Here I am showing a few instruments, or modes, overlayed. Most instruments are designed to simply make sound when I interact, but others are self generative (like the bouncing balls) so that aspect of them persists between modes. I haven’t really payed much attention to musical key or the ‘edges’ of the sounds, so its a bit of a cacophony I’m afraid, but I wanted to play with it again and thought i may as well blog it. Each time I do this I go away and make improvements, so perhaps itll be better next time! I really must work out how to switch of auto focus on my camera tho!
We have the full details for this fantastic event at Cafe Oto on the 10th of June.
Established in late 2007, and presented by Chimera Productions, Blank Canvas is a bi-monthly ‘club’ night reputed for its eclectic contemporary classical and experimental music programming, which pays no heed to classical music convention.
To mark the last in the current season of Blank Canvas shows, which has seen incredible performances from the likes of Jon Hopkins, Mira Calix, London Sinfonietta, Shlomo and Plaid at venues such as the BFI Southbank, Kings Place and Ether 10 at the Southbank Centre, British electronic artist par excellence Robin Rimbaud – aka Scanner – presents a new collaboration with pianist Will Dutta and coming off a widely critically acclaimed album, Save Your Light For Darker Days, Digitonal perform a full live set.
Most of the last week has been spent feverishly trying to finish projects off so that they don’t run into other ones that are about to start. I haven’t quite managed it. On the finished side are the Chris Difford album and Eno’s Pure Scenius project. Chris’s was quite straight forward – mostly a case of working hard to find the right vocal approach to each song, and backing vocals to illustrate lyrics which are by turns witty, moving and kaleidoscopic. One of the highlights for me was getting Green Gartside of Scritti Politti to sing on a track. Hearing that voice that i have listened to for 25 years coming out of my studio speakers was an incredible moment for me. The Scenius thing as been a more complicated journey, but after much to-ing and fro-ing I hope that we’ve hit on the final running order – a representative document of the Oprea House concerts that nevertheless works as an album in its own right. I think it has benefited from some last-minute ‘eureka’ moments from me in the dark art of mixing. It is one of the skills that seems to take the longest to develop confidence and fluidity in, full of often-unquantifiable value judgements arising from seemingly simply technical decisions. Then in the end someone goes and plays a low-res mp3 of the thing out of their iPod speakers.
Edging towards the finishing line but not quite over it yet is the Iarla O’Lionaird album. During this latest period of work, and not for the first time, his incredibly beautiful, honest and brave singing had me in tears at the mixing desk – which was a bit embarrassing for us both. Instrumentally a large part of the record involves strings, courtesy of The Geese (a very creative duo of violin and viola, whose part-planned improvisations I edited into arrangements that could never have been scored conventionally); and Oliver Coates, a quite staggeringly talented cellist whose understanding and application of influences from Xenakis to Nico Muhly made for one of the most electrifying and humbling days I’ve ever spent in a studio. Here is a man destined for greatness, if he’s not there already.
Unfinished but well on the way is the Brett Anderson record. We’ve spent some time writing songs over the edited improvisations recorded in January, and frankly both of us have that slightly naughty feeling you get when you’re trying not to be too pleased with yourself. It is going to be amazing, the songs are the most powerful and direct he’s written since Suede and the album has a sound all its own. There is a distinct drive and rawness at the heart of the record that will render overdub-stage dithering obsolete. Unfortunately I have to stop work on it now for a month or so, but I know Brett will be hard at work in my absence.
I did an improvised session for a show called ‘Late Junction’ on Radio 3 with Seb Rochford, the mbira player Chartwell Dutiro, and a young MC called Jyager. All the sounds seemed to bloom from the giant rattling, primal, joyful shell of the mbira, with Jyager managing to invent some new kind of genre which we are going to try and expand upon by making a record later in the year.
A few sessions scattered around – another great score by Alex Heffes for a film called ‘The First Grader’; a little more for KT Tunstall’s new and very different-sounding record; something with orchestra for a tv series called ‘Daughters’ during which i was not required for large swathes of time so effectively got paid to sit next door in Carluccio’s; a French artist called Lio; and even a day with Coldplay which was pretty bizarre and mostly consisted of me and Jonny geeking out over guitar effects. Lastly, Jon Hopkins and I had a day in the studio with Brian doing some more jams for an album that is going to be made from bits of our score for ‘The Lovely Bones’ that never made it into the actual film. I think it’s my job to edit it together, and although I felt slightly weak at the prospect of going through literally hours and hours of stuff, luckily Brian’s brutally efficient use of the ‘rating’ column in iTunes has cut hours, possibly even days, off the job.
