01-05-2008 : Creature - Promo 1 Available For Free
You can now download a FREE promotional album containing 9 tracks from previous Creature releases, plus one completely new track, Glide. You are free to distribute this promo to all your friends. We also encourage you to upload this promo album to as many torrent sites and news groups as you like. We appreciate your help in spread the word about Creature. You can download the album from HERE. The track listing is as follows:
01 - Ferrite
02 - Hive
03 - GeoSwitch
04 - Terrapin
05 - Even Flow
06 - Vitamin
07 - Helter Skelter
08 - Rise
09 - Tenge Misuser
10 - Glide
21-04-2008 : Electronic Critters Available From Sample Magic
Today Electronic Critters went live on Sample Magics new download portal, Sounds/To/Sample.
The direct link the Electronic Critters is here. This is a cool thing to happen. They are quite picky about the sample collections they stock, so I was quite happy when they got in touch with me.
Here is some information from their site:
About Sounds/To/Sample
Sounds/To/Sample is a one-stop pro-audio download resource developed by the team behind award-winning sound design company Sample Magic. In an age where media is increasingly delivered and consumed online, Sounds/To/Sample's mission statement is simple - to bring the sample industry in-line and up-to-date with the remainder of the creative industry. In putting sample libraries online we cut the costs associated with duplication, packaging and shipping - offering a better, fairer deal for the producer and the end user.
Who are we?
Sounds/To/Sample was founded in 2007 by Sharooz Raoofi and David Felton.
Sharooz is a veteran dance music producer who has sold over 100,000 records worldwide. With releases on Warner Music and Ministry of Sound, he has enjoyed numerous plays on Radio 1 and has written for EMI Music Publishing and BMG Zomba. As a sound designer he has produced sample collections for Zero-G, Loopmasters, Tekniks and AMG. He has a background in music marketing, having previously working at London Records and Universal Music.
David Felton is a music producer whose debut album is due soon on Toolroom Records. He has remixed for the likes of Mark Knight and has released a series of house singles to critical and commercial acclaim. He also writes production music for Boosey & Hawkes, EMI/KPM and Deep East. His professional background is in print management, journalism, editorial and design, and his work has been published in, among others, The Guardian, the BBC and the Sunday Sport.
What we sell
We offer full sample collections from leading sample production companies exactly as they appear in their physical form, and associated variants to offer you what you need rather than what others think you need. We also offer samples from named producers and DJs, as well as exclusive bespoke sample download packs and a variety of free sounds. To help users make the most of the sounds, we also feature production tutorials and producer insights, tips and tricks from the best writers in the industry. In offering Wav, Rex, Apple Loops and assorted sampler formats we give the customer unparalleled choice and flexibility. But most of all, we sell quality sounds - handpicking the companies and producers that we work with to ensure that our sounds are the best out there.
14-04-2008 : Distant Horizon Now Available For Licensing
We are pleased to annouce that Creture's 2nd album, Distant Horizon, is now available for licensing for TV and other commercial purposes. It has been a long time in the making as the process of getting licensed seems to take so long, but we are finally there. Hopefully the rest of the Creature catalog will follow soon.
License this music for commercial use through Pump Audio
12-04-2008 : Electronic Critters Merchandise
Along side the release of Electronic Critters, we would also like to announce the first in our range of Circuit Bending inspired T-Shirts and Aparrel. We offer a range of different garments in different colors for our first design, "Speak Not Spell". Click the 'Get Unique Gifts Here' button to go to our Cafe Press shop...
07-04-2008 : Free Happy Welly Album - Tales From The Teapot
We are pleased to announce that the original Happy Welly album can now be downloaded FREE of charge from Haunted House Records. Click here to get the album. This is the first Happy Welly album that was recorded before Irritable Vowel Syndrom. We have been deciding what to do with the album for a while now, and we thought it would be good to release it as a FREE album.
