Musical Making and Discovery

Last Saturday was the perfect day for music making and discovery!

Stormy outside, but Jeremy’s west end studio was warm and dry, with plenty of well-steeped tea, incredible roti and time to mark down favourite takes or dodgy bits to be edited out. Though Astrid’s performance was essentially flawless (no joke), the rest of us human Shiners listened for the most vibey performances, honing all the summer recordings down to twelve bed tracks.  It is a meticulous but joyful process, and we felt we were in good ears with Jeremy, our expert and patient guide/technician. And no doubt, what will emerge  from all this will be our own beautiful cicada of an album! But we’ve only just begun – we’ll be going back in this month to finish up the editing.  And then the next step – vocals and overdubbing – can begin.

As for musical discoveries, we left the studio that night and managed to get to the Mod Club just in time  to catch Laura Mvula‘s set! She’s an amazing new artist out of the UK and South Africa. A most striking and generous performer (think Nina Simone meets Kate Bush meets Miriam Makeba meets Vampire Weekend)! I got to meet her after the show – she was gracious and exhausted – felt like I got to experience the whole wonderful process of music making, performing, producing and promoting! A reminder to be an appreciative  music fan, as well as an artist.

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