NEWS

As part of his final year on the BA Popular Music course at Edinburgh Napier, Darren made a two week trip back to his home in Caithness to record a four-song EP of his own material based around the idea of using natural reverbs and effects. This project included capturing the natural sound of certain instruments in different environments such as Village Halls; The Assembly Rooms; A Castle's Dungeon and even a Forest. During his visits to each destination he recorded various instruments and took Impulse Responses to later develop into a convolution reverb of the space. The idea is to then re-record some of the parts (and some extra parts) and apply the digital reverb create. This means all the reverb on the final product with either be from the actual space the instrument was recorded in or a digital reproduction of that space for the times when location recording is not practical. "I had a rough idea of some places I wanted to try with an vague knowledge of how they may sound but on the whole the project was very experimental. Some of the results were brilliant where as others were slight let-downs but the beauty of this project is that I can re-record the parts I'm not happy with and apply the reverb I've created." said Darren. He the commented on the challenge of branching away from his drum kit that " this really tested my guitar playing and even more so my singing. The strange thing, and this wasn't intentional, is there there is no drum kit on it at all. Theres bass drum played with a Mallet, snare played with on brushes or a single stick and plenty of tambourines but not once did I sit down to an entire set. The songs just didn't require them, they suited a much more stripped back approach.˚"

The finished EP, 'The Reverberation Investigation' will be available for listening or free download here in mid-May.