…but a ‘Critics Choice’ listing as well!
Says much the same thing –
‘Improvising jazz and soul vocalist explores loops and sampling with Brian Eno sidekick Leo Abrahams and bassist Steve Lawson.’
Now I’m a v. happy bunny. :o)
Should've blogged this a week ago…
It’s normally the first thing I do when Time Out arrives around the time of a Recycle Collective gig – check the entry. But I only got round to looking today, and it’s been in for a week. This is what it says –
*Cleveland Watkiss/Leo
Abrahams/Steve Lawson Recycle
Collective at Darbucka, EC1: 7pm; £7 concs
£5. Superb monthly concert series that
explores the relationship between live
improv and live looping (ie recycling the
song as it unfolds and using the created loop
as part of the unfolding piece). Tonight with
superb singer Watkiss, Brian Eno sidekick
Abrahams and bassist Lawson.
that’s rather nice isn’t it? No reason for you not to come along now. :o)
How hard can it be to find three expression pedals???
I’m just trying to find three M-Audio expression pedals. Has anywhere got any in stock? Have they shite. Studio spares has one, but are charging a fiver more than anywhere else for them.
Anyone got any suggestions? And no, i’m not going to buy three EV-5s – they’re double the cost of the M-Audio ones, and do exactly the same job…
The vagueries of the English language.
Just found this on the blog of a Danish bloke – pretty much sums up the silliness of the pronunciation of English language…
When the English tongue we speak.
Why is break not rhymed with freak?
Will you tell me why it’s true
We say sew but likewise few?
And the maker of the verse,
Cannot rhyme his horse with worse?
Beard is not the same as heard
Cord is different from word.
Cow is cow but low is low
Shoe is never rhymed with foe.
Think of hose, dose,and lose
And think of goose and yet with choose
Think of comb, tomb and bomb,
Doll and roll or home and some.
Since pay is rhymed with say
Why not paid with said I pray?
Think of blood, food and good.
Mould is not pronounced like could.
Wherefore done, but gone and lone –
Is there any reason known?
To sum up all, it seems to me
Sound and letters don’t agree.
Lord Cromer, 1902
another fine day's recording
Managed to get another couple of tracks recorded for the album today – a new version of one that I’ve done 7 versions of so far, and I think this is ‘the one’… remains to be seen. The other is a re-recording of ‘Jimmy James’ from Not Dancing For Chicken. It’s always been one of my favourite of my own tunes, but the version of the CD didn’t really get close to doing it justice. And as it was inspired by the memory of a dear friend, it really deserved to be done properly. So that’s done. Sounds great.
Also did some more work on the sleeve, started getting the sleeve notes together, the front cover is done, it’s all beginning to feel like a proper CD that’s actually going to happen! I’ve also found another place that does the same kind of packaging as I have, but does it a lot cheaper than my usual source, which is v. exciting!
So tomorrow will be another heavy recording day – I still need to get good takes of the tune for Eric Roche (working title – Deeper Still), and the two covers, People Get Ready and What A Wonderful World. It remains to be seen if a) they work on the album and b) I can be bothered to sort out the copyright stuff to be able to release them. sounds like faff to me.
Anyway, I’m probably only a week away from being able to start mixing in earnest… guess I’d better get my mastering plans sorted out…
Giving Birth
is a bit like making a new album. Well, I’m not having morning sickness, haven’t had to buy maternity wear, don’t get a seat on the tube, and haven’t at the moment got lactating mammaries, but there are bits of it that are a lot like pregnancy… There’s a fair amount of anxiety early on, not knowing how it will turn out, will everything be ok, will something go horribly wrong… early scans are a bit formless and lacking in definition – you can see a bit of a blob, and as time goes on it starts to riggle a bit, but it’ll be a while yet before you start to feel it inside you.
But when you do, and you get that feeling that things are going to be OK, you start planning. For babies, you decorate and think of names. For albums, you design the artwork and come up with a title and track names. the more you know about the forthcoming arrival, the more you are able to shape such things ahead of time. Is it a boy or a girl? Is it a mellow album or an up-tempo jolly album? etc. etc.
Well, my new album is taking shape, tracks are being added to the ‘definite’ list, the artwork is progressing, the title is at the ‘I think this is right, but we’ll wait and see’ stage, and I’m making final decisions about whether or not to have any special guests on the album (at the moment it looks like there’ll be one for one track… more on that at a later date).
Every now and then I flick across to another window on this computer and have a look at the proposed front cover. Does it work? I try to catch myself by surprise and see if I’m pleasantly surprised or not.
I love this process. As I said a few days ago, I’m slightly apprehensive due to how much I love Grace And Gratitude, but these tracks are taking on their own identity, such that I’ll be able to play quite a few of them on the upcoming gigs (yet more reasons not to miss the gigs!)
Buying cheap basses…
I know, you’re on a limited budget and the offer of a new bass for £85 is just too tempting. So you hit buy it now, and hope it’s playable when it arrives. That’s if you’ve got any notion of what ‘playable’ is anyway.
The proliferation of cheap import basses from the far east has led to loads of them turning up on internet shopping sites, lots of them shipped from outside the UK at prices that no high street retailer can match. And why? Because your local music shop has a legal obligation to guarantee that the bass works, that it’s OK, and that it’ll still work in a few months time.
