LOWLAND
MASTERS NEWS
10/01/12.
Funk In The 3rd Quarter
One of the highlights late last year was
an album we mastered for The Deep M.O., Funk
In The 3rd Quarter, featuring the bass-playing, vocal and
songwriting talents of Yolanda Charles. Yolanda is an established
side-person on bass for such luminaries as Robbie Williams, Mick Jagger
and BB King, and this new release will
only serve to widen her musical reputation.
22/12/11. As the
year draws to a close...
...we'd like to say a heartfelt 'Happy
Christmas and a healthy and prosperous New Year!' to all our customers
and friends. 2011 has been a momentous year for us
with the new studio and some fantastic projects passing through, and
we'll look forward to seeing you in 2012.
22/12/11. Three
Grammys, two pianos
and a Floyd
We recently played
host to new artist projects from no less
than three Grammy winners: Simon Gogerly (won for his work with U2), Cameron Craig
(Suzanne Vega) and Kipper
(Sting) - a pleasure, gentlemen! Then there's the conundrum that solo
classical piano albums are like buses, you
don't see one for ages and then two arrive at the same time, in this
case from Iran's Golriz Hashemi and Yiannis
Georgiou of Cyprus, fine projects both. And Pink
Floyd came calling again, via their long-time engineer Andy
Jackson,
to denoise the soundtrack of the influential 1970 'An Hour
With Pink Floyd' TV special -
definitely one to watch out for.
24/06/11. Workspace
The new mastering room has been online
since earlier in the year, and has proved a pleasing
combination of comfort, space and great acoustics. Those who've
attended sessions here have given an
enthusiastic thumbs-up, and you can now view pictures on the About Us
page.
07/06/11. Busy
busy...
It's all been happening at LM in
recent months: we've seen mastering projects from artists including Tim Oliver, Philippa Hanna, Matt
Schofield, Fat &
Frantic and Weisan
Auyeung
passing through, together with other work
including
production music albums, musical theatre CDs and educational audio.
Also of note have been a solo project for Mike Lindup of Level 42, a
Carl
Davis 'Beatles For Orchestra'
CD and denoising on the forthcoming boxsets from Pink Floyd.
01/10/10. New album
for Simon McBride
We were pleased recently to be asked to
master a second album, 'Since Then', for Irish blues guitar whiz Simon McBride
on Nugene Records - a
fine CD and a talent to match.
01/10/10. lowlandmasters.com
update
The website has had an extensive 'autumn clean' of text, link
and information content to make it easier to use.
30/09/10.
Studio build
The
building of the new mastering room continues apace, and if all goes to
plan it should be up
and running before Christmas. The design makes good use of the space
with no visible acoustic treatment, and will provide a
pleasant and relaxed working environment.
09/01/10. LM on the
move
We
moved just before Christmas, and all went well in spite of the snow.
Please note our new phone number, (UK) 01799 586 835.
07/11/09.
Mastering the future
Another packed year here at
LM, one of many mastering highlights being Elaine Paige's 40th
Anniversary live album.
Once again, warmest thanks and season's greetings to all our customers
and supporters! In the meantime, after ten years at the same location
we're going to be on the move - more updates soon.
12/03/09.
Tech news - the River flows
First gear purchase of 2009
is an analogue mastering equaliser, the Great River MAQ-2NV.
The unit is making a significant difference to what goes on here: it's
entirely switched for repeatability, and has one of the better
interfaces around for fast and easy working including an unusual
channel link facility. And the sound... gorgeous old-school
analogue,
anything from subtle correction to assertive toneshaping - as you may
have guessed, we like it!
22/12/08.
Farewell 2008, here's to 2009
This
year has been another busy one here despite the economic gloom:
highlights included mastering music for Barack Obama's presidential
campaign, a single for Red Nose Day 2009, projects for artists like David Essex, Superhero,
Mika Urbaniak, Jonathan Veira and Cara Winter
plus over a hundred production music albums. We'd like to say a big
thankyou and wish compliments of the season to LM's customers and
friends - please continue to watch this space, we're working on some
exciting plans for next year.
27/07/08.
Tech news - Danish
invasion
It's only been here a few
weeks, but the Mastering System
6000
from Denmark's TC Electronic is already contributing much to projects
passing through with its varied and pristine digital
processing. In addition to the standard algorithms ours also has TC's Unwrap
software and an Icon touchscreen controller.
02/03/08.
Isis in Eurovision
LM customer Isis
Gee is
through to the first
semi-final of the Eurovision Song Contest representing Poland. She will
perform
her song, For Life, in Belgrade on 20th May,
and if she goes through to the final will do so again on the 24th along
with UK entrant Andy
Abraham. More here.
13/10/07.
LM goes to the Vatican
Catholic outfit CJM Music have
recently
been mastering
with us again. To publicise the release CJM enterprisingly put
the
album, Age To Age Volume 1, on an iPod and sent it to His Holiness Pope
Benedict XVI - full story here.
27/07/07.
