Simon Order and Matt Mclean were among the University’s staff involved in the album. Source: Aiman Aminudin
Murdoch University music producers have made the US album charts
The ambient electronica album, The Night Train Vacancies, was a collaborative project by students and university staff of the sound department and hit number 14 in the North American College and Community Radio Electronic charts this week.
Producer and senior lecturer, Simon Order, never expected to see the album he helped make gain attention overseas.
“I think that was an added bonus,” says Dr Simon.
“We didn’t expect it to do as well as it did,” he says.
Other contributors to the album include two Murdoch sound students, Ben Da Cruz and Andrew Davis.
Matt Mclean, who is a lecturer in sound.
Scott Quigg, the media loans officer in the Media Arts Center and Benjamin Morton, the audio operations manager in the Media Arts Center.
“The success of the album is very important to me as it is my first official release in the music industry,” says Ben Da Cruz.
“This release builds a solid foundation for future releases and events in my personal music career,” he says.
The album was a double release, which included the original album from 2015. The Night Train Vacancies is a remix album, using tracks from Simon’s 2015 release.
“I thought it would be a fantastic idea to open this opportunity up to some students, who I thought would do a really good job,” says Simon.
The original plan for the album was to build a community among the producers, so they could offer each other help.
“One of the challenges for electronic producers, or musicians in general is to make a living out of selling and distributing music, it’s really difficult to do it as an individual,” says Simon.
Having their collaborative album based on this concept of community reaching the US was good news for those involved.
“It is a welcome surprise,” says Ben Da Cruz.
The album is available now on Spotify, Google Play, iTunes and Amazon.
You can find their website here.
You can listen and buy the album here:
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