Monday 21 January 2008

Stomps!




















Whatcha!
We're currently busy finishing off our latest commission for FM.
This month it's focusing on sound manipulation/processing and we've gone guitar stomp box crazy.

Being quite avid collectors of the guitar pedal (despite being very poor plank-spankers ourselves), we've a few on hand to shove some synths and drum machines through. The sharp eyed amongst you might notice a few bent/modded stomps nestled away in out pic - just for that extra sprinkling of chaos.

Only problem we've got at the moment is not falling over all the patch leads strewn as far as the eye can see, well all around our feet at least.

Friday 18 January 2008

Bye bye GCHQ v1.0

Part of the reason the Xmas period last year was so busy (and not to say stressful) was due to having to move studio. Never a particularly fun experience at the best of times, when it also goes hand-in-hand with moving house it's a bit of a bugger.

We have a lot of great memories from GCHQ (v1.0) , some fantastic sessions, literally thousands of samples produced, not to mention the odd released tune or two.


Of course change comes to us all and stripping out the old gear allowed for a good long look at how we work and some major re-arranging in our new temporary home.

A couple of new rack units, patchbays, lots of cables and a frankly huge 80's A-frame stand for the synths, later............


Welcome to GCHQ v1.1
It's only a temp home for us poor sampling souls until the all new GCHQ v2 is built (hopefully this year, but who knows).
Still, we've settled in and have been knuckling down to some hard(ish) graft and have already become quite comfortable.
we've even got a window - ahh natural light at last....





New York New York



As we mentioned below, Mr Hoodee was lucky enough to bag a trip to New York last November. Despite having only a couple of days notice before flying out, completing on a new house whilst away and the small matter of 15 music students, he had a great time.


As it was his first time to NYC it really did live up to its reputation as a city that never sleeps (nor did Hoodee for nearly a week due to not being able to adjust to the time difference).



Great place to visit, eat out and shop of course (there seem to be many more pairs of trainers knocking about the studio these days) but Hoodee thought it was a bit too full on to live there

Ahh he's just a quiet country-boy at heart.



Saturday 12 January 2008

Photos


Due to those nice chaps at Future Music still asking for our (well Hoodees - serves him right for being in charge) ugly mug in the magazine every other month - you would have thought it would hurt sales, you really would, we have to pile on the old slap and lippy and get dressed once in a while.
These shoots which we really don't look forward to being shy (okay, ugly) souls, are made bearable by our old friend Richard 'Eckie' Ecclestone being behind the camera.
A cracking snapper (and a not bad singer-songerwriter either), Eckie has developed a perfect mixture of threats, abuse, foul language and occasional 'glamour-style' praise to coax Mr Hoodee out of the shadows and into the (flash)light.
Anyway, we really liked this one !-)

We're still here!

Happy New Year!

Oh crap, was it really way back in October when we last posted?
We have an excuse, no really.....errr...dog eat our blog?

Okay, bad jokes aside the last few months have seen some pretty drastic chances here at GCHQ: moving house (and studio!!), a surprise trip to NYC not to mention being snowed under with sample work. Oh we've got hold of some fab gear as well !-)

Anyway now we've kinda recovered from Xmas/new year and the new house, we'll be back on track updating the blog much more regularly.

Honest.