Saturday, June 21, 2008

Police See UFO - And Admit it!

"They are convinced it was a UFO. It sounds far-fetched, but they know what they saw."

That's a quote from South Wales Police who reported that a helicopter crew were almost hit by a “saucer shaped” craft as they waited to land at the St. Athan MoD base in Cardiff.

They even chased it to Devon but ran low on fuel!

Full story here from Laura Clout:

Daily Telegraph - Police chase UFO over Cardiff

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/2160814/Police-chase-UFO-over-Cardiff.html

Thursday, June 12, 2008

Loz Bridge & The Box Social

In this Sunday’s Original Showcase we have Loz Bridge and the Box Social in session.

Loz used to sing for the Portsmouth band Suburbian who split at the end of 2007 leaving him to concentrate on his song writing and find musicians to compliment his new direction.

The Box Social includes Showcase regular Andrew Foster on guitar (left) and Matt (right) on a rather beguiling Spanish drum that you sit on to play.

Every Showcase session is always a new experience and it sometimes feels like the old days of recording when we try to get the best positions for the microphones and balance the sound levels.

Afterwards a small amount of reverb is applied to give the songs a “live room” feel but we don’t add compression any more as it seems to take away something from the band’s performance.

I didn’t realise we were part of an “anti-compression” trend until I heard about the “Loudness War”.

Compression has been used to make songs louder and help them stand out on the radio. However if today’s songs are loud, tomorrow’s will have to be even louder!

To counter this vicious circle, and the resulting poor quality sound it produces, the “Turn Me Up” campaign has been started by music professionals Charles Dye, John Ralston and Allen Wagner.

You can find out more about their attempts to bring dynamics back to music at www.turnmeup.org

It will open your eyes and maybe your ears too!