Mike Collins began his musical recording career in 1981 as a songwriter-producer at EMI Records and Chappell Music publishers where he achieved early chart success with leading Brit-Funk band Light of the World.
As part of a vibrant songwriters workshop in the mid-80’s, led by legendary producer Gus Dudgeon at Dick James Music publishers, Mike co-wrote with a range of established writers and artists including Scott English, Steve Jerome, Juliet Roberts and others - and worked as a producer and studio musician with these and other bands and artists for various labels.
Several years of TV work, producing recordings mostly for visiting US pop, soul and R & B artists in the 1980’s, put Mike in the producer’s chair with Sly Fox, Cameo, Shannon, Jermaine Stewart, Joyce Sims and similar acts.
A busy year in 1987 as in-house Senior Recording Engineer & Music Technology Specialist at the Yamaha R & D Studio in London W1 brought opportunities to work with producers George Martin and Gus Dudgeon, rock musician Keith Emerson, jazzman Courtney Pine and composers Hans Zimmer and George Benjamin.
This led to top-flight session work from the late 80’s onwards as a studio musician and MIDI programmer working on singles for The Style Council, Zeke Manyeka, Junior Reid, Patsy Kensit, The Chimes, Dave Angel/Eurythmics, Jeremy Healy, Feargal Sharkey and others.
As soon as the new generation of digital audio recording and editing tools became available, Mike was an early adopter, working on the Shamen’s hit “Boss Drum” album in 1992, for example, using Cubase Audio and an early version of Pro Tools in preparation for their world tour.
Around this time, an invitation to work with film composer Ryuichi Sakamoto as his MIDI programmer and technology guru led to screen and soundtrack album credits as a Mac Computer & Music Technology Consultant on “The Little Buddha” and “Wuthering Heights”, and to work with other film composers – most notably David Arnold on his first major film score for “The Young Americans”, which included the hit single “Play Dead” by Bjork/David Arnold.
Since the early 1990’s, Mike has often been commissioned to write, record, play on or produce music for TV and radio ads, music for films and TV programmes, and music for multimedia projects. Clients have included Channel 4 and ITV, Apple Computers and Canon Cameras, among others, and a CD of co-composed original ’Loops for Multimedia’ was released by RE Media in the UK and the US.
The 1990’s was a busy and varied time for Mike, working on all kinds of musical projects. He was commissioned by Virgin Records to write string arrangements for REM producer Mitch Easter who was working on an album for UK ‘indie’ band ‘Moose’. This was followed by specialist Pro Tools editing on the music for the opening titles by US3 for the film "Get Shorty". Then a recommendation by songwriter Pete Brown led to a commission to write and record music for the opening titles of a Taylor Hackford-directed film, Greenwich Mean Time. Technical consultancy for an unusual album for Sony Classical, 'Majoun' by film composer Richard Horowitz and Iranian-American vocalist Sussan Deyhim, allowed insight into the working methods of this extremely talented and unusual creative partnership.
In 1998, a chance meeting with leading UK jazz guitarist Jim Mullen led to a move into the jazz world, with Mike producing an album of solo jazz guitar for this award-winning soloist. This project led to a long-standing, ongoing relationship, with Mike working on many original compositions and arrangements with Jim and other top UK jazz and studio musicians.
Since the year 2000, a move back to music production, Pro Tools engineering, song co-writing and instrumental music composition has led to work on several albums covering genres ranging from pop (Phil Harding’s “The Story of Beginners” album) and rock (the self-titled Catcha album) to folk/pop (Caro’s “The 4th Way”album) and Afro-beat (Ayetoro’s “Omo Obokun” album).
In 2008, a re-creation of a song called Kindness (originally recorded by New York bluesman Guy Davis) for a Deutsche Bank promotional video featuring vocalist Noel McCalla from Manfred Mann’s touring band, provided an opportunity to work with five gospel singers on vocal harmonies. On this project, Mike worked with producer John McKenzie as Pro Tools engineer and studio musician, playing tenor banjo and Martin acoustic guitar parts on the recording.
Currently, Mike is recording original songs and covers of classic material with various singers including Noel McCalla and Jocelyn Brown.