Spring has come and gone all too quickly it seems. Whilst the weather may sometimes have been a little cool, down at the studio things have been hot! Sheena has finished off producing and mixing the Serpentine album and initial responses have been great. Sheena also re-mixed some tracks for our old friends Redline with their new members. These guys are a favourite band of the producers of the TV coverage of the Isle of Man TT. One of their songs “King of the Mountain” was recorded here and was featured in the closing titles of the programme.

In the meantime Mark has been touring all over Europe with the Magnum guys on their “Visitation” tour. The home show in Wolverhampton went down very well in front of over 800 people. They have a few shows lined up in December too. Upon their return the band will be coming into the studio soon to re-mix some old songs for a retrospective album entitled ‘The SPV years’. Magnum are also planning on recording some new material too for this release.

The Magnum Rabble '11

The tour had a short break between Europe and UK shows, so Mark returned to the studio to finish off some mix tweaks with Sheena on the New Saints album. They have been getting great reactions to their live show, and now are launching themselves to greater heights with their new album entitled “Songs for the Black Hearted”. We wish them luck.

Soley Mourning’s album launch party unfortunately clashed with the Magnum show at Wolverhampton so we were unable to attend, but responses from the public have been great. In fact the album’s title track “Zaire” has even converted Al Barrow and Tony Clarkin of Magnum into fans!

The summer is rapidly approaching and we are hopefully welcoming back into our studio very soon the likes of Stampede, Dante Fox, Mike De Jaeger, Eddie Morton & Voodoo Sioux. As a busman’s holiday Sheena is also off to Download, so look out for her there, and Mark will be at Sonisphere working with Diamond Head.

Serpentine with new singer Matt Black

Our main project now in its early stage is the band Serpentine's second album, as yet untitled. The first album recorded here a year or so ago, which featured Tony Mills on vocals, received great reviews and we are hoping to get even better reviews for this one. Tony is again singing on the record, but the band has recruited a new singer, Matt Black, for future live and recording projects. Work on the album is now well under way, it's coming together great.

We also enjoyed a breif visit from a few old friends. Voodoo Johnson came in with their new singer Nik to record vocals and guitar solo by Brian Tatler of Diamond Head on a co-written track.

Mark is getting the organisation done for the forthcoming Magnum 'Visitation' tour starting in Stockholm, Sweden on the 9th March and touring all over Europe until the 1st of May. There is a tourbus, crew, hotels, flights etc to book so lots to do.

Whilst away on this tour in March and April Sheena will be running the studio so we are still open and we will be doing some special rates over that period, so please call us.

Check out the new section of our website 'listen' (on the flash version only) which features some MP3 snippets of some of our work for potential clients to listen to.

First of all a Happy New Year to all of our readers. We hope you had a great Christmas too.  We were working right up until Christmas eve again. But oh boy what about the weather? We still managed to get in despite very slippery roads around the studio.

Soley Mourning have been in putting finishing touches to their album, under the working title 'Zaire' and will be up for release in April sometime. Fun and games all through this session but in the end a great product and worth a listen

We also had a session with a band we had not worked with before - LBD. A quirky punky rock outfit with a great girl singer by the name of Heather. A good band and we think well worth going to see.

Also returning to the fold are Dante Fox, Tim and Sue who have been laying down some new songs for an EP and hopefully a new album for 2011.

Keeping up with our international ventures, after finishing with Greek guitarist Babis Kaisas’s session, we started doing some mixes for a side project from Diamond Head’s drummer Karl Wilcox. Karl lives in New Jersey, but has been writing a project “Too Close for Missiles” with Wednesbury  based singer songwriter Dodge. Karl has been recording it in his studio in New Jersey and whilst he was over here doing some Diamond Head shows he took the opportunity to do some work on the songs here

Whist Mark was busy doing sound at the UK Diamond Head shows, Sheena was working with band '8 Day Warning', featuring former singer and bassist from Black Orange plus 2 new members. Their material is sounding great as ever, and we wish them all the best with their new band.

