Professional product finishing for the independent artist
Why us?
Well you might ask. We'll start with what really makes us different. We are a company that has been involved in the releasing and recording of independent music for more than 35 years. We have been, and still are MUSICIANS first and Technicians a close and very capable second.
Our CEO Andy Tillison owned and ran an analogue tape recording studio in the north of England from 1985 onwards. Here he worked with hardcore punk, reggae, indie, metal, pop, dance and just about anything that made a noise at the time.
It was the first studio in northern England to use a computer as part of the day to day running of the recording facilities. During his time there, the studio recorded more releases that actually went to press than anyone else in the UK... most of which were independently funded. Chumbawamba, Mekons, Three Johns, Cassandra Complex, the BFG, The Membranes, Bogshed, The Utah Saints, MDMA, Sore Throat, Deviated Instinct, Hellbastard, Steve Albini, Electrohippies all passed through the doors along with hundreds of others. They were treated fairly, they were not fleeced for their money, there were "no frills" in the studio but the clients made many many records here and the studio and its owner are in a fair few books of memoirs for different bands.
Since those times, Andy has been highly active as a musician and producer, his band The Tangent is currently signed with Sony Music and released their 11th album for them in 2020 which made the top 10 in the Uk album charts. He's won a few awards too, in Italy in 2006 for the "Best Produced Progressive Rock album", in the UK the Classic Rock Society special award for outstanding contributions to music. He's frequently appeared in Polls as a keyboards player, in 2018 voted No1 keyboards player of the year in the high street Progressive Rock glossy magazine PROG.
He's released more than 20 albums of his own compositions over the years and the MP3 file he posted on the Internet for download in 1995... a day after the mp3 encoder was released is almost certainly the first band music mp3 to have existed online. He subsequently went on to post an entire album for free download with a "pay what you like" option. Radiohead did the same, a full 8 YEARS later.
above: High quality downloadable album including cover c. 1999
Andy has done graphics layout for nearly all the albums he has released. While he uses artists and photographers for some of these, the actual layout of the pictures, lyrics, credits, copyright info - everything that makes an album sleeve an album sleeve - he's done the lot. He had a band website up and running in 1994, his band was the first band ever to use the Atari ST and Steinberg sequencer software on stage (in 1985 less than a week after the system was released). he's passionate about music from Punk to Baroque thru Metal to Jazz and back and his fave band of all time is Earth Wind & Fire.
He has a large network of contacts, other producers, musicians, engineers in all corners of the world and will be distributing any work YOU send to MBL to the Best person for the job, whether that's Andy himself or someone more suited to your project.
above: Working on the Zopp album in 2019
MBL worked with new up and coming avant musician Ryan Stevenson on his debut album ZOPP in 2019 and after its release in 2020 it was one of the "Progressive Albums Of The Year" in many end of year polls. At present we're working with a Canadian Metal project and keyboards parts for a forthcoming project by Tim Bowness and we're remixing a classic song from the 1980s from the band Twelfth Night.
MBL wants to offer professional standard services to musicians at an affordable and realistic price. Contact us using the chat box on all pages of this site!
