Download: Long Mp3

The second 'single' from the forthcoming new album. This time things are slowly progressive: moving through a contrast of a dark soundscape with a funky house pulse, building incrementally to lush epic-pop drama. Those listening from the tracking scene might pick a certain influence of Xerxes here, and I've no doubt the years of listening to him have rubbed off here.

A minimal journey into the night:

---
Long
It's long...
Feels like I've been waiting here
Forever
Long into the night
A night that never ends
I long for you.

It's OK
The waiting is right
A combination of choices
Turns silence to voices
But not yet
No not yet
Still so long to wait.

I can wait
For you, forever
Long quiet
Long dark
Longing, as the thunder rolls in...
---

In 2006 I was playing guitar for a jam band which met locally at an old and cold farm cottage outside of town. The project was roughly called 'Unity Gain' and never got further than some wonderful funky improv with all sorts of musical elements clashing in unexpected ways. I was on guitar, Luke was on bass and keys (and responsible for computers and recording), Dylan was on bluesy keys, and of course Iain MacKay was on his hybrid electro-acoustic drum set-up. We spent many long Autumn and Winter nights meandering through some interesting jams coming across many little gems of music along the way.

Things never got too dark and heavy as there was an agreement to keep the aim uplifting. Born out of a little frustration with the process the later jams started to wander into darker passionate places. One of these were recorded and I'd like to offer to you here as an mp3. It's started out in our typical style moving around half formed clichés and unrealised flows, until about 19 minutes in it all starts to really come together. All of sudden a pounding sad doom started to form in Gminor and I chanced upon a simple descending ostinato rooted on the minor 1st and 3rd, while playing out the 7th, 6th and 5th. For months and months afterwards I had this little riff stuck in my head - I loved it's ambiguous feel of longing, a paradoxical sad resolution.

I just had to make a song out of it! I wanted to make something that had the same building tension as the jam, but not using the same method to get there. I also had a strong desire to build something progressive like an Arvo Pärt piece that had a balance between mechanical repetition and organic flowing melody. But for some crazy reason a funky house beat ended up in there! So by late 2006 I had a very muted and murky G#minor build (to make use of the natural E) without much variation until the point where the chords start to really seriously shift around - and then I had to leave the project for almost a year while I went through the dramas of fixing my studio computer.

In 2007 as Winter started to make way for Spring I picked up the song and quickly hammered out the rest of the 11 minute structure. Whatever idea came to me I simply honoured by putting it in without any concerns of being reductive to any pop rule set - no fussing! With spirited focus every came easy with this song, despite the fact that months upon months of work was done on every single element. Even the vocals, which are usually very hard for me, seemed to slot into place almost too easy (Here I have to thank Ruth Strut for some serious vocal tuition to break me out of some bad long term habits). The result is a long-winded journey into a progressive dirge in the dark, mounting tension from dreamy obscurity to pounding anxiety.

Long won't be for everyone, it's lengthy meandering celebrates all things that gently take their time, sometimes drilling energy with hypnotic forgetfulness. Sometimes such is the nature of waiting, of longing. This song is for those waiting.

Iain Mackay has been hard at work making another short film entitled 'Out'. You can watch it on YouTube. The film features a song I released in 2004 called Find. Iain heard the song played live at the last Arc gig and decided it would be appropriate for his club scene. He ended up using the song as theme music as well. It has been good to support Iain's projects musically as I think he makes appealing films of an artistic quality miles above simple home movies.

If you happen to be an Armidale or New England local you might like to come along to the Belgrave Twin Cinema on Wednesday 29th of November at 7pm. 'Out' will be premiered on the big screen along with all the other short films from the TAFE film school. The showcase is usually a very interesting mixed bag.

See more of Iain's films here - especially 'Killshot' which features music from Unity Gain.

It's been very tempting to change the heading of this post to "Uhhgg Chaos!!", but I have several things I want to get to the point of here. It's example of how in life as an artist both good and bad things happen all the time, but interestingly the good things seem to sprout up like flowers out of the immediately seemingly bad.

Over a month ago now things were cooking with Unity Gain - we were pacing ahead with two weekly sessions, and starting to slowly zone in on some 'reproducable songs'. Due to reasons I will go into here and have very little to do with me personally, there was an impass and then the band was announced at an end.

Feeling a little befuddled about this happening, and still having strong desire and momentum to continue to play guitar with my friends I naturally wanted to keep something going. So I quickly asked Iain if he wanted to continue playing and try to aim to present something for the AlterNative gigs on the 15th and 16th of this month. Iain was quite a happy to give it a shot as his momentum and playing were reaching a peak. We relocated all our gear from Wood Park back over to Iain's basement.