Blimey summer went quick! Now we look forward to autumnal days and longer nights as Christmas – yes that’s right Christmas - rapidly approaches.

Magnum’s new album entitled “The Visitation” is finished and delivered to the record label for a January release and a tour in March and April. It sounds great and has a progressive ‘bent’ with some big tracks, now Mark is starting to get the tour organised for the spring in his role as the band’s tour manager, and Sheena has managed to have a holiday for a week away in the sun. We've taken a little post-album downtime and spent a few days upgrading all our operating systems and and plugins to make sure we are up to date, plus aquiring a few new ones.

This amazing shot was taken by Al Barrow, Magnum's bass player. It is a panoramic shot of our control room with Tony Clarkin and a thoughtful look, Bob Catley quietly reading the newspaper and Mark hard at work at the computer. Great shot Al. More of Al's work can be seen at www.albarrowphotography.com

Mark and SM guitarist Tony

Our next projects are international again. We are finishing our Babis Kaisas’s project from the Greek songwriter/guitarist featuring Tony Mills on vocals. Tony is still recovering  from his health problems from a month or so back - we hope he's fit and well again really soon, and look forward to working with him again imminently, as in the New Year we will begin work on another album by the band Serpentine.

During a break from the Magnum work, we started a new album with our old friends Soley Mourning. This will be their 3rd studio album with them. These Black Country lads are welcome visitors to the studio as their antics in between, and during, recording sessions can be great fun. Mark in fact, has a starring role in their new video which we are sure will be up on youtube very soon.

BOTB Finalists

Liberty Lies at Rock City
on the Magnum Tour

Jim’s back!  After a spell of inactivity on the Jim Lea front, he is back resuming on his project with violins, violas, cellos and even a double bass in tow.  Jim has never been one to rush things, his last album took around 10 years to complete, some tracks were started in our early days in Walsall, and we have been here in Coven for nigh on 8 years. Currently he has over 20 songs on the go.

Our little refurbishment is 95% done we have a nice new lounge and kitchen, the latter nearly went pear shaped when we had a burst pipe over the kitchen ceiling, fortunately we caught it in time and all was OK.  So if you’re coming to visit us any time – please wipe your feet (or Sheena will be cross)!!!  We are hoping to extend the refurbishment work to the live room area later this year.

It looks like we are going to be especially busy in the spring and early summer as we have 3 bands intending to record albums this year and another one planned in September. Also our perennials, Magnum, will be starting work on their next studio album in the next few weeks - which will be interrupted by a few festivals in Norway, Sweden and UK in the summer months.

We are always looking to produce new up and coming bands, so if you are reading this and have never recorded here and would like to know more please get in touch.

The end of October proved to be surprisingly dramatic considering the studio was largely closed for refurbishment.  On the 28th October the TV studio adjacent to our building caught fire and has more or less burnt to the ground  - taking with it two cars, a little of Magnum’s equipment that was not required for their tour and some lighting equipment.  Unfortunately this means we can no longer offer deals on a video studio facility as advertised on our website.

This all came as a great shock to Mark, who was on tour at the time. He received a phone call to say that the studio had burnt down!  A very panicky 15 minutes transpired before he discovered the full details.  But we are still here, despite what was implied in the local papers, and suffered nothing worse than a week without power as a result of the drama.

The Magnum crew in a hatastrophe

On September 23rd Mark departed on a long tour with perennial rockers Magnum all over Europe doing their FOH sound and tour managing, in fact he has passed through 11 different countries and seen all forms of weather from 22 degree sun in Lisbon to snow whilst loading out in Munich!

During Mark’s absence Sheena has not been resting on her laurels, but has been working hard doing some much needed redecorating at the studio – ably assisted by Redline’s guitarist Ade (who is a builder when not busy playing) and 2 members of Mark’s family who have been tiling for us.  The refurbishments are quite behind schedule due to a number of setbacks but we’re hoping to have the place looking much renewed by the New Year.  We hope all our clients old and new enjoy the changes.

