Like they say, there’s never enough subwoofers…for a cello. At the Festival of Sound in London, UNKLE co-founder James Lavelle and I performed REDUX: reinterpretations of 20 years of collaborations. James is like a brother from another mother to me and we have worked together for over two decades creating numerous tracks with UNKLE, movie soundtracks, installations and live performances.
We were joined by Steven Weston in a state of the art audiovisual show made possible by producer extraordinaire, Chris Kimsey, and the rest of the Festival of Sound crew! Check out “Buffalo Jump” a song that will be on my upcoming album! I named it after a strip club in Big Sky, Montana…but that’s a story for another time with a bit of gin & tonic!
Watch "Buffalo Jump" Video

Things I’m Loving

Jacob Collier is one of my very favourite musicians. Here he is explaining how harmony works in a very cool Wired series. Yuja Wang plays Mozart. Seriously stop what you’re doing and watch this. It has a twist and a half. A lecture by Larry Tribe. He was Obama’s professor. His visualisations of political theory are quite stunning. The Trickster’s Hat by my friend Nick Bantock is a ‘Mischievous Apprenticeship in Creativity’. A simply wonderful book to have on one’s desk. Self Journal – a brilliant system to keep on track and focus on the important things. Their bookmark notepad is a thing of genius too. I give these away all the time!

A Portrait – By Nathan Azopardi

Nathan Azopardi is an incredible photographer, magazine founder, father, son and friend. I met Nathan in Berlin during a C2 Spark event. There he took one of my absolute favorite photos that I almost always use as my headshot…although it’s of the back of my head…I think it’s my best side.
Nathan joined me at Abbey Road last summer while I was recording the score for the film, The Final Year. Nathan tiptoed around the players of the English Session Orchestra and took the photos and videos for his work “A Session with Philip Sheppard”.

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LIVE from TwitchTV

If you’ve enjoyed Kara’s music from Detroit: Become Human, I’ll be streaming LIVE from Twitch HQ on Friday, October 12th @ 2PM PST. I’ll be playing songs from Detroit: Become Human and some of my other favorites! Join me and I may even compose a tune just for you! Tune in at Twitch.tv/twitch
Check out the entire Spitfire Audio September Masterclass Journal HERE.
Enjoy more beautiful pictures from Nathan on his site.

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Spitfire Audio: Under The Hood

I had the chance to sit down with the amazing team at Spitfire Audio, a British music technology company that specialises in sounds: sample libraries, virtual instruments and other useful software devices. I went DEEP with them about my composition and recording process for the emotionally charged Dark Night scene in DETROIT: Become Human. I also let them in on my favorite and signature compositional trade secrets!
For all the Kara fans, I performed the Kara theme and broke down my process of creating and writing Kara’s theme. I have LOVED all of the requests I’ve gotten for the sheet music for “Little One”! Please post on twitter and tag me in your renditions of “Little One” and I’ll feature my favorite in my next newsletter!!

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