Amiga Me by Claire Welles

In late December 2023, my partner found an old Commodore Amiga 500 in a local junk shop for £50. We bought it immediately and fixed it up with a Raspberry Pi/PiStrom 32 (which gave it unlimited space and memory). By January it was functional and I began making music on it for the very first time, using OctaMED (version 5). Within a few weeks I'd done loads of music on it and an album was beginning to take shape. I did all the music on the Amiga and then ran off each of the individual track stems (all 8 of them) into Ableton, so I could mix the tracks to my liking and do the vocals. I didn't do much mixing on the music itself as I wanted to retain the original 8-bit sounds, I just polished them up a little. It was a whole new way of writing and working and was loads of fun…so having started the album in February it was completed by November (quite a long time for me to work on an album!).
It was a liberating experience working on this and I won't rule out another Amiga album in the future. The Amiga is such a creative and interesting computer, with a ton of personality. I'm glad to have finally got one in my life.

Enjoy- CW x

DIY Pop Outsider. Fiercely singular in her approach to music yet with a musical nous you simply can’t teach.

Claire has actively been writing and recording music for three decades, releasing many albums in the process and reinventing her sound many times over.

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