ARCADE PERFECT
REBEL ALLIANCE
Released November 2007

Recorded in Sandhill Studios August 2007. Sonic Boom Six return with their second full-length album; their most consistent work to date and the first release on their Rebel Alliance label. Meticulously produced by Peter Miles and the band, 'Arcade Perfect' tightens up the rough edges of 'Ruff-Guide' and adds deep, dark dub and jungle into the mix alongside huge chorus's and chunky rock guitar.

We recorded this album in Liverpool, our first full-length with Pete Miles. The session was managed a lot more efficiently this time around and, apart from having to go back to Manchester every evening, things went very smoothly. The most memorable part of recording was playing Rebellion festival on the weekend off and kidnapping Jonny One-Lung, Itch and Babar Luck in the van to take them back and record 'Ya Basta!' The surprise of the session was Jonny One-Lung's conquering rap stylings no one had predicted, least of all him.

RUFF AND READY:
LIVE IN MANCHESTER DVD
Self-Released May 2007

Recorded by Sitcom Soldiers on the last date of the Ruff and Ready tour in Manchester. Wicked hometown gig with a jolly stage invasion and all that good stuff. Itch turns up on All-In and Wind Ya Batty, Laila is suitably foul-mouthed and the crowd is nice and bonkers. We were going to do a DVD split with Ad7 but what with Ad7 splitting it never happened. The gig was filmed though, I have it somewhere, maybe I will put a track or two up if I can get permission.
This DVD also has a photo gallery, a cool 'Northern Skies' remix and the All-In video.

ALL-IN (single)
DECK CHEESE RECORDS
Released March 2007

Single of All-In. We re-did it so we could spend a little more time getting it right and making it sound more like hip-hop than it did on the album... This was re-recorded with Peter Miles at his house at the end of 2006 along with a cover of Chumbawamba's 'Marching Round in Circles' which was the first thing we did with Pete and came out really well. It was very much Pete's test run because we already knew after the Babyboom EP that we wanted to do the next album with him. This also has 'Face Forward' which we recorded in our front room in the house Ben and I used to live in. Ah, Good old Casa Boom. Only 1000 of these were made for the Ruff and Ready tour.

RUFF GUIDE TO GENRE-TERRORISM
DECK CHEESE RECORDS
Released July 2006

Our first proper album! After the change in line-up (Ben going to guitar) there was a lot of work to do to get the album ready and we went in with almost too many ideas. It was finally our debut album and we had a lot to prove! The sessions were recorded with Christophe and Tim G in Oxygene studios and there was so much to do that they were unbelievably full-on. But we managed to squeeze in everything we wanted which gives the album an ambitiousness and sense of madness I don't think we'll ever be able to replicate. Even if the final recording quality isn't up to our newer stuff, this record really succeeded in bringing out all the different ideas for the band in one record and is lots of people's favourite release of ours. Some of the stuff that Tim brought to the table with the glitches and electronica and bits between tracks sound great and were an important part of the records appeal. After this came out, we started getting bigger gigs and Deck Cheese were really good and helpful. This also got some really good reviews... which was nice.

BABYBOOM EP
Self-released January 2006 

 We had actually finished recording Ruff-Guide in October 2005, but the in's and out's of mixing it and everything in between became quite convoluted. We were waiting a while for the inevitable up's and down's in sorting a label and really wanted to do something a little bit fun in the meantime. We had started Babyboom for a few different reasons but mostly because we simply liked playing acoustic reggae and found it really easy to write songs this way. Its also great to be able to play acoustic sets on the radio and live and do charity shows like this. Howards Alias had Skylar, so we did Babyboom. And got Matt to sing on it!
We knew Pete Miles from Howards Alias and the stuff he did with other bands. We just wrote four songs, put our stuff in a box and went down to Ben's house in Andover and recorded four songs without much messing about. They came out great, everyone liked it, job was a good'un.
Pete was a fucking dream to work with. Hopefully one day when we're less busy we'll do another.
One thing that does bug me is when people go on about preferring Babyboom or Sonic Boom Six. Newsflash, Babyboom is Sonic Boom Six. Playing acoustically. Nothing more or less to it.

 SOUNDS TO CONSUME: CHAMPION EDITION
MOON SKA EUROPE
Released August 2005

 At the start of 2005, Ben quietly swapped for Dave onto guitar. We'd been touring with bands we liked and had become to get a more accepted in the punk crowds so we were happy but the situation with Moon had stifled a little. We heard Moon was going to be doing more trad-ska stuff so we needed to come to a compromise in terms of the relationship. They had the songs off Turbo and STC and needed to make things work financially for them so we decided to give them more tracks to make the whole thing album-length and worthwhile for the buyer. I think it was a really good move, because the record really works. 
We had heard Tim G's (from a Bolton ska band called Harijan) mash-ups he had done of us, Capdown and King Prawn and loved them. We asked him to re-mix the four tracks of the original demo that were workable and do a remix. He did a fantastic job and the remix was stunning. It made us say, "there's a boy we can work with!" We stuck some extra remixes on there and an acoustic track that we had recorded at home (albeitly jokingly at first) called Babyboom. Its a good CD but due to Moon's eventually move into the Moon Ska World operation production on it has been very limited (1000 copies or so). This also got our first big magazine reviews... the one in Kerrang! couldn't have been better.
This CD will be re-pressed soon. It has two more bonus tracks has also been re-mastered by Peter Miles and sounds stonking. Be patient!

