Declared Sound

Mastering

Please contact dom@declaredsound.com if you’d like to discuss your project.

Mastering Options

Compact Disc – 16-bit 44.1k WAV files / DDP image / master CDR / digital transfer
Cassette – 24 or 16-bit 44.1k WAV files
Digital stores & distributors – 24/32-bit 44.1/48k WAV files
- Other online stores & distributors – 16-bit/44.1k WAV files
- Bandcamp and SoundCloud – 24-bit/44.1k WAV files
Vinyl – 24-bit 44.1k WAV files / DDP image / digital transfer
Music Licensing – 16-bit 48k WAV files and 320kbps MP3 for reference
320kbps MP3 from 32-bit 48k WAV
Metadata and ISRC Codes where applicable

I specialise in full dynamic range – making the most of all those sweet curves without over compression. That said, I’m totally aware of the current trends for volume, and I’ve spent years perfecting the art of keeping the dynamic range and bringing the volume up to a level that competes with the highly compressed sausages of modern music. I’m also adept in achieving that elusive live sound that many modern electronic musicians crave. Chances are I’ll have a good idea of what you want by listening to your mix, but talk to me about the sound you’re after… I’ve been involved with rock, punk, disco, prog, techno, avant-garde experimentalism, hardcore, grindcore, East African dance music, gabba, jazz, noise, revolutionary rave folk music from countries run by dictators, you name it… I’ll know what you mean and be able to accommodate.

Mastering – What do you get?

My standard fee is £50 per track, covering masters as required for digital, cassette, and CD. There is an additional fee of £50 for a vinyl master.

I also offer a sliding scale for mastering ranging from £20 to £50 per track. The sliding scale works on an honesty based system, and aims to make it more affordable for those on low incomes and/or from countries where currency conversion to £ doesn’t work out. If you can afford to pay more, please do so!

When the quote is agreed and your payment is received, you’ll get an experienced, knowledgeable and passionate ear putting the finishing touches to your music in a professional custom built mastering studio. You’ll have the opportunity to suggest amendments to the draft master, and when approved you’ll receive the final mastered tracks in all the various formats required.

Click here to read the track submission guide.

Mixing & Production

I also offer mixing from stems and production services. This can include mixing your tracks from stems, to more full-on production work such as taking your instrument stems and processing the sounds through analogue outboard hardware (vacuum tube EQ’s and amplifiers, re-recording sounds with ribbon and tube microphones, processing with filters, distortion, reverb, etc). Please feel free to email dom@declaredsound.com to discuss your project.

Sound Design Services

As a musician, I also offer bespoke sound design for commercial applications such as video, adverts, indents, branding, social media campaigns, in-store installations, etc. Naturally, this service will very much vary depending on your individual needs and budgets. There’s more on my 20 years in music in the about section. Please contact dom@declaredsound.com for further information.

Credits: Scroll down and take a listen to some of the releases I have worked on… (it’s quite a lot over the past 10+ years, and no doubt I’ve missed some off this list)

Mastered at Declared Sound Youtube playlist…

Credits: Nyege Nyege Tapes

nyegenyegetapes.bandcamp.com

Takkak Takkak – Abu

Serokolo 7 – Maramfa Musick Pro

Edu & Judgitzu – Nuku

Kinact – Kinshasa in Action

Operating at the intersection of sound, movement and sculpture, Kinshasa based street art collective KINACT collapse performance and ritual into music on their debut LP: Kinshasa in Action. Founded in 2015 by Eddy Ekete, Kinact have transformed Kinshasa’s public space into a living theatre, where refuse becomes regalia and street processions bear witness to pollution, superstition, gendered violence and postcolonial scars. Known for elaborate costumes fashioned from bottles, wires, tyres, dolls and detritus, their work bridges sculpture, activism and ancestor invocation., with costumes doubling as instruments, and tools of making reimagined as weapons of rhythm.

In 2022, led by Ekete, a core group of members travelled to Nyege Nyege HQ in Kampala for a two-month residency, entering the studio for the first time. Primarily a street performance collective, Kinact transformed the Nyege studio into a makeshift workshop, converting costumes into instruments and using drills, motorcycle parts, saws, hammers and nails to augment homemade xylophones and improvised drums. The result is a body of work welded into the Congolese landscape, shockingly contemporary yet politically resonant, questioning the future of not only the DRC but the continent at large. Performers appear as mythic avatars: Falonne Mambu as La Femme Électrique; Athou Molimo Bongonda (Spiritus) as ancestral bell-ringer; Pape Noire as L’Homme Pneu; Dudamwanza as L’Homme Poubelle; Patrick Kitete as L’Homme Miroir; Bestaguy Bayoka as Coco Man / Sachet Man; and Eddy Ekete himself as Homme Cannette. Each embodies a sculpture-being; each contributes sonic matter to the whole.

