The Sheffield Scenester

Back in early April we at Scenester were given several sample tracks from Ian Huddleston as a taster of his forthcoming album, this was also an intriguing insight into his project of orchestrating these tracks for a full 50 piece orchestra.

Catching up with Ian recently we asked him to expand on this concept and this is what he had to say for himself;

“I just started working with The Endcliffe Orchestra, rehearsals are due to start on Monday 24th May, we’re going to be doing a concert together, basically me, my band and my tracks backed by a 50 piece orchestra. I’ve been working with the conductor, Martin Lightowler, who’s been scoring the orchestral parts, and that’s where we are at the minute. We’ve pencilled the concert in for January at St Luke’s Church in Lodgemoor, so this summer will be spent getting prepared for that really. At the minute I’m recording and hoping to do my album but there’s no date for that so I’m just sort of writing tracks and recording tracks, but that’s sort of ongoing at the minute. I’ve done a couple of solo EPs which I’ve put out on itunes but not really followed anything up until this project really so its all hands on that for now but I have to say its looking alright!

When it came to starting this project I put an email out to him (Martin Lightowler) back in November last year and then went to see them with the idea of me working with an orchestra. I emailed Martin and he said basically “Yeah, it’s a wicked idea, and he’d like to get on board” but obviously they’ve got their own thing going on. I went to see them rehearse just before Christmas and was completely blown away by how good they were so obviously a bit nervous, I felt like a bit of a blagger with all these good musicians playing my songs, but yeah they got really into it so Martin’s been doing the scoring for that, he’s done two tracks at the minute and that’s were we’re at right now.

All the songs that I’d recorded like the ones we were doing used ‘midi’ strings on them, essentially which means I used 'midi' string sounds to record through a midi keyboard in the recording studio. I’d recorded them with the whole thing in mind anyway so all Martin had to do with the tracks, since you’ve already got your basic string section, is to fill in the gaps with the rest of the orchestra, your flutes, your brass and all that sort of stuff. Since I’m writing all the time I sent all my tracks to Martin and he picked two that he wanted to start with and that’s sort of where we are now. I mean it’s something I’ve always wanted to do but never had the opportunity before, Endcliffe Orchestra have given me the opportunity to do it so it really is a once in a lifetime opportunity, we’re not gonna stop at doing this one I think, this is the first sort of thing we’ll be putting together for the foreseeable future, hopefully something will come of it you never know – Monday is the first time we’re all going to be in a room together, it’ll be hard work but it’ll be fun.”

We at Scenester would like to thank Ian for his time, wishing him all the best in his project working with The Encliffe Orchestra; we look forward to hearing the resulting tracks :-)