Apologies for the delay in announcing the Covers Comp winners - as I'm sure you can appreciate, we've been up to our eyeballs with the Vienna and Rage in Eden releases. We're now moving back onto our second re-listen of all shortlisted entries though, and are hoping to get the results up on the site in two weeks.

Thanks for your patience, and all your fantastic entries!

Cheers,
Cerise & Rob.

That`s perfectly okay - I can only imagine
how bussy you must have been!!!

And once again I will thank you for the
incredible and outstanding work you have done
- it relly is beyond words!!!
I will be so exciting to listen to the
re-releases and extra material! WOW!!!

aye it's all go eh? You'll be needing another holiday! It is appreciated though, as Jesper and lots of other folk have said ...... I know I'm looking forward to listening to all that live stuff!!! excellent!

As for the covers competition..... the entries were sooooo good this year: they/ we are all winners!

Hi Cerise, any sign of an ETA for the results? The suspense is really getting to me now!

Paul - Yes! We'll be putting the results up this weekend, probably on Sunday night.

Apologies for the delay, everyone - it's all go on the EMI front! We appreciate your patience and you can rest assured that you haven't made our jobs easy this year; the standard of entries, as always, is absolutely breathtaking.

Cheers!
Cerise.

Thanks for the update Cerise, I know you've been manically busy with the remasters as well as wading through all of the many entries. Look fwd to seeing the final outcome at the weekend!

Looking forward to seeing the results tonight

Sorry folks, we didn't quite get it all written up tonight, although the winners have now been chosen (how exciting!). I'll try to get it finished tomorrow night instead.

Cheers!
Cerise.

Holding breath!!!

Neil
(Geigertek)

Oh lord, I seem to have stumbled through the wrong door.

Haway Cerise, get ya supper doon ya neck and put these folks outa their misery.

Results please...

I'm writing, I'm writing!!

Results shortly...

C.

The Covers Competition Results 2008 are here! Congratulations to all who entered, it was an extremely tough call to decide the winners and runners-up. Well done, everyone! You should be very proud of yourselves.

Next year's comp end date is June 27th, 2009 - ten months away. We're going to try to keep it annual from now on, so get those thinking caps on!

Congratulations everyone.

Congratulations everyone!!!
Very well done!!!
If I got the time, I will surely do a track next year too! But I´m 99,9% sure it won`t be in the Best Cover section...it`s too hard to get right!

Some thoughts about doing Man Of Two Worlds:
To me it was an extremely difficult track to do
- mostly because of the bass guitar. To a non bass player like me...errm...it took me months to get it sound just a little bit decent. It really is very hard to play it right and tight and I encountered the "What the fick is going on here..." more than once hehe....
What I always knew but stood face to face with doing the track was, that it is totally impossible to copy a UV-track, because of the playing style...it just is so special!!! A good example on this is Billy`s solos...as we all know!
The best thing is that I´ve learned a lot...and I mean a lot!!! The track is the first track I´ve done in my little home studio and it was the first chance to try it out. A lot of times I realized, that this and that wouldn`t work out as expected. One of the things was mixing in the box...using software eq`s etc. I just doesn`t work that good for me really. Result...I ficked the mix up more than once hehe.... The same thing about softsynths...I used them a lot on the track...but I never got that satisfied with the sound really. In the future I will only use hardware synths the old UV-way....get the sound right with effects and all from the start! That`s the way for me!
Helen did the vocals just incredible wonderful -
under extremely difficult conditions...with the cheapest Philips mic you can buy... a great example of, that gear isn´t the most important thing!!!
It surely is a shame, that the Midge-vocal is missing, because the track looses a lot because of that. To me it also gave some difficulties mixing the track right...or the other way around...pointed out that I really have to practise a lot more mixing....

And last...thanks a lot Helen...you where FAB all the way....

PS! And a BIG BIG thanks a lot to Mike L for giving me a hint of the chord progression...

Congrats & well done to everyone, there were some cracking tracks in there

Well done guys!!!!!
1st runner up in our catagory? NO WAY!!!!!! REALLY??? Bladdy 'ell.........

WOW! Well done Jesper!

Well, well!
Two category wins and three runner-up spots...I'm very pleased of course! Much credit is due to my brother and constant partner-in-crime Johan who helped out tremendously with engineering, mixing etc.

'Reap the Divine Wind' came about for a couple of reasons:
The song's original melody is almost completely in a pentatonic scale (that's the black keys on the piano folks ) often used in traditional Japanese music, making it ideal to sound 'right' on a koto.
The slight change in the title: if I'm correctly informed, the word 'kamikaze' translates literally as 'divine wind', fitting nicely with Ultravox's original theme of fighter pilots etc. So the Japanese talking and aircraft sounds were nicked from the film 'Tora! Tora! Tora!' about the attack on Pearl Harbor. Pretentious? Moi?
'Dedicated to those who gav all...everywhere... including in the Pacific!'

'Guns and Arrows' is not nearly as deliberate, it's just a different arrangement and sound to a favorite song. And it gave me the chance to pick up the old guitar!

