NEW RELEASE
from 101 Music Pty Ltd^®
 now available via
‘Harvest Media Distribution’
&
‘SourceAudio’

Radio Friendly was composed by Gareth James Hudson, a prolific composer, artist, musician and record producer from Australia.

Gareth has produced and recorded with award winning artists including JayTee Hazard (Hilltop Hoods, The Last Kinection, Brigg – featuring Gurrumul), The Beards, The Buddy Knox Blues Band, Amy Vee, Auriel Andrew and many more.  Hudson also composed Turning Corners (101M041) for 101 Music earlier this year.

His passion with recording and composing began in his early years when he started collecting instruments and recording equipment, which developed into ‘Hazy Cosmic Jive Recording Studio’ that Gareth owns and manages. The studio features state-of-the-art digital equipment and software, fused with old school analogue gear and instruments, which is the key to Hudson’s unique musical sound shaping style.

Gareth has performed and composed music for his own original bands, The Good (1999~2006) and Hudson Arc (2012~present). He has toured extensively throughout Australia and Europe as front man (guitar/vocals) for each of these acts. He is also a key band member and composer with the award-winning artist Buddy Knox Blues Band.

He has written several musical theatre works beginning with The Shining Isle: A Rock Opera (librettist Nick Higginbotham), premiering in 2006 at Australia’s Civic Theatre in Newcastle, where one of the songs won the prestigious ABC Music Award. He also composed for the 2010 Gilbert & Sullivan spoof, Mermaids of Mull, and won a 2009 City of Newcastle Australia Drama Award performing with Jon English in his musical Buskers & Angels.

In 2007, Gareth received a SPARK grant from the Australia Council & Youth Arts Queensland, to work with film music composer Art Phillips, owner and director of 101 Music Pty Ltd, initiating Hudson’s theatrical play Between Worlds, which was selected by New Musicals Australia in 2015 as a ‘snapshot presentation’. The work is currently considered for major staging in both Australia and the USA.

Project Backstory

Radio Friendly is modern commercial electro-acoustic pop with short ‘one-liner’ male vocals, vocals with just a ‘one-line’ lyrical hook as per the track titles provided in the initial brief to the composer.

This approach allows for more space under the dialogue and is a more ‘direct quote’ of emotion for consumer product advertising and various dramatic storyline purposes by utilising just the track title as the featured vocal hook.

The 12 track titles are generic, yet slightly personalized for varied story spectrums – all titles being positive messages that fit well across a multitude of situations, being uplifting, confident, feel-good, assuring, forward-looking and driving.

The project is aimed for advertising, corporate, travelogue shows and various television and feature film stories, perfectly set for an opening theme, end credits, source music and various background situations.

Gareth combined both the analogue and digital worlds through the use of computer based electronica and real instruments. He also used two analogue tape machines, a MCI JH24 / 2” and a MCI JH110 / ½” for recording and transferring various instruments back into the digital work station.  Before sending the final audio mixes off for mastering, Gareth’s mixes are printed back to his DAW via a ½ inch two track at 30ips, providing a rich analogue audio soundscape.

The project was mixed by Gareth James Hudson at Hazy Cosmic Jive Recording Studio (Newcastle, Australia), and mastered by Kathy Naunton of dB Mastering (Sydney, Australia).

Notes from the composer:

I began writing songs at 14 years of age. Although I’d been learning classical piano since the age of 6, I’ve always had a love of pop music.  My mother and father’s record collections included artists such as The Beatles, Stevie Wonder, James Taylor, Simon & Garfunkel, Joni Mitchell, Carol King and many more, and this is where my love of great melodies and lyrics began to ferment.  In early high school, I started a band with my best friend who played drums, I picked up the bass guitar and have been writing songs ever since.

I jumped at the opportunity to work with Art Phillips, 101 Music Pty Ltd, on this project. Composing melodic hooks and creating emotion through music is a passion of mine. The project brief for ‘Radio Friendly’ fitted straight into this pocket. My goal for the album was to make the ‘one-liners’ as catchy and pleasurable to the listener as possible, while also working to catch the emotional flavour of the single hook line lyric.  Incorporating modern production techniques and timbres, so that this material would stand up against current commercial radio material, was inspiring and rewarding for me, as I’m consistently looking for ways to communicate emotions through recorded music by keeping the sounds as fresh and thrilling as possible.

This album consists of 12 main track titles with one-liner hook vocals, 12 instrumental versions (no lead vocal), an underscore of each title, 30 second cuts of the vocal and instrumental version, a 30 underscore and two short stings.

Thank you for your continued support of the 101 Music Pty Ltd® catalogue.