News
Sam Shinazzi - Then I Held My Breath
In August 2008 Sam Shinazzi will release his new album ‘Then I Held My Breath’. It is the Sydney songwriter’s third full length recording and it is being released by Black Lodge Audio.
The first single to go to radio is titled ‘Today We Lost A Great One’ and can be heard in full on Sam’s MySpace page. We encourage you to request it on your favourite radio station.
The first launch will take place in Sydney on Thursday August 28th at the Hopetoun Hotel in Surry Hills. Please put it in your diary now!
Some details about the new Sam Shinazzi release:
‘Then I Held My Breath’ is the third full length album by Sydney artist Sam Shinazzi
Sam’s regular band consisting of Adam ‘T-Bone’ Taylor on lead guitar, Tessa Benjamin on keys, Bruno Brayovic of Peabody on bass and Anthony The of Skull Squadron on drums all played major roles in the recording process.
Bruno and Sam began it all with pre-production, shaping the songs and production which would become the album ‘Then I Held My Breath’. Anthony recorded the drums and bass in his own space at Velvet Studios. Tessa brought to the album her usual enthusiasm for Sam’s songs and contributed her finest keyboard and piano parts to date, whilst Adam ‘T-Bone’ Taylor blew everyone away with his amazingly tasteful lead guitar work. If you ask Sam, he will tell you ‘T-Bone’ is the star of ‘Then I Held My Breath’.
Guests on the album include alt-country wizard Jason Walker, 78 Saab’s Nicholai Danko, The Devoted Few’s Skye Knight and Little Sky’s Elizabeth Payne.
‘Then I Held My Breath’ was produced by Sam Shinazzi and his close friend / musical collaborator Adam Wes Gregorace. The duo also produced Sam’s second album ‘Stories You Wouldn’t Believe’. Wes was the bassplayer in Sam’s first band and has always played a significant role in producing Sam’s music, from early four track demos to helping mix ‘Then I Held My Breath’ in a major recording studio. When not hanging out with Sam, Wes can be seen playing bass in The Devoted Few and teching for bands such as Midnight Juggernauts and Cut Copy.
Nine of the twelve songs on ‘Then I Held My Breath’ were written over a three week period specifically designated by Sam to write this album. He blocked out 21 days and nights of his life (with the exception of a few social outings which ended up in the songs anyway) and started the process as an experiment. As the songs started to flow every few days, sometimes daily, he threw himself into the idea of writing the bulk of this album in that short time period of time. Each night Sam would call lead guitarist Adam ‘T-Bone’ Taylor and over the phone, sing to him the songs to seek advice. Once each song was written and structured to his liking, Sam recorded them in one take into one microphone (the sessions would soon be known as ‘Shaky demos-album 3′.
‘Then I Held My Breath’ was mixed by the ARIA award winning engineer Wayne Connolly (The Vines, Josh Pyke, Youth Group amongst many more).