The Spylab track 'Celluloid Hypnotic' dropped during a poignant party scene of the first Six Feet Under episode. This was to become a major turning point in Kenny's career. It had some of the core elements of the Spylab sound but it was deeper, more cinematic.” Kenny received news that a track from the previous project Spylab had been requested by HBO for the first episode of a new TV drama called Six Feet Under. "I then started a new project under the name Cinephile. From the launch party in Los Angeles, to a sell out show at SXSW in Austin. I'm not entirely sure how I pulled that off.” In March 2001 the Spylab album was finally released to a hoard of excellent reviews. I think I had a week to figure out how to do that and put a playlist together. A request for Spylab to DJ on the show was to follow. Picking out the album's title track 'This Utopia', Mary Anne would go on to play it no less than 8 weeks in a row. At the time Mary Anne was presenting The Breezeblock - a late Sunday night show with an eclectic playlist of alternative electronic music. The album was to catch the attention of Mary Anne Hobbs at Radio One. Writing and recording Spylab 'This Utopia' began in 1999. They wanted an album, and were offering a $15,000 advance. But then there was an offer from a Chicago based label by the name of Guidance Recordings. Studio K7 were interested in a singles deal, as was Flying Rhino in London. Ten went in the post one Monday morning, and the following Monday there were three offers from three different labels. I remember having this endless battle with the bias control to try and get the best sound I could on these little tapes. "At the time you did demos on normal cassette tapes. The initial demo consisted of three tracks, with the melancholic 'This Utopia' leading the playlist. A dark, downtempo project with a cinematic edge. I wanted to grab some of that ambiguity I felt from the TV shows of my childhood and make it into a project of some sort". I didn't come from a music loving background, but I was always obsessed by the way music and film would interact - how music brings this atmosphere and tone to even the most mundane visual stuff. "Eventually, I stopped writing the music I thought people would want to hear, and started writing the music I wanted to make. Kenny focused on learning as much about the craft as he could whilst winging his way through recording and mixing everyone from the likes of singer/songwriters to bands, to voiceovers artists and anything in between. I literally had no idea how to work any of the equipment. Kenny figured the best way to move forward was to start a small project studio and learn his craft as a recording engineer. That left me with this hanging sense of ambiguity as to what would happen in that hour after the titles came up.”Įxposure to a work colleague’s tiny project studio in a kitchen cupboard was a lightbulb moment for him and the experience of utilising music technology as a way of writing and producing entire tracks stirred a wave of determination to chase a career in music using the opportunities that technology could offer. My mother would let me stay up to watch the opening sequence of the latter then send me to bed because the story would be too heavy for a kid. From the family orientated stuff like The A-Team, to darker dramas such as The Equalizer. "I loved the pre-title music on a lot of those 80's U.S. Born in 1975, Kenny didn't listen to much music, unless it was the opening credits to a TV show or a film score that had caught his ear.
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