mmd

Last Friday the 13th Iain and I played at Uralla’s Top Pub for the Get Off Your Arts Dance Party, in support for Tijuana Cartel and playing after The Knobs. At the peak there must have been over 50 people there. It’s hard to focus back to this event as already my mind is deliberately erasing the memory of it. Some things went really well – we got to set up early and make sure all everything was running perfectly for the PA; and some moments during the performance had a nice spark to it. But the usual drawbacks and mad surprises were present: no payment for playing; no certainty with food arrangements; stunned unresponsive audience; storm water leaking heavily onto the playing area threatening electrocution and causing flooding of the floor during Ed and James’ set; bumping and damaging equipment; and of course people getting roped into running the PA when there should have been someone formally taking that role all along. I found it very hard to get into the performance, and only felt the magic once during “Life This Free”. But otherwise I just couldn’t keep up with Iain and where he was going, nor did I feel emotionally committed to the whole operation. Earlier in the evening I had a mild panic attack from feeling claustraphobia and noisy indecision inside the pub and had to run outside just to breathe. To tell you the truth I probably would have been happier at home in bed with a Stephen Donaldson book!

I’m feeling a little burnt our from a few things, playing live and rehearsing is part of that. I feel I need to “heal”. Perhaps a break is in order, but I’m not sure. There are other things to organise first:

Late last week R and I received notice from the rental agents that our landlord wished to move back into the Galloway Street residence where we are living. We have been given 6 weeks. This news came as a bit of an emotional blow at first, but I’ve since taken it on the chin and starting to figure out the daunting puzzle of how to pack up everything. This means we’ll have to find a new rental, at least for a short time like 6-12 moths, while we plan and initiate building our OWN house somewhere else in Armidale. It’s all a little bit of a case of bad timing. This means I will have to put any studio production work on hold at least for the next month or so while we move, and who knows if the new rental we have to settle with will have an acoustic space I can use for work. I’ll update you all of what will happen here, if I can: my internet access may be little more restricted for a while. Maybe that’s a good thing.

Ghost Inputs (Iain MacKay and myself live) will be playing at the Get Off Your Arts Black Friday Dance Party, which is this coming Friday. We have a few more practices to go to make sure we’re playing up to the same level of energy we had last year. This is straight off the back of a ‘warm up gig’ we did last Friday at a private party in Armidale…

With every gig I come away thinking “now I’ve seen it all” but I keep getting surprised with new random insanities. This last gig hosted all the usual madness of having no run-order, no sound check, and random people everywhere on all sorts of substances. But the cheery on top was undeniably the stage set-up: “erected” in a back yard on uneven ground causing the whole thing to slope forward in differing degrees. To add to the odd situation there was a tarp above the stage which was so low that when you stood up your head disappeared up into it, meaning that the audience couldn’t see who you were! The combination of a sloping stage and the low hanging tarp meant that I had to stoop over to play, which ended up making my back a bit sore. The whole PA and lighting was run off just one power point and there were weird glitches and blips causing the whole thing to feel like it was going to fall over at any second. Iain had no power to his laptop so that decided to make a problem of itself mid set – nothing like a recalcitrant computer to make you feel helpless on stage. Despite all the above we had some ok moments where things came together. I couldn’t help but feel a little numb to everything, perhaps out of self preservation. Yet again I’m scratching my head thinking is it worth it at all, but I have hopes that the gig we have next Friday will be a little better. I’m kinda missing time to work on my own albums…

I’ve been running on empty a little bit lately, hence not much posting here.

Hunz’s RPM Challenge mixing was a lot of time consuming work but also a lot of fun: it’s now all finished and shall be released soon! The album is called “Thoughts That Move”. I will let everyone know when it goes public – you have a good one to look forward to!

Other than that, work has been insanely busy and time consuming due to the teaching semester starting (meaning I’m running around again recording all these lectures). To top it all off R and I have been doing a lot of ‘house hunting’ and ‘property hunting’ in the last couple of weeks. That can be enough to totally do your head in with all the options and possibilities. At this point we’re leaning toward buying land and getting something build for us (not by us), possibly using new green technology and ideas. And of course, we must include somehow a new space for my studio! I’d miss the old roomy acoustics at Galloway Street, but our time here is now limited, and it’s now the moment to commit the ghastly act of conformity and join the property investment game. Part of me feel icky about this, but part of me accepts the inevitability of it all, perhaps looking forward to the quiet modest commitment. I’ll let you know when the decision has been made.