After a short, haunting introduction from Mambu, chanting “musique du Congo” over swirling synths, Kinact pull the listener deeper on Cercle de Tambour KinAct avec Manza, where industrial-strength staccato rhythms collide with undulating xenharmonic flute blasts and snapping percussion. Power drills whirr over hollow, plasticky drums on Atelier KinAct, while the collective’s circular saw becomes a driving rhythmic force on Gaingai, spiralling around a jerky, percussive thump.

Elsewhere, Cercle de Tambour Kinact spins rusted polyrhythms into psychedelic spirals, corrupting syncopated sub-bass pulses with sheet-metal cracks, explosive knocks and hoarse incantations. Existing somewhere between the street, the dancefloor and the factory, this music captures contemporary Kinshasa in motion, its noise, its urgency and its contradictions.

Across 11 tracks, a new chapter of industrial Congolese street sound takes shape, interlocking drills, hammers, saws, motorcycle engines, discarded pill packets, plastic bags, bamboo sticks and a homemade xylophone with raw chants, spectral invocations and communal drum circles. It sits somewhere between Einstürzende Neubauten’s industrial clang, Konono No.1’s distorted amplification and African Head Charge’s dread-soaked voodoo minimalism, yet remains grounded in Kinshasa’s street heat and night air. What emerges is a scorched suite of industrial Congolese percussion, equal parts scrapyard theatre and nocturnal trance.

Recorded at Nyege Villa Kampala
Recording, mix and mastering by Declared Sound
Artwork by Marc Armand
Additional Production by Declared Sound
Very Special thanks to Violence Gratuite & Eddy Ekete

Metal Preyers – Retox Man

Nkisi – Anomaly Index

Nakibembe Embaire Group & Naoyuki Uchida – Phantom Keys

Katokye – Obuhangwa bwa Banyankore na Bahororo

In his first studio album, legendary singer John Katokye shines an unprecedented light on the rich vocal music of the Banyankore and Bahororo people of Western Uganda, bringing to the fore two singing styles intimately anchored in their century-long practice of cattle herding. When still a young boy, Katokye ran away from home to immerse himself in the traditional songs of his region. Herding cattle in different farms to earn a living, he roamed his homeland singing for several decades, refining his art one performance at a time. Now approaching his 60th birthday, Katokye has become arguably the most talented and popular traditional singer alive in his region today.

Specializing in the style of ‘ekyeshongoro’, Katokye improvises short poetic sentences, like a long series of Japanese haiku, to convey morsel-sized impressions on the land and history of his people and their cherished cattle. On a regular performance, one or several singers usually back up the meandering of the lead vocalist, overlapping their verses in a continuous vocal flow – at times stretching well beyond ten minutes – transforming the moment into a long meditative experience. Marking the major twists and turns of their river-like performances, all the singers punctually raise their pitch together, steadily increasing the intensity of the current that pulls the audience along their mesmerizing praising chant.

Named after Katokye’s clan, ‘Abanzira’ pays tribute to the moral values and beauty of the women from his lineage, while ‘Ekyeshongoro Kyabakazi’ singles out the merits of the people of Karengo, a village at the heart of the Ankole region where Katokye settled with his loved ones. Throughout this song, Katokye peppers guttural breaths reminiscent of the mooing cows grazing in the hills surrounding his home. To say that the Banyankore and Bahororo people have a deep bond with their cattle might be an understatement in a culture where the generous eyelashes and quiet gaze of calves shape beauty standards, while the subtle taste of smoked milk flavours family reunions and friendly hang outs.

‘Okugamba Ente’ illustrates this intimacy well as Katokye salutes cows’ understanding of human nature, beating with his herding staff the pulse of another form of praise singing deeply rooted in the region, transporting listeners from the meditative river of ekyeshongoro to the dense and wordy waterfall of the ekyevugo style. Gluing words together to recite a dense series of sentences in one breath, ekyevugo singers draw on local myths and history while evoking cattle as signs of beauty and wealth to praise their audience and highlight the quality of the moments lived together at weddings, political rallies, or family gatherings. Acknowledging the praises, the audience usually concludes each flow with a short and vocal ‘eee’ during which the reciter quickly catches breath to draw strength and fire the next verse.