Things were a lot quicker but more challenging with just two of us. I had to try and make a massive bass/melodic sound with just my guitar and effects (some of which sounded really suitable). We narrowed down to about 8-9 songs and jammed solidly for two or so weeks just on those alone. Because of the limitations we were coming up with some rather original minimal elctronic grooves, some with a distinctive afro influence. Unsure of a name, and wanting to put Unity Gain behind us, we loosely were working on names like 'Soltek', 'Soltronics' and 'Iain and Mark's Project'.

Simon Floth had arrived back in town on holiday from another project in Sydney. He came to one of our jams and got in on the action nicely by playing his fully improvised bass on the Juno keyboard. Straight away we were able to carve out a fuller legitimate sound. It looked like Simon had a great time contributing as expressed willingness to stick around and play bass for the gigs. We gladly encouraged him and had another session as a 3 piece, probably sounding the best we've ever sounded...

Then last weekend I got very sick. It started out as a cold, but progressed into a nasty chest infection. I was in no state to play anything. Simon too was feeling the bug. After a rocky week of session cancellations we decided last Sunday that it was time to knock it on the head, having only a short time availible to pull together a scattering of material without confidence. Simon headed back for Syndey. Iain and I will probably regroup down the track to see if we can't make something else out of the project. So, three to four months of playing live guitar has come to a temporary end! But what a fun time, and what wonderful way to get new sonic ideas and thoughts about grooves. And something tells me I've not yet finished some ideas with Luke and Dyllan...

(Oh and btw, the Band Comp is over: Sum Assult has won, with a very cool Strange Days coming second.)

Ok, you would think that 'all is lost', but quite the contrary is prooving so. As mentioned previously myself and Luke have been putting effort into building a basic Hi-fi PA system. The core elements have come together: I have obtained an Australian Monitor IS 1200 poweramp (that's 400W into 8ohms, and 600W into 4ohms using the technical speak). He has a pair of Fender 2 way speakers @ 300W program, with 15 inch bass cones. Last friday we had a chance to rig it up outdoors (out of town) and crank it. There's nothing quite as fresh sounding as crystal clear dub at full volume under a star-light sky (the bass carried alarmingly well, not the sub though). L is also getting a another pair of composites to handle the mids better and will allow the IS 1200 to output it's full 600W of power - which will be certainly big enough for most gigs around here. We will also have good cheep access to large Mackie powered subs, so the ability to put on a electro party or show is now within our grasp.

And so the first event is planned! Mark your diaries for October 7th at The Armidale Club for the Re:Turn of _the arc_. I will be doing a mixed set of live electronica (arc music) with lots of layering and improvisation. No doubt a certain other L will be making a laptop performance as well. Stay tuned for more details.

The other good news is that I will be on a very extra-ordinary holiday during the last two weeks of this month. My dear friend Jarrad Cousin is making another move back from Perth to Armidale to live. I will fly over and join Jarrad on the epic road trip all the way across Australia from Perth to Armidale (including The Nullabor Plain). This 7-9 day haul is something I've always wanted to do since being young and now have the lucky opportunity to do. No doubt it will have many echoing implications for musical geographic inspiration, much like my trips to South Australia in 1998 and the Victorian Alps in 2002.

I'm also looking to meet up with James DXU, albeit for a short amount of time. If all goes to plan we might do a little sonic work together...

Liked promised, here are some mp3s of Unity Gain's recent madness:

http://www.thequietrevolution.net/ug/

Or for your ease, here's a list of the last two jams:

http://www.thequietrevolution.net/ug/Record%202006-08-05%2002.mp3
http://www.thequietrevolution.net/ug/Record%202006-08-05%2003.mp3
http://www.thequietrevolution.net/ug/Record%202006-08-05%2004.mp3
http://www.thequietrevolution.net/ug/Record%202006-08-05%2005.mp3
http://www.thequietrevolution.net/ug/Record%202006-08-05%2006.mp3
http://www.thequietrevolution.net/ug/Record%202006-08-05%2008.mp3
http://www.thequietrevolution.net/ug/Record%202006-08-05%2009.mp3
http://www.thequietrevolution.net/ug/Record%202006-08-09%2001.mp3
http://www.thequietrevolution.net/ug/Record%202006-08-09%2002.mp3
http://www.thequietrevolution.net/ug/Record%202006-08-09%2003.mp3
http://www.thequietrevolution.net/ug/Record%202006-08-09%2004.mp3
http://www.thequietrevolution.net/ug/Record%202006-08-09%2005.mp3 - This one gets really nice and big...

Thanks to Luke for making the recordings possible. We'll try and get more photos of the gear setup this weekend.

Unity Gain: L-R Iain Mackay, Luke, myself and Dylan Gilliland.

Unity Gain had it's beginnings late 2004, myself having met Iain Mackay and expressing interest in jams. Iain, previously leading geek-hop political music group Audio:LK-da got my attention because he was doing stuff with live electronic drums and samples (not to meantion being a terrific live-personality). Soon enough Iain hosted a few jams at his place where I met bass player Luke, as well as keys player Becky (Iain's better half). With myself on guitar, heavily effects oriented like my Pnuematic Bell days, we created some rather loose and interesting jam sounds.

