Here are several unreleased songs that I co-wrote and demoed with the brilliant Cathy Dennis back in 1996 for the album that would become 'Am I The Kind Of Girl?'.  They are edited down drastically and are just intended to give you a glimpse into these sessions.

Bare in mind, these are very rough demos because as a top line writer and lyricist, Cathy comes up with the goods really quickly and we wanted to just get the songs down without getting bogged down in serious production work. Her vocals are mostly first takes that I recorded as she came up with the melodies and lyrics. Some don't have proper lyrics. But I think they all had great charm and potential and deserved to be finished off.

Track listing:

01. Cars And Boats
02. Somebody
03. Nothing I Can Do
04. Stop
05. Half Of Me Is Reality
06. These Arms
07. Keep You For Myself
08. Conscious Of Myself
09. I'm A Sailor
10. Tempted To Stray
11. Yesterday's News

Cathy Dennis - Am I The Kind Of Girl? Unused Tracks Sampler

Mory Kante - Bankiero (Mark Saunders Mix)

Mixed this back in the mid 90s. They were signed to Polydor who completely dropped the ball with this incredibly talented girl. Fantastic voice....a touch of the Bjork and a bit of Harriet from Sundays I think.

Green As Sea - Raissa (Mixed by Mark Saunders)

This is an unreleased version (as far as I know) of this great Shiny's song featuring Carah Faye on vocals instead of her replacement singer who came in for the second album. It's not a final mix because the song was bumped off the We Are Pilots album but nevertheless I think it's pretty exciting.

Shiny Toy Guns - Turn To Real Life (Mark Saunders production/mix)

One the most fun times I've had writing and performing a piece for the ad world!

Mark Saunders - Holy Cow

David Byrne...what can I say...I loved working with this guy....incredibly talented, insanely arty, immensely successful and yet the most humble of men. An absolute pleasure to work with. David had me mixing various live recordings from shows as he toured around in 2003/2004. The shows kept getting better as the tour progressed. Especially when David got to Austin and hired a string section called Tosca Strings. Up to that point in the tour David had been hiring string sections local to what ever city he was playing in. This was a bit dicey because the only rehearsal the strings had with the band was at the soundcheck. This led to some quite colossal screw ups....on one gig I remember the strings appearing in songs in all the wrong places and when I just listened to the strings tracks I could hear one player saying 'where are we?' and another replying 'I don't know!'

Tosca Strings were on a totally different level to the other sections David had hired. Not only did he hire them for the rest of the tour but they tightened up and embellished the string arrangements a lot.

This song was recorded at a Chapel in London and was the last day of the tour so the band and string section were amazingly tight. I loved mixing this gig and Naive Melody is probably my favourite song and is a great showcase for Tosca Strings.

David Byrne - Naive Melody [Live At Union Chapel] (Mark Saunders Mix)

One of my favourite co-writing sessions. Emilie is an Australian living in Paris. When I first heard her music, after someone suggested I write with her, I wasn't sure about it because it was very singer/songwriter, girl with an acoustic guitar vibe was wasn't really what I wanted to get in to. But their was something about Emilie's voice that made me want to do it. Not Coming Back was not anything like either one of us had done before and it happened really fast and fluidly. I think her voice is fantastic on this and she wrote great lyrics too. This was two days from start to finish.

Not Coming Back feat. Emilie Gassin (Mark Saunders co-write/production/mix)

Not long after graduating from assistant engineer ('tea boy' in the UK!) to engineer, Duran Duran booked a weekend in West Side Studios, London where I was working. They wanted to audition the totally brilliant drummer Steve Ferrone for the gig as Duran's drummer after the original guy left. Because it wasn't a 'real' recording session they made do with the lowly house engineer - me! I was perfectly happy with that...who gets to work with one of the biggest bands in the world at the time when they've just started engineering? Simon Le Bon wasn't around because he was taking part in a yacht race in a new boat he'd just bought - which sunk a few days after the session. John Taylor asked if we could get the same drum sound as they had on the Power Station album he'd just been part of as a side project to Duran. That was an exciting challenge to a pretty novice engineer but Steve Ferrone was the ultimate incredibly polite and patient pro musician and the Duran guys were really cool too so it was a great weekend for me. I have to admit though that the highlight was probably when John Talyor's super model wife Renee Simonsen walked through the control room door! Which reminds me that I had a friend who worked for Duran's management company in their heyday - part of his job was to contact models and book dates for the band members who'd look through fashion magazines in the office and earmark pages of those they wanted to date.

