By contrast with my own piece I posted earlier, here's a couple of covers of songs from the 1980s by Blancmange. Done with the knowledge and approval of the band.

Running Thin

Waves

Instruments were mostly Korg Legacy, with drums from AraldFX DKS Pro. Guitar is from my Line6 Variax.

I listened to the first one. Nice song, never heard about the band, sound a bit like another British band, that I forgot the name of, at least singing. Smooth mix and arrangement, only the drums sound somehow sharp and thin.

You've got a nice Neil Arthur bark to your voice. Liked them.

Thanks. I have met Neil a couple of times since, and he said he particularly liked my take on Running Thin.

If you dare to brave it, there's a video of my cover of God's Kitchen on YouTube

Awesome! Any chance I can get the MP3s for these and add them to my collection?

--Sean

(PM'd audiojunkie)

How about Don't Tell Me as well?

http://soundcloud.com/richard-p-hanson/dont-tell-me-blancman ge-cover

I guess you have the market cornered on Blancmange tribute bands...

Not a lot of production dynamics going on compared to the original. Sounds like you just loaded the midi file into Fruity Loops and added a couple of instances of FM8.

Hmm. All done from scratch, no FM synths at all.

As for cornering the Blancmange tribute acts, I guess I have This stems from playing all of Happy Families at a private gig last year, which came out of my original cover of Running Thin. Some songs departed more from the originals than others.

For something a little further away from the original arrangements try:

http://soundcloud.com/richard-p-hanson/i-cant-explain-blancm ange

I will post some covers of other bands as soon as I find where the hell I've put the CDs with them on.

I'm not sure how Blancmange managed to escape my notice thus far, so thanks for turning me on to them. I think I actually like your voice better than Arthur's. Digging the Waves cover for certain.

I'm about two dozen tracks into your Soundcloud page and I'm beginning to wonder why you don't use your voice more often?

While I'm at it, I'm not sure why but "The Occupation" really got my attention. Definitely one of my favorites so far. May I ask for the sake of my own gear lust what you used here?

Principally because I'm crap at writing lyrics That and I've only felt comfortable with my voice in the last couple of years.

The Blancmange thing was a bit of side project for a couple months.



That was almost entirely Korg Legacy. Without going into my backup discs, I think it was mostly the MS20 with the Polysix for bass and the Wavestation for other textures.

I understand the feeling on both the lyrics and voice. I'm still not entirely comfortable with my voice, though hearing it over and over again in the last few years has helped me come to terms with the fact that my voice is my voice - it is unique and I must do what I can with it. Lyrically, I tend to be quite concerned with having the right words, avoiding cliche, and so on. These two factors are why it has taken so long for me to release anything.

And thanks for the info on the song.

I tend to feel better about my own voice when I hear Phil Collins