Podcast Side Project: Episode 6

In this week's episode, we interviewed Akshay Kalawar, one of our audio lecturers at SAE. He was my lecturer for AUD113 and I've learnt quite a lot of shortcuts and other tools on Pro Tools in those lessons thanks to him. I've been keen to interview him because as I mentioned in my last post, I don't really know his background much regarding his career and I've heard he knows a lot of good shit. Before this episode, he gave us links to his LinkedIn page as well as a link to his SoundCloud, and no doubt, I was soooo impressed. He has scored many qualifications such as acquiring a Masters of Business of Administration, Bachelor of Audio Production (from SAE in Byron), Bachelor of Engineering, Diploma in Industrial Electronics, and many other qualifications as well. He also participated and grabbed 3rd place in the Annual Standout Composer's Contest which I thought was really cool, and I made sure to ask him about it in the interview. Everyone wrote up good questions for him before the episode and we emailed them to him so he'd have a rough idea of what he was being asked.

All the live rooms were being booked out and the only studio that was available one the Audient A control room, so we packed in a table from a classroom into the small control and set up our mics around the table. Akshay was expected to arrive 2 hours later so we just made sure all the mic levels and our Pro Tools session was set before we worked on our individual work while we waited. We still haven't decided on what audio platform to use to post our podcast episodes which is why we don't have this podcast up yet but I will link it as soon as we get one!

Fast forward 2 hrs and we began the podcast with the interview. He began a brief summary about himself and then we started with the questions. I asked him about the contest he competed and it was funny to hear that he entered and got third place all by accident. He composed a song and entered it in thinking he'd never get through but, he did, and got third place. We also brought up the subject of how him and Sean from the Tech Department were class mates at SAE Byron Bay and his stories were really interesting to hear as well as the projects he worked on. One of the members asked if he's ever gotten into audio in games and through this question, he also talked about his games setup at home, where he has a separate room with a projector where all the magic happens. From all the questions we asked, we got a bit of insight about how he produces music, some upcoming projects and touched on some new good shit that's coming to our campus (it's to do with game audio being introduced and having more special guests in our lectures). He also asked us what we'd like to see change in our campus and we gave our ideas, which I hope will be considered! We had a lot of laughs and it was really good to hear his stories about his experience with the audio industry as those stories inspire me. Really glad we got to interview him!

Album Review

This week, Brea gave me Loyle Carner's album Yesterday's Gone to review, and I'm glad i got to review this because I've always wanted to listen to some of his songs but never got around to it. This album was released in January 2017 and includes 15 tracks and goes for over 42 mins. It is worth mentioning as well that the album got nominated for the 2017 Mercury Prize so yes, well done to him.

Overall, I thought this album was nicely mixed and it was nice to hear that there wasn't that much processing in all of the tracks; it's always nice to hear a nice natural sounding album from time to time, especially from the hip-hop genre. There was good use of sampling and the piano parts also suited this album as keys are a common characteristic in hip-hop. Good bass lines and drums breaks as well. Most of the songs reminded me of the chill-hop playlist on YouTube or hip-hop lo-fi study beats (which are getting really popular today) as the track were really chill. It also felt jazzy and reminded me of some of Brock Berrigan's productions. This album makes me picture myself in a New York penthouse at night, with glass windows on all walls overlooking the city and with me sitting on a couch with wine. It then also makes me imagine myself taking a walk through Times Square on a light snowy night with my earphones in while busy traffic is going on outside. His accent (omgg) is soo nice and daydreamy, I could listen to him talk for hours. He has a good rapping tone and his accent comes through nicely. There were 3 tracks that were just speech, "+44" being a poem and both "Swear" and "Rebel 101" is him having conversations with another person.

This was a really nice album and I'm glad I got to review it. I look forward to listening to his other albums now. An 8/10 from me.

Look out for my next blog post of our next Episode where we interview our next interviewee (still undecided) and where I'll review Transplant by Transplant, recommended by Stephen. Haven't heard of this band so this will be interesting!