Our friends at SampleTekk managed to secure the rights from 10cc's Eric Stewart to make the astonishing vocal washes of their seminal hit record, a production masterpiece, "I'm not in love", available as a sample library and SampleTekk honoured us by asking HS to put together a Kontakt GUI for the project.
Not just an honour but enormously exciting because, as far as I am concerned, 'INIL' is one of the best records ever made.
The band spent three weeks recording hours of 'aaaahs' of individual notes onto 16 track, creating big stacks of vocals which were then mixed down to countless stereo reel-to-reels which were then bounced back to to the 16 track and some tracks further bounced down within the 16-track leaving a few tracks let for the Rhodes, Eric's vocal, some bass (from co-writer Graham Gouldman), a (synthesised) kick drum (done on MiniMoog) from Kevin Godley plus some grand piano and, of course, the 'Big boys don't cry' from 10cc's studio secretary. And then the band 'played' their Helios mixing desk, fading and punching in and out this astonishing wash of vocal textures. A leviathan achievement and quite frankly, it was quite eerie to have in our possession the raw recordings from such a classic record.
Those samples are now available HERE.
We did a custom GUI for it that allows a great deal of flexibility...
And in the process of building that, came up with a quick and rough and ready little AUDIO DEMO
This is a great opportunity to buy into a piece of classic pop history for a modest price. It was certainly thrilling to have been involved.
And if anyone is in touch with Enya, let her know - these lads were doing it over a decade before she was and wrestling with the technology of the time to achieve their vision!
Cheers,
Stephen