Happy to reveal the latest Boy Azooga track that I recorded/produced/mixed and mastered (ooh la laa) - it’s a cover of The Table’s, comic book dead body dance floor classic ‘Do The Standing Still’.
The video (by Toby Cameron) features Kliph Scurlock, a polar bear and some confused members of the public. Have a good day. Long live The Table.
Catch the Azoogas on their UK and US tour on these dates - I’ll be at the Scala gig tomorrow (Weds 17th Oct).
With love and Azooga,
Ed 🎚🎛❤️
I spent a lot of 2014/2015 working on an album for Sera. She's a folk/country/americana artist, and came to me with a bunch of songs written on piano or guitar, plus vocals/lyrics, and we worked together to make an album. She's a really brilliant songwriter.
The album's called 'Little Girl' and was released on Folkstock Records - it's had play on BBC Radio London, BBC Wales & Cymru, Absolute Radio, and I'm sure a bunch more that I'm not aware of.
It was a LOT of work - as well as recording/mixing/mastering the album, I played guitar, synth/keys, bass, drums, percussion and even did some backing vocals (!), so it was quite a labour of love. We wrote the final track 'Through The Night' together, and I'm really proud of the whole album.
It also features songwriting collaborations with Sion Russell Jones and Gordon Mills Jr (The Bluetones, Ed Sheeran, Lissie, Newton Faulkner and Lillian Todd-Jones), as well as violin by Jenn Williams and cello by Sion Lewis.
Sera/Folkstock also released an EP called 'Rocks' which features a subset of the rockier songs from the album.
Thankfully, both the album and the EP have had some great reviews - I generally am not a huge fan of posting quotes as it makes me feel a bit queezy, so I'll leave you to check out the Huffington Post or Americana UK if you really feel like it. Still, here's one last one from From the Margins, just to flatter one's ego a little (hey, if I don't no one will etc?):
Her last EP, Straeon, saw a first musical collaboration with the producer of this album, Eddie Al-Shakarchi, who contributed by playing on Mond am Eiliad and Agor dy Galon. If anything has changed to make this new album something a whole stratospheric level above what, however excellent, she has recorded before, it must be this new working relationship. Al-Shakarchi is also a multi-instrumentalist - and his contribution of often spare but dynamic percussion is particularly important here in breathing life into the music.
Isn't that nice? You can stream Rocks below, and if you like it, please check out the whole album on BandCamp or iTunes / Apple Music. Thank you and have a lovely day.
I don't always agree with him, but I do agree on artist perspective mixing... always. Anyone who doesn't is weird and I will fight you to prove that I'm right.
Enjoy!
When in Rome/State Of The Ark...
Obligatory #vintage EMI fader porn 🌝🌚 #gearporn #studioporn
A photo posted by Eddie Al-Shakarchi (@dr_ed_boogie) on
I thought it would be cool to document some of the sessions I do - and what better time to do one, after the recent release of the Palomino Party EP II (iTunes / Spotify / SoundCloud)? We recorded all the drums, bass and some of the guitars at Rockfield Studios in Monmouth, Wales. We were in the smaller of the two spaces at Rockfield, the Coach House (vs the Quadrangle), which has a pretty cool/tight sounding room, with some extra mics sprawled out into the corridor and a nearby marble room for differing levels ambience. This room was used to record the Oasis' What's the Story Morning Glory, and like, a bunch of other stuff.
The main desk was a Neve 8128 (which likely had a dodgy channel buggering up one of the overhead mics - noticed only once the session was over, of course), not a whole bunch of outboard gear, but some nice EQs. We were lucky to find a decent/tatty old AC30 there so took advantage of that, and used an old Marshall Lead-Bass through a vintage 4x12 for some bass, plus the amps we took.
I get asked about different mic setups, so here they are. The vocals and more guitars were done at my studio, but I'll give the vocal chain too:
Drums:
Overheads: 2 x B&K 4011 (or DPA if you’re fussy)
Kick In: Sennheiser 421
Kick Out: Neumann FET 47 & Yamaha NS10 Sub
Snare Top: Sennheiser 441
Snare Bottom: AKG 414
Toms: Sennheiser 2 x 421
Hi-Hat: AKG C451
Corridor Mics: 2 x AKG 414
Marble Room Smash Mics: 2 x Sennheiser e606
Bass:
1) DI via 1176
2) Sansamp DI
3) Marshall Lead & Bass 1964 though Marshall 4x12 -> Neumann FET 47
Guitars:
Vox AC30: Shure SM57 + Neumann U67
Marshall JTM30 and Fender Hot Rod Deluxe: Shure SM57 + Neumann U87
Vocals:
Shure SM7 -> Great River ME-1NV -> 1176
