Every now and then I go tooling around youtube. This is usually brought on by a desire to hear a specific song that I haven’t yet added to my library and I invariably get caught up in listening to covers of the intended song. Tonight was such a night and Moondance was the song I sought to delight my ears with. Being such an iconic song by Van Morrison
That is how I stumbled across Charlese, a British vocalist wishing to make a name for herself. The composition was simple, her vocals accompanied by an acoustic guitar played by Matthew Shaw. It wasn’t overworked or over done and I admit that I found it more engaging than the version by Mr. Bublé. Charlese has a deep, throaty sorta sensual sound that easily lends itself to a smokey (or not so smokey, given the times) jazz club in a hole-in-the-wall dive that everyone visits to hear the best music in town. If you don’t believe me, visit charlese.co.uk for yourself and give her a listen.
She includes two original tracks – written by Mr. Shaw – for your listening enjoyment with a number of covers. My personal favorite was the mix of Play and Ain’t No Sunshine. It has a uptempo bossa nova beat (to the best of my musical knowledge) and breathes new life into an old song from Jennifer Lopez
The only thing that I will fault Charlese on is that I believe the mixing of the tracks could have been a little better. The mixdown volume is too high. I understand that in this age of digital music, it is common for sound engineers to up the volume to ensure decent performance on portable media players, but it is a practice I don’t much care for one leads to clipping (in the case of the tracks Charlese encourages you to download) when played at full volume on my MBP. This is not something that I experience with other tracks from either signed acts or independents (like David Choi
More quickly than I would have anticipated, the first year of my graduate career has come to a close. What that means for me is that I no longer have to be plagued by the dual (or triple) task of research and class (or TAing, with any luck). It wasn’t bad until this past spring [...]
There are times when you hear a song and it just seems to resonate so well with your current situation that you would swear that the lyricists peaked into your mind to find inspiration. That is how I feel about Low Tide of the Night by Everything But the Girl. Off of their album, Temperamental, [...]
Hello Thaim,
I have just come across your blog and wanted to thank you for taking the time to write about my daughter! I of course think she’s marvellous but it is wonderful to hear praise from someone who has no connection to her and has truly enjoyed listening to her sing!
Not being technically minded I don’t quite understand your comments about the mixing of the tracks but I will pass your comments on. What is clipping? All the tracks were done very quickly in just 2 hours (less studio time to pay for!) and were originally intended just as a demo to try and get gigs in local restaurants so I imagine there wasn’t quite the attention paid to the mixing that there would be for signed artists. Hopefully one day she might get signed and then will have some professional recordings done!
If you would like to keep in touch with what she is doing perhaps you would like to become a fan on Facebook. Her direct address is http://www.facebook.com/CharleseMusic
Thanks again for your wonderful review.
Regards,
Kim
I am a chemist by trade so instead of possibly confusing you with my explanation of clipping, I’ll provide you with two links. From Clipping (audio), “clipping is a form of waveform distortion that occurs when an amplifier is overdriven and attempts to deliver an output voltage or current beyond its maximum power capability.” As I had the volume all the way up, the amplifier in my computer was set to operate at full capacity and resulted in distortion in the music coming from my speakers. As for the second thing I commented on, that is explained pretty well at Loudness war.
While not a major issue, I will have to be careful when listening to these songs in mixed company as they are considerably louder than anything else in my library. Hopefully when more people discover Charlese, she’ll be able to afford more studio time and won’t be as rushed as she was with these tracks. Or at least she will be able to request that the sound engineer not artificially increase the loudness of the final tracks.