Tiger Mendoza is proud to present our latest album NOT A GAME which will be coming out on Friday 24th October 2025. Coming in a tight 7 tracks, it’s our attempt to process what’s happening around us all touching on the unavoidable impact of AI, the increase in (mis)information, confusing fact with opinion and, obviously, a need to make beats.
This is the first time that longtime TM member / ace guitarist Dan Clear has featured on all of the tracks of a TM release. Also we’re really happy to have our good friends Octavia Freud and Helen Pearson return to help out alongside Mark Restructure who you may remember from the TM remix of Restructure’s Antisocial Media which featured on TMSk8. The album also sees the return of original Tiger Mendoza singer Helena Markou for the first new track we’ve made together in over 10 years.
Here’s the tracklist:
The Puzzle Is The Point (feat. Digging The Greats)
Conscious Of Time
The Message Too (feat. Mark Restructure)
Electric Blue (feat. Helena Markou)
You’re Forgiven (feat. Octavia Freud)
Stalagmite (feat. Helen Pearson)
Anybody Can Make A Statement
The deluxe Bandcamp edition also includes the following bonus tracks:
The response to our single Live Well for Less with our friends Killer Kowalski has been amazing! I may have got the dates wrong on the release and put it out 2 months early but honestly I think it worked out for the best. If you haven’t heard it yet here’s some links to stream or download it:
Don’t forget if you want to create your own remix, you can download the stems from here
We had an amazing night at the single’s official launch night at The Library in Oxford with our friends from All Will Be Well. LWFL got it’s live debut and Tom from KK joined us on lead vocals. A big shout out to Old Man May and Manners for joining us as well. Here’s some photos from the night by the amazing Ian Hanham.
Taken by Ian HanhamTaken by Ian HanhamTaken by Ian HanhamTaken by Ian HanhamTaken by Ian HanhamTaken by Ian HanhamTaken by Ian HanhamTaken by Ian Hanham
In case you’re wondering, the cover art was made using a kind of janky mod I made of Streets of Rage Remake. I’m wondering whether or not I should make the mod available as a download. If you’re interested let me know.
When I started on this project in December 2021, I had absolutely zero expectations about what it would raise or achieve. If you want the long version of how the whole thing came about, you can read about it on the Orion / Sandman Bandcamp page and listen back to the interview I did with the folks at BBC Introducing in Oxfordshire but the short version is that it was a fairly stupid thing I put together with some amazing people in remembrance of a friend.
Orion / Sandman came out on Friday 2nd December and to date has raised £220 for Katharine House Hospice in Banbury via donations on the bandcamp page and I know some people have donated directly to the hospice which is totally fair enough (and you can also do here). I know there’s a lot going in the world right now but I just want to say how much I appreciate all of the support it has received so far from everyone that has donated, downloaded, commented, retweeted, and featured the project in any way. I also want to say a particular thank you to Gabby and the rest of Dan’s family for all of their support as well.
This project would not have been what it is without the support of all of the musicians that helped out. Please do yourself a favour and check them out via the links below:
As of today, Orion / Sandman is 100% free to download – no email or donation required, just go here to download. I do still ask though that if you can, please continue to donate directly to Katharine House Hospice.
I posted my little tribute to Vangelis on the blog the other day and someone asked if I could share the Arminator 2 patches I used for the synths. I thought I could do slightly better than that so here’s some info on how I put the track together and the fx and vsts I used.
Recording and Mixing
The goal was to record and mix the whole track very quickly between other things so the track was recorded in about an hour and then mixed in a couple of hours the same night. Normally I’d spend much longer on both but to quote Kenny Beats “Don’t Over Think Shit“.
Everything was recorded and mixed in Ableton Live 11. The drums, pads and bass were programmed using my Arturia MiniLab Mk II and midi for the leads was recorded using a Fishman Tripleplay Connect midi pick up fitted to my Epiphone SG. I then used my Ableton Push to trigger the bass, drum and pad clips live while I recorded the lead synths over the top, pretty much in 1 take.
If you just want to know what my Arminator 2 patches were, here you go (8k zip file)
Although most of Vangelis’ tracks have rhythmic elements they don’t really have drums but in the interest of artistic license and creativity I thought I would add some to my track. I used Ableton’s 808 Core soundpack for the actual drum samples which is my default for most projects and seemed to fit the vibe of the track.
808 Drum Pattern
Processing on the drums was done on in 2 stages. Here’s the EQ and compressor settings I used. Again, nothing crazy.
Drum FX 1
To add a bit more grit and slap back to the drums I used Waves Kramer Master Tape on the main drum bus. Here’s the settings I used.
Kramer Bus settings
Bass
I’ve never really used Armintor 2 for bass before but after doing this little track, I think I will again. It has a great synthy grit to it. I used one of the arpeggiated presets that came with the plugin as the basis but I didn’t like the pattern the plugin’s built in arpeggiator created and the built in echo didn’t work for me either so I got rid them and used an external arpeggiator Max 4 Live midi plugin called Probability Arp from a Cm chord.
