Tuff Sherm on Or​.​VA1 Compilation Benefiting New York Child Mind Institute

Cover design by Daniel Baragwanath

Earlier this month, Orphan Records released a various artists compilation titled Or.VA1 for Mental Health Awareness Day on October 10. I took part with a new track from my Tuff Sherm project called ‘Ska Console’ (coming in at number 6, as you can see above on the release’s excellent cover by Daniel Baragwanath). The lineup of artists is really excellent and all the tracks are worth a look.

The release can be streamed via this specially designed mini-site before heading over to Bandcamp to buy. Proceeds from digital sales will support the Child Mind Institute.

Ska Console was completed as a demo in late 2017 and remained unreleased until appearing on this compilation. Earlier this year I revisited the mix, making some minor sonic changes and refinements, and these are reflected in the final version on Or.VA1. One place this track had very partially cropped up before was in May in a Palace Skateboards x Kickers Instagram video for their Lennon Boat Shoe collaboration. There was interest in using a TS track but due to the absence of new releases for a bit I thought I’d just send through a set of unreleased songs as options. It worked out nicely that I was able to then also get the full track out there via this compilation later in the year. Anyway, the reason I’m noting the Palace clip in this post is that there may be someone out there searching for the ID for the song in that video (and maybe they’ve ended up here with an answer, plus a way of buying it that supports an important cause). There’s now a reasonable bit of continuity between Palace and the TS project, with ‘Clobber’ featuring on their social clip for the Reebok collab and vintage TS material ‘Burglar Loops’ and ‘Pharmacy’ appearing on some of their older skate videos.


Since moving to new monitors earlier this year I’ve been returning to many unreleased tracks and mixing them in Pro Tools, only as audio (i.e. no MIDI to edit), as if they’ve been delivered by someone else. The ‘rules’ are that I’m only working with the original stems and just engineering them to intuitively ‘fix up’ whatever is revealed with the current monitors (and current ears), while retaining the original composition and intent of the tracks. Ska Console is one of twenty or so Tuff Sherm songs to get that treatment – some of the others should hopefully be set for release in some form soon.