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I am Chas
I am a Sound Engineer. It's what I do
Music is my curse. It compells me, it drives me, it takes me up to the greatest heights, it has me weeping on the floor. At times I try to escape this sonic parasite, but...........I didn't choose it, it chose me..
It kind of started at 9 when i was given my first electric guitar. Spent all my time with it, but never seemed to get any better at playing it. I would spend hours chaining effects and creating soundscapes. It took 10yrs (and 4 or 5 bands) before i would actually accept that i was a rubbish guitarist and layed down the axe. Problem was that i loved sounds rather than the music theory. Whilst in bands Necrosis Tree and Adornment got the taste for doing live sound, usual problem, a crap or no sound engineer. So of course then everyone wanted me to " just do my band" basically on account of me doing it for free. Got to do a few good bands including Biff! Bang! Pow! the band of Allen McGeeand Andrew Innes (Primal Scream),and McCarthy who later became Stereolab. After doing some recordings with bands that I was in I had truly got the bug. EVERYTHING went down onto 4-Track and was ritually abused. NEED MORE EQUIPMENT !!! I thought so squirmed my way into helping out at small studios (ooh 8-Track). Became an expert at making tea, getting electrocuted and generally wiring everything together in the wrong order to see what would happen.
After a bizarre easter ended up on a tour with The Mission ...still not sure what I was, Guit Tech/Drum Tech/follower/dogsbody, it was a fun couple of weeks anyway
Then it was leave home and off into the big bad world.
Nottingham 1987 - Invented Acid House lol :)
London 1988 - Sound Engineering at Town & Country 2
Nottingham 1989 - Returned to my partners in crime to make electronica squiggly dance sounds. We started doing house parties,mixing some of our tunes with other tapes and records, got asked to do parties for more people together with a growing group of DJs called DIY So bought some decks and off we went to Dance Nirvana !!
Started putting on club nights around the city and generally getting ourselves into far to much shit.
Also managed to blag a spot on a pirate radio station. We would fill in for other djs on those middle of the night shows too. Problem was, this was an R&B station; we started off gently playing garage but soon it progressed to Techno and Belgium Trance, as for the 3am shows :-Sex Pistols, Throbbing Gristle, 1/2 speed heavy rock records (we claimed they were chill out ambient) basically whatever came into our heads on the night. Think the final straw was when a morning DJ came in and everything had been disconnected from the desk because we wanted to wire in a sequencer to broadcast.
Ooooh happy times
Then... psychiatry, pool cues, made some dance records,teenagers, William Orbit, armed police, yoghurt pots, broken bones ... and on to-
Did a HND at Confetti Studios (access to the big toys!!) and then got myself a house engineer job at Junktion7 in Nottingham. Got to do some great bands there and at different venues around the country including
The Kaiser Chiefs
The Arctic Monkeys
Duke Spirit,
Miss Black America,
The Young Knives,
Million Dead
UK Subs,
Seachange,
Youth Movie Soundtrack Strategies
Manatee (later to become Earth the Californian Love Dream),
Scout Niblett,
Television Personalities
Wolves of Greece
The Grips
Little Chris !!!!!!!!
and did the "Why Can't We Just All Get Along" nights, which were an amazing array of the brilliant, bizarre and downright freakish.
but the need to roam took me and I hit the road as engineer to Pheonix Down,Soul Train and Face
Face evolved into The Kull and I still haven't managed to shake them !!!
They locked me in a room and made me record their debut single Tic Tack Toe/ Miss UK **Out Now** and regularly attempt to deprive me of the ability to hear.
Now I am camping out at Cabaret in Nottingham as the engineer for The Hot Renault Traffic Club nights.
Sadly The Cabaret is over, the dancing girls have packed up their clogs but HRTC continues... we will hunt you down
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