Other parts of me yearn for travel. Sometimes I get cabin fever from being locked in studios all the time, and the cooling crisp air of an approaching autumn beckons me to be on the road. Some new ideas are entering my head either way, but all I have to do is reclaim my time to enact them…

Link to YouTube.

Iain MacKay has recently got his creative video gears going again and finished a lovely video matched to my music. The song he chose is called Sub Conscious and is from last year’s album 3 Smargaid Maerd. The dark moody music give Iain’s images a doomed nostalgia filtered through a montaged dream consciousness. The work, I believe, will be on display this Friday at Armidale’s NERAM gallery as part of a new media exhibition. It’s quite exciting to finally have one of my songs have a proper video to it and to finally get on YouTube. Iain has a whole stack of other works that are well worth checking out, as well as more in the pipeline.

Iain and I will be playing live as Ghost Inputs again this year too, so stay tuned for dates.

Let’s start with some ghostly images thanks to R:

All in all a good performance! Possibly out best so far, but still a long way from perfect. Iain reported recieving many positive comments after the show. I didn’t stick around to find out, as I was pretty over it and needed the peace and quite of home. Why so? Let’s tell the story:

R and I were set to go up from Armidale to Wytaliba with our car load of music equipement and camping gear at 3pm, aiming to arrive at the venue two hours later. A mere 17kms out of town my car decides produce an alaming little explosion and strange sounds causing us to pull over. Deciding that car was un-drivable we hitched back to town, got in R’s car and drove back out to my car with some oil and to better inspect what had happened. It turns out the radiator had exploded! A visible crack had allowed all the liquid inside to fizz out everywhere rendering the car’s cooling system defunct (and who knows what else just at this moment). Realising we couldn’t get my car back to town we headed home and started to call the local road-side assistance organisation to book in some towing. Fortunately, a very friendly Simon from the NRMA was nearby and I was off on the highway again with him to get my car. Despite the cracked radiator the car would still run ok, just enough life in it to drive it up onto the tow truck. Simon nicely droped the car off at the mechanic and everything was squared off. R and I had a quick bite to each, made sure we had everything pack in her car, and headed up the highway, again, at 7pm.

We bumped our way into Wytaliba after 9pm, to hear the party going at the shop and Bruce’s punk-metal act Suspected Terrorists brutalising some aggression into the air. The vibe certainly didn’t seem that welcoming, and we had a little trouble finding Iain amongst the bleary eyed roamers and drunk people arguing about something. R found Iain grooving out to the music and despite us being 4 hours late it was ok to still play live set after Bruce (whew!).

The highlight of the set was our new version of Massive Attack’s ‘Angel’ which we’ve morphed into a much more dancy version. We had a good handful of people get up and groove out to that, and thus Iain did a good job of extending it out to take them on a longer ride. It was strange though, I felt we played even better the song after with our own work ‘Life This Free’ but having hardly anyone dancing for it – I guess people love being rewarded with something they know. The vibe wasn’t quite there with the party, some 50 odd people milling about, a lot of passive observation and quite a few moments of aggression or imposing manipulatively behaviour. There were two notable moments of this. One was a younger fellow decided that he needed to join us on the drum kit, play out of time and generally ignore the feel of what we were doing (even though he was happy enough about doing all this). The other moment was between songs toward the end of our set where an old bloke came up to me and started gibbering something I could understand fully, something about how I don’t need all this technology I’m using and that I’m a crap guitarist. He then proceeded to give me the finger! I guess you can’t please everyone! Who knows what that was all about…

Fittingly, the power generator ran out of petrol just as we finished our last song.

Iain, on behalf of Zia, had offered us to stay on and sleep over, upgrading from camping to sleeping in a room. But we’d both had enough by that point. Feeling pretty pumped from playing and realising that it was only 10:30pm we decided to make a run for home, to peace and quiet and neglected pets waiting… In bed by 1:30am. What a gig adventure!