Sheena hasn’t been entirely devoid of studio work during the Mangum tour, she enjoyed a brief visit from Dante Fox, did some opera work with Tony Mills (yes opera).  She’s also been working with a rock band called Black Orange, who came to us on recommendation from Soley Mourning (cheers guys).  They’ve been working on their debut album – recording guitars, vocals and mixing. We think they’re a band with a lot of promise so keep an ear out for them in the near future.  The album entitled ‘Katzenjammer’ is due for release on their own label in December.

Well the summer came and went and we hardly noticed it at all, we were kept busy with melodic rock band Serpentine continuing their debut album featuring Tony Mills (Shy/TNT) on vocals, release date still yet to be decided.  Angel House also came in to record their second album with us - the guys out of Angel House we have known for many years (Mark worked with them in the 80s in fact).

The end of June saw the return of some more old friends, the band fronted by Callum Lake, who have gone through many a band name in their time, and are currently calling themselves ‘Latina Heat’.  We first worked with Callum whilst he was still in school and it has been very exciting to see just how much they’ve progressed over the years.  They’ve laid down the first 5 tracks for an upcoming album to be finished later in the year and it’s sounding pretty good so far – keep up the good work Latina Heat!

In July we worked with a band new to us – a Hendesford/Rugeley based metal band called ‘We Are Nines’.  A somewhat unconventional band they play in a considerably different tuning from normal, and make excellent use of keyboards.  They recorded 3 tracks with us over a weekend.

As many of you no doubt know, this summer also saw the completion of Thunder’s farewell tour.  Thunder’s drummer Harry James is an old friend of the studio through his other job with Magnum, and both Mark and Sheena would like to wish him and the rest of the Thunder guys all the best in their future endeavours.

The winners of the Wolverhampton Battle of the Bands - CCL - have recorded their ‘prize’ and are due back soon to do some more recording with us. We are still waiting for the runners up to get in touch though!   Our local friends Soley Mourning have laid down a few more tracks (they also happened to be special guests on the Magnum tour in Germany and Denmark) but have yet to finish them completely.

Well the Battle of the Bands final has been and gone and we will hopefully be welcoming the winners ‘CCL’ and runners up ‘Psycho Circus’ through our doors sometime in the coming few months to record some songs. Congratulations to both the bands, and well done to all of the finalists for getting so far. We will be carrying on our sponsorship of the event for the next round of competitions finishing in 2010.

As the summer approaches the thought of the two of us getting any sun tans has more or less been dissipated.  We have bucked the current economic trend and have found ourselves to be very busy. We’ve now finally completed the Lasse Dale album, (in the words of the singer Tony Mills “a f**king awesome mix” – Cheers Tone, we aim to please!).  This month we’ve continued in a slightly less heavy vein with the return of old friends of ours; previously ‘Headspeed’, they have refreshed their style somewhat and renamed the band ‘The New Saints’.   Over a period of a number of days (we are not letting on how much) we recorded their new album ‘Promise and Prediction’.  Some intense work went on there and all concerned were very happy with the end result. Keep a look out for them in the future.

John Dunnett from the band ‘Resistance’ is getting married in May and he wanted to record a song especially for his new wife to have the first dance to at their wedding.  The track was an acoustic guitar-based rock ballad to which we added some nice string arrangement (courtesy of Sheena) to give it a bit of class. Once the honeymoon is over the band are planning on coming back in the autumn to record an album.

Tony Mills has introduced us to a young Welsh AOR band, ‘Serpentine’.   They have started recording their debut album with us, featuring Tony on vocals.  The bulk of the work will be undertaken in June and July and the band is planning a major launch sometime later on in the year.

