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The Story Behind Ali Hugo's New EP [Time Machine]

Nov 7, 2017
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The Story Behind Ali Hugo\'s New EP [Time Machine]

In the late 90’s Ali Hugo was attending summer school at Bathurst High, Eglington West; in Ontario Canada. By the end of that summer, Ali had written a bunch of songs that were laying around everywhere in his room at home. Ali understood that success required him to do more than just writing the songs and singing them acapella. Ali wanted to bring his songs to life, so he started researching on a couple of studios in Toronto, but they were all out of his reach. A kid who worked part-time at Ryerson University’s Pizza Pizza outlet, for $7 an hour, could in no way afford to pay those kinds of studio time rates. By a stroke of luck, Ali ended up on the doorsteps of Mitchell Lepidus & David Ashley, owners of “Twice Shy” productions studio. The team of Ali Hugo, David Ashley, and Mitchell Lepidus worked well together because, Hugo had complete autonomy to write, arrange and produce the materials for a professional demo.  David was left with doing the sequencing & programming of the songs, while Mitch played guitars and sang backing vocals. Satisfied with the 10 songs professional Demo and having saved up enough money,  Hugo took this valuable possession  recorded on a DAT  to “Studio 9”; a high profile studio in downtown Toronto , which boasts hosting recording sessions of renowned artists such as “Marc Cohn”, “Alannah Myles” & “The Cranberries”. At “Studio 9”, Hugo digitally mixed the Demo. When the mixing at “studio 9” was completed, Hugo took the Demo to “Punch Media”  where he teamed up with “Martin Lees” for additional mixing & mastering.

After the Demo polishing process was completed, Ali tried hard to get a record deal; but with not much success; Hugo shelved the DATS. Many years later and after a long time-out, Hugo pursued his music career again. This time; as a multi-instrumentalist musician in the easy listening genre. After the success of Hugo’s “New Generation Farahan’ album, Hugo decided to re-master the demo from “back in the day” and release tracks of his earlier recordings. But how do you remaster songs recorded on a DAT? When it came to studios which were set up after Y2K, the same question was always asked of Hugo “what the heck is a DAT?!”

Hugo recognized the importance of digitizing the songs, so it was back to North York Ontario Canada where the engineers at “Digital Treasures”, helped with the “Digitization Process”. Once the songs were digitized, Hugo inputted his developed skills as a sound engineer, to re-master and enhance the sound quality of the songs, using the sophisticated and innovative technology provided by PreSonus. After completing the whole process of time traveling the songs from the 90’s into 2017, Hugo encountered resistance to releasing the songs by HugoProductions Record Label. However, after a long series of debates & negotiations, the team at  HugoProductions Record Label relented to releasing four tracks with the agreement that releasing the tracks would be Hugo’s own endeavor.

Track List:-

1-So Much Love

2-This Love is True

3-You’ll Find Love

4-Sunshine