These continued on and off throughout 2005, though really never taking off into consistant motion due to lack of a core-idea and noise restrictions placed upon Iain's abode.

During early 2006 Luke's persistant idea of doing groove based music live for people to dance to started to really click with me. This was also fueled by the positive reaction we both got from hosting the 'mini art doof' live electronica event The Arc a few months earlier at the Armidale Club. Also, brilliantly typified by Australian band The Bird, there is a new growing live underground music movement happening through Australia's now established doof-party and smaller Festival roster. The Bird have arrived at a live music style that blatently emulates the tunes spun by 90's dj-culture, e.g. groove electronica (d'n'b, dub, hiphop, etc). Their crowd interaction is entrirely uplifting. There are bands surfacing (e.g. Alter Native) that are using this rough template of emulating electronica with live performed grooves and sampling. Luke and I both went and saw The Bird play at Stockwood which envigorated our desire to attempt the same live approach.

Iain also had being saying he wanted to perform live dance music using a hybrid setup of his electronic drums and acoustic percussion such as hats, cymbals, snare, tamb, and whatever else he can throw together. I remember Iain saying he wanted to do 'live house', and I took that as a cue to meld that with what Luke wanted.

Having a goal in mind we were keen to start jaming a little more frequently and more seriosuly. We almost resurected usage of the old UNE Union Creative Arts College (where 2 years worth of Pneumatic Bell noise took place), but because it didn't have the power switched on anymore we quickly relocated to Luke's place, now out of town on a farm locally know as "Wood Park". This place has seen some pretty loose and wild jams over the years, due to different local personalities being associated with it. Now both Luke and keys player Dylan Gilliland lived there: so it only seemed natural to sit Dylan in front of the Rhodes and let him twinkly his blues-influenced melodies with his dub skank with new found interest.

For those first few jams I had conciously made a choice to play guitar differently. At home I play lead a lot, which is consistant to the Pnuematic Bell style, but this time I decided to keep things higher energy with repetitive rhythms and echoy chordal textures (rather than metal sludge, or Vai like solos). Seeing the other guys were already in the groove headspace something all clicked and had the feeling that the goal of the hybrid electro-acoustic groove was reachable, and quite fun to play.

Now, having two technology obsessed audio geeks in the band (Luke and I) as well as Iain's creative ideas, we quickly came up with a very convoluted approached to creating the live sound. Luke brought his G4 laptop into the mix, allowing us access to the world of VSTis and Reason via midi. So in front of Dylan there is both his Rhodes, and my DX9 acting as a midi controller (giving Dylan whatever sound he likes, with effects).

Luke has access to a smaller midi keyboard which he's been using for real crazy sample triggering or drum loop triggering (note: not synced to any sequence, all live). He also has in front of him a Juno synth which he mostly uses as a very very fat bass machine. But sometimes he goes for the warmth of his beautiful fretless electric bass, just to keep the low end all slidy and melted.

Iain, as previously mentioned, is using his electro-kit with an additional series of condenser and dynamic microphones capturing his acousitc percussion. Iain, Luke and I also have dynamic vocal microphones allowing us to rap or sing, most of which is being done by Iain at the moment while he plays drums. The mics are running through two different rack-efx units (mostly for verb) and the global mix through a digital compressor unit.

I have my standard Zoom4040 setup with a few new amendments: my output is now full stereo (making for great verb, delay and chorus sounds), utilising the fact the the mixers we're using are stereo (two daisy-chained Behringers, soon to be three) and the PA we're developing is like a very big 2.1 setup, almost Hi-Fi. I have the Crybaby before the Zoom, and now I also have an authentic Talk-Box post-Zoom, which sees the output tube tapped to my vocal microphone. I'm still learning to use it, but some interesting sounds are coming out of it.

Over the last months since May we've been jaming up to two times a week, anywhere between 3 and 9 hours a go. Using Luke's laptop we've been using Cubase to get a live dump of the jams, so we have an extensive recorded archive. Through [tqr] we've been hosting some of the more interesting, and usually the most recent ones, right here. You're quite free to download these to see what you think.

Our style is very diverse, and I won't spend time going into that here. I will state, though, that our main goals at the moment are twofold: to tighten our rhythm, and to continue to build a flexible arrangement method that works for all of our approaches. As we now have our first gigs booked, the pressure is on and we're well on our way.

The gigs are:

• Friday 15th of September at Bellingen Memorial Hall, with Alter Native and DJ B9
• Saturday 16th of September at The Armidale Club, with Alter Native and DJ B9

If you're around we hope you can make it, it'll be a very fun event. There's something there on both levels: you can get up and dance to the groove, or you can sit down and get lost in our upper textures, sounding so much more smooth, lush and interesting compared to your local punk band through a bad PA.

Unity Gain: L-R Dylan Gilliland, myself, Luke and Iain Mackay.

More updates to come...