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Ashley, I remember you were in a band called Freakpower with Fatboy Slim. How did the collaboration come about?
It's actually a very long story, but basically Norman got to know about Ashley when his first signed band, Microgroove, was remixed by him. They danced around each other for a while, and Ashley's band formed Norman's live band when he was touring Beats International. Anyway, they kept tabs on each other and when Norman decided to hang up his Beats International gloves, he phoned Ashley and asked if he'd like to start a new thing with him. That thing became Freakpower.
Where have you been performing recently? As a band and separately on your own..
Well… We've been off the road for quite a while, as we mentioned but we've played at most of the big festivals in the UK, as well as France, Belgium, Holland, Germany, Ukraine and Russia, to name but a few. We're also playing in Lewes on New Years Eve this year!
Do you produce all your own songs and if so, which DAW do you use and some of your favourite plugins?
As we mentioned before, we do produce most of our own stuff. Ashley uses Logic Pro and has been using that since it was Emagic on the Atari 1040 ST! He loves his UAD
Quad Core card for mixing, which he does all in the box. All the Native Instruments stuff is absolutely excellent with a really specific sound to it. He also really likes Wavesfactory stuff, which is incredibly cheap but really well produced sample libraries. Quite obscure things in there, always worth a dig through when he's looking for something a bit off the wall.
What are your favourite styles of music right now?
Ash doesn't really get time to listen to much stuff, he's always writing or composing something. Most of his musical intake these days comes from what he might hear on the TV, he pays particular attention to what's on the ads, they tend to be a good way to find interesting music that's out there. He'll never stop listening to the great jazz singers as he does quite a lot of singing with his jazz quartet.
Scarlett likes, Jessie Glynn, Jessie J, anyone called Jessie really…. Macklemore, Ryan Lewis, Rita Ora, Justin Bieber, she likes great pop music and great voices.
And lets rewind for a moment, what were your earliest musical memories?
Ashley was raised on a diet of country music, bluegrass, easy listening and dixieland jazz. He also remembers his dad having lots of musicians over playing with his dad, who could play anything with strings on it.
Scarlett grew up with an indie loving mum and dad, so Stone Roses, Elliott Smith, REM, Neil Young, Tracey Chapman, Lauren Hill and The Posies. She also used to go and see her dad's band, Blow Up.