Saturday, 28 August, 2010
As if by magic... the "5 Seconds Back" track is now downloadable. If you've got ten seconds, sign-up and get yourself a copy. The track is an early mix with a healthy bias towards my synth/arp goodness... have a listen and don't forget to leave a comment.
...Thursday, 26 August, 2010
Today I was working on a track handed to me by a new group based down the road in Sydenham, called the Ghostship Lanterns. The track, entitled 'Hey Buzz', depicts the tranquil journey (many assertively claim) the famous astronaut makes to the moon. Starting from a rather loose acoustic guitar and vocal track, I layered on top some blissful piano riffs and spacey synth parts to bring out a bittersweet sound, taking the song towards a Lemon Jelly / Delgados / Grandaddy vibe.
It was as good a time as any to get my MS-20 on a record, it sounds great! Once ...
Thursday, 19 August, 2010
Kung-fu warrior maidens? Fire-breathing dancers? Back-flipping acrobatic nymphs from another world? It seems that Wildfire! could be the tonic that will see me through these cold winter nights.
Wildfire! is a new production from Alison Jones at Shapeshifter productions (who is also my flatmate), is an outdoor event that depicts a fantasy world through dance, music, martial arts and pyrotechnics. Based on Celtic folklore, the story follows a hero who visits a race of scantily-clad warrior women, in order to master the art of combat. The original show is a full hour and fifteen minutes long, but Alison recently got ...
Thursday, 19 August, 2010
Imelda: He eats like a pig.
Bernie: He's such a prick.
Natalie: Hasn't got the voice of a pig though. Joey says it belongs to God.
Billy: God should ask for it back.
Having spent two days searching, it was time for a break. It is my birthday this weekend, and what better way to spend it than making merry in the friendly city of Dublin? As it was I already had a flight booked and a weekend planned when I realised what an oppertunity it is to meet singers! All I need to do is somehow get invited ...
Thursday, 19 August, 2010
Loyal Few
Red Shark In Vegas
The Milk And Honey Band
My first attendance at a Brighton gig for many years was on a bleak, rainy night. I'm dropped off at the Providence, which looks like a Weatherspoons or a Scream Pub, so I duck into the Bee's Mouth bar, opposite the venue, assured by the taxi driver of its renowned trendiness. Soon enough, I am ordering Japanese lager and watching the coolsters, with their variety of silly hats, pottering around in the tiny bar. It was tiny enough for them to ...
Thursday, 19 August, 2010
Going down to Kemp Town to see a bearded man perform can mean any number of things, but on Friday it was the high-tech human beatboxing and live mixing show of Darren Foreman AKA Beadyman and DJ JFB. An impressive array of laptops, mixing desks, guitar pedals, keyboards, cameras, projectors and wires stretched the length of Audio's stage, for the pair to manipulate, punch and skew in their live dance show: Battlejam.
When I arrived, JFB was already into a DJ set, scratching and mixing up a Dubstep-style sound. With a camera positioned right on the ...
Thursday, 19 August, 2010
Its been a long day of listening. Its three a.m., and I have been listening all day. I never knew listening would be so tiring,
I rock up late to the convention at the Thistle hotel, joining the various queues to get my delegate pass. We queue twice; once to get our photo taken on digital camera, the second time to recieve a make-shift laminate with our name and business on. I join a conversation with Chris Morrisson, manager of Blur, amongst others, and hear anacdotes about managing Thin Lizzy, buying drugs by proxy and dealing with threats of physical violence. A ...
Thursday, 19 August, 2010
I was in a different mood on Friday than the previous day. Having little sleep and a few cans of Red Stripe causes me to feel dopey, and I did hardly any networking to speak of.
Instead I hear about on-line digital business models. Not very rock +roll, but exploring the subject was the main reason I had come to the Great Escape. A panel comprising of representatives from YouTube, PRS, Spotify and media-tracking company BigChampagne held a narrow discussion on such a diverse and complicated topic, mainly because there was consenus in identifying access over ownership as the key element. The convention was full ...
