Church Road Recording

read moreMultitrack production for all types of music - bands, solo artists, acoustic and electronic performers. You'll have access to a wide range of guitars, amps, keyboards and drums. We specialise in the unusual and esoteric - 60s Hammond organ, upright piano, Indian harmoniums, vintage drum machines and guitars. Everything goes through an analogue desk and boutique mic pres by Neve and SSL. Mixing sessions can be remote or attended. We can work with your project to turn it into a commercially ready master.

read moreI recently set up Church Road Audiobooks and my first book is Martine McDonagh's dystopian climate novel 'I Have Waited And You Have Come'. It's available on Audible now. Set in a collapsed Britain where flooding is our everyday reality, its a study in loneliness and grim determination to defend yourself amidst the rain. We have recorded voiceovers for books, media and online learning since the early noughts, so it was a natural extension to get into audiobooks. One audiobook that caused me to fall in love with the medium was Will Self's The Book Of Dave.

read moreWith Julian Tardo engineering and Jonny '8 Track' Aitken drumming you can now record drums remotely for your Track via Protools, Logic Audio or Analogue Tape in an Acoustically-treated live room with all the great gear Church Road has to offer (full list here) just send us the stems, we can discuss what you want, produce the recordings and transfer them back to you electronically in a wide range of formats! You can choose which kit you would prefer, choose from a selection of snare drums and from 3 in-House kits: A bright sounding Unique Premier kit, a 'rock' sounding Pearl Export and a beautiful 70s Ludwig.

read moreJonny Aitken is one of the great drummers i've worked with over the years. Also known by his alter ego Jonny 8 Track, he's actually a very experienced session drummer who recently provided the drums on the critically acclaimed Spiritualized album 'And Nothing Hurt'. We were recording some drums for the Torn Sail album and having received the WAVs I set up a multitrack session to replace some pre production template ideas with real drums. I didn't compress anything on the way in because I want to give the future mix engineer more options.

read moreHere's a nice chat I had with Savia Rocks on her Us People podcast, which covers how I got into music and recording. I really like this new podcast as it's pretty broad mix of creatives, and I find it's always good to study different disciplines and compare their experiences to your own. This is pretty much the back story to Church Road if you're curious!

read moreWhen you're a producer working with someone of such highly-charged creativity as Nick Hudson you've just got to be ready. There's no such thing as a guide vocal or a guide anything. They're all such incredibly inventive musicians it's a real pleasure to be there capturing as much of the magic as you can. It's exciting to be producing music in this very free collaborative process. On a personal note I think it's important to acknowledge this as a key part of what we do in a professional recording environment these days.

read moreWe use very high end audio equipment, such as Apogee Rosetta converters, Neve or SSL pre-amps, recording everything on our 24buss Soundtracs Quartz analogue mixing console. Our range of over 40 microphones includes choice picks like a Neumann U87, Shure SM7, and 2 EMI 1949 ribbon mics. We record to Logic X, but there is a 2 Lyrec 24 track, a half inch Fostex E16 and a 2 track quarter inch Tascam for the tapeheads out there. Other items of note are our C3 Hammond, and our Samick Upright piano (which is regularly tuned).

read moreI met up with a very talented lazer engineer called Graham last year and we chatted about our mutual interest in tape recorders. Probably not realising what he let himself in for, he is now well into refurbishing our Revox B77. We bought a kit from Australia which has all the components you need to bring the machine back to essentially brand new. Then I managed to get brand new hears from a guy in Romania. Sounds sketchy but the guy came up trumps and they duly arrived in the post. So a month or so in and Graham has disassembled the motors, replaced the bearings and things are looking good so far.