Duran Duran - Notorious Album Demo Track (engineered by Mark Saunders)

This was a piece of music that I originally wrote for a Motorola spot but wasn't used in the end. A few years later an editor we knew was cutting a spot for Lowes and asked us to send him unused tracks so he could pick something to cut to because the spot he was cutting didn't have a definitive piece of music. When he called up and said he loved this piece and was using it, I couldn't imagine that it would get very far because I'd been told that the bosses of Lowes still drove their pickup trucks to work and as this was happening not so long after 9/11, I thought they'd not really be the kind of folks who'd go for anything slightly ethnic sounding...but as luck would have it they did! In fact they used this piece of music on every tv and radio ad in the US for a few years...and let me tell you....that was a wonderful thing. Gene Hackman always did the voice over for Lowes. I like to think that me and Gene were a good team :)

Lowes had so many people writing to them telling them how much they loved the music that they asked us to make an ep of Lowes songs and this extended version of the ad piece posted here was on it.  They were supposed to sell it in the stores but I don't think they ever got around to that.

Joe Walsh (The Eagles) even had his assistant call me and ask if Joe could get a copy of the ad music because he was such a big fan of it. That's good enough for me.

Mark Saunders - Lowes Anthem (extended Mix)

Cool New Zealand duo Arles asked me to remix this song back in 2019. Big Tricky fans! This wasn't the final version of the mix but I like this one.

ARLS 'Pace' Mark Saunders remix

This was early on in my career and I felt very luck to get a chance at remixing this song which was produced by my bosses at the time, Clive Langer and Alan Winstanley at West Side Studios where I got my first start in studios.

Rome Wasn´T Built In A Day

The Jeremy Days 'Rome Wasn´t Built In A Day' Mark Saunders 12" Remix

I mixed a few songs for Lisa, the first being Coldcut's fabulous "People Hold On" which feature Lisa and it was here 1st hit. Even before it was released I was in her manager's office and she walked in. The manager said 'Hey Lisa, meet Mark, he's just mixed your first hit.You should give him a kiss!'. Without missing a beat she walked straight up to me and kissed me on the lips! No complaints from me.

Lisa Stansfield 'The Love In Me' Mark Saunders 12in remix

Imagine my excitement at being asked to remix a Madonna song.  'Vogue' was out at the time and I was hoping that I'd be remixing that song. I was a wee bit disappointed when I found out it was this song from her 'Breathless' album that I'd be working on, but I couldn't really turn down Madonna. I don't think Madonna actually sanctioned this remix at all - I think it was her A&R guy's idea.

I'm Following You (Remix)

Madonna 'I'm Following You' Mark Saunders Remix

Here's my chilled out version of a total 80's classic.

Modern English 'Melt With You' Mark Saunders Remix

MARRS  'Pump Up The Volume' Mark Saunders Remix

Fear Of Pop was a side project of Ben Folds Five. I love Willam's dialogue on this!

Fear Of Pop featuring William Shatner 'In Love' Mark Saunders Remix

Automatic 'It's Like Sound' Mark Saunders Remix

Texas 'Mother's Heaven'Mark Saunders 12" Remix

Lisa Hall 'Connection 17' Mark Saunders Remix

A little something I came up with for a TV ad demo. Can't remember what it was for. But it was fun to play drums on!

Heavy On The Sauce

TV series theme tune maybe. Detective, cops show. drama?

Cop Show

Mood and Mystery

Recorded in the cowshed on 1/4 8 track Tascam tape machine. Russell Raisey singing. Wish I could remember the backing vocalist's names. Mick Perry's excellent sax playing as always. Russell and I played all the instruments. Roland TR808 drums. Keyboard parts Juno 6 (why did I sell it!). Not at all Human League influenced :)

1982 No We Don't - Russell Raisey & Mark Saunders

Band: Boy Crisis. From Brooklyn. Most dysfunctional band I've ever met. They were always destined to self combust but managed to do it before releasing the record. I love this track though! Great guitar riff.

Boy Crisis_'Fountain Of Youth'

A track I produced for Canadian supermodel Tasha Tilberg in 2007. Love this girls voice - very unexpected. This is a one take vocal too which is bloody impressive - doesn't happen often! No autotune either.  We never got to finish this which I was sad about - she decided on a change of direction.

