I thought I'd wrap up 2019 with a quick roundup of what I've been up to with Soundfackery Productions, while I sit here sipping coffee with cream and whisky, waiting for the spirit of Hogmanay to take me.
We kicked off 2019 with an awesome recording session with the Michael Cretu Trio for their debut album. This was a fantastic three-day session showing how well the trio can effortlessly fuse elements of jazz, funk and soul and contemporary classical music with the folk music of Romania, Greece and Turkey.
I also mixed the album, which has been mastered now and should be released in the new year.
Speaking of Michael Cretu, the solo album I recorded and mixed for him last year got its release on Prima Facia in 2019. The album is called The Byzantine Connection, and we are both really proud of it. The last two tracks on the record are a compositional collaboration between Michael and myself.
Even Vast's Warped Existence album was finally released in 2019. I contributed bass guitar and backing vocals on this album, engineered some of the vocal and saxophone sessions and received a co-producer credit.
So far, this is my favourite quote from a review for the album,
"“Somebody” is basically the audio equivalent of a black hole: extremely dense body that pulls in everything around it. With a good pair of headphones and a high volume source, this song could probably make your head implode. The last forty seconds or so of this track is why this style of Doom Metal is so damn good—nonstop riffs that make you want to punch through a brick wall. As he does on the entire album, Kilpatrick’s bass alone is some sort of unstoppable monster."
The biggest task of 2019, however, was the composing, recording, mixing and mastering of the soundtrack to a brand new horror feature film called Coven of Evil, due to be released in the new year.
You can hear a short snippet below. Listen out for Alan Williams and Anikó Tóth contributing some guest vocals.
I composed around seventy-five minutes of original music for this film, so it was quite an undertaking, but I'm really proud of the result and can't wait for the movie premiere in 2020.
While I was working on Coven of Evil, I did manage to sneak in a soundtrack for a fantastic documentary called Games of Survival: A Culture Preserved in Ice.
The documentary tells such an interesting story, and the characters are fantastic. I would highly recommend checking out this film.
While we are on the subject of films, I'm closing out 2019 about two-thirds of the way through a feature documentary entitled Plastic Britain: On Our Watch. I'm really proud to be a part of this film, as it carries an incredibly important message, while, at the same time, it is very engaging and has superb cinematography. Here's hoping you will be able to watch it on Netflix in 2020.
A real bucket list achievement for me in 2019 was to work on a project with John Carpenter, albeit indirectly. I was asked to submit a song, in traditional notation, that would be included in a story written by Mike Sizemore to appear in John Carpenter's Tales for a Halloween Night.
The song appears in the story Cast, which is a modern take on the theme of witchcraft and spells. As I'd written the song anyway, I decided to make a short video for it with Matthew Lawrence, Jamie Burr, Alannah Marie and Anikó Tóth that we put out on Halloween.
One of the things I decided to do in 2019 was finish up some of my own pet projects that always get shoved to one side in favour of other people's endeavours. I have got so much half-finished music on drives, it's ridiculous. I'm currently working my way through stuff to finish and release, just for fun.
One of them is Staring into the Sun, which I wrote years ago. With the exception of playing the drums, I did everything on this record, including performing, recording, mixing and mastering. I'm pretty happy with the results.
I'm planning to put one of these tracks out every month, so keep your eye on my YouTube channel.
A really lovely coda to 2019 was being approached by Laura Kidd of She Makes War to mix her final album recorded under that moniker. I've been a fan of Laura's music for a long time, so I was really excited about this. What made the project even more fun was the fact that the album was a compilation of Laura's most popular songs, but in new and intimate arrangements.
There are a ton more things I managed to do this year, such as tracking bass for a new black metal record and making a few videos with Dear Superstar, but these are the things that stick out the most.
Here's to moving onwards and upwards in 2020!