Thursday, 19 August, 2010
I have that melancholy feeling that the party is over and its time to go home. Its been three pleasent days pottering about Brighton, pretending to be part of the music industry.
Saturday's talks remained bouyant even after two night of partying, starting off with a panel on digital promotion. I was awakened sharply when I find myself only artist in the room honest enough to identify myself, suddenly answering the question "Would I ever consider signing to a promoter?". I'm not sure I dealt with it especially well, and wondered how far back I would need to sit to avoid being picked on ...
Thursday, 19 August, 2010
I've been couped-up far too long in my parents old house, helping my dear ol' mumsie convalesce from her operation. Its like being nineteen again, but without the going out, getting pissed and trying to get a shag part. So when I blagged Jennifer Delaney to see her gig with Daniel Ward Murphy at the Troubadour, it would be the first time in a few weeks that I would see a show.
...Thursday, 19 August, 2010
I encountered a strange situation today. I had a response to the singer ad, initially positive, but he later changed his mind because he thought the music wasn't the same direction that he wanted to go in. Fair enough; but why respond in the first place? Its a bit like going for a job in a fishmongers, if you can't stand fish. Forming original bands isn't much like forming cover bands, or other areas in the arts, like acting; where if you're trying to get a gig or land a role, you might as well apply for fifty castings and see ...
Thursday, 19 August, 2010
The masochist in me has decided to put myself all over the musican search websites (again), to hopefully open the door to some decent collaborators to form a new band with. I'll be creating profiles over the coming days, and maybe mention a few words by way of review as I go along.
BandMix is from that irritating species of website that deliberately cripples itself in the hope that you pay to access its full features. Its a bit like a footballer who tries for a team by stamping on his own foot with a garden fork before telling the manager that ...
Thursday, 19 August, 2010
Warning - this is an audio geek post. Casual listeners / surfers please move on!
I recently began extensively using Redmatica's EXSManager now that my sample library is growing rather large (around 100,000 instruments). After some issues getting the thing installed, I was too eager in pressing buttons, and I'll begin by reminding you all to BACKUP FIRST. I am now in a position where my instruments are 'organised' in an unintuitive way, and I might have liked the chance to revert to a backup, but stuipidly I pressed first and asked questions later.
To be fair, organising instruments is a huge task, one ...
Thursday, 19 August, 2010
Last time I posted on gumtree, I got three hundred click-throughs to my ad, nearly all of them e-mailing in. Not bad for a freebie site. Now that Gumtree has tarted up its homepage, I ducked in to see if I could top that.
Best new feature: RSS feeds of the adverts. I now have a button in my Firefox toolbar that fills up with people searching for keyboardists, or vocalists available. I reckon this is by far the best way of skimming over hundreds of ads, especially as the days roll past.
After playing round with that and listening to some ...
Thursday, 19 August, 2010
After months of chipping away, the new website is finally here! And everything is broken!
So what's new? Well for one thing none of the images work anymore . And the design is a stylish white-label that was stolen from me by Spotify. Behind the scenes, the site has a raft of re-organisations, which are supposed to make it easier for me to update it. However, it will take a while for things to get sorted out around here, it seems.
The main things are that I've applied some ultra-geek stuff to the back-end to ensure that things work ...
Thursday, 12 August, 2010
I have recently become comfortable in the wearing of hats, this one (pictured) kindly donated by Peter Baike. Currently it serves the dual purpose of regulating my uncouth hairdo and bolstering my self-impression as a musician. Whilst recording parts in the room, the donning of my apex receptacle helps to bring a live edge to the sound, with semi-professional nods to the side-stage mapping the beat. So much so that I layed-down parts to four tracks, soon to be included on the forthcoming E.P. of London 'super-band' Hercules Rockafeller.
HR is a blues-rock band driven by guitarist Stuart Knowles. ...
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