heard back some of the masters and it’s sounding massive.. big, warm, rich and very organic, ticking all the boxes for the brief really.  I’m looking forward to getting a copy and enjoying it as music now.. I can’t really hear it for real until it’s on my headphones and I’m not over analysing. I find it takes time to detach yourself from the job perspective and to hear it as it really is.

How do you deal with all that reverb and distortion?!

Selective cuts mostly.. without getting to geeky, I’d basically only allow certain frequencies into the reverbs, the settings are different for every instrument/part.  So for the bass guitar tracks I’d have an EQ on the bass reverb send which filtered out all the low energy before it hit the reverb.  This gave the impression of the bass guitar being in an acoustic space but without all the low end muddying it up.  Catering the reverbs for each instrument allowed for lots of control.

Generally I’d use the same reverb type for all instruments but have slightly different settings for each instrument.  I’d use one reverb type to give the recording a sense of space and depth, then different reverb types, springs etc, for giving particular sounds a character.  Along with summing everything on the Neve console, the reverbs really helped stick everything together for a overall natural sound.  I’m pretty sure there would’ve been loads of automation on the reverbs also, mainly for when sections changed and something needed to be more upfront and therefore less wet.

Where does ‘Take Me With You’ stand in the J hall of fame you have worked on?

It’s up their for sure! Great guys to work with and the music’s spellbinding..  Roll on the next one!

You’ve also been working with another Prima Rosa artist Ben Solo… what have you been getting up to on that project?

This ones a very different approach, much more in my comfort zone.  From my perspective its really been about giving the sounds a harder analogue edge.. using the Neve to get more from the sounds, lots of bussing signals back and fourth within the console.  The Neve 51 we have is very flexible at routing things around and I take full advantage of this to colour things.  There’s much less software involvement with the Ben Solo record because it’s largely already from that place, I’ve tried to mix it all out on the desk in order to round off the sounds, giving them a little more depth and shape.. plus for delays and other effects we’ve been using a lot of guitar pedals.. just more character pieces, anything to give the mixes more sonic identity rather than just the same old plugins everyones using.  Its obviously subtle as Ben Solo has done all the colour work already when designing his sounds, it’s more about enhances what he’s done.

More generally what’s been your studio high point so far?

I’d say those rare moments when I get to witness a performance so gripping that I forget I’m working and become the audience.

What’s been your studio low point so far?

Oh, I once accidentally deleted all the drums parts from an EPs worth of recording.. bad times.  I think they were secretly very pissed at me.. we re-did it, it sounded better from what I can remember.

What do you do normally, musically? Are you self producing/releasing?

The studio hosts a multitude of different projects, from audio book production to recording HipHop artists.. it keeps me on my toes.  Personally I make music under an alias but I try and keep that separate from my job, otherwise things get a little blurry.  Right now I’m just the dude who runs a studio, happy to be involved with such great projects like working on the new DCI album!
What are you looking forward to working on in the future?

I’m really up for getting involved with more D.C.I. especially at the recording stage.. it’d be great to explore an unusual acoustic space, or something to impart a sense of acoustic colour on the recordings.. I’ve just seen them play live in an Art Gallery called the Pipe and the natural acoustic of the space really suited the music. People nowadays seem to want to avoid capturing any natural resonance of a space.. I like recordings that have an overall character to them and don’t sound like they exist or come from within a computer.

What music is rocking your world right now?

I’ve been listening to the new Dimlite album ‘Grimm Reality’ whilst doing this chat, it’s pretty special.. and so good that I’m finding it pretty hard to concentrate on getting this interview done.. think I’ll have to turn it off when I proof read what I’ve written.  The EPs before this album are seriously amazing works.. worth picking up.

Jay is currently studio manager at Deep Blue Studio which is part of dBs Music.  www.deepbluestudio.co.uk

Ben Solo will be releasing his latest album ‘Somewhere Between the Horizon and the Sky‘ in January 2012!!

This is the third studio release for Ben Solo and it sounds like its going to be the most creative so far… word on the street is that its got more drums, more synths and has even got vocals! Yea, I know, that’s just crazy talk! Word around the camp fire is that the vocals are supplied by Plymouth (UK) based Folk acoustic songstress Esther Alexadra and electronica genius Andrew Prior.

Sneak preview of the album coming REAL soon so keep in touch here to find out more… in the mean time have you heard Ben Solo’s previous releases? No, then head to the Ben Solo home page to hear some stuff…

We’ve been busy.

Welcome to the new Prima Rosa record label website and music community forum.

From our cottage somewhere in Devon we craft the releases of the loveliest ambient, electronic, shoegaze, post rock you could wish for. We are always on the lookout for new emerging talent in our area and anywhere on the planet so do get in touch if you want to be part of the Prima Rosa thing.

Here you can listen to your fav Prima Rosa artists, buy there music (I really think you should do this!) and also get involved in some exciting new ventures… like our new remix forum which is coming VERY soon!