MAY 19, 2004: TONY VISCONTI A POSTER BOY?!

Tony Visconti and Darren Cahill have been chosen by Cap Gemini to promote collaboration in their new advertising campaign. The point of the campaign is to emphasize that greatness comes from collaboration.

Tony Visconti is named as David Bowie's record producer and Darren Cahill is the coach for tennis great Andre Agassi. Visconti and Cahill were asked to present themselves doing what they do in their spare time. Visconti is seen playing T'ai Chi on a Manhattan rooftop and Cahill is fly fishing in a mountain stream.

Both were photographed by Dan Burti-Forti. The photos appear on billboards in airports and motorways worldwide. The campaign started in May 2004.

DAVID BOWIE DUBLIN LIVE DVD AND SHINY NEW STUDIO.... PLUS A VISCONTI MASH UP!

After almost two months of refitting, our new studio is finished. Almost everything is new and that includes a Yamaha 96 channel DM2000 console and a complete Yamaha 5.1 surround sound monitor system based on the MSP-10 monitor. The heart of the system is a new, dual engine Apple G5 computer running the latest ProTools HD system and Logic Pro 6 . The DM2000 is housed in elegant studio furniture manufactured by Argosy . The front end of the studio is still quality high end preamplification from Avalon and Malcolm Toft Audio among others and a trusty old Otari analog multitrack with a 16 track head block. The new system is, to repeat a well worn testimony, Windex for the ears. I love the MSP-10s, they exceeded my expectations in clarity, focus and fidelity. The studio was completely rewired by Dan Zellman using Mogami cable, prepared by Coral Sound. My trusty assistant, Mario McNulty, has been assisting Dan with the refit, and spending his recent evenings away from the charms of Manhattan maidens and smoke-free bars burying his nose, instead, into the new equipment manuals.

Our first project in the new studio is mixing the sound for a new David Bowie DVD/CD, his November 2003 concert in Dublin, Ireland. We are able to watch the concert on our 23" cinema display whilst mixing the sound. It is apparent why this, of all the shows on the recent Reality tour, was chosen. The band is peaking beyond belief, David is in perfect form and the massive audience knows it! The rapport is fantastic and captured brilliantly on video. It looks and sounds scary good.

There is a mash up contest going on at the moment presented by Audi, the car manufacturer. You have to create a mash up of two David Bowie recordings, but one must be from Reality, his new CD (which yours truly co-produced). I am ineligible to enter but that didn't stop me from entering the spirit. I mashed together two of my fave Bowie cuts, "Win" from Young Americans and "The Loneliest Guy" from Reality. This was created entire in Logic 6, my favorite audio/midi program, on my Apple laptop. To tell you the truth, I was so bored not having a studio to work in during the refitting, I had to do something! I did this mash up with just the two commercially available recordings, I did not use the vocal tracks only, that would've been cheating. I had to drop the key of "Win" by one semitone and, of course, I had to diddle with the tempos to make it all mash. Mash ups are real fun to do.

»DOWNLOAD WIN/LONELIEST GUY MASH UP MP3