Hux Electronics : History 3

I worked for CAAMA in Alice Springs from 1985 until 1995, I was mostly employed as the Technical Officer, my main tasks were looking after all technical requirements for CAAMA Radio (the radio station), CAAMA Music (the recording studio) and some works for CAAMA Productions (the video production unit). As I had a background as a bass player and live sound engineer it was a logical progression to get into recording bands for CAAMA Music as well as my other tasks. My first recording project was the Hermansburg Ladies Choir which was captured on-site at Hermansburg and then later mixed down to logging tape (it was the only spare tape we had lying about at the time), it sold well. I recorded and mixed a wide range of projects over time. I also mixed audio "live to air" for Imparja Television for telethons and coordinated live sound and recording for events such as The Hand Back of Uluru, the first Australian Blues Festival, the visit to Alice Springs by the Pope and various other stuff along the way.

Ross Muir, Stan Satour and Mark Manolas came on board with CAAMA Music and took over most of the recording duties, I used to get called in to offer a different perspective or to fill the void when others were busy.

I am one of those strange people who has rarely been happy with anything that I have recorded or mixed and have a lot of trouble listening to stuff that I have worked on as I know where all the bodies are buried (so to speak). I don't have many actual production copies of anything as I always just made my copies directly from the masters before they went off for duplication, so I don't have many album covers. That said and done, there are a couple of things that I am very proud of, one is the mix of the Sing Loud Play Strong concert that we recorded on-site in Darwin in 1988 and the other is the UPK album that we recorded on-site at the old (abandoned) Inland Motel right near the base of Ayers Rock. Following are the few album covers that I do have :

Most of this album was recorded by Ross Muir, Mark Manolas and Stan Satour, I recorded a track or two, released in 1990. Most of the CAAMA releases up until this time went to cassette and so this is probably one of the first CD's that we churned out.

 

This album was recorded by Ross Muir and mixed by Warren Huck, 1989

 

This album was recorded over several years and finally released in 1995. I recorded some tracks and played bass on some tracks. The Brothers In Booze (aka the Booze Brothers) hosted the Monday night jam session at the Todd Tavern in Alice Springs for more than ten years, a well structured and very popular event. This was usually a seven piece band, six to seven vocalists, bass, drums, two guitarists, keyboards (inc real baby grand piano) and two horn players (who also played flutes and other stuff). The keyboard player, Dave McCall, wrote lots of great arrangements for the horns and the band as a whole. I mixed this band for a couple of years and then eventually joined as the bass player for a couple of years.

 

Warren as Record Producer 1991 : I suggested that local band Amunda needed a producer for their next album. I just thought that they needed someone other than the recording engineer to help get more out of the band. They took up the challenge and elected me to do the job (not really what I had in mind but I decided to give it a go). The following photos were taken during this recording. This is the original CAAMA Music studio (at Little Sisters camp) and was based around a Fostex B16 1/2" 16 track tape machine.

Warren in contemplation.

 

Gerry (Gerbs) Laughton

 

Stan Satour

 

Nick Guggisberg

 

Nick Guggisberg

 

Paul Ah Chee. This is not some weird recording technique its just Paul innocently playing his guitar. The drum kit had been taken out and the mics were just left there, it looked interesting and so I took a photo of it.

 

Gerry, Nick and Stan doing backing vocals

 

Rachael Perkins

 

Mark Manolas

 

Warren looking very worn down and tired, very long days as I recall. Its weird, when we got to this stage I was thinking that we were just getting into the swing of things and wanted to start the entire recording process again, we didn't luckily.

 

Nick and Mark, with Paul recording a vocal track.

 

The whole crew.

 

The finished album, Amunda, "Civilised World".