Happy Welly is busy writing the 3rd full length album. We hope to release this album towards the end of the year. More information will be posted here nearer the time.
06-03-2008 : Electronic Critters - Lo-Fi Circuit Bending Sample DVD
Way back at the beginning of last year when I was planning the Distant Horizon album I started a marathon circuit bending spree over 4 months. The intention was to use a lot of the sound samples from this in the making of the album.
After I had made lots of circuit bent recordings, I chopped up all the sounds and started processing them with weird and wonderful effects. This created some really quite bizarre and alien noises which featured heavily on the album.
That whole process was so much fun, I carried on making circuit bent samples and also carried on with the processing of them. I then decided that these would be interesting to release as a sample CD for other electronic musicians.
Well, I am nearly at the end of the project. All the samples are finished, I just have to compile the final DVD image. The disc will contain over 700 raw circuit bent samples and over 250 processed alien sounding textures and atmospheres. All samples will be provided in both 16bit and 24bit wav file formats.
While the manufactoring is being sorted out, Electronic Critters, has been made available for pre-order. The pre-order price is £20 + p&p. The normal price will be £25 + p&p. I expect to have the first batch of DVD's by the end of the month. If you pre-order now, your disc will be sent out as soon as I have them turn up.
06-03-2008 : Free Drum Machine Samples
Because I am such a generous and giving person I have put up a load of drum kits samples I created for my last album, Distant Horizon, for free on this side.
First up there are 22 kits from an old Korg Electribe ER-1. Then there is a kit sampled from a Yamaha DD-10 kids drum machine. I have not circuit bent this device yet, so it is a clean kit. Lastly there is a drum kit an old Yamaha PSS-80 keyboard.
You can download the samples from here.
Have fun using them. I used a lot of these samples on the album, and when you combine them with some effects processing you can get some quite interesting sounds out of them.
06-03-2008 : First Reviews in for Distant Horizon
We have had a couple of reviews come in for Distant Horizon, the first is from Mark Tater at ChainDLK.com and the 2nd from Side Line magazine.
"New release for the Haunted House-recording artist CREATURE hailing out of Derby, UK. CREATURE is Stephen Haunts and he continues with this new full-length his path performing a special sort of Dark Ambient/Down-Tempo Electronica. His musically outfit still relies on some dark lead synth sounds complimented with rhythm patterns between ear-catching and commercial-oriented up to experimental and abstract-minded. “Distant Horizons” is like most of its predecessor “Mechanical” a completely instrumental arranged album, but it surprises a bit, that Stephen for this album seemed to have spent some efforts in the creation of the tracks list. After a dark, cold melodic intro tune (“Indigo”), the track “Carbon” rules the scenario and offers easy-minded but powerful and I tend to say catchy synth textures. But the more this album continues, the more it turns into some darker and more ominous sounding spheres. Since all tracks work well and do the best to offer a matured listening experience, I like to point out the slow and dark-melodic track “Helter Skelter” and the DIVE-like “Flutter” as being favorites. Stephen himself extracts a lot of his sounds out of very experimental-minded kind of work. Circuit bending is to be named and this requires some knowledge of a electrician. Would be surely interesting to know more details on this, since this music is a descent trip under a pair of headphones, but also “easy” enough to work in the background while concentrating on different things. Good stuff."
4 Out Of 5 : Mark Tater www.chaindlk.com
"The debut-album “Mechanical” of this British artist sounded quite promising. “Distant Horizon” goes on a similar way, merging pure ambient soundscapes with some low tempo rhythmic. The electronic arrangements are quite well done and the global feeling of the listening remains pretty enjoyable. Creature tries to inject some extra variation on a track like “Rise”. This is for sure one of the high lights for the darker sphere and a kind of dramatic expression. This is a pure soundtrack-like release, not bad at all."
side-line.com
06-12-2007 : Creatures Distant Horizon Now Available.