Ghost Inputs on YouTube

The above video is a 10 minute ‘highlights edit’ done by Iain. If anything it gives you a taste of the style we are working on.

Ghost Inputs are set to play live this Saturday the 22nd at Wytallibar, and with any luck we’ll have some media for you.

The Ghost Inputs Halloween Gig for 2008 has been and gone! Overall, I felt it was a little hit and miss due to a smallish attendance, most folk waiting politely for the punk band after us, Suspected Terrorists. We did, however, achieve some songs with higher ambitions and complexities, so this will give us confidence to really ramp it up with future gigs with a better vibe. Vibe is everything playing live. You really pick up on the subtleties in the room, the intentions and tensions – and it ends up affecting the music.

Mum was visiting for the event, and managed to snap a few bits of evidence:

We’ve another gig on very soon at the Armidale Club, on the 6th which is this Thursday night. in support of TuneFM’s birthday bash (I think), and this time we’ll be on late. After that we’ll have some time to develop ideas for the 22nd of November, at Wytallibar.

Thanks to R, Alex Z, and Mum for coming along to support. Special thanks to Simon for being a front of house engineer for the evening, the sonics were excellent. We were filmed too, so I’ll let you know if a youtube video surfaces…

Iain Mackay and I have yet again changed the name of our live duo project from Solsonic to Ghost Inputs. It feels good as a name so far, so we’ll have to see if it sticks. We’re set to play live again at the Armidale Club on October the 31st, a suitably dated event for our new name. Reharsals have been fairly solid so far, and we’re really honing in on ’set ideas’ for songs that allow for refinement rather than plain searching for anything half decent to play. It’s a nice balance between improvisation and highly structured dance beats – you can dance to it but it’s also food for the brain.

So if you happen to be in New England on Halloween do come along to the Armidale Club to see Iain and I do our thing. We’ll try to get some more photos to post here too!

In the mad rush of things going on at the moment Iain reminds me that we’ve a gig on that I’ve forgotten about! This was last Wednesday the 24th, leaving only two days to get ready for the Armidale Club’s open mic night on the Friday the 26th! Holy smoke, I though it was going to be a month later! Nevermind I thought, been practising for a while now with Iain, so we won’t do too bad.

The evening was opened by Ed Campbell’s 299’s project throwing some laptop driven pop to ears that may not have experienced such a thing before. He had some fine moments during quiet sections and the electronic vibe paved the way nicely for Iain and I to go on second. Our project name has moved onto ‘Solsonic’ and operating as a prog-dance duo. Here are some in-the-heat-of-the-moment-photos thanks to R:

I think we played for around 40 minutes but it was hard to tell due to being caught up in the whirlwind of the sound and performance. Overall we achieve our goal very well, to play progressive improvised loop-based music with a sense of fun, groove, melodic engagement and characterised entertainment. Of course, many minor slips occurred, and things can ALWAYS be improved upon, but the overall energy was right on for the aim. And it was fun to do! That seldom could be said of playing live, as there are so many ways it all can go wrong. I left the gig feeling that something small but important was achieved, and that Iain and I can now build upon the live idea with confidence.

The 50 odd people were generous with attention and applause – no heckling or looks of utter confusion could be detected. Assorted audients came up and gave thanks after the show, which is nice to hear from people you do not know, or from people who are not directly ‘there to support the project’. One particularly satisfying encounter was with a Zia from Wytaliba who invited us to play live for a fund raising gig for the Stockwood Festival during late November. To be asked to do this is a big honour, and I’ve long wished to play live there one day. Looks like there is much rehearsing and refinement to go!

Finally the dust is settling on a very busy period, so busy to the extent that participating in this blog and regular web antics has been a difficulty. Work has simmered down to acceptable gentle levels, and personal life has done much the same opening doors to time for regular practice, composition and mixing. And releases. This I am looking forward to!

In what has felt like a blink of an eye I have moved residence! The Pink Tank is no more. My studio and all my junk (much of which has been thrown or recycled this time) hasn’t gone too far as I’ve remained in Armidale. I am now located at Galloway Street. I shall get some images up soon, but for now you can take my word that it is a lovely leafy and quiet area on South Hill. The space is a little larger than the flat, being a big old house with odd rooms and shrouded back yard. I’ve already spent time setting up the studio, placing important sound absorbing material up in the room and placing the speakers in the best possible position for audio bliss. The results have been impressive! I think I’m getting a better sound than the Pink Tank: a clearer stereo image, and much clearer and deeper sub. It’s a joy to work on music in there.