Congratulations to all winners, runners-up and participants! Well done!

Thanks a lot Helen!

By the way! I would also like to thank my brother
Morten for the very very cool mastering - it sounds much much better...
And Billy Currie and Gmedia. The solo sound on the impOSCar softsynth was heavily inspired by one of Billy`s leadsounds in his outstandig signature set!

Will Definatily Not Been On This Dumb Site Again, What a Joke.
I'll just stick with fond memories of Ultravox, not this site.

Darren, don't be like that, please. You submitted two fantastic covers; you didn't win this year but it doesn't mean they aren't appreciated by everyone here.

As we said, it was a really, really tough call to judge - it always is - but somehow we have to pick the ones that we like the best. At the end of the day, the judging is just our opinion, and our opinion doesn't - and shouldn't - detract in any way from all the other entries, we love them all. You should ALL be very proud of your achievements. Every single track entered is fantastic and as far as we're concerned, every single one is a winner.

It doesn't matter how high the price of a barrel rises, somehow Cerise always seems to have a plentiful supply of soothing oil to pour upon troubled waters.

In a way, it's encouraging that people can be so reactionary in response to these decisions since it means that they've approached something with a creative passion that can sometimes seem a little lacking in modern music. I'd echo Cerise's sentiment, though, in-as-much as so much of this is subjective. There are elements in a number of the winning tracks that I didn't really like - a lyric, a key change, a progression of notes that felt "not quite right" - but that's because I listen to things with my big and gently whining ears, and the brain and memories connected to them, and not another person's, not because they're necessarily "wrong" (much though it galls me to say it).

Personally, there was much in Darren's pieces to which I could only aspire (the only time I'm likely to enter the competition is if there's ever a category for "Most in need of Help") and heart should be taken from that. It's made no easier since the standard of entries is so high.

Cerise and Rob must have had a real task selecting a short list, let alone "winners" (an unfortunate term, suggesting as it does that the other tracks are "losers", which they clearly aren't), a task completed whilst simultaneously working on several other projects. Disappointments are inevitable but taking offence is a hiding to nothing. Don't deny yourself the pleasures of the site. Use this as a spur, use that emotional energy for your next competition entry and enjoy it for the simple, honest, gentle cut-throat fun that it is.

Not that it has any relevance to the final results I'm sure but it seems a shame some of the "votes" scored in the best cover section of the media archive seem to be artificially low. When tracks get an average of 3 or less with over 50 votes you would expect them to be really really bad - and nothing I've heard so far has been.

Registering false votes happened a couple of years back I seem to remember - be a shame if it had happened again...especially when it serves no purpose as far as the end result goes. Apart from making the original artist feel bad maybe.

High standard overall anyway - the bar seems to get that much higher each year. Congrats to all.

Oh, and Mike's French female alter ego I found rather scary, I must admit...

Yes, you're right Flip - I'll look into whether it's possible to disable the rating function, I think. But you are correct in your assumption that it doesn't affect the judging - we don't even look at the ratings in the media archive until afterwards.

I think both of you have a good point!
I have a feeling, that what Darren is most
sad/angry about is the very low rating
- and I understand his feelings towards that
really well - though you have to be ready
to deal with some rather more or less unfair
ratings if you enter the competition. We did
that ourselves - it`s just a part of it it seems.
I just laughed a little bit a it really.
I think it would be a good idea shut the rating-thing down. I don`t think it really serves a good
purpose - what is great to someone, doesn`t have to be great to someone else - and the ratings are not used picking the winners anyway.

And really good to see you Flip!
Hope you are fine over there!

Can you please delete all of my tracks, since its more of a embarrassment. Maybe some other site might appreciate.

Well if it helps, you certainly were't the only one to get stupidly low ratings - too many prats on the internet to use these things properly.

Jesper - hi, yes fine ta. Just haven't been here too often lately. Hope all's well with you.

Well I've been working on it the last couple of hours, and I've managed to remove all the code relating to ratings. They're all gone, all of them. I've been thinking for a while that it's stupid to have them, for two reasons: one is that they can be open to tactical voting, and secondly that when you click to rate something, '1' is selected automatically. I really think many people don't realise that it's the lowest rating, not the highest (rating it 'number 1', if you see what I mean). Especially where English might not be the visitor's first language. So - ratings are all gone, completely removed from the site. No trace left.

Darren - as I've said, we DO appreciate your tracks, as we appreciate ALL the excellent entries - I've been playing the whole lot all day, whilst working on Quartet.

Listen, give it a couple of days. If you still feel the same way on Tuesday, contact me then and I'll remove them. But I think it will be a huge loss for everyone that visits the site.

Hi Cerise.
I appreciate all the great work you do, especially Ultravox Re-Releases.
I have just lost interest in this site and dont want to be associated with it anymore.

Thanks
Darren

The midi, and later mp3 files were the first thing that attracted me to the site. Ive heard and saved most of the files over recent years. I believe all the tracks are equal, and the amount of work people put into recording them too. If anything, as i said last year, the level has increased both in terms of performing and recording. Theres no winners / losers in my book. Its all music and thats what matters.