This week we also welcomed the return of Speed Theory who came in to record some new tracks. This band has gone from strength to strength since they recorded their debut album here a few years ago.  The original demos from the album were Metal Hammer’s ‘demo of the year’ in 2006. Their style of metal has ‘progressively’ evolved somewhat and are a band that is not afraid of using modern technology, both live and in the studio. Welcome back guys!

So the summer is about to start, we will be working hard with ‘Tara’s Secret’ for the most of May on their new album.  Serpentine, Angel House will be here in June and we have lined up more sessions with more bands in July and August, even Tony Clarkin of Magnum is itching to get in to record some new solo material! 

BRH singer Sven belts out a vocal take

As we sink deeper into this recession we have set up a Pay Pal account so that if you want sessions can be paid into our Pay Pal account from your wallet, bank, or credit card. So perhaps you can afford to do that recording after all.  We’ve also set up a brand new MySpace page, this time under MySpace Music, so current and future clients can enjoy listening to examples of our recent work.  We will be posting new MP3s soon so watch this space...

We are looking forward to spring which is just around the corner and hope to see some of you then.

We have decided to become sponsors of the Wolverhampton Battle of the Bands along with Wolverhampton Civic Halls, Beacon Radio and Banks's Brewery. As part of our participation in this event we are offering prizes to the winners, runners up and all the semi finalists. For the winner we are offering the opportunity to record and produce 2 songs at the studio, for the runners-up the same for one song. We will get our producers heads on and hopefully come up with a quality product to help these bands go on to fame and fortune. All the semi finalists will receive a voucher which can be used towards sessions booked at the studio.

In the meantime busy as ever we have carried on with the mixing for our awesome guitarist from Norway Lasse Dale as well as putting final tweaks to mixing sessions with UXL and Redline. We have also spent a couple of days, with a few selected musicians and producer Gary Cole, recording lullabies for the Staffordshire LHA. Boy did we sleep well for those two nights afterwards.

In the run up to Christmas we have welcomed the return of UXL and Redline.  Jim Lea has been branching out from his own work to play strings on a track for both of them, a service we very much hope he will continue to provide our clients.
We’ve been closed over the whole Xmas period in order to prepare for another of Sheena’s New Year’s parties at the studio.  It was a very successful event, and probably the only time anyone’s seen a Ringwraith dance or a dragon sing Karaoke!  January will see our continuation with our work on Lasse Dale’s album (from Norway, not Sweden as aforementioned - sorry Lasse!).

We would at this point like to wish all our clients and friends, old, new and future a very Happy Christmas and a very successful new year and look forward to producing some great recordings for you soon.

Magnum in the studio

Fresh from their tour Magnum have begun work on their new album. Tony has been writing prodigiously at home, and over the next few months we will be turning his demos into another full Magnum opus. Meanwhile Sheena has taken a break from the studio to visit the countryside – Download festival that is! The end of June also brought us a new band, the E gos – an indie outfit well worth a listen on their myspace site.

Sheena left on holiday in July, leaving Mark to continue the development on Magnum's album. Mark has also been away over the summer, not on holiday though! Magnum had a few trips to various festivals in Germany and Wales and Mark has been fulfilling the role of FOH engineer and tour manager once again. July also saw a further stint of work on Jim Lea's album which is sounding better all the time.

The JLO on location at St Christopher's RC Church...

Mark went away in May doing a short UK and then European tour with Magnum, as is his want. In his absence Sheena has been very busy with Jim Lea. Jim is nearing completion of his “String Theory” album which has taken a few twist and turns in its evolution. Originally with great virtual instruments available we planned to achieve his string arrangements with keyboards and an occasional real violin on top (those of you old enough will remember Jim not only played bass and wrote songs for Slade but also played violin). But during May after a number of experiments with some printed scores and multi-tracked violins we decided to re-record most of the string parts for real, Jim playing them all, and create his own 'orchestra' (aka the JLO).