And the talent lives on in the younger generations as the B side opens with ‘Omuhogo gwa Rujeru’, foregrounding Katokye’s acolyte and longtime partner Samuel Rujeru who takes the lead to drive a song usually opening fire sessions, calmly warming up the audience and performers for an evening of storytelling. As they listen to the singers’ whirling melismas and passionate bursts, it’s not unusual for people to raise their arms in the air in imitation of the iconic long horns of their beloved cattle with which they share their lives in the bushy hills of the region. Rendered for the first time in an intimate studio recording session, listeners can now feel the warmth of these amazing vocal styles that for so many years accompanied the lives and dreams of the Banyankore and Bahororo people.

Recorded by Jonathan Uliel Saldnha & Declared Sound at Villa Nyege
Mixed and Mastered by Declared Sound

JLZ & GG – Medio Grave

DJ K – Radio Libertadora!

Akira Umeda & Metal Preyers – Clube da Mariopsa Mórbida

Chaka Chawasarira – Useza

DJ Shaun-D – From Bubbling to Dutch House

DJ Dadaman & Moscow Dollar – Ka Gaza

Kingdom Molongi – Kembo

DJ Travella – Twende – Dance Classics

Jako Maron – Mahavélouz

DJ Tobzy Imole Giwa – Lagos City Unloaded

DJ Znobia – Inventor Vol. 2

Arsenal Mikebe – Drum Machine

Ekuka Morris Sirikiti – TE-KWARO ALANGO-EKUKA

The first studio album from lukeme maestro and legendary Langi griot Ekuka Morris Sirikiti, ‘TE-KWARO ALANGO-EKUKU’ is an emotional and historical milestone. In 2018, Nyege Nyege Tapes combed through the artist’s work forensically on ‘Ekuka’, picking out the finest examples of his sound from recordings made by keen-eared listeners who caught his performances on Ugandan radio. Ekuka had never kept any of these tracks; living frugally in Lira, Northern Uganda, he doesn’t even own a device to listen to the music. So when he eventually heard the anthology, it triggered an epiphany. The songs – recorded between 1978 and 2003 – brought memories flooding back; some of his bandmates have long since passed away, and Ekuka was suddenly reminded of old friendships and long-forgotten life events.

Following this revelation, and for the first time in his life, Ekuka finally stepped into a proper studio, spending two weeks re-discovering and re-recording his old songs. These new versions capture the artist’s virtuosity in microscopic detail: the characteristic rattling sound of his lukeme, an ancient African thumb piano, takes pride of place, but his assertive, agile voice also sounds as if it’s been unlocked. On previous recordings, his words were often obscured by saturation, distortion and radio static, and here they’re presented with startling clarity as he deconstructs social issues, telling winding, poetic (and often humorous) stories in the griot tradition. Sparse polyrhythmic percussion rattles against the euphoric rhythmelodic thumb piano tones, while Ekuka’s voice anchors the music in the daily realities of Northern Uganda.

On the opening track ‘MITO MON OMEGU’, Ekuka stacks quivering lukeme phrases into a tense rhythmic foundation, dancing around the buzzing notes with clipped, casual rhymes that untangle the stresses and strains of romancing a brother’s wife. And he travels further into the moral grey zone on ‘ICO AWILO KOTI ME KWALO ORANGA’, telling the tale of a man who buys a coat to steal beans over an irregular, woody rhythmic knock. The album’s de-facto single ‘TEC ME OT JOK’ is about local witch doctors, and is the first song Ekuka has accompanied with a video. Colorful and cinematic, it juxtaposes footage of his performance – showcasing his lukeme playing in vivid detail – with local dances and narrative snippets that dramatize the interplay between a medicine man and his community.

Eukua is an endlessly inquisitive presence, mixing public service announcements (‘ONYO OCOLO’ is about paying taxes, while ‘CIL PACO’ details personal hygiene) with questions about village morals, like on ‘OPWODO DAKO PI KUNYU OMOGO’ when he recounts an incident when a woman is beaten for harvesting cassava. Everything’s presented with an invitation to dance and to reflect, delivered with pathos and mischievous charm by an artist who’s seen life’s full spectrum in intimate detail.

Mixed and Mastered by Declared Sound
Recorded by Declared Sound at Villa Nyege