From today you can buy Creatures latest album Distant Horizon from iTunes, Napster, eMusic and other leading online download stores. This album sets a darker tone to the previous album, Mechanical, and continues the use of circuit bent childrens toys for creating some very strange sounds and ambiences. We hope you enjoy this album!!!
02-12-2007 : Free Creature and ZiBiR EP's for December 2007 only.
FREE GIFT
For December only you can download Creature's Daisy Cutter, Twilight EP's and ZiBiR's Electrodes EP for FREE. Click on the images above to go to the download pages. Thank you for your support through 2007. Happy Holidays!!!
22-10-2007 : Creature's Distant Horizon preview now available
You can now listen to previews of Creature's new album Distant Horizon on our music page. The tracks Rise and Helter Skelter can be downloaded in full for free. Enjoy!!
14-10-2007 : ZiBiR's Life Begins available from Napster and Rhapsody
ZiBiR's, Life Begins album is now available from Napster and Rhapsody. Enjoy -)
14-10-2007 : New album cover or Distant Horizon
Here is the album cover for Creatures latest album, Distant Horizon. The artwork was created by Neil Duffin Photography. The full cd case images shows an interlaced TV pixel effect of a horizon which fades to a non interlaced image on the back cover. It is going to look really nice. More info and track previews from the album are coming soon.
10-10-2007: New Album From Creature Coming Soon
After this years well received album Mechanical, Creature is pleased to announce his latest album called 'Distant Horizon'. Ths album is in the final mixing stages and will soon be ready for mastering. Creature is also due to work with photographer Neil Duffin on a photo shoot for the album's CD cover and tray artwork.
As a treat for all those that have emailed us recently asking about the new album we have put a couple of work in progress tracks from the new album on the music player to the right of the page. These tracks are not completly finished yet, but they give an insight into the tone of the album. Distant Horizon is a much darker album than Mechanical which involves circuit bending to a much greater extent. The tracks are called Flutter and Helter Skelter.
The final album track listing will be:
01 - Indigo
02 - Carbon
03 - Tenge Misuser
04 - Metrified Outfielding
05 - Flatlets Luteal
06 - Rise
07 - The Architect (Part 1)
08 - Helter Skelter
09 - Flutter
10 - Omega
11 - The Architect (Part 2)
12 - Not Enough Time
13 - The Luna
14 - Creep
29-09-2007 : ZiBiR's Debut Album 'Life Begins' Preview Available
ZiBiR's latest album 'Life Begins' will be available in the online stores very shortly. In the mean time We have added mp3 previews of all the tracks to the music page. You can download the full tracks to 'Post Process' and 'Sound Off' for free. Also check out some new tracks on the radio player on the right of the website..
14-07-2007 : ZiBiR's Debut Album 'Life Begins'
We will be releasing ZiBiR's debut album, 'Life Begins', in September. Keep checking back to this site as we will soon have excepts of all the songs available. If you enjoyed Electrodes, then you will LOVE Life Beings!!!
14-07-2007 : Creature Review In Virus Magazine
Mechanical recently recieved a great review in Virus Magazine. They gave the album 8 out of 10. The review reads as follows:
"Creature is an electronic music project of Stephen Haunts, who also happens to run Haunted House Records.
Using circuit bending as a compositional technique, this CD is armed with an impressive array of sampled sounds, simple but strong melodies, and creative programming, therefore making "Mechanical" an unexpected listening pleasure.
The circuit bending technique is when one takes old electronic gadgets and toys and rewires them to create new and interesting sounds. These sounds are then recorded and sampled and are used to create beats and melodic structure.
In my opinion, what was even more impressive than the circuit bending technique were the abundance of consistently catchy melodies, which act like viscous fluid for the seamless stream of sampled sounds and beats.
"Mechanical" is one of those CDs where nothing is overstated and everything works well together. I would have rated this CD higher, but there were some abrupt track changes that seemed more like technical issues than intention, and were more noticeable while listening with headphones. Otherwise this was a very balanced and encouraging release, and a sure sign that the musical future is looking bright for Mr. Haunts and his label."