Armed with his 2 new violins, one inherited from his grandfather, 2 violas, a cello and a multitude of others borrowed from Turner Violins in Birmingham, Jim has been recording his orchestra one person at a time (with an occasional oboe part from Sheena). It may sound long winded but the results are sounding very impressive. To enhance the realism of the whole affair we have also done some location recording at the CBSO Centre, and the local RC Church in Codsall. Upon Mark's return we also enjoyed a visit from the friendly guys of cool black and white mustelid roadsters – The Icelandic Traffic Badgers back in again to do some more tracks.

Is it really Christmas since we updated our news page? We can’t believe how quickly time flies. So here with the news from the winter solstice to the spring solstice and the very early Easter we have had this year.

The New Year stated with the continuation of album 2 mixes for the CJM guys, who have enjoyed a very positive response to their first album of modernised hymns. They also appeared recently on Songs of Praise.

We also had the pleasure of another visit from one of our favourite covers band Tranzam introducing their new singer to us, and pushing themselves ever further with no less than a Rush cover on this visit (amongst others).

January also brought a band new to Mad Hat who we think will do something special in the near future - Voodoo Johnson. They recorded a handful of songs for their new EP and one thing is for sure - they have a great singer who is worth a listen. Formed by guitarist brothers Carl and Paul Gethin they had been around for a few years before discovering Kev Bayliss a vocal talent many rock bands would give their right arms for. We wish them success and look forward to doing some more recording with them in the summer.

Next in was Tony Mills, he ex of Shy and now the front man of TNT (one of Norway’s finest) had, in between his other projects, teamed up with guitarist Neil Hibbs and wrote a new solo album. This he recorded by sending demos to keyboard players and bass players in Norway, and USA and recording the drums with Shy’s drummer Bob. We then gathered all the files together from effectively 7 different studios, stuck it all together and mixed it. The material, very progressive in style, is on sale very soon.

February was interspersed with other sessions; with Redline back to do some stuff for a new album, Vaseline Rats, putting finishing touches to their debut album, which incidentally is sounding great. Another band with a bit of X factor Telegramme ‘the band with no money’ but a great singer in Faye came in to do a few more tracks. Faye has a great voice and it is delivered with great passion. Watch out for them this year.

Magnum have been in to start demoing stuff for a new album due to be recorded here in the summer in between the odd festival booking and post tour which starts in early May.

Well that’s about that, Mark is off with Magnum in May, Sheena’s around to look after the place then, well she’s around nearly all of the time anyway.

Have a good spring!

Well what a busy autumn we have had! We welcomed the return of one of our rodent bands The Vaseline Rats who have now finished the final tracks of a self-financed album and are now looking for a place to release it as well as getting some more gigs to help promote it. We feel it is a great album and will be well worth a listen. We also welcomed the return of one of our favourite bands of the last few years – Ripchord. The guys came in to demo some new tracks. They have been working with Ian Broudie from the Lightning Seeds on a soon to be released debut album which will feature tracks recorded here as well. They have been doing great things live as well supporting the Kaiser Chiefs amongst others. I would like to think that we helped them on their way a bit. Also returning were the interestingly named “Icelandic Traffic Badgers” laying down some more catchy tunes. Returning too were Angel House, a great rocking three piece rock band who (I am sure they won’t mind me saying) have been around some time as Mark recorded with them many many years ago. New through the doors we had a band called The Counago’s recording some good songs too!

Also, much to Mark’s delight, one of his favourite ever bands, The Adventure Babies made a brief return to put the finishing touches to new material possibly for a new mini album, these guys write great songs with a rather off the wall approach to recording and arrangements.

Since our last news update we have continued with more work on Jim Lea’s Magnum Opus and talking of Magnum, Mark has just done a short tour with these rockers and recorded all the shows for a forthcoming double CD release of their classic Wings of Heaven album live. Touring, compiling the recordings and mixing took up most of November and December and now we are ready for our turkey (if there is any left!) and Christmas pudding in a well-earned break.