v/a - PUNKTASTIC UN-SCENE
PUNKTASTIC RECORDINGS
Released August 2004

 We'd begun to hit our flow a little bit by this point but here was another one of those things you wish you could go back and re-do. Punktastic.com had been really good to us and we have been longtime friends of the site so really wanted to be part of this record. We did a couple of little skits at the beginning and end of the record cos we didn't have time to record something proper. We were actually on tour at the time so had to do these before and after gigs which meant the recording quality really suffered. I think we were so caught up in how innovative and future-sounding they were going to be and how great the harmonies and ideas were that we forgot that we actually had to have some idea how to mix the tracks to back it up. They stand up as funny little artifacts now but this stands out as something that I hear and think... "if we just had a few more hours to mix this!"
A metal website called our tunes a rectal prolapse or something which I was pretty proud of. The reaction to these skits was really mixed - which seems obvious now - but at the time I didn't for the life of me understand why everybody didn't desire to have a homebrew 2 minute drum and bass/ska workout at the start of their punk compilation. Again, possibly the drugs. :)
One thing I can say, is that the tune on the forthcoming Punktastic 30-second song release came out brilliantly, so we feel redeemed.

SOUNDS TO CONSUME EP
MOON SKA EUROPE
Released May 2004

We went back into Oxygene with our dream team of Ace and Christophe at the start of 2004. The circumstances of this EP weren't ideal for us, we wanted to do an album at this point but the label said we should do another EP because they still were a bit unsure of what we were going for. We had mainly been playing with the other Moon Ska Europe bands but kind of wanted to play with the more underground punk bands like Ad7 and Howards Alias whilst the label wanted us to branch out in other ways - it was a little bit of a conflict of direction - which shows in this release.
We took the vibe of Turbo but went a little overboard with the songs stylistically at times, we felt we had to really prove ourselves... the addition of more sampled stuff and electronica elements really comes out on this CD to be fair. And of course it's got 'Monkey See, Monkey Do' which just came out great and I don't think we've ever played a gig since wihout it. Knob 'ead.
Because of some of the pushing and pulling, the CD arrived late and didn't come out exactly as we had planned it. Which was another very important learning experience, it's all good! Members can see the original artwork here.

TURBO EP
MOON SKA EUROPE
Released Sept 2003

Moon just wanted us to do an EP because they didn't think we were ready for an album (looking back, they were right!). They paid for Ace (ex-Skunk Anansie) to come in and record it which was a big deal for us.
We'd toured with King Prawn by this point and seeing them night after night totally and utterly changed our mindset. We realised we needed to slow down the grooves and refine the wayward ideas on the SB6 EP and wrote these four songs specifically for an EP.
Recording in Christophe Bride's Oxygene studios in Manchester, Ace (and Christophe) understood where we were coming from and refined our ideas in the most perfect way for us at the time. Ace made Neil play harder, he made Dave's guitar tone fat and he made me change my strings(!) while Christophe engineered the mix of punk and groove just right. Despite the obvious King Prawn and Capdown worship, this will always be my fondest release by us... we still play all the first three songs on the EP live. It's the first proper Boom... the mix of styles and referencing every genre imiginable is there and the Drum N Bass secret track is daft as a brush but nice and bold! This was us developing from an ill-defined idea into a band. We got a Radio 1 Lock-Up session days after Mike Davies heard this and he started playing 'Blood for Oil' a lot on the show.

V/A - THIS ARE U.K SKA (Vol 3)
DO THE DOG 
Released June 2003

We had signed to Moon Ska Europe in mid-2003 (when they still did P-Rock!) after they heard the potential in the demo. Kev at Do the Dog had liked 'Northern Skies' off our orignal demo and wanted to put it on the comp. We were made-up cos this also included King Prawn, Howards Alias, Ye Wiles and Shootin Goon and some others who we loved at the time. I love this comp to this day.
This was nice because we used the version off the original demo that I had mixed and recorded myself on my old PC and was a much clearer vision of what we wanted from the song and was used for the blueprint of the 'ultmate version'(!) on Ruff-Guide.

SB6 Demo EP
Self-Released 
December 2002

We had slung the demo around a little bit and managed to get some gigs with Capdown, Jesse James and we were putting on our own gigs in Manchester. Because of his King Prawn and Capdown records, we wanted (and managed!) to get Jerry Melchers to record a demo for us. This was an extreme learning situation. We attempted six complex songs in three days and, amongst many other disasters, managed to erase a day's worth of drum takes. And I found I couldn't actually sing my duet with Laila in that octave. It was far too much, too soon for us. The entire last night (like literally all night no sleep) was spent copying the contents of the hard-drive to CDs. On lots of drugs. This is what we did before external hard-drives...
Also, what with our crazy mix of vocals, we discovered that it's probably a bad idea to not be there for a final mixdown.  Especially when it's being rushed to be ready for a tour we'd somehow bagged with the Toasters. Lots of lessons learnt with this one! 
There are some glimmers of promise. The ideas such as the artwork, mix of styles across the songs and our home recorded 'Northern Dub' as a secret track are all the ingredients of what we would develop into the proper Boom trademarks. And Mike Davies played 'Northern Skies' on the Lock-Up which was amazing! Only 500 made.

DEMO
Self-Released 
April 2002 

Ah, the memories. This was the first three-track recording we did. Basically, Grimace had split up towards the end of 2001 but Neil and I were in Uni doing music. Part of it was recording bands and stuff and I was tired of just doing one style so I did a project where I decided to do three recordings in different styles. I got different musicians to play on some stuff but this line-up worked together well because it was, round-and-about, the final Grimace line-up. 'SB6' was a ragga-punk-ska mash-up thing, 'Northern Skies' was reggae, 'Different People' was spazzy hardcore. It came out alright so we thought maybe we had something there and should do some gigs. I sent a few off to promoters and labels and SB6 was born.

Members can hear this artifact here!