Michael Casano, 01 Jul 2007
10-06-2007 : Creature Interviewed by TheVibes.Net
Stephen Haunts from Creature has been interviewed by TheVibes and asked lots of questions about the album Mechanical, Future music, and the state of the world. You can read the whole interview in english at the following address:
http://www.thevibes.net/interviews/creature.html
10-06-2007 : Happy Welly Reviewed by TheVibes.Net
Happy Welly's Irritable Vowel Syndrome has had a glowing review on the Italian eZine TheVibes.net. The whole review is in Italian, but I have been told be the review writer that it is a good review.
10-06-2007 : Review for ZiBiR's Electrodes
Chain D.L.K awarded Electrodes 4.5 out of 5 and gave the following review:
"A new CD-EP release for the UK-based Haunted House Recordings label, with ZIBIR a debut of a new solo effort of Mat Howlett. We lately have discovered Mat’s other project HAPPY WELLY, a kind of fun and light-hearted Electronica project. But ZIBIR differs musically by offering a kind of instrumental arranged lo-fi dark electronic music and likes to call the works of KRAFTWERK, DAFT PUNK and DEEE-LITE as possible influences. Not very conventionally produced, the provided music here offers rhythmically tunes with a lighter attitude, but also stuff to sink in and chill-out (“Electrodes (Matulator Mix)”). Quite interesting arranged, this 6-track EP offers at all three different tracks, plus three remix works on the title track, one of them created by the label colleague of CREATURE. The “Maximix” of the title track gets my vote for the best piece here, maybe asides the darker sounding remix work by CREATURE. “Electrodes” works well as a convincing background sound design, but offers also several interesting structures and ideas to get checked out under a pair of headphones."
Marc Tater for Chain D.L.K Magazine
14-05-2007: Creature Joins The Social Revolution
Today Creature has launched a homepage on virb.com. This is a service similar in functionaility to MySpace except the home pages allow a far greater level of customisation and design. You can view Creatures virb page at http://virb.com/creature.
If you already have a virb page or are planning on setting one up, then why not add Creature as a friend.
03-05-2007: More Reviews
Had some more reviews come in today. First one is for Mechanical with an impressive 4 out of 5:
"We had already a review on this release, but thanks to a double-mailing I too come into the pleasure to consume this first full-length release by this British solo project. Behind CREATURE stands Stephen Haunts, who’s also responsible for the label Hauntedhouserecords. With a look on the cover I expected at first an effort woven into the Powernoise genre, so I was a bit surprised to enter an almost instrumental Dark Electronica/Ambient album, which obviously tries to explore some cinematic attitudes. The musically fundament is based on dark Synth basses, piano sounds and wide-ranging Synth layers sounds. Some diverse percussive elements are joining this relatively dark sounding scenario, while real vocals are only featured on two tracks “Daisy Cutter” and “Nox”. The tracks which manage to provide rather complex structures with a constant melodic content like the title track, “Wish” or the already mentioned “Daisy Cutter” get my vote for being the best worked-out pieces here. CREATURE’s music isn’t designed to wrestle against the nowadays popular club sound virus, it rather needs to get heard under a pair of headphones for example. It’s an entertaining, filmic, although not sci-fi infiltrated kind of music, which also works well as a sedating background sound."
