Jimmy Judge & The Greensands • Hold Me Down • Future Talent

The lead single from Future Talent’s RISE album is Hold Me Down, written by Jimmy Judge when he was just 16 years old.

I led a songwriting camp for young composers in August 2023 and I gave Jimmy the inspiration of writing a Radiohead-style ballad. Jimmy sat at the piano (which he doesn’t usually play) and wrote this impressive song in about 15 minutes.

Production Approach:

We continued to develop his work at our demo recording session in October 2023. I helped guide Jimmy to refine the song structure and build tension and atmosphere into the arrangement, and we began discussing how we would include other Future Talent musicians, as well as his usual bandmates from The Greensands.

Recording:

We took to deepest darkest South West London for a weekend to record the band playing first, before heading to the much more glamorous Menuhin Hall in Surrey to record the strings. 

A lot more work went in programming sound design and shaping the production. Then the masterful mix engineer Pete Schweir added his layer of brilliance in shaping the song. Overall, it really is the stand out piece of production on the RISE album.