Some regular coaching with Ruth Strutt has me feeling a lot more confident in singing technique. We’re working specifically on ironing out old bad habits of constriction, and exploring the possibilities of the baritone part of my voice. For the first time ever I’ve really enjoyed singing low and resonant, opting for an octave down when I used to opt for an octave up. Ruth is also getting a sense for how high I can go, which can be up to a G#6 (or 5?) in full body voice, and even higher using a proper blend technique (mixing body with falsetto). I’m still slowly working toward doing vocal recordings for my songs (for which there are many to do), but this now feels easier than ever. There are a few outstanding recordings that need doing for Alex Strain and Beatslaughter that are motivating me as goals.

I’ve a new toy: which I’ve dubbed Loopzilla. This a Boss RC-50, brand new. It effectively means that I can do away with the studio-computer as a tool for live guitar looping (so no more lugging fragile computer bits to venues). I can layer and loop audio on the fly, very similar to the tape-loop Frippertronics approach. I’ve already recorded some interesting melodic textures using this device, which seem to spill out of my hands intuitively in layers and overdubs. I’m keen to test it out in a live situation, mostly likely with Iain MacKay with his electro/acoustic drums. And there will be no doubt more additions to a growing library of delicate ambient guitar pieces, possibly evolving into a separate release project.

Speaking of Iain, we’re working on a little film project. He’s put together a rough montage of abstract time-lapse imagery. I shall be viewing this and deriving some sort of soundtrack applicable to the visuals that he can further edit into some sort of cohesive work. Think psychedelic gardens…

Thursday night was spent sorting out the final parts, sequence and length of our live set. For me the parts were starting to be solidly internalised, like reflexes sparking off the fingertips. Iain and Becky had a bit of this too, but only to be balanced with a creative uncertainty of songs so young in their life undermining confidence. Then Iain came close to over straining his voice, so we decided not to push too hard for the remainder of the night.

As you will see in the picture below, our set list finalized to: ‘House Mouse’, ‘Free Her’, ‘Flowers And Towers’, ‘Don’t Smoke’ and ‘Let Television Be Your Guide’. I’ll briefly describe each one. House Mouse is an uplifting funky electronic groove that cycles between Iain’s bass samples and voice samples, all the while Becky and I improve a similar uplifting melody set on accordion and keys respectively. Free Her is a slower two chord lament with Iain touching on the sad absurdity of Bindi Irwin’s public grief – it can be quite a soulful song where in all comes together. Flowers And Towers is a fun contradiction of my sludge-nu-metal chugging down low as a brooding bass with Iain and Becky doing a contrasting jubilant melody/lyric on the top. Don’t Smoke starts off with minimal synth-funk with Iain ranting about the topic, then moving into a harder uplifting groove with Becky soaring long moody notes over the bouncy mechanics. Lastly, Let Television Be Your Guide is an oldie from the Unity Gain days mutated into a hilarious cheese-funk stomper, with Iain in full blast rant mode about many unconnected absurdities regarding local celebrities and ‘the good life’ down Bellingen way.

Last night, Friday night, was gig-time. Luckily we had a chance in the early evening to do a complete run through of the songs up in the artspace. I wish I had recorded it, as we played the songs better than ever before and better than the gig. Free Her was completely moving and sequenced near perfect enough for a ‘final take’. As soon as we were done it was time to pack up and go.

The following should be of interest to anyone who wants to get into playing live music and has a romantic vision of the whole operation. Reality is far from any glory you might have dreamed up.

Packing up, moving, re-setting up gear (often multiple times in one night) is a very real drag and often a mood killer of being in the musical zone. It’s mostly stressful and things often go wrong, get broken or lost. We were ok this time though, and we helped ourselves by leaving behind a lot of gear we didn’t need. In fact, we couldn’t afford one piece more of anything because as we turned up to the venue we found someone had made assumptions about just how much space we needed to perform. 1 by 3 meters was doable, but awkward to be jammed between band gear, foldbacks, and technicians still crawling over everything (including leads). It made for another stressful experience to further prohibit ‘getting in the mood to perform’.

