Released digital albums
You can listen to Rockidles digital albums through all digital channels, Spotify, iTunes, Deezer, YouTube and others 🎧. Buy the songs & albums from iTunes and Amazon.
All songs written by Rockidle, with exception of Train A Comin written by Mike Peters. Lyrics, vocals and acoustic guitar by Rockidle. Each album is produced with a different musical genius, Hill Briggs, Simon Trought with Matt Cowley and Tania Sheratte.
Relationships 2
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Relationships 2 was recorded during 2021, in London and Helsinki.
The songs for the album were written pretty quickly, and decided to make this collection of songs sound more like a studio album than its predecessor Relationships.
Planned to have a full band sound for half the songs, and a more acoustic sound for the other half. I found myself listening to a lot of 70´s music in 2021 when running, and wanted the songs to pay tribute to some of those artists/sounds of the 70´s, which looking back on it now, was in my opinion, the best decade for music.
It was great to be able to get one half of what was the Rockidle London live and recording act (Matt Cowley), involved on recording backing tracks, production duties on 3 songs, Degeneration, Autumn Air, and Lost in the shuffle.
Swedish rock legend Hazze Wazeen came on board to produce 3 songs too, Change, Vinyl Junkies and Degeneration (the rotten mix).
Tania Sheratte who I worked with on Relationships, was involved in all but one of the songs and added great backing vocals, backing tracks, and piano parts to the songs.
All 3 offered a different and unique approach. I wanted the songs to sound anthemic, I wanted (some not all), of the songs to sound like you could imagine standing in a field at a music festival and singing along to the choruses. I can’t pick a personal favourite. I like them all! (Even if I am biased).
Relationships
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It all happened very quickly. I had a plan to use a female backing vocalist on some songs as I was planning to record in a studio during the summer of 2020. I saw a post from a singer called Tania Sheratte who was starting an English singing choir in Helsinki, so nothing ventured, nothing gained, I took the plunge and sent a Facebook message. Her answer was yes, and It seemed to all click pretty quickly.
I sent a demo of a song Self Importance I started writing that morning, and a couple of days later I was listening to the same song, which sounded like it was really coming to life. Not only had I found a backing vocalist, but a piano player, musician, band, and producer all rolled into one! I wrote 15 songs in July, recorded 11 in July and August 2020. I wanted to get them out quickly, as if not other songs would never see the light of day.
As is clear from the recordings, the vocal and guitar parts have not been recorded using a studio, or any software recording environment. Vocals and guitar have been captured live, in one take from the bedroom, and captured on video. Ideas were already in my mind as to how I wanted all the songs to sound, and within 6 weeks, it was pretty much all done. I wanted to capture the songs in the moment, and use as few gimmicks, and studio gimmicks as possible to keep a raw, honest vibe to it.
Why, well none of us are perfect, yet anyone/everyone who is making music these days, has to produce an almost perfect sound recording. Due the Coronavirus with the world in lockdown more music is being made than ever. Life is far from perfect, and very few, if any artists, can reproduce their studio sound in a live environment in any case.
My favourite songs are Put The Brakes On, Daylight, Innovators and Bad Hombres.
Belvedere Drive
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Recorded at Soup Studios in London. Produced by Simon Trought & Matt Cowley, recorded with the Matt Cowley one man band. There was a different approach in the recording of the songs for Belvedere Drive. I got to know Matt through work, and liked the stuff his band (initially known as Casino, then The Lucas Group) were playing. Vocally we started to double up the lead vocal on some tracks. Added some female backing vocals on another. Matt is a superb musician, played most of the instruments on the songs, and he added the craft and musical nous to the record, along with Simon. Pedal steel guitar was added to Train A Comin, piano on Belvedere Drive, Mandolin on The Circle. Brushes were used on some songs rather than the full drum kit.
It was an eye opener to see these guys at work, and the attention to detail on each song. I could almost hear them thinking about sounds they wanted to capture for the tracks. Unfortunately, we never quite got around to finishing it all off (the plan was 10 songs), and polishing it up, but even still, it's more than stood up to the test of time.
My favourite tunes from this one are Alcohol Dreams, Sunny Side Up 2, Train A Comin and Belvedere Drive.
Sunny Side Up
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Recorded at SL Studios in Bushey Hertfordshire, England. The first recorded works featuring 11 songs. Produced by Hill Briggs. I had ideas as to how I wanted the songs to sound, I saw an advert in the NME, SL Studios caught my attention, production services for singer songwriters, and decided it is now or never, if I am ever going to do this. I had by this time written a lot of songs, but wanted to record songs that were current, or at that stage not yet written. Hill is and was great, as he needed a lot of patience!
We initially worked on a 3-track demo, featuring You´ve Got It Made, Back To Me, and Shine On then carried on with 10 others. I wanted to make an album of songs that fitted the emotional lyric of the song. The songs are about a range of topics as always, but a lot of these songs were written from imagining I was a different person, almost trying to get inside someone's head to try to unravel what they were thinking.
My favourite tracks from the album are You´ve Got It Made, Shine On, and Feel A Little Better.