Mastering update
It's
been a varied mastering year so
far: among the highlights have been albums for guitar legend Tim
Renwick, Pakistani star Najam
Sheraz, harpist/singer Katie
Targett Adams and Christian
music veteran Garth
Hewitt.
Also a new release for Ben Okafor of music from the play 'Child
Of
Biafra', a single for the 25th
anniversary relaunch of Kajagoogoo
and
even an album of Gregorian chant in the style of Madonna.
28/04/07.
Site News - articles update
The articles
page of the website has been updated with
a selection of writings for Audio Media magazine from the last
few years.
More will be added as they become available.
15/03/07.
Tech News - Blue arrival
Delivery
of the Algorithmix
Classic PEQ Blue
plug-in was confirmed today. At
LM we've been living with a
demo version for a couple of weeks and have been knocked out by its
quality - it's the best all-round digital soft-
or hardware EQ
we've come across, and
customers who've heard it seem to like it too.
16/01/07.
Tech News -
New
workstation
Recently arrived is a second
SADiE
5 PCM8
digital audio workstation to help absorb extra
workload. The new machine has similar facilities to our existing one,
and will
enable us to take advantage of SADiE's powerful networking.
Update,
01/02/08: this
machine has now been upgraded to H16
status with more processing power and I/O
04/12/06.
Accelerating toward year's end
There's
a flurry of mastering activity at the moment, boding well for 2007. One
notable project has been a new album, Out Of The Ordinary, for
Christian singer/poet Graham
Kendrick,
produced by Julian Kindred
and mixed at three locations in the
UK and US.
12/10/06.
Mastering update
Paul
Bell,
Allan Ellingsgaard,
Mojo,
Ben
Okafor
(two CDs), Erin
Starnes,
Shade and Simeon
Wood are among the artists
who've had
albums mastered at LM since July. There's also been a
Star Wars show recorded for
Chessington World
of Adventures, live
albums and lots of compilations. Onward and upward!
01/05/06.
Tech News - CEDAR
and CD text
New additions to the audio
processing arsenal at Lowland Masters
include the CEDAR
Retouch, Denoise and Dethump noise removal tools which
integrate into the SADiE workstation. Also added recently is a
SADiE CD text update so
that album title, artist and track name will be
displayed on players allowing it.
01/02/06.
A flying start
January proved a busy
mastering month here, with a number of
production music albums - LM-mastered material is becoming increasingly
prevalent in TV and film music - along with further Vineyard
projects and an EP for Essex band The
Morenas.
Nigel also worked on an ongoing educational audio series, and recorded
and edited veteran actor Douglas
Blackwell reading a selection
of
Mr
Men
stories
for forthcoming CDs.
11/01/06.
Mastering update
Amongst projects passing
through the mastering suite of late:
an album
reissue for UK bluesman Ian Siegal,
a
number of classic album
remasters and a new album, 'All From You', for Vineyard,
a
debut solo album for Sony BMG singer/songwriter Jill Jackson and an
album for Christian performer Alun Leppitt. Re-formed
eighties
rockers After
The Fire
have also recently used LM to
master
tracks for iTunes.
Last October Nigel
Palmer recorded children's
voices for Sony's
Christmas CD, the TV-advertised
Santa
Sings,
and recorded, produced and mastered the companion story
disc.
02/11/05.
Tech News - HEDD
converter upgrade
Recently added to the LM
gear
inventory are new AD and DA
converter boards for our Crane Song HEDD
192.
These provide world-class digital conversion to and from
the
studio's
analogue equipment, and
complement the HEDD's
existing on-board processing.
25/10/05.
Boog EP
After mastering their
debut album with us in 2004,
quirky
popsters Boog
have returned to Lowland Masters with a four-song EP
recorded at Rimshot Studios in Kent. The band's
Dave
Seckleman commented via email: 'Fantastic job, even such a control
freak perfectionist as myself can't find a thing to alter. Ever thought
of doing this "mastering" thing professionally?'.
04/08/05.
Matt Schofield live and in the studio
Two new albums for blues
guitar prodigy Matt
Schofield
and his
Trio are currently in the mastering pipeline for Nugene
Records.
The
studio album 'Siftin' Thru Ashes' will be followed by a 'Live At The
Jazz Cafe' CD, and additional tracks featuring special guests
from
the Jazz Cafe set are being processed for use on the web.
04/07/05.
The Open University
Lowland Masters will be
collaborating with
The
Open University,
mastering audio course materials on behalf of the university's
Sound and Vision department.
The OU has more than 180,000 students, and was placed ahead of
Oxford University in a 2004 national survey of
teaching
quality.
17/06/05.
Multiple
releases for Vineyard
Lowland Masters has recently completed five new projects for Vineyard
Records UK, a Christian
record company with a
worldwide base and an LM customer since 2000. The CDs,
produced
by Nigel Hemming and engineered by
Paul
Burton,
continue the successful Great Big God
series for
children and also provide backing tracks of all the songs to date as
an additional resource.
Nigel Hemming (via email): 'Thanks so much for the final masters.
They sound fantastic. The mastering you have done really spices
them up - I'm really excited to hear them sounding this good.'