Stamp! Beats: Studio Ventures
Through our manager we had met Stefan Kazassoglou, director of Binary Cell in Liverpool, at some point during 2010. Upon our first trip to the building the studios are housed in, it was pretty clear to us that we had to do some work their with Stefan. Binary Cell's studio floor is comprised of 5 studios (one of which is for video editing only), a large live room and a roomy vocal booth, so the set-up was more than ideal to use for recording with vocalists we didn't know personally, as Binary Cell allowed us a certain degree of professionalism over our personal studio, which is only a one room affair. Whilst we have recorded many vocals in our studio over the '12x12' project (Bubbz, Jenna G, Jon Rice x2 and Mad Rush), Binary Cell offers a certain wow factor, as well as a skilled (recording) engineer who would be able to operate the studio in a much more time efficient manner than ourselves (largely as it is their day-to-day working environment).
(Screen bank in the Octagon studio, Binary Cell)
Stefan worked with us on the recording session on 'Are You Dumb?' (ft. Miski) and we built a great rapport with him over the session, which has since seen us collaborate with him on a couple of projects. We DJ'd at Binary Cell as part of the Liverpool Biennial festivities (late 2010) in one of the building's performance spaces. This wasn't just any old gig however, this was next level HeavyFeet (!), with us playing on a 5.1 surround sound system. Stefan has many magical gizmos (hardware and software) which allow him to be able to sweep frequency bands of audio around the six speaker stacks, creating a soundscape that is fairly unimaginable until you stand in the middle of the 5.1 set-up and hear it properly. We also had Mad Rush to hand for this show and Stefan was again able to take his (mono signal) vocal output and bounce that around the various speakers, adding to the atmospherics of the event.
In addition, Stefan worked on a 5.1 surround sound mix of 'Are You Dumb?' for us, which can be downloaded below. Please note, unless you have a correctly configured 5.1 audio system, this wma file will not play as it is intended to play, so if you only have stereo desktop speakers for example, you will not be able to hear the audio's movement and the full effect of the surround mix. If you do have a correctly configured 5.1 gaming system or home cinema system however, feel free to download Stefan's 5.1 version here. If you would like a higher quality wav file, just reply to this post or contact us through Twitter or Facebook.
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STMP006
HeavyFeet ft. Miski - Are You Dumb?
Stamp! Beats
Release Date: 06.09.10
We first came across Miski through hearing her track ‘Lady Noisy’ on DJ Target’s 1xtra show which led to discussing the option of her voicing a single for the 12x12 project. After having released ‘War’ (ft. Jenna G) we were keen to complete a second single for the project that also had its roots in the club but crossed over into the realms of radio playability and was vocally strong enough and full enough to be listened to outside the club. Miski wrote two lengthy rapped verses over the beat as well as a sung hook for the chorus simply which added a great new additional dimension to the track. When it came to recording the vocals for 'Are You Dumb?' at Binary Cell, Miski adapted to the recording environment extremely well and delivered the vocals in a minimum of takes, considering the length of the verses, with the quality of the resulting stems enabling us to place them on the track with minimum editing, allowing a natural flow to the vocals. The club mix we produced for this single was, to be honest, far from the best selling club mix we’ve released over the project. However, we had agreed at the beginning of the project that whilst we would always at least try and get a house-type remix done of each single, it wouldn’t always be HeavyFeet that provided that, thus enabling us to be a bit more experimental with our club output on occasions. It would be fair to say that we are not the most accomplished of producers when it comes to 140bpm bracket but had we not done the remix in the style we did there would have been no benchmark or ambition to go on and produce Mad Rush’s ‘Vs Up’ in such manner, which went on to be a very successful single for us. Also, we felt the original 'Are You Dumb?' instrumental parts and vocal would not lend themselves to a house mix particularly well. As for the remix, there is very little to be said other than Dre Skull absolutely murdered it! As such a prolific and varied producer we were excited to have him on board for the project, and had zero idea of what would be returned to us come deadline day. Suffice to say, it was suitably mind-blowing and is definitely the most leftfield track we’ve released throughout the project.
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Our apologies this week's blog is a few days late. It's been a pretty hectic few days here and HeavyFeet HQ. Tune in next week (hopefully Monday!) for more...
M&J
Two music producing, tea drinking, radio show presenting, industry critiquing, cake loving, studio gear buying, blog writing chaps from the rainy city, Manchester.
UK/Europe Dates:
Sat 12th May: Future Perfect, Manchester
Thrs 31st May: Unconvention, Preston (panel)
Sun 3rd June: Joshua Brooks, Manchester
Sat 9th June: Parklife (VIP), Manchester
Fri 15th June: Hula, Manchester
Sat 7th July: Wakestock, Wales (VIP)
Sun 8th July Wakestock, Wales
Fri 3rd Aug: The Egg, London
