Holed away in an industrial loft studio in Brooklyn, producer Mike Beck is rehabilitating last night’s computer crash, re-loading the recording and mixing program Pro Tools as he awaits the arrival of his next group of musicians. They’re a rag tag crew who come from three different countries—US, UK, and Brazil—and have never met before, but were assembled by us via an international talent search held on The Creators Project this November. With the help of your votes, we selected three outstanding artists who are now tasked with collaborating on an EP over the course of this week. Beck will be at the production helm, guiding them in their songwriting process, but with three electronic musicians who embody vastly different styles and have no shared history, will he be able to wrangle them into a cohesive unit? That remains to be seen.London-based musician Aaron Horn walks into the studio first and says, “Let’s just get the jam on,” promptly heads to one of Beck’s pianos and starts pounding on the keys. Beck gives the musicians a brief tour of the studio, pointing out the “heaviest bass in the world,” various recording equipment, an optigon stashed in the corner, and a variety of optical disks before Horn pulls out a never-been-used stylophone that he brought all the way from London. Getting a feel for his new team, Beck remarks, “Most of what I do is engineering, so I feel like I’m going to learn a lot from you.”The youngest of the trio, Eugene Derek Hong from LA, is also optimistic about the collaborative nature of the project. “Each time I collaborate, we come out with a brand new style of music… It’s exciting because you can never predict where you’re going to go,” he says.The group moves to a coffee shop down the street while they wait for Pro Tools to load. Laptop-toting Brazilian native, Rossano Snel, asks everyone if they like Brazilian music and promises to share records while he’s here, as well as no doubt impart some Latin flavor to their recording project. Over coffee, the musicians express their collective hope that this experience leaves more of a mark than just this one week in New York, and dream of releasing the record on iTunes and performing together live. They’re an energetic group that’s passionate about the project and even more so about music in general—only hours into their adventure and they’re already planning out how they’re going to delegate creative responsibilities, and have even come up with a possible band name: ERA (“E” for Eugene, “R” for Rossano, and “A” for Aaron).On the way back to Mike’s studio, Snel says that winning this contest is an exciting moment in his creative career because having access to so much equipment is hard to come by in Brazil. He also brings up the fact that before the contest was even over, the three were cross-promoting each other’s tracks and talking over Facebook and Twitter. Snel also started a new blog chronicling this recording session experience from his point of view.Back at the loft, the guys and Mike are vibing, Pro Tools is at 83%, and things are looking promising as producer and band are finally left alone to get down to business. Check back here for more behind-the-scenes updates from the studio throughout the week to track the progress of our budding supergroup.Images courtesy of Christophe Wu.
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