During the project I familiarised myself with Camel Audio‘s excellent Alchemy synth, so you can expect to hear some evolving synth drones and sample-mangling pads in the score. Imperfect Samples‘ warm Braunschweig piano sample library also came in very handy, affording me the kind of warm, intimate piano chords that I can’t seem to get enough of lately.

It was also superb fun being able to get my hands dirty handling the sound design for the film. Plenty of fabric-rustling, cutlery-clinking, field recording shenanigans involved, including the implementation of sophisticated GLOVEBIRD™ technology.

The full film’s due for launch this summer, following its tour of film festivals.

You can visit the official Centrefold site over at: www.thecentrefoldproject.org and take a peek behind the scenes on the official Facebook page.

Although all the tracks have been previously released online in one form or another in the past, to collate and properly sequence them, give them a polish and adorn with some great nkurence-penned artwork, has breathed new life into them.

Early Learning constitutes most of my pre-’Midsummer’ output from between 2001 and 2003, and in some cases required revisiting the Cubase VST 5 song files, to be remixed and re-rendered for a cohesive release (i.e. tracks 1, 3 & 9). Being a download-only album, it seemed like a good opportunity to encode the FLACs in 24-bit, exceeding the 16-bit sound quality typical of a CD-borne album. (Which reminds me, I can also upgrade the FLAC editions of ‘Like Dust’, Lemodie and ‘Midsummer’ with 24-bit FLACs too. Shall arrange this when I get the chance.)

I’ve also taken full advantage of Bandcamp’s bonus-bundling capabilities, uploading a couple of extra tracks (a remastered ‘Bipolar Bears’, plus my Zelda remix), in addition to Chris Larkee’s video for ‘Esign’. The Esign video has been updated with the remastered audio, and rendered to a 720p H.264/MPEG-4 video file.

Enjoy!

Please remember to hit those like/tweet buttons on Bandcamp and help spread the word. Much appreciated, thanks.

Initially I was a little reticent to combine my recording and production work under the ‘Ochre’ umbrella, but seeing as though the production side of things now (thankfully) makes up a sizeable portion of my working life (along with my mastering work), it seems to make sense now for my site to reflect this. It’s also a good means of keeping my portfolio neatly catalogued, online and in one place, as I had almost forgotten about some the work I’d undertaken in the past (I’d been busier than I thought!).

Additionally, I’ve created a small library of available production tracks, which will hopefully serve both as a demonstration of my compositional versatility, as well as a catalogue of pieces that are available for licensing.

I’m very keen to expand my portfolio, particularly with some game audio work, so if you’re an aspiring game developer in need of some music or sound effects for your game, please get in touch. Although I’ve licensed my music for use in games in the past, I’m really itching to get stuck in with some game audio production, interactive music and sound design, so I’ve been poring over various audio APIs, raising my proficiency with FMOD and Wwise.

Finally, I’ll be dropping some news about some Ochre related releases over the forthcoming weeks, so stay tuned. Thanks!

Although I’ve still got both shops on the go, the US-centric .com and the Eurocentric .net, there’s nothing to stop you ordering from either. Spreadshirt seem to operate on a 1$=£1 basis, which while initially baffling, might not be far from the truth when you factor in customs and VAT if ordering from the US store to the UK, for example.

I’ll also be ending the current sale on physical products soon. No set date, but probably some point this week, so if you’ve been thinking about grabbing a Lemodie CD or Midsummer vinyl, act (moderately) quickly.

Lastly, you’ve probably noticed the new ‘Production’ label in the menu. As well as being kept comfortably busy with the mastering, I’ve also been doing more bespoke production work for various media clients, which I’ve been thoroughly enjoying. The frenetic work pace, prescriptive briefs and urgent deadlines contrast nicely with my (perhaps overly) leisurely Ochre output of late. I’ll add these projects to the site once I receive the completed video files etc., and will no doubt post an update.

The above video documents the production of a very unique set of musical artefacts, created initially as part of my PhD submission. The inaugural set of these ‘Auratic Artefacts’ comprises three transparent, single-sided vinyl dubplates, with a double-sided, laser-etched wooden veneer, bonded to the non-audio side of each dubplate. Further variations include sleek, laser-etched aluminium plates, contrasting nicely with the warm, almost rustic character of the wooden veneers. As you can see, each set comes with a hand-sprayed, custom sleeve, too!

This all came about through a gnawing dissatisfaction with my largely dematerialised music practice and its subsequent dematerialised output. Feels good to be able to physically see, touch and feel the fruits of my musical labour again in a non-CD format — to have something tangible to show once the computer shuts down.

But as you might expect, being able to offer these for sale would be quite a challenge; cutting dubplates and laser etching could get expensive very quickly. Then there’s the time costs incurred by all the parties involved in crafting these artefacts. Still, it’d be nice to present a few more sets at some point.

A huge thanks goes to nkurence for his design and crafting skills, in addition to his laser-etching expertise. Thanks also to Frank at The Carvery for cutting my tunes to transparent vinyl.

If you’re interested in learning more about the UDK and fancy dipping your toes into the world of game development, then this video of Dave at Psyonix gives you a quick intro to the platform. The UDK is free to download too, so given a little free time there’s nothing stopping you from crafting your own titles.

Ochre – Lunar Suburbia on a HDD Speaker from Ochre on Vimeo.

The track is ‘Lunar Suburbia,’ taken from the next Ochre album, ‘Like Dust of the Balance,’ playing through an old hard disk soldered up to the headphone outputs of my sound card.

Yep, it sounds terrible. But looking at the little drive head vibrate and bob in time with the music perhaps redeems it a little.

If you fancy making your own hard disk speaker, there are a few articles dotted around the net documenting the process, step-by-step, such as the one at the ever-handy Instructables.

I’ve embedded a YouTube-hosted vid below, but if you want a warp-free high quality version with AV timing intact (grr, YouTube!), you can grab a .mov of it from Knellotron.com, or an mp4 and DVD quality mpeg from archive.org.

The audio track itself was created using Ross Bencina’s Audiomulch program, while it was still in its freeware beta stage.

All six animations will be included on the collectors edition of Need For Speed: Carbon, and are also doing the rounds on TV ad breaks (at least here in the UK). Keep an eye out for the ad and press the red button on your Sky remote to check them all out.