The first thing to go when the price of manufacturing instruments drops that low is quality control. The parts are sourced cheaply in massive bulk, assembled in an OK way, but very few are ever taken out of the process for being faulty – they’re just patched up and put through with the rest of them. Quality varies massively, and if you buy online, you’ve no way on earth of knowing what you’re getting. If you go to any music shop and try out all their cheap basses, they’ll vary a lot in sound and feel. Some will play like a bass worth double the price on the headstock, others like they aren’t fit for firewood.
If you go to your local music shop and spend an extra few quid, try a few basses out, and check what your guarantee is, in the long run I GUARANTEE you’ll save money. No question. You’ll also benefit by buying a reputable make – not only in quality but resale value should you ever get rid of it. Go to The Bass Centre, or The Gallery, or even Sound Control/Musical Xchanges etc. – any well stocked shop, try a few out, and ask as many questions as you like, but don’t get hung up on the extra £25 you spend in the shop. It’s all about the Value Added.
all right, own up…
who has put my email address on a public website somewhere??? I’m getting so much spam over these last few days, it’s mad. I’ve had very little for the last 6 months or so. Seemed like a lot of it had gone. But now it’s back, and I’m getting loads of spam comments on this blog… they get filtered, and I can delete them, but they are a pain in the arse…
grrrrr
*grumble grumble*
Easter Improv
just had a great fun gig at St Luke’s. Every Easter, the church is turned into an art gallery, housing various ‘stations’ – works of art based on bits of the easter story in varying levels of abstraction, dotted around the church, and used as a focal point for meditation/prayer. There’s a launch on Good Friday lunchtime and then the art is left up for the next week or so.
This year, Julie McKee and I were approached by a woman in the church to provide a soundtraack to her piece. She’d originally wanted something that ‘sounded like Handel’ i think was the request… clearly not going to happen, but mellow ambient loopy improv goo we can do. And we did.
So we set up in an inconspicuous place in the corner of the church, and improv’d to our hearts content. The words were taken partly from some stuff that Judy the artist has sent as being her inspiration, and partly from a prayer/poem written by the ever-wonderful Martin Wroe, taken from his book, When You Haven’t Got A Prayer – here’s the prayer in question;
God
within
and
without
God
underground and overground
everywhere and nowhere
always and never
sometimes and all times
God
inside
and
outside
God
here
with
us
now.
That’s it – very simple, and easy to sing. Strangely enough, it’s the second time I’ve played on a musical setting of these words, the last time being on a demo by Steve McEwan… but anyway.
So I was looping and layering my own ambient loveliness and Julie’s voice, so the words were tumbling over one another in and out of layers of bass goo. Sounds pretty damned fine listening back to it.
Oh yes, I finally got round to recording an improv gig – yay for me! I recorded it direct into ProTools M-Powered, and am now bouncing it down so I can export it to my PC and edit it in Adobe Audition. Much as ProTools is proving useful for this kind of recording, it is a total pain in the arse to use. For one, it saves the stereo audio as two mono files rather than one stereo one, so I can’t just drag the raw data across. Secondly, in order for the program to even start up, I have to have both my M-Audio soundcard and the iKey plugged in! I had hoped that I’d be able to export multitrack sessions to my laptop from the PC and mix things in ProTools, but that’s clearly not going to happen… I definitely prefer Adobe Audition.. and when I eventually get an Intel-Powered MacBook Pro, I’ll be running Audition on that for sure…
For now, I’m currently bouncing down the audio from the two mono files to a stereo file (which happens in real time so is taking a full half an hour!!! what a pain!! grrr), and will then do all the loveliness that needs doing in Audition on the PC.
Anyway, depending on how good it gets when I’ve tweaked it, it may end up being available for download via the shop. It is rather lovely…
This disturbing case of Flt Lt Malcolm Kendall-Smith
This has been in the news a lot of late, the case of an RAF Doctor who has refused to go back to Basra on moral and ethical grounds. Jyoti’s blog on this is a fantastic piece of journalism so go and read that first.
He was quoted from the trial, in The Guardian as saying,
“I have evidence that the Americans were on a par with Nazi Germany with its actions in the Persian Gulf. I have documents in my possession which support my assertions,†he told the court. “This is on the basis that on-going acts of aggression in Iraq and systematically applied war crimes provide a moral equivalent between the US and Nazi Germany.â€
How much more damning could an assessment be? This isn’t some peacenik, this isn’t me calling the government fascist scum, this isn’t John Pilger getting all hot and bothered again about some foreign place where people are dying. No, THIS IS A MILITARY DOCTOR, WHO HAS ALREADY BEEN TO IRAQ TWICE. He’s seen this shit with his own eyes. He’s just put his total career on the line in order to follow his conscience, a conscience that previously led him to join the RAF. That is a huge huge thing.
And that the legal system in this country (I initially wrote ‘our country’ there, but who are we kidding?) would jail him for this rather than applaud him and have him head up an investigation into the war crimes he says he can document (along with those that are already only-too-well documented), is a tragic tragic indictment. What a hateful regime. How can that happen? He’s apparently appealing the sentence, I just hope he can appeal to a civilian court where he might get a fairer hearing at least, if not a standing ovation for exposing the corruption, murder and deceit that is the illegal occupation in Iraq.