i’ve been writing ambient/instrumental music now for over 20 years, but it’s only in the last 2 years that i decided to actually try and get my work out there.

i don’t use synthesisers or sound creation software to create my works. a single sampler, yes, but no synths. my main sound source (and for a while my only sound source, as i now own an electric guitar as well) is the bass guitar, which is played through a distortion pedal and some effects, but sometimes played “straight“, too. some, thought not all, of the sounds are then “processed” and looped in the Mac. i still mix all my work via analogue equipment, not inside a computer, using a mixing desk and outboard effects. i only use the computer as a “tape recorder”.

history

since my late teens i seem to have always been somehow “involved” with music. my first forays into recording were done using a guitar and an ancient Teac A108 2 track cassette recorder, which i discovered if i mixed down to a mono tape recorder, i could quadruple the number of tracks, and also generate some interesting effects.. the acquisition of a Moog Prodigy made life much easier, and it was then that i started writing ambient pieces. this was around 1982.

after a 2 year stint managing a band in manchester, in 1987 i moved to leeds, which is where i got employment at Lion Studios. and this is how i came to be a sound engineer, which had been a long held ambition of mine. if i had a “speciality” it was for acoustic/folk music. still a genre dear to my heart.

1990 i moved to london.
1991 i left london.

in 1996 i managed to scrape some cash together and buy a decent sampler, and a very basic desk, and one reverb unit.. and this is how i came to be doing the work i am doing today.

i still sound engineer and produce for other people, but only on a part time basis, and it has to be the right project, and the right people.

apart from my work with Dean Richards, as “still Earth” - at the age of 44, after 20 years of solo work, i have recently joined a young local band, called Soviet Dynamo as their producer and sound designer, adding ambient elements to more “traditional” arrangements. this is another exciting chapter in my life. there have been a few.

contact details:

peter james - www.myspace.com/2still
Soviet Dynamo - www.myspace.com/sovietdynamo
still Earth - www.myspace.com/stillearth