Playing only songs from the album When Victims Fight the band delivered enhanced versions of the songs with live intensity and genuine emotion, all which came across most enjoyable and beyond expectation. Going off my limited knowledge of their YouTube posted performances, it seems that the band is quite tight and Hunz has embellished the songs with live keyboard, extra melodies and effective ‘tape loop’ style self-sampling of his vocals to perform lovely weaving auto-choruses and builds. There were many moments when I though ‘this is all better than the CD, especially the strength in Hunz’s voice’. It was a slight shame there were only 50+ odd people there to see all this – but I’m reminded of a time I saw Augie March playing beautiful music to a small and totally unresponsive Bistro Audience up at UNE in 2000 before they got very big on Triple J. Somehow, and I know it’s a cliche, I feel it’s the same for Hunz: that wide and appropriately deserving attention will befall this music one way or another. Good gigs leave you with this feeling. There are all too many acts out there that suffer from having too much style and not enough substance – but if you ever catch these guys play live you’ll see that there’s no such issue here. The music left us feeling both entertained as well as inspired.

What a motivator to keep on with my own music.

We met up with him after the set to have a quick chinwag. He told me that the Renoise XRNS files for the new album Thoughts That Move have been released, which you can read more about here. Oh yeah, and of course that means the album has gone fully public and the band will be performing the new songs at future gig dates (lucky for Brisbanites). As stated before, I’m excited for him and think that it’s a good sign of what is yet to emerge.

As for myself at the moment there is little to report other than I’m continuing with much work where I can as time allows. I’ve recently started using Reaper, which is audio software based on much the same philosophy as Renoise. I’m looking at ways I can get the two joined up with ReWire, or using Renoise to do mixes and Reaper to do masters. More soon…

Heading back about 3 weeks to Easter both R, the animals and I set off for Brisbane to make temporary camp at R’s Mum’s place. Once prepared R and I headed out for a road trip in much the same intention as our Birdsville trip last year to see more of outback Queensland. After three days of driving up through Roma, Emerald, Longreach and Cloncurry we finally make it to Mount Isa. You have to see Mount Isa to truly believe it – it’s like something out of sci-fi movie crossed with suburban Australia plonked on Mars. As we were winding through the rocky semi-desert hills heading west toward the town, we could see plumes of heavy smoke rising. Getting really close to the town we rounded one last set of hill to see it all appear before us: massive chimneys and elaborate mining industry towering over a sprawling busy town, all surrounded by rocky red desert country hills. As we were going into the town the usual billboards were on the side of the road welcoming us. One stood out as humourously unforgettable: “Welcome to Mount Isa – Now you’re a REAL Aussie!”. In this we felt content.

We had a good stay over and enjoyed a few things like the swiming pool and seeing tropical birds we’ve never seen before. The following day we headed south west into more remote country and ended up at Boulia. Seeing that the country had recent rains it all felt abnormally ‘green’, and there were an excess of flies and locusts to add to the discomfort. We also found that the car had a flat tire. In the morning we found a local mechanic to patch it up for us, but later on the road to our surprise we found it flat again. Pulling into a tiny little place called Middleton we got a hand from a friendly old local which basically resulted in us putting the spare on and being done with it. Swealtering in the sun we needed a drink, so we followed the old bloke into the pub and got some icey drinks and had a yarn to young Brittish exchange worker as well as the old fella. Before recent rains they hadn’t seen rain for 8 years. Can you imagine that? I noticed a poster on the wall from Bird’s Australia asking ‘Have you seen this bird?’ showing the ever so rare Gray Falcon. I asked the old guy if he had seen any around. “Yeah, all the time!” He explained that we might see a few up the road a bit further nesting in one of those high thin communications towers. Sure enough he was right. Not only did we see one of these rare birds: we saw three – quite possibly a whole family of Gray Falcons and a nest. Satisfied with our twitch we kept on the road east until we finally rolled into Winton. By this point we were very tired of the whole camping thing and traveling huge distances just to get anywhere – we decided to treat ourselves to an airconditioned motel room and take it easy.

More adventuring had been pre-planned at that point but due to R coming down with a head cold we decided we had enough and to head back to Brisbane to relax. Of course it wasn’t that easy. It took two days of driving just to get there! The first day was epic, a sunrise to sunset slog from Winton all the way down to Roma. R’s cold had hit full on, and we were glad to be back in modernity of suburban Brisbane.

