This month started off working with Miami Horror in the studio to record their version of The Church’s “Under The Milky Way” for the Snickers Sessions project. The film clip (below) for the track was shot as we were working on the track in my studio at Electric Dreams.

I also had Mr. Luke Smiles in the studio working on mixes for a couple of pieces he’d written for Gabrielle Nankivell for her show, “I left my shoes on warm concrete and stood in the rain.” It was great to see Luke again after he’d been away for quite a long time with touring commitments overseas. Gabrielle’s show was on for a short season at Arts House in North Melbourne.

I also mixed sound for the documentary “Between The Devil And The Deep Blue Sea” directed by David Schmidt for Liquid Creations. The score and sound design are by old student and good friend, Nick Van Cylenburg. It’s an amazing and gripping piece about people seeking asylum in Australia – told mostly by themselves. A couple of times during the mix, I had to walk out of the room as it was overwhelming to hear and see the stories of these people. Most have had family killed, some have lost their entire family, others are travelling with young children – all of them are seeking a better life, and all of them are trying to seek asylum legitimately. I hope the documentary does well and is seen by a lot of people, as these people deserve to be understood and heard.

I was also busy mixing a new LP for the Tolpuddle Martyrs which is an on-going project for local songwriter Peter Rechter. Peter has been going strong since the 1960′s when the Martyrs had an early hit with Time Will Come. He’s got a massive catalogue of really catchy classic songs and is long overdue for some recognition.

I was also busy mastering a debut LP for Perth based artist Lousie Love, and also has Matt Watson back in to add some additional material for his debut LP under the moniker Other Places – a smashing listen driven by great beats and the power of the EMS AKS.

I also started work on putting together some music and sound designs for this years Christmas and New Years Eve celebrations for the City of Melbourne. More details on that as we get closer to the time!

--
Byron J. Scullin.
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Ambient Diary Podcast.

August 2011 Update

Greetings!

A quiet month this July. Being mid-year, I took the time to get out of town and have a break. Outside of that, here’s what else happened.

Oren Ambarchi came into the studio at Electric Dreams to do some recording and mix a track for the end titles of a film he has been scoring. It’s a new track featuring vocals by Paul Duncan of Warm Ghost. James Rushford arranged some string parts and he and Judith Hamann played them for the recording. The track should also be out at some stage on a new LP from Oren.

As Lukas Simonis was in town for Liquid Architecture, he and Dave Brown came down to Electric Dreams to do a little recording as well. Not sure where these recording will end up at this stage, but it was a productive session and great to have these guys in the studio.

I mastered the new single for Metals called Like/Unlike – check out the clip for it here. I also mastered an EP for Circuit Bent called Trenchfoot out on Omelette records.

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Byron J. Scullin.
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July 2011 Update

I had the pleasure of mastering the new Francis Plagne LP. Recorded and mixed by my good friend Joe Talia. It’s a great record and will be out sometime soon (on vinyl, naturally) via the good people at The Lost and Lonesome Recoding Co.

I also was fortunate to work with my old friend Matt Ridgeway on his new Winterpark LP. Winterpark has been an ongoing project of Matt’s for many years now, and continues to twist and evolve with Matt’s interests. As of writing this post the LP is out! You can listen to it. The record launch took place in a gallery where Matt asked some artist friends of his to create works that respond to the tracks. There are some pictures of the launch. And there’s always the Twitter for more Winterpark news.

Along with the guys at Electric Dreams, I worked on the music, sound design and dialogue for the Melbourne International Film Festival trailers. As usual, they are good fun! I think The Potato Peelers is my favourite of the two. Check them out for yourself below:

I got out to do some live mixing this month for Thymolphthalein, the monster ensemble lead by Anthony Pateras and featuring a superstar lineup of some fine avant and experimental musicians. Check out some of their form. We did two shows as part of the Melbourne International Jazz Festival, one feature night at the Melbourne Recital Centre in The Salon, and another supporting Kraut rock legends Faust at The Forum. Their LP on Editions Mego is a must have.

The 1st Semester of 2011 teaching at RMIT was wrapped up. I’m only taking a couple of subjects there this year – Audio Technology 1a in 1st semester and & Audio Technology 1b in 2nd semester. AT is a primer for working with sound and computers and is predominately focused on software as well as techniques relating to synthesis, sampling, sequencing and editing. We get into building tools as well later in AT1b, when we have a look a MAX.

This years Liquid Architecture festival stretches over the end of the month. In previous years festivals I’ve been pretty involved on the live mixing front, but this year I’m taking more a back seat with production duties and Marco Cher-Gibard is going to be mixing the shows in Melbourne and Sydney. Check the LA page for the list of artists for this years festival.

That is all for this month! Remember to follow me on Twitter for interesting stuff!

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Byron J. Scullin.
Follow me on Twitter.
Ambient Diary Podcast.

