Inside ATA Records
What is Library Music? - A primer for the uninitiated.
There’s a good chance you’ve heard the term ‘Library Music’ bandied around quite a bit in recent years. Compilations on BBE, Trunk Records and Strut have mined the back catalogues of Library companies recently, bringing long forgotten classics back into the spotlight. Producer Shawn Lee delved into the subject for his documentary and accompanying compilation ‘The Library Music Film’, and Library music has been cited as inspiration from artists such as Luke Vibert, Adrian Younge and countless beatmakers and producers. But despite all this you may be left wondering “what exactly is Library Music?”. Chances are that if you grew...
Work Money Death…..
Work Money Death started in a basement bar, slap bang in Leeds city centre around 2010. We had a weekly residency on a Tuesday night. For “Sela Bar’, Tuesdays were not a night that paid the bills so we were free to play what we chose without too much interference from the management. It was there that we spent a good few years digging into tunes that we had never heard anyone else tackling. I have mentioned the influence of record-collector Fraser Hinchcliffe in these blogs before and many of the numbers we played came from tunes that he was...
13 Horns, 2 microphones
The name ‘The Yorkshire Film And Television Orchestra’ came before any recording. As you might know we like film and library music here at ATA and this seemed like the perfect name if we were ever to do something with a large scale ensemble.
Do You Want To Produce Music Or Run A Tape Machine Museum?
Here at ATA Records we pride ourselves on the methods that we have chosen to make our music, mainly recording analog to tape and pressing up vinyl. Not only are we recording to tape we are using the equipment that sonically best represents the style of music we are recording. This involves a lot of vintage recording equipment and with that comes many hurdles. The pitfalls of such an endeavour on an almost non-existent budget have, at times, almost got the better of us and we find ourselves weighing up dedication to the process against actually just getting music made....
The Sorcerers - Last minute monkey business
The purpose of these blog posts was to offer some insight into how we do things at ATA records. Sometimes this will take the form of something technical, like the equipment we use or a particular mic’ing technique, and sometimes it might be more conceptual or about the process of recording itself. This one is more on the conceptual side of things. We’ve got an album coming out soon that I am very pleased about. Across the board I feel like we have, for the first time, got a lot of it right. From the recording to the artwork, conception...