Marc Tater for Chain D.L.K Magazine
The 2nd review was for Happy Welly's Irritable Vowel Syndrome with 3.5 out of 5:
"Well, I’ve included this release under the genre “Experimental”, because I really don’t know where the musically combination between Electronica sound design and Slapstick up to Nonsense would fit in. Be sure, this release is the strangest thing you’ve ever heard! HAPPY WELLY is leaded by the UK-based musician Mat Howlett who likes to present his humorous kind of Electronica music. This output manages hard to sound like never-ever heard before - be it an instrument, a melody or be it a strange vocal a-cappella performance (...which Mat often likes to use as an instrument...), it all got mixed to a climax only designed to poke fun on musically structures, genres or behavior. If it sounds awful and trashy enough - it may fits into the musically world of HAPPY WELLY. “Song” titles like “Back Pack Sock Rat”, “Snortacus” or “Pablo Dubios And His Smiling Tits” will prove you nicely that life has more to offer than bitter and gray seriousness – while I’ve at least found with the track “Gripping Stripes” a constant political-associated message. My favorite track for sure, maybe besides the pretty decadent tune “Paint Your Wogan”, on which Mat acts like a single entertainer and the “music” sounds like played with “my first Bontempi” keyboard. It’s a fun release at all – but somehow unique in its kind."
Marc Tater for Chain D.L.K Magazine
02-05-2007 : Mechanical Reviewed in Side Line Magazine
Mechanical by Creature has been given a positive review in the electro goth magazine Side Line from Belgium.
"This is a new band signed on a new label, both from England. The style of Creature can be easily defined as a mix of low trip hop influences and ambient soundscapes. It’s all a bit in the style of soundtrack music, which comes over you like a warm summer breeze. The serene atmosphere is a real pleasure and especially when becoming more refined like on the great “Hotel”-track. “Mechanical” is easy, entertaining music released in a style that already has many similar productions. "
28-04-2007 : Electrodes Gone To Distributor
ZiBiR's first ep 'Electrodes' has finally gone off to the distributor. Expect to see it on all the major online stores like iTunes, HMV, Napster etc over the next month. The CD is also available from our online shop at this link.
If you can't wait and want to hear the ep before it hits the online stores, the entire ep is available to stream on Last.fm.
13-04-2007 : Mechanical Reviewed By Chain D.L.K Magazine
Mechanical has been reviewed by the US publication Chain D.L.K and given a very respectable 3.5 out of 5. Chain D.L.K is a magazine specializing in electronic music from ambient and abstract through to industrial and EBM.
You can read the full review here:
22-03-2007 : Mechanical Available from CDBaby and Amazon.co.uk
You can now buy Mechanical on CD from CDBaby in the USA. If you buy more than 1 copy you get a 30% discount, so why not buy lots of copies and sell them to your mates for a profit :-)
Mechanical will also be available from Amazon.co.uk over the next few days. We are just waiting for them to process our inventory. We also have copies of the album available from amazon market place as of now. You can buy the album from marketplace for £7.99.
The album should be available from Amazon.com in the USA soon.
20-03-2007 : Listen to Jitter by ZiBiR
Curious to hear what ZiBiR is all about? Well, wait no longer. On the Haunted House Records Radio player to the right of this page you can hear one of the new tracks from the forthcoming Electrodes EP, Jitter.
We will have more information for you about Electrodes soon.....
03-03-2007 : ZibiR Added To Label
We are pleased to announce the latest act on Haunted House Records, ZiBiR. ZiBiR will be releasing their first EP, Electrodes, in April / May this year. More information will be available soon, including some demo's you can listen too.
22-02-2007 : Listen To Our Releases On Last.FM
We now have all our releases available to listen to for free on last.fm. This is a great way to get to know our music. Then if you like what you hear you can purchase the albums on CD, or from iTunes, Napster, Rhapsody etc.
20-02-2007 : Available on CD
All of our released are now available to buy on CD as well as the online download retailers. The latest releases available on CD are Daisy Cutter, Nightmares and Dreamscapes, and Twilight by Creature.
12-02-2007 : Available on CD
We are pleased to announce that Creatures - Mechanical album and Happy Wellys - Irritable Vowel Syndrome are available to buy on CD. So if you like to have a solid piece of plastic in your hand instead of a digital download, click the above links..
Each album costs $14.10 for the USA, £8.32 for the UK, and 12.48 euros. All prices include handling and shipping.