Mark & Sheena wish all of our clients past present and future a great merry making Christmas and hopefully a successful and prosperous New Year.

Whild Dogs and Cowards

It is difficult to believe that another month has gone by since the last news update that’s because we are always busy! The first of the two CJM projects has finished and is released this week and plans are afoot to continue in the new year with project 2.  Paul May has finished his project and we have been continuing a large project with ex Slade supreme Jim Lea who is currently writing and recording songs for an “unplugged” album. Jim, who is responsible for huge hits such as  “C’mon feel the Noize”, “Gud’bye t Jane” and “Merry Christmas” amongst others, is a regular customer and has some fantastic stories to tell of the days of Slade and beyond – We are trying to convince him to write a book, but of course that treads on his recording time – maybe one day!

In the last month we have also had visits from Frontline, a great guitar driven pop band with superb vocal harmonies, Chris Wallbank and The Cowards in again to record some great quirky stuff and Façade in to record some new songs with their new singer Kirsty.  Tyla, from the Dogs D’amour has also been in to start work on his next album.

Razorhead Album Artwork

Well what a busy time we are having, it has been so busy we haven’t even had the time, or indeed the energy to bring you up to date, but we thought it was high time to remedy that.

Since February we have been busy with the Marshall Law album, "Razorhead" which has finally been mixed and in our humble opinion is sounding awesome.  A lot of hard work has gone in to it from all concerned and the guys are now in the process of getting a release sorted out.  Buy it if you like metal – it is very good!

We have continued on our religious theme from last time, this time with another project from rocker Paul May who has been recording some new spiritual material.  In addition we have continued sessions with our other religious clients, the guys from CJM, who keep gracing us with fantastic session musicians of all types from brass quintets, flautists, singers, to jazz guitarists.  They also sent some rough mixes to an orchestra in Prague for them to record the string arrangements and we have just received them back and they sound great.  This is a relatively inexpensive way to get real a string orchestra playing on a record, and the turnaround is extremely quick.  Technology for sharing recordings over continents is a wonderful thing.

Mark has been away during most of May with Magnum doing their Princess Alice Tour.  Mark is their Tour manager and Front of House engineer and is therefore responsible for making sure everything goes according to plan and that the band sound good!  The tour around Europe and the UK was very well received and plans are afoot for another one in the late autumn.  The UK support for this tour was another of our clients, UXL, who were received very favourably by the Magnum fans and took the opportunity to release their album (recorded here of course) at the same time.

Meanwhile back at the ranch Sheena has been finishing off a rock session with Redline, a great biker rock band from Birmingham, they have a track called “King of the Mountain”, which has been used as promo music for the Isle of Man TT Races. She has also been looking after one of our regulars, Jim Lea, who is recording more material for some more releases later on in the year.

We have also had sessions with a great girl punk band called Drag, the Icelandic Traffic Badgers have driven in and badgered us, as have Tukazon, This is Sprit, Renfield, Pris and a little session with Tobias Sammet from Edguy getting some guest vocals recorded by Bob Catley from Magnum.

The summer continues to look busy and because of that we have just invested in a new Mac Pro to make our sessions go smoother and swifter. We still have time available so don’t hesitate to give us a call and become part of our news items!!

Over the course of February we have mostly been occupied with heavy metallers Marshall Law, and continued work on the CJM recordings of hymns and religious songs brought up to date.  In addition to our normal pursuits, during the very brief spell of snow we had a few weeks ago, we arrived at the studio to be greeted by three black Indian runner ducks, a mallard and a little white duck, and they have stayed. They greet us most days with a chorus of quacks and are most entertaining - we suspect we may have a few little ones later on!  March is to be another busy month with more Law, hymns, folk and rock.  We do have a few days available in April, but May and June are looking busy, so if you are thinking of coming here to record best get in quick!!