Tasha Tilberg_Enough

A collaboration between Matt and myself in 2006. Le Disko was a great track to work on and remix. This was a fun project that turned out rather well I'd say.

Le Disko (Mark Saunders/Matt Haick remix)_Shiny Toy Guns

Don't Cry Out (Mark Saunders remix) Shiny Toy Guns

It was very exciting to get to work on this track back in 1992. I did a single remix with Daniel Miller, the awesome boss of Mute Records. Afterwards I couldn't resist laying down some sections to make my own private extended 12" remix. It came as a shock to me that the original was only 2'20" when I first played the tape - it has everything that you need from a song in that short time. That's the genius of Vince Clarke.


Situation (Mark Saunders remix)_Yazoo

This started off as a 5.1 remix and was converted to stereo. It sounds awesome in 5.1. Michael Floyd came up with the initial idea for the remix and then we worked together on it. I got hold of the files for the original version of the song from Robert Smith because we briefly discussed doing a 5.1 remix version of the albums Disintegration and Wish. However the 5.1 format never really took off for music in a big way which is a great shame because it's awesome to mix in surround and the system in my studio sounds amazing. I have a SACD (Super Audio CD) 5.1 version of Dark Side Of The Moon which is glorious to listen to.


Pictures Of You (Mark Saunders/Michael Floyd remix)_The Cure

Careful listening to this whilst driving.....this might increase your risk of a speeding ticket!

Driving Indie - Mark Saunders

Mark Saunders Productions

Deep Machines - Everybody Wants To Rule The World (Produced and mixed by Mark Saunders)

Marrs - Pump Up The Volume (Mark Saunders remix)

Nina

Nina - Mark Saunders

Meantime

Worm - Raissa (Mixed By Mark Saunders)

Mark's professional music career started as a drummer playing with Carlene Carter, Johnny Cash's stepdaughter, in 1982. The first time he went into a recording studio with her to record some demos, he was excited by the whole recording process and after the stint with Carlene finished in 1984, he landed a job as an assistant at West Side Studios, London working with renowned production pair Clive Langer and Alan Winstanley who had great success producing Madness, Dexy's Midnight Runners, Lloyd Cole & the Commotions, Elvis Costello and later Bush.

In 1985, Mark engineered the hit record ‘Dancing In The Street’ by David Bowie & Mick Jagger. A year later, he became a freelance engineer and was discovered by Rhythm King, a label at the forefront of the British dance music. Working on a couple of Bomb The Bass mixes led to co-producing Neneh Cherry’s no.2 US billboard smash ‘Buffalo Stance’ & the subsequent seminal multi platinum album ‘Raw Like Sushi’. Following this he worked on a flood of pop/dance work for acts including Erasure, Depeche Mode, Lisa Stansfield & Yazz as well we Ian McCulloch, The Mission (UK), The Farm, The Heart Throbs, Texas & The Sugarcubes.
Robert Smith from The Cure, employed Mark's radio friendly skills to mix all singles from the album ‘Disintegration’. One of these ‘Lovesong’ is The Cure's highest charting single peaking #2 in the Billboard Top 100. Mark went on to work on further Cure albums - UK no1 ‘Wish’, ‘Mixed Up’ & 'Wild Mood Swings'.

Tricky, a big fan of Marks work for the Cure, asked him to program, co-produce and mix his critically acclaimed debut album ‘Maxinquaye’ one of the definitive albums of the 90’s. This in turn led to Tricky fans John Lydon, David Byrne, Cathy Dennis and Cyndi Lauper hiring Mark to work on their albums.

In 1996 Mark moved his studio to Hell's Kitchen NYC and side stepped into writing and producing music for big brand campaigns for companies such as Nike, Lowes, Reebok & Motorola although he continued to work on select artist projects for Erasure, Femi Kuti and Marilyn Manson (‘From Hell’ film sound track). While diversifying into TV/Film work Mark became an early adopter of the surround sound format and has been brought on board to consult, record and mix surround projects for PBS, EMI, David Byrne, film director Luc Besson as well as an exclusive project for Apple as part of a their major product release of Logic 8.

Having worked on many commercially & critically acclaimed records as an engineer, producer & mixer Mark also steadily developed his writing skills. Co-writes have included with Cathy Dennis, PNAU, Kaz James (Bodyrockers) & Amalie Bruun.

Mark Saunders

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