Roger John D'Arcy

Born 1956 - Derby, England - currently resides in Valence, France

Singer-songwriter/guitarist - erstwhile designer of recording studios for the rich and famous, poor and talented, corporate and mean....

Busy making other plans:

Longsongs Music was originally set up in 1981 to publish the songs of Roger D'Arcy - "Longsong" was the title of one of sixteen tracks recorded by the (very) short lived duo, The DT Band and featured on their first album, "Just a Dream". Recorded over the summer of 1981 in Sheffield in the north of England, a second album of songs, "To the Sky", was written and recorded within just a few weeks of completing "Just a Dream".

Roger D'Arcy (songwriter) and Kevin Thompson (guitarist) had just completed six years studying architecture at university - there was no time to lose! Initially working as The dt's, the name was changed to The DT Band (D'Arcy -Thompson) after discovering there was a modestly successful outfit already called The dt's - before the Internet, such things were harder to establish.

Following modest sales but only a little interest from record labels, Kevin returned to pursue a successful career in architecture while Roger moved to Exeter in the south-west of England and incorporated Longsongs Music Limited as part of a group of arts based companies (The Iron Bridge Group) with some like-minded souls from Sheffield University. Exeter was simply a pin on a map - London seemed far too daunting a proposition at the time.

The next couple of years saw Longsongs sign and attempt to develop a handful of local artists, achieving some critical acclaim but little commercial success (The 6ix - Radio 1 Best New Band of the Year, The Gift - John Peel BBC Radio 1 airplay with "It'll End in Tears", Go! - Radio 1 airplay and local TV news theme...). For the time moment, that seemed to be that....

Sidetracked...

In 1984, Roger joined fledgling recording studio design company, Turnkey Two, in London as company architect, leaving in 1987 to form Recording Architecture Limited (RA) with colleague, Hugh Flynn. RA went on to become one of the most respected and prolific studio design companies in the world with a client list including The Kinks, Ronnie Wood, Sade, Annie Lennox, The Waterboys, The Cure, The BBC and literally hundreds of the world's finest studios.

Deciding to quit whilst at the top of their game, Roger and Hugh together with architectural photographer, Neil Waiving, produced and in 2011 published "RA:The Book - The Recording Architecture Book of Studio Design". Thousands of copies of the book have sold in over fifty countries around the world and it has become something of a recording industry "standard". Still in print, RA:The Book is also available as an eBook. Following publication, Recording Architecture Limited and its sister company, Black Box Limited closed the doors to new work in 2012 and finally ceased trading in 2014 although Roger still occasionally consults on projects for former clients.

Full circle...

After 30 years designing studios, Roger was finally able to get in to use one of them for himself. Between 2012 and 2014, an album's worth of his more recent songs was recorded at Babajim Studios and Mastering in Istanbul, Turkey, one of RA's flagship projects and a personal favourite of Roger's.

The album is entitled "Crooked Tales" and produced by Pieter Snapper, co-founder of Babajim. All songs are written by Roger D'Arcy and published by Longsongs Music Limited, established 1981.

Post script:

Crooked Tales has gone on to enjoy international success and critical acclaim including radio airplay in 15 countries.

Over the last year, a follow up album has been recorded at Babajim with most of the original team of musicians and engineers and adding a few new faces.

The album is called House of Heads and features 10 new Roger D'Arcy compositions plus a cover of Canadian legend Gordon Lightfoot's song, Ordinary Man, which will be released as a single on August 24th 2017 with the whole House of Heads album following on September 8th.