TRACK PREMIERE: Miles Newman – Sophie

TRACK PREMIERE: Miles Newman - Sophie

Myles Newman is a 19-year-old songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer from Shropshire, combining a unique blend of 70s soft rock influences with accessible lyrics and floaty melodies; noted influences include J.J. Cale, Allman Brothers Band, Steely Dan, George Harrison, Ronnie Wood, Joni Mitchell, Willie J Healey, Neil Young, The Doobie Brothers to name a few.

Recording every instrument himself in his east London home using analogue tape machines and equipment, Myles brings a breath of fresh air both through the speakers and on the stage. From selling out headlines in the Midlands to playing support slots with names like Alfie Templeman, in his 2-year career, Myles has already racked up 300K Spotify plays and has planted his foot firmly in the alternative music scene’s door.

With this, E.P. Miles has taken his music to a stage where it has not been before, writing lyrics that reflect on maturing at a young age and family trauma, flipping to comical nonsense and fictional lovers. Myles encases these sometimes sensitive, other times chucklesome words in music that rings of his musical inspiration.

Myles also makes his 70’s influences known in his ancient recording equipment and production methods, and his creative process is another unique trait of Myles’ music – writing every song himself, playing every instrument himself, and recording all his music using reel-to-reel tape machines and analogue equipment, engineering, producing and mixing everything entirely on his own in a small bedroom in East London, all at the age of 19. Myles shares some of the equipment used on the latest recordings:

“I ran everything through the Fostex M80 8 track reel to reel, Behringer Xenyx 8 track mixer and my Adam Audio monitors. I didn’t mic up many instruments, to be honest obviously, I did with the drums, acoustic guitar and vocals things like that but I mostly DI’d the guitars. I ran them through a Neve preamp clone from Alctron. Sounded lovely, especially when I put the overhead drum mic through it and made it lovely and crisp. I did mic up my VOX amp if need be for slide parts, but the electric guitar was mostly DI.

My strat DI’d combined with the acoustic guitar mic’d up gave the guitars this lovely warm, washy sound which is exactly what I had in my head. Mic wise, I used that Rode condenser mic that they sell at every music shop, I bought it when I was 15? It’s a great mic to be honest, super sensitive and captures all frequency ranges pretty well so it’s a good room / overhead drum mic. SM58 on the snare and some vocals – pretty simple. I used some vintage mics too, this little Audio Technica AT804 direct mic I use on the kick drum, lead vocals and some guitar miking, it’s got amazing colour to it and I think it cost me 20quid off eBay.

I also used an AKG D190 for some floor tom action because my one is beat up and has a lot of top-end rolled off. I used a Korg SV1 for piano / Rhodes. I love that keyboard; it’s got some great Rhodes patches that I used to compliment vocal lines and guitar parts. For bass, I used my trust Hofner violin bass. I put flat wound strings on it, and it sounds so fat, but the unmistakable tone of the Hofner cuts through the mix, which is handy because I don’t have to do much mixing. My drum kit I’ve had for years; it’s a Pearl kit that I bought of one of my friends when I was younger. I’ve tweaked it so much over the years to get it to sound exactly how I want it.

Guitar wise I used my ‘79 Fender Strat for everything electric and my uncle’s 81-2 Ibanez acoustic. I didn’t use many pedals but I used a Boss overdrive for slide/lead guitar. It’s not a pedal, but I also used an Alesis reverb/delay unit for vocals which sounded pretty sweet. So if you take all that, run through a tape machine and use the pitch control to push the speed and sharpen everything slightly, you should have my sound, haha!”

Today XS Noize is pleased to exclusively premiere ‘Sophie’ from the ‘You & Me’ E.P. – Listen to ‘Sophie’ – BELOW:

SOCIAL MEDIA:

https://soundcloud.com/mylesnewman

https://www.instagram.com/mylesnewmannn

https://www.facebook.com/mylesnewmannn/

PRE ORDER LINKS:

https://lnk.to/sophie-mylesn

Xsnoize Author
Mark Millar is the founder of XS Noize and looks after the daily running of the website as well as hosting interviews for the weekly XS Noize Podcast. Mark's favourite album is Achtung Baby by U2.

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