Arminator 2 – Arpeggiated Bass
And here are the midi fx settings
Midi FX
As you can see I used Ableton’s utility plugin to reduce the width and reduce the stereo spread of the synth and then fed the lot in to my bass bass which is just a bit more EQ and a bit of side chain compression to duck the bass when the kick hits
Bass Bus Fx
Pads
In a way the Pads were the most straightforward bit. They were created using more Arminator 2 goodness with a bit of EQ. I think I tweaked the attack a bit so that they didn’t fade in quite as slowly but apart from that I played in a Cm chord on my midi controller then duplicated it and moved the bass note to a B for a bit of variation.
Arminator 2 PadsArminator 2 pads fx
As you can see I used Ableton’s built in EQ in L/R mode with slightly different profiles on the left and right to add a bit of stereo separation and width. The channel EQ just had a slight bump in the mids to give them a small boost.
Lead
The lead line was Arminator 2 in mono synth mode with midi coming from my guitar via the midi pickup.
Arminator 2 – lead
Again a bit of EQ add but nothing to shout about really. I sometimes add a bit of saturation to lead lines to help them cut through a mix but as this wasn’t really a dense mix I didn’t need to here.
Noise / FX
In a nod to the pulsing crashing wave noise in Chariots of Fire I add my own pulsing white noise bed under the track. I have no idea how Vangelis did it when he recorded Chariots of Fire but I used Ableton’s Analog Synth with the noise on and the oscillators off to generate the noise. I then used auto EQ and auto pan to create the pulsing effect (which I believe was created by someone manually moving the volume fader up and down in the original). I then added some stock Ableton reverb at the end for a bit more space and bumped up the width a bit in the utilty.
As you can see the mix was set to 100% and I adjusted the sends on the bus channel until I got the vibe I wanted.
On the master channel I added another tape based effect called Tape Cassette 2 from Caelum Audio which adds nice bit of grit and warble to the whole mix in a tape-y way and ups the retro-ness.
Normally I would stop there, check the levels on the master and try to make sure the track peaks at less than 3db then bounce the whole lot down to master separately but in the spirit of seeing what I could do quickly, I just added a copy of Waves’ Infected Mushroom Pusher to the end of the master channel and used the Gentle Giant preset to do a quick and dirty master.
Infected Mushroom Pusher on Master
Wrap up
That’s it. I hope you found it useful. I have never claimed to be an expert in any of this stuff but I hope it inspires some of you do see what you can do. If there are any questions or comments, leave a comment below or feel free to message me on twitter or instagram.
I know, I really should have done this earlier but as well as my own mixtape out today I wanted to make a quick list of other releases available on Bandcamp today on the penultimate Bandcamp Friday of 2020.
Ok here it is. I made a lockdown album. I didn’t mean to but hey, it was something do between sitting at home and binging Cobra Kai on Netflix. Oh and playing THPS 1+2. Obviously.
The idea of doing a Mixtape based around ‘boarding games like THPS, Skate and SSX has been something I’ve actually been thinking of doing for a while – way before the new game was even announced. It’s just good timing I guess.
The album will be available from Bandcamp on Friday 6th November (which also happens to be the next Bandcamp Day) and then all of the usual streaming services a couple of weeks later. “But Ian / Tiger / Whatever, why would I download it from Bandcamp when I can stream it on Spotify alongside my favourite Pixies / S Club 7 album?” I hear you ask. Well…
The Bandcamp deluxe release will include 2 tracks (“TMSk8” and “Futurist Car Chase”) which will get as soon as you pre-order the album
The Bandcamp version comes with instrumentals for all the vocal tracks.
The price for the whole thing will be £5 which probably less than it will be on other download sites.
It comes with expanded sleeve notes and artwork inspired by the release created by Mila Todd.
I genuinely believe that Bandcamp are one of the good guys in terms of music distribution and the support they’ve offered to bands and music makers over the past few months has been amazing.
A MASSIVE thank you to all of the people that have featured or contributed to this album in some way. Here’s the tracklisting:
All platforms: Bomberg Redux (feat. Red Wilkins) Easy Tiger (feat. Sinister Sound Gallery & Mike Ginger) Oppressor (You Don’t Know) (feat. Mila Todd) Exhibition (feat. Stuart Macbeth) KPS (feat. Half Decent) Masks (feat. Daniel Clear) Words (feat. Kate Herridge) FOMO Ja El Beat Fear of Falling (feat. Emma Coombs) Antisocial Media (TM vs Restructure) Battery Fighting Firm (feat. Phi Project) Skate Free (feat. Octavia Freud) Beautiful People
Bandcamp only: TMSk8 (Bonus Track) Futurist Car Chase (Bonus Track) Easy Tiger (Instrumental) Exhibition (Alt Mix) Oppressor (You Don’t Know) (Instrumental) KPS (Instrumental) Words (Instrumental) FOMO (Instrumental) Fear of Falling (Instrumental) Antisocial Media (Instrumental) Beautiful People (Instrumental)