We spent the following week around the city, doing a lot of things but not enough ‘nothing’. One highligh was meeting none other than Hunz in the flesh for the first time, and had a good chin wag with him at Fundies in Paddington. It’s always good to put a ‘person’ to the ‘artist’ – very nice guy. If all goes to plan I might head up that way again on the 22nd and catch him live in The Valley. We also got to catch up with Jarrad and Bec for dinner and a day of bird watching up at Lamington NP. But by the time the end of the week was coming around my version of R’s cold was starting to manifest…

Heading back to freezing Armidale didn’t feel like fun. As soon as we got there we had to begin the ardous task of moving house. As I’ve explained before in this blog, we had to move due to the landlord wanting to move back into Galloway Street – so we found a new rental at Dorothy Avenue. With some great help from Dad and Simon (who also helped with my tape machine, more on that later) it took us the whole week to move just 3 blocks away. You can now probably see why I need a holiday. Moving sucks. Moving is worse when you have cold. There’s nothing nice about it and I won’t write about all the little problems and remaing issues. One thing I will say is that I’ve already set up the core parts of my new studio space – I’m already coming into some nasty RF interference problems with the power lines, and I have very ugly sounding bass response (probably due to the ceiling being lower). I’m not sure how to approach these problems just yet as we’ve barely started living in there, but I will speak of them again soon…

Ok now for some musical style updates:

A few posts back I said that Hunz’s new album Thoughts That Move (which I now have a lovely physical copy, ta Hunz) was up online for audio streaming at the RPM website. Well RPM took it down for some reason, so the link I provided would have seemed wrong. He’s since put it up at bandcamp and you can listen to the whole thing here! I’m really happy for him and I think the music deserves wide appreciation. The launch of the record will be on the 28th of May, so keep an eye on his website.

Another tid bit that has surfaced is some noisy guitar work I did for the artist Vivace (formally known as BotB) – he’s just release a new album called Polderdub which you can get here. You can hear some of my ‘off the rails guitar’ in the song Test Results. Not for the faint hearted…

We are also very happy that as of the end of this week we’ll be off on a much desired holiday from work! For a few weeks we’ll be out driving around western Queensland like we did last year – more desert adventure that will hopefully lead us to Mount Isa. It’ll be food for the soul and good thinking time. We’ll also be spending some time in Brisbane catching up with some folks and items of culture. For now, it’s adieu to computers, and adieu to the web (said with much joy).

By the way, Hunz’s finished album is now up online for streaming listening here. I had a listen to it today and did some reflecting on the mix work I did on the project back in the flurry of activity during Feburary. With the benefit of hindsight I can detect one or two micro-moments where I think “gosh that should be 5% more THIS way”, but otherwise I’ve happy with what is there. It was a great opportunity to help Hunz get to that final point, and to have a hands on experience with his fantastic music. I’ll keep you posted if he does a physical release.

Still working hard on Hunz mixes and the final results will be out next month.

There’s a few articles I’m writing and a minor release of an old album I’ve got to write up all in progress. I’m largely waiting for the right headspace to do these to give them justice and make them a nice read. Fortunately summer here is a quieter time (both at work and locally with events, etc) so time allows for these things. This also means I’m freed up for the time being from live commitments with Ghost Inputs, and I can get back into composing and recording on Renoise.

I’m particularly aiming to finish two respective EP/albums with Beatslaughter and Alex Strain, most of which simply require the always daunting task of recording vocals. Since I have more time I’ll be trying to sing more daily to get the voice up to an acceptable level. It’s very difficult and I find myself often thinking that I’m just not cut out for it. But other moments everything flows and sounds good, so I’m aiming for the ‘more equals better’ process. I think, though I’m not sure, two roadblock songs will be finished very soon: “The Objector” with Beatslaughter, and “The 4th” with Alex. The pressing need to move on grows daily, and I have my own albums and projects I want to finish off in 2009.

I’ve recently acquired a Tascam BR-20T, and I’m looking to play around with it for mastering purposes. I don’t write here much about clients I’ve been doing mixing/mastering work for, but I’ll mention two that are exciting me somewhat: Aflare and Distance (aka Lackluster) – I’ll try to link you all to these finished works better than I have been doing in the past.

