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Download mp3: Summertime Quiet

This is a version of a previously release collaboration with Henriette Isabella Berggren, entitled Summertime In Bureaucratic Portions. The blurb goes as follows:

This was an odd collaboration that happened via the Renoise messaged boards. Henriette Isabella Berggren, from Norway, was looking to provide vocals to producers so that she could gain experience and confidence in the process of vocal recording. One of the items she posted was a demo of a folk song called Summertime - just the vocal track that you could tell she had sung to a simple guitar backing. I took the vocals and went about mapping them into a new song with different chords and rhythms. This was difficult because the original take wasn’t sung to a mechanical bmp, and her phrasing wasn’t as sure of itself because it was a demo. Nevertheless I got a very electronic and moody backing track done and sent the mash-up back to her. Fortunately she liked it and we went ahead with a release, which is what you hear here. Henriette did express that she wanted to do a stronger vocal take more suited to the mood of my music. We did a little work on that, but due to complexity of life, the project has been postponed to an unknown date.

Fast forward to now, I was doing some spring cleaning of files and stumbled upon the file. Instantly the drums seemed a little misplaced, so I muted them. My ears fell into the deep chords and how Henriette’s voice floated above them like some half whispered dream. A quick edit and remastering resulted in what we have here, a quiet mix.

My imagination wanders… Again this is tense heat, but at night. A sweaty dream that boarders between bliss and nightmare.

Flying the skies of The Netherlands, Pilot7 released an untitled stomper last year that caught my ear. I’ve long had a fascination with the perceived ‘temperature’ of a song. This one prompted intense inescapable heat, drilling humanoids into a delirious crawl across some desolate surface. I suggested to Pilot7 that I could offer some guitar improvisation in order to enhance this vision. Guitar and voice were added. The tense result can be downloaded here:

Red Sands

The title is partly inspired by a recent trip out to Quilpie, and in particular a little geographic feature called ‘Baldy Top’.

Firstly, apologies must be expressed for the large gap of not posting. Busy times have prevented the time and headspace to appear to sit down and recap all that is happening. A summary is in order which is provided below. No official releases have been made, but many are on their way.

Winter this year has been particularly bitter, it being said that it was the coldest we’ve had in about 17 years. Why is this significant? Cold outdoors is never really a problem - it’s when it’s that cold inside that you’re aching and you find it eroding your confidence for doing anything but keeping warm. So several disciplines were neglected making it hard to summon the zap necessary to work on music. Added to this I had long periods of waiting for computer dramas to be sorted. It was an unexpected slog and now I’m not so sure I want to fantasise about another Armidale winter like I did years ago. August’s warmth and wattle bloom has been very welcome. Recent trips out to outback Queensland (e.g. Quilpie) have shown me a new world to consider. Although the heat out there might kill me. For now I’m still here.

The studio computer, ala The Magical Black Box of Doom, is now back on it’s healthy legs again. Not only did the hardware have to be rebuilt from scratch to accommodate the replacement motherboard, I had to also rebuild the operating system from ground up. This was a headache that lasted a few weeks and still isn’t completely sorted. I’m very happy to be up and working again after about 6 months of downtime, the longest stretch of time since I was young where I’ve not been composing. I’ve since been playing catch-up, both on pressing projects, as well as old ones slowly burning away in the background… However, I’m not as happy with this new motherboard compared to the old one - there are odd little glitches here and there. So far they have not interrupted with recording, and I’m not fazed enough to pursue an expensive smoother solution.

Composing has been random and focussed on getting a feel for the various projects I left back in Summer. A lot of this has involved finding my mojo again with playing the guitar, which got neglected as much as the composing did. Some heavy practice has been welcome. The guitar playing was especially necessary for an untitled project with Pilot 7 - a tense electro-stomper now being close to completion. The over-the-top guitar part has now been laid down, along with some spontaneous spoken word in theme with the heat of the track. A few tweaks and mastering will see this track public soon.

The other song that has seen major work done to it is a collaboration with Alexstrain called The 4th. The beautiful little piece has needed some rather dynamic and expressive vocals on my part. This has been a challenge for someone who is out of practice. Nevertheless Alex and I are deliberately being picky over the matter and working on crafting the best vocals possible. My feeling with this song is that once it is complete it will serve to be one of the best pieces of music I’ve ever been involved with. Part of the general excitement Alex and I are sharing over this growing body of songs.

Other things that are in the works are some long needed remixes of 2 Smargaid Maerd material; some even older restorations of songs Student X and Growing Old; a cover of The Cure’s A Forest; Paradox tracks Digital Geekboy, Codec, 404 Not Found and Berarngutta; major work on The Malnoia Project’s Outrofonty; and due to this amazing tool some merged work on Corporate Whore Pt.2 from the sluggish Requiem For Subordination project. Also, some soundscape guitar pieces are evolving nicely into a collection of their own…

As mentioned previously, singing has been again presenting itself as a challenge for me, especially now that I have the right gear to capture vocals properly. So I am going to do something about this like I did in 2004 with Naomi: get singing lessons. This time I’m going to try out well respected local theatre personality Ruth Strut to see if we can’t narrow down onto some disciplines to unlock my unpredictability. I begin tomorrow!

My abilities with mixing and mastering are starting to earn me some more attention. So as an initiative to get some more pocket money I’ve decided to offer my services commercially. The blurb runs thusly:

Needing an audio geek to mix or master your music? Got the ideas but not the time or skill to have that song sounding world class? Have your work polished by someone who is sensitive to sonic fidelity, and the need for presence and punch. Get in contact with me, send me a message - I’m happy to discuss your needs and demands to deliver a fantastic result.
Need some vocals or voice recorded? I offer affordable rates with the added convenience of doing it local. A professional quality recording is guaranteed using the best in tube and solid-state processing.

- I’ll be dressing up some of this website to better spruke this service… One project I have already done is a wonderful instrumental track by Carmazine called My Little Underwater Strawberry.

For a long time now I’ve been pondering the possibilities of getting a new guitar, specifically a new electric guitar. Having a look around for a dream setup involving a floyd-rose, sustainer and quality electronics has seen no solution present itself. However, the itch was still there. So, I decided to make the guys happy at Black Dot Music by buying a 6 string steel acoustic guitar. It’s something I’ve actually needed for a long time, ever since my jazz guitar got stolen years ago. The Tanglewood has nice tone and sustain for an entry level guitar. I’m pleased to have it, because I’ve got a knack for composing on 6 string accoustics, possibly due to the musical simplicity of the instrument. Here we go:

Gotye continues to inspire. We saw him live recently - there’s something very amazing about his combination of stage shyness and sheer musical talent. The reliance on the backing track was the only drawback. If it has not been stated earlier I’ll state it here: Gotye has been a big motivator recently in ‘keeping at it’ with my own commercial projects, particularly The Paradox.

My friend Mykie under the guise of kwhyetteSmartdust on Deviant Art has recently stepped things up a gear in going public with his prolific visual art. I was hanging around with him lots during 2004 at the radio station exploring his DJ-invention of ‘arc music’ - laying many tracks on top of each other live to create a dense, surreal and futuristic soundfield. His visual art matches that approach in many ways, and deals with futurism and dreamtime. Do go check it out and leave him a comment or 49.

Many website updates to come, so stick around and keep watch.