Hi.
We’re very pleased to announce a couple of London-based live dates this spring:
First up is an intimate evening hosted by our record label at the Camden Roundhouse Studio, featuring the very beautiful acoustics of Dan Arborise and a live set by the full Digitonal band.
Secondly, we have been invited to play at London’s premiere new venue for contemporary music, Dalston’s Cafe Oto on the 10th of June. Details still to be published, but we understand that Will Dutta and Scanner will also be performing.
Watch this space for more, plus details of our forthcoming retrospective album “Be Still My Bleeping Heart” very soon indeed.
The main news this month, is that A Lost Connection is being released on CD by our friends at Just Music, the exact date is still to be confirmed but we expect it to be around the beginning of June. All the tracks and the running order are the same as the MP3 version but for the CD release the original recordings have been newly mastered by Guy Davie.
Binemusic are releasing a double vinyl compilation, Various Artists – 2010 which features a new MU track called Ancoats 111, release date is 12.04.10.
Due to popular request we now have copies of the Tokyo CD on sale in the shop .
So I have written a few ‘instruments’ but this one is a nice basic one we were hoping to play on stage some time soon. It has basic x-y control for reverb and filter, but also distance between primary and secondary touch is delay length and angle between the 2 touches is delay wetness.
We had it ready and set up to play at last weeks Digital City party. But WOE! however much testing and prep you do before-hand something has to come along and take a long hot piss on your metaphorical bonfire. This time it was in the form of a bizarre midi glitch that knocked out Andys PC. Not even the PC thats running it! So, in order to do the show we had to ditch the new toy and play. And what a gig it was….sweet, sweet Digital City. GOOD party.
Again we tried for Peepshow, having debugged the problem. Against all odds, having to share a somewhat cramped stage with Hextatic and Jon Hopkins, we managed to get it working again, and despite having Jon in the line of sight of the projector we even got it calibrated and ready to go. Then another weird bug, this time with the CCV/camera driver software. CRASH! so we had to forget about it again. We are edging closer and closer but still the cigar has not been presented to me, or even purchased in preparation. I looked jealously at Jons rugged, and effective triple Kaoss pad setup and wondered if there was any point.
Any more name ideas? So far we have…
Virgil
ITCH
CLIVE
Lumiphone
Lumiphonica
and Lamp-a-tron
C’mon surely we can get something more impressive than comedy names. Or maybe anything else would just sound wrong?
Rob And Valentyna In Scotland won the “Honourable Mention For Short Film-making” Award at Sundance this year. More info about how you can see this film soon.
I finished my first solo film score a few weeks ago, for a new British-made film called Monsters. The film had its world premiere at SXSW film festival last weekend, to amazing reactions – you can read about it here. The film will be having its UK premiere at the Edinburgh Film Festival this June.
I am very pleased to announce that PURE SCENIUS, the improvised live show featuring Brian Eno, Karl Hyde and Toby Vogel (Underworld), Leo Abrahams, The Necks and me is making its UK debut on May 9th, at the Brighton Festival. Don’t miss it… info here.
Here’s an up to date list of the next solo live shows, including my first shows in Russia:
9th May : Pure Scenius, Brighton Festival
14th May : Club Mosproekt, Moscow, Russia
15th May : SKIF, St Petersburg, Russia
20th May : Brighton Festival, with Lali Puna
27th June : Celtronic Festival, Derry
23rd July : Stone Hill Festival, Alterswil, Switzerland
..My old friend who introduced me to JM many years ago recently emailed to say johnmartyn.com has given me a ‘bigup’
Recommended Artist – Dan Arborise
Its not often that we recommend another artist, in fact we’ve never done it before! There’s a first time for everything and Dan Arborise is an artist well worth a listen. Inspired guitar work, heartfelt lyrics and beautiful vocals abound on his debut album Around In Circles and 2009s Of Tide and Trail.
Very sweet and kind of you lot over there at johnmartyn.com and i hope the big man would have approved
This is one of the most pointless exercises in creative nerdery, I think, that I have ever undertaken. Why? Because I can. Basically, this is a video made up of text letters, like the very old-skool ascii print-outs you could get of your face on white and green tractor feed printer paper…except moving.
It features me mouthing the words that I did eventually want to have done by a pretty girl. But the process of converting video into thousands of frames of text characters was so gruelling, I didn’t want to re-do it once the proof of concept worked. I started this project last June. It still aint really finished to the standard I’d like. But I really do have better things to do. Peace. Dom Echaskech.
Click here to see ‘Shatterproof’