Oh, and a little update from the last post’s story regarding my car exploding. My Dad and I are going to see if we can do various things to the motor down at his home in Taree before Xmas (i.e. machine a slightly warped cylindar head). If that all goes well I’ll be up in Brisbane relaxing until after new-years. I might even write some noisey stuff on the laptop…

Room40.org played host for Tujiko Noriko, who played at the Judith Wright Centre on the 20th of August. Playing to an audience seated or lying on the floor with eyes closed, Tujiko delivered an interesting set of ‘avant pop’ by simply singing along with her laptop as it played the backing tracks. Her voice was so captivating, full of confident yet understated melody that lulled you into some sort of magical place – it became the central focus of the performance. The most amazing moments were when the backing track became paired down to minimal elements allowing us to focus on the drama of her performance. It certainly was a treat to see and hear, and largely unlike the usual live bombastic noise we’re used to with rock and pop experiences. She has a new album out which I picked up, U. A particular standout (as it was at the gig too) is ‘I Can Hear The Heart’, which is both dark but reaching toward the light. You can find out about the album here:

Worth mentioning also is the support act, Melbourne’s II. Armed with just two guitars and an array of effects devices, they played two loop-based long-form improvisations that merged post-rock warmth with ambient strangeness. Their moments of gold were produced with sensitivity to melody’s relationship to emotion, yet keeping it interesting with abstraction. You can get more here:

Now patiently waiting for Spring to emerge…

The format will be as follows: Name of artist or artists with website link; a title which is a link to the mp3/ogg of the song (we’re not doing streams at the moment); then followed by a short description of the song. You can also subscribe to The ReSelektor Podcast. At the moment the podcast only features available mp3s, not the songs that are in OGG or are hidden behind PHP downloaders.

Without further ado, here is The ReSelektor – 1

Beatslaughter – Innere Leere :: Released for the Camomille 100 release, this is Beatslaughter at his slick and dark peak. Crisp sound-design rolls funk-glitch grooves over reflective ambient atmosphere. Strange futuristic sounds grunt in primitive echo, a soundtrack to de-evolution.

Mushen – Breakhopcore :: As the title suggests Mushen tries his hand at a street-smart acid groove fusing breakcore’s fast percussive antics and the arrogant strop of gansta-hiphop. Amen and acid nostalgia abound.

BotB – Kreissägebläter :: BotB makes a second submission into his recent foray into creating nightmare dramas of epic proportion by welding breakcore violence with Wagnerian orchestral excess. This very well could be the song played with the next war in your local neighborhood.

Kaneel – Pyjama Lapin :: The multi-talented Kaneel continues the dark brooding emotion of recent work with his trademark cute melodic weirdness and melancholic melodica. Released for the excellent first compilation of Petite & Jolie.

It-Alien – Churches Of Umbria :: The Renoise Ninja-Grandmaster It-Alien returns with an epic folk-classical soundtrack that has a richness that no one else is capable of. We’re still asking the question: How is this possible to do with a computer?! Listen and believe.

Kenny Beltrey – Ffwd :: With a breath of fresh sonic air Kenny Beltrey returns with a straight-up groove that begs being danced to, along with atmospheric repeated melodies sweet enough to carry you through the night.

Hektic – Back To The Future :: Short and sweet, Hektic marries oldschool tracker blop with enough thick and weird sonic texture to put this in a class of it’s own.

Danoise – Kys mit blodrøde smil :: Totally unlike most dance oriented scene music, Danoise masterfully takes us on an emotional journey through pop-folk with excellent placement of avant-noise. The soundtrack to soul and sky being ripped open.

Void Pointer – Stoorzender :: Difficult to categorize but unmistakably irresistible, Stoorzender grooves with uniqueness. Bridging zones between psychadelic and hiphop, it’s a lofimat danceparty on an inter-dimensional ice sheet.

Le Monsieur Baguette and Mushen – The Unbelievable Attack Of Les Horrid Bananas :: Monsieur Baguette teams up commando style with Mushen for an all out breakcore gorge-fest full of comical insanity and pure pining emotion. Amazingly done with nothing but native Renoise effects, check out the XRNS here.

Alex Strain and mr_mark_dollin – Uneasy :: Dark cinematic introspection weaving through lost jazz melody and doom-atmosphere. Free of drums, deep space is given to a tense narrative, like waking up sweating from some obscure nightmare.

Tenniscoats – Totemo Aimasho

For Barry