HEADLINES

Surreal Estate Music With A Alternative Rock Edge

January 19, 2020
Surreal Estate were originally formed in Bradford (UK) as a two piece band by Mik Raven and Amarik Singh back in 1984, from the remnants of their four piece band Ministry of Fear. Surreal Estate performed regularly around Bradford over the next couple of years using a tape backing track for drums and bass and playing the guitar and synths live. However, despite a certain amount of popularity, they never really took off. Bradford was more interested in bands like New Model Army and Southern Death Cult at the time. Synth based bands were more in vogue around the Sheffield scene, a little far for poverty stricken musicians to travel. So, inevitably, late in 1986 the band split and that seemed to be the end of that. Mik and Amarik both went their separate ways.

Roll on 2016 and social media. In the January Amarik had found some old Surreal Estate recordings on cassette  and thanks to the advent of social media he was able to contact Mik with the suggestion that the songs be re- recorded using more modern equipment than they had available back in the eighties. Back then the band had to  make do with analog recording using very poor equipment just to get the backing tracks down. Having had a 20 year break from music, Mik was back playing in local covers bands so was more than happy to get the old stuff re-recorded.

So the two got together and started recording the songs using CuBase. It soon became apparent that just recording the songs as they were was not going to be enough. The songs needed enhancing using all the tools available in CuBase. So, once the basics had been laid down to a basic click track, Mik took them away and started to lay down big impossible drum tracks, sweeping strings and massive choral and orchestral sounds to give the songs the feel he had always imagined they should have.

Just prior to Mik And Amarik getting back together Mik had befriended Christophe Bride at a Killing Joke concert in Cologne. Christophe runs Oxygene studios in Manchester and does all the recording and production for Kirk Brandon (Spear of Destiny, Theatre of Hate etc.), so it seemed an obvious choice to take the songs to him to have them produced. So Mik and Christophe shut themselves away for 7 very long days in the studio to perfect the tracks. What came out at the end of that is what you can hear if you visit the Surreal Estate ReverbNation or SoundCloud pages.

The the album in the can plans were afoot to get it released onto CD as soon as possible. An artist was found who was willing to do the artwork free of charge so all that seemed to be left was producing a promotional video. As luck would have it, Mik was friends with someone who makes animated videos for a living. A large deposit was paid to secure her services and everything was looking good. Green screen shots were filmed to go along with the animation and everything was looking hopeful for an early 2017 release. This is when things hit the buffers. Months and months went by with no video, but always the promise of soon. As 2017 came to a close the video was abandoned and the money written off.

The band is still hopeful to get the album released some time soon, but are looking for help with publicity and distribution, plus hopefully a talented video producer who can make something to be proud of that matches the Surreal Estate music. There are also many more great songs to record and lots of ideas for a second album, but the band needs to get the first one out there in the wild first. They would also love to get the music out there in a live environment, so would be happy to speak to anyone about live shows or support slots. Have a listen to the music and if you like it why not get in touch with the band and let them know.

Though they was featured in recently released Lifoti's January/February 2020 issue 11, you can check it from below link's for your country:

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