It’s tight work maintaining mental clarity with unnecessary pub noise and dealing with people coming up to you while you’re trying to set up. It’s hard enough dealing with over-enthusiastic organisers attempting to inflate your ego, drunkards talking utter nonsense, or confused engineers slowly dealing with a band that does their sound a whole lot differently to your average pub rock ritual – let alone maintain your zest to nail some weird and delicate tunes. Very young tunes.

Eventually everything gets set-up and the show is ready to roll. House Mouse begins and the rhythm is thankfully going along fine. But I could already tell that Becky, having only played with me twice before on this track, was still not sure where place herself. There are the usual nerves as well. While the track was ending crazy Pete felt it necessary to come up on stage with us (read, squeeze with us) and yell his approval at the top of his lungs. It was kinda funny and kinda off putting, if you can imagine. No applause. 50 people in the pub and their all chatting away as if nothing much is happening.

Free Her resulted in a bit of a wobbly grasp in the dark for the previous magic we had earlier on, and we didn’t get it. Disruptions had destroyed the vibe. It wasn’t a train-wreck though, and I was happy enough with some melody I got in. Then it was time for some cheesy metal antics with Flowers And Towers, although my rhythm wasn’t as sharp as I would have liked.

Iain produced an excellent ironic rant in Don’t Smoke and the strong rhythm saved us enough from the uncertain structure. He tried to bring a vocal melody from a different older song (Brothers Sister) but it seemed a little alien to what was going on. TV was lots of fun – Iain blasted away with his words with full energy. We finished up, received a small applause and encouragement to keep playing as there was still time left to do so. Having nothing prepared meant that we had to improvise on the spot. Iain was gracious enough to let me play his drum kit thus putting him on keyboard duties. We moved through a variety of grooves, with Becky warming up to her usual Arabic themes, and Iain producing complete blip-blop weirdness on the Juno. If the rhythm were tighter it could have almost past as a serious part to Disco Volante.

Then the set is over. And what are you left with? No glory here. Just the feeling that you’ve now got no more than 20 minutes to pack up all your stuff and get the hell out of there. Doesn’t even leave much emotional space for ‘ahh, that’s over phew’. And the usual debatable verbal praises are coming forth, pawing you for more commitment to the cause, more conformity to the larger entertainment machinery. I hope by now your possible romanticism of live music playing has now dissolved.

Didn’t I say earlier on, not only a few months back, that I didn’t want to do this anymore? What’s changed here? Despite the above complications I have come to an arrangement in my head. It begins with two axioms regarding keeping ambition of playing live in Armidale within realistic expectations:

1. There are too few people here.
2. This town is too straight.

Locking onto those points prevents me, or others under my direction, from getting involved with epic dreaming and scheming to possible events and projects that will flop because of their own inability to conform to stagnation and boredom. Now, where does my compromise lie?

I actually like very much being creative with Iain, and Becky too when she’s along. There’s no other active performer that I know of here that has such consistent intention to work at music (although what we attempt is very much by his control and by my support). I need that social interaction as an artist and musician. It is enough. It’s not an absolute ideal, but an absolute ideal right now is not necessary. It’s my version of going down the pub after work (although I’d argue it’s a healthier version). If this means we do odd things here and there in Armidale in the form of performance, then that is OK – there is currently no ambition to elevate that to something more ego inflated. I possibly would entertain the idea of playing more serious music festivals if we had the material to support it, but it remains to be seen if that develops. There is no formal statement of intention in that regard yet, and that is fine. In the meantime I can get on with my more precious projects at home, slowly.

Anyway, after packing everything up we attempted to socialise a bit and to see what the other bands had to offer. Disappointingly I left early, after having two rock banks blast our ears with clichéd sludge, made worse by an overly large PA and the pub’s acoustics. Coming back to an ultra quiet flat, eating toast, reading, and being a house mouse myself, was the preferable option. Realisation seldom happens in a drunkard cacophony, but silence (in full unsympathetic terror) offers the true gold of growth. My early conclusion? Indifferent.