June 2011 Update

And just look that this shiny new website will you? So nice, so fresh. Ahh, that new website smell. Big thanks to my grand old friend Mr. Pete Brundle esq. and his team of coding savants down at Nice Device for bringing my few general statements into a tight arrangement of pixels and appropriately tagged streams of data driven by arcane symbols. I wish for bottles of single malt whisky and electrifying insights into the nature of reality to rain down upon you when needed.

Seeing as it’s been a mere 21 months since my last update, strap in and get ready for an update blipvert.

• I became a Dad again. We had a little girl and her name is Esmeralda Iris Alma.
• I’m now working at Electric Dreams.
• I’ve been working on tons of different projects. Such as:
  • With J. David Franzke, did a whole bunch of sound design and music for a feature film.
  • Along with Lachlan Carrick, did a couple of live shows and a bunch of recordings for Speak Percussion at MONA FOMA.
  • Operated some sound and helped design a crazy sound system for Interior Design: Music for the Bionic Ear.
  • Some sound design for NICA and a few other little bits and pieces such as some sound for new works by Daniel Crooks.
  • A bunch of live sound and some production hussle for Liquid Architecture and What Is Music?
  • A whole bunch of mastering for lots of interesting music. Check the mastering page for details.
  • Mixing and recording for a few projects such as The Queens Head.
• I’m still teaching at RMIT, in the sound area at the School of Art.
• I’m still popping up from time to time on RRR FM to recklessly pundit over tech on Byte Into It.

Probably the most exciting thing in this list is my new place at Electric Dreams. It a music/sound writing and production studio located in South Melbourne. The above photo is a shot of my room at ED. It’s a great place to work and filled with awesome people. I feel really privileged to be working there! It’s home base to Qua (Cornel Wilczek), Clue To Kalo (Mark Mitchell), Magic Silver White (Jojo Petrina) and Super Melody (James Cecil).

More to come…

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Byron J. Scullin.
Follow me on Twitter.
Ambient Diary Podcast.

Update, Update. (The update of neglect)

Daniel Crooks – still from Intersection #5

• A new music/sound work for Daniel Crooks. He’s installing a large work in a new building down in Melbourne’s Docklands precinct. See image above.
• Sound design and music for a new Australian feature film, again riding shotgun with Mr J. David Franzke.
• An album of soundtrack fused rock for post-pagan power rituals hosted by the power elite. David Thrussell has something to do with this as well – naturally.
• A live show with Mr. Jeremy Dower where I’ll be breaking out the MIDI sax to add some snuffly colour to what I can only describe as hi-fi down-tempo jazz for the 8-bit generation. Mr. James Cecil will also be taking a deck chair and MIDI hand-drum out onto the jazz patio with us.
• A return to contemporary dance land with the ladies and gentlemen of Chunky Move. Ben Frost will be hanging about bringing his experiences of making love to Icelandic glacial forms to bear on some sonic architectures for the dancers.
• A bit of a snazzy PA and live performance with Dr. Philip Brophy. He’s still a punk ass bitch and he’s opening a video installation next to a body of water in downtown Melbourne. It’s for a festival, don’t you know?
• A fair bit of live sound for the return of the What is Music? festival, in both Sydney and Melbourne.

And more besides….

C’mon daylight savings! I’m ready for you now.

--
Byron J. Scullin.
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Ambient Diary Podcast.

August Update

Panorama taken at the Melbourne Planetarium while Nat Bates and I were mixing Our Living Climate.

The show for Melbourne Planetarium is finally done! Nat Bates (sound design) and I are really happy with how it’s all turned out. Here is a little mix sample of some of the music for the show.

Our Living Climate (soundtrack excerpts)

The show will be running at various times from August till November. Check this page for details. It’s also likely that the show will continue to run for sometime after that, as the Planetarium regularly rotate the various shows in the program. Also keep your eye out for Stories In The Stars another show that I made the music and sound design for with David Bridie. The show is about Indigenous Australian astronomy, specifically focused on the Boorong people of Central Victoria.

The Red Tree launched their LP, “I Am Not Bird” at the Evelyn on the 31st. Head to their MySpace to hear some tracks. They were also feature artists on JJJ Unearthed. They’re heading out on a national tour shortly, so check their web-site/myspace/twitter/etc…

Click the LP cover above to listen in iTunes.

July also saw local composer/musician/producer/engineer/spooker James “Wilkinsound” Wilkinson in the production room mixing and mastering music he’s just completed for a new computer game. The game is being made in Melbourne by Transmission Games, and is yet to be released, so I can’t tell you anything about it except that James’ music is an awesome collection of block rocking beats. For those of you that don’t know James’ work, his excellent record Post is available via Preservation Records.

James “Wilkinsound” Wilkinson listening to mixes in my room at Jack The Bear’s

Liquid Architecture was also on in July. For those of you that don’t know about Liquid Architecture, it’s a national festival dedicated to “Sound Arts”. This means it takes in and shows a broad range of work being made in both sound and music here in Australia, as well as featured work from overseas artists. Generally, L.A. shows feature artists who are taking a more experimental and avant-garde approach to music and sound. This year marked the 10th year that the festival has been running for and I’ve been involved with the live sound in Melbourne for the festival for 6 years. I also sit on the board for the festival since it became an incorporated body last year.

This years festival was an interesting one, but probably not one of my personal favourites. This may sound to some like it was a bad thing, but not necessarily. If you are going along to take in music and sound of this kind, you have to do so with an open mind – many times the work you hear is surprising and invigorating. Other times this is not so much the case, but when people are experimenting with sound and displaying this to an audience, it’s not uncommon to come away either loving or hating what you just hear. One of the great things about L.A. concerts and shows is that you rarely come away going, “Meh.” Anyhow, all of the concerts happened without any technical problems and all of the performers seemed satisfied with the sound system and the technical aspect of their performances.

In the mastering room Clare Bowditch came in to master her new single, mixed by Cornell “QUA” Wilczek at his awesome and fresh new studio Electric Dreams. Not sure when that one is hitting the streets in Australia, but keep your ears peeled!

That’s all for now!

--
Byron J. Scullin.
Follow me on Twitter.
Ambient Diary Podcast.

July Update

David Franzke and I have been spending most of our time working away on darklovestory, a film directed by Jon Hewitt and written by Jon with his wife actress Belinda McClory. A version of the film has just been shown in Perth at the Revelation Film Festival. Another short film that I mixed earlier in the year, Carrot was also shown at Revelation.

Dave and I are taking care of the entire soundtrack on this movie, which means plenty of work and quite a few interesting challenges. I spent quite a bit of time early on cleaning up dialogue. The film was shot entirely on location in Kings Cross on Super 16 film. We only have dialogue from the shoot and it was all pretty noisy as you could imagine – lots of traffic noise and unwanted room noise across most of the film. ADR is not an option, and I’m not a huge fan of re-recorded dialogue anyhow. I had to go looking for a tool I could use for cleaning up some of this stuff. I ended up using the amazing Izotope RX thanks to an awesome recommendation from Cornell Wilczek (aka Qua). I’ve used a bunch of different noise reduction tools in the past, but not recently. What this software package was able to do for the dialogue in this film is nothing short of amazing. It’s really changed the sound of the film for the better!

We’re continuing to work on the film over the next couple of months most likely. It’s possible that the next stop for the film will be overseas festivals in Korea and Canada. We’re both pretty happy with where it’s all heading. I’ll keep you posted in future updates as things develop.

Also this month I’ve been busy working further on music for the Melbourne Planetarium show The Living Climate. Nat Bates (who’s doing the sound design) and I are getting pretty close to finishing and the show will be completed by the end of July.

Also, semester one finished at RMIT, so I was busy dishing out the grades. For all my students reading this – don’t worry, you probably passed!

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Byron J. Scullin.
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Ambient Diary Podcast.

June Update

If you want to keep up with my general web interests and small thoughts check or subscribe to both my Twitter and FriendFeed streams!

Here’s so highlights of what’s been happening in May:

Acolytes, the film for which I produced the original score (written by J. David Franzke) has seen a limited release. Due to the financial vagaries of Australian film distribution, it’s not going to see a general release. The film had a limited run in Melbourne at ACMI. I went along to see it a couple of times and it sounded much better than when I saw it at the Forum for Melbourne International Film Festival in ’08. It was at least as good as what I heard when we mixed it in Sydney – the ACMI cinemas really do have great sound. Anyhow, the film is now out through Madman – see here. Here’s a review by David & Margaret from At The Movies, and another by Juile Rigg from MovieTime.

Mr. Franzke and I have also begun work on another film for Acolytes director Jon Hewitt called darklovestory. We only just started and should be finished in about 6 weeks or so.

The Red Tree album, which has in a very on and off way taken 3 years to complete, is finally finished and into its release schedule. The album is epic in its scope and has been a real labour of love for both myself and the band. We’ve all been working really very hard to bring it too fulfilment and the band are going to be doing a bunch of shows around the country in support of the album. The first single “Ziah” is out now and the second single “Ivory and Gold” will be out shortly. Check their MySpace or homepage for details. The singles and LP will be are (or will be) available on iTunes. The launch show for “Ziah” is at the Northcote Social Club on 18 June.

Digital Primate was in the production room for a couple of days with dub versions of his last LP which were dubbed up byMad Professor who also mixed the LP. We added a few bits and pieces to the dubs to flesh them out prior to mastering – some additional bass lines, synth passes using the System 700 (see next), dogs barking and Tibetan Dongzhens. We mastered extra bass heavy (naturally!) and the LP should be out through Shock in the next couple of months. Here’s the DP homepage and MySpace.

I’m mid-way through writing music for the new Melbourne Planetarium show “Our Living Climate”. Nat Bates is taking care of the sound design and so far it’s going quite well. Once things get a little more settled with the score I’ll post up a little taster or two of some of the music.

There has also been the usual raft of various mastering, mixing and teaching jobs as well!

--
Byron J. Scullin.
Follow me on Twitter.
Ambient Diary Podcast.

May Update