Gap Year — Old Clothes

Gap Year’s first single of 2023 is Old Clothes, out now on Blue Grey Pink! The tune features Lee Napper’s melancholic melody floating over a rock solid rhythm section performance from Maddy Blue and Ben Santostefano, with lush guitars and synthesiser painting the harmonic backdrop.

Masterfully engineered and mixed by Rhien Tan, the track sets the band’s compass towards further recording in 2023.

Old Clothes was in the RTRFm Sound Selection for the week starting February 28th, and was the 10th most played track on RTRFm in the month of March, 2023.

Engineering and mixing by Rhien Tan
Mastered by Dan @ENCODERSound
Artwork by Maddy Blue
Released on Blue Grey Pink

Jocelyn's Baby — Wake. Relax. Repeat Again.

New single from Jocelyn’s Baby out now on Blue Grey Pink! It’s a big “rock n roll” track, something out of the late ‘90s, early ‘00s. Special mention to Josh Rospondek on guitar for winding up a huge solo out of the breakdown and carrying it to the finale.

Stay tuned for the release of Jocelyn’s Baby’s debut full length, Are You Listening? Due in early March!!

Production and mixing by Ryan K Brennan
Mastered by Dan @ENCODERSound
Released on Blue Grey Pink

Apple Digital Masters Certification

ENCODER Sound is now approved to provide Apple Digital Masters (ADM)*.

Artists and labels around the world are creating amazing music all the time, and the streaming providers, including Apple Music, are tasked with delivering that music to the people. This delivery requires careful handling of digital audio from the time it leaves the studio to the time it reaches the fans. On this process the Apple Digital Masters Team states:

“It is our job to faithfully and accurately deliver this music to fans around the world exactly as you [the artist] intend it to be heard.”

Mastering engineers share the same ambition and through collaboration between audio mastering engineers and the ADM Team the quality of streamed and downloaded music can be maintained.

To this end the ADM Team have developed workflows and protocols for mastering engineers to follow in order to achieve this “faithful and accurate delivery.” When hiring a mastering engineer with ADM approval you can be sure that the master you receive will meet the ADM specification and reach the ears of your fans as you intended it via Apple Music and iTunes.

Artists and labels who receive masters from ENCODER Sound and use a digital music aggregator that has ADM functionality will be able to display the ADM badge on their release in Apple Music and iTunes, giving listeners the confidence that due diligence has been served in preparing the digital master for Apple’s encoding process, ensuring that the final listening experience will be of the highest quality.

The Apple Digital Masters Badge on Arctic Monkey’s fantastic 2013 release AM.

*You can read more about delivering Apple Digital Masters here
**Apple Digital Masters (ADM) was formally known as Mastered for iTunes (MFiT)

Great Statue — Goes Bust

The fourth and final offering from the Great Statue is Goes Bust. This EP guides us into the club and onto the dance floor, and encourages us to “lean real heard into it.” True to the Statue there’s always some ear candy dancing atop the drum machine, every song at a tempo where you could really pull some shapes.

Written, recorded and mixed by Annika Moses.
Mastered by Dan O'Connor at ENCODER Sound.
Released by Rockton Records.

Great Statue — Great Lake

Great Statue’s third release of January 2023 is Great Lake, out now on Rockton Records. Although released as an EP Great Lake stretches close to 50 minutes in duration. It is a significant chapter in the four EP journey of the Statue incorporating “indulgent pitched vox,” intimate revelations and “weird dancefloor energy (WDE),” a term coin by the Statue herself.

Written, recorded and mixed by Annika Moses.
Mastered by Dan at ENCODER Sound.