Freelance

Having left university, into the flurry of the Manchester music scene, I spent a period working as a pro audio specialist in a music shop while playing any gig or show I could. One day, while at a music trade show, I met someone who had recently produced one of the first-ever sample CDs — a collection of loops and sounds that could be easily loaded into a sampler and used as construction tools. Moving to London, I started to help assemble volume 2 and quickly found myself caught up in London’s vibrant, early 90s underground music scene — playing with various bands and producing that era’s ‘new’ techno and trance sounds at venues such as Megatripolis and Glastonbury.

All the while I was writing and releasing music of my own — dozens of tracks across various labels, most of the Goa trance through Brighton’s Koyote Records. One of the more entertaining outings, Stanley Shanti and the Chillum Wallahs, can still be found floating around YouTube.

While I was producing a demo for one of the bands I played keyboard for, a studio owner spotted my talents and offered me a spot as their house engineer, specialising in computer-based music production. Between solving relentless tape timecode sync issues and degaussing the head of a Studer 2“ 24-track, I got to work with many artists, working on diverse styles from jungle to acid jazz, and techno to African and Indian world music. Having learnt Mac-based print publishing to generate cover art, I began freelancing as a Mac operator, working with and learning from the likes of Dorling Kindersley and high-end designers such as Pentagram, Quentin Newark’s Atelier and provocative writer and activist Nicholas Saunders, who all had connections with the music scene.

Music technology at that time was progressing rapidly and I jumped onto digital audio production techniques and hardware as soon as they were available, becoming proficient in tools such as Cubase and Logic Audio, Pro Tools and Max/MSP, which taught me the basics of writing real-time digital signal processing (DSP) code, using a Macintosh Quadra and Audiomedia II card. I created a number of audio processing tools that ended up being used widely in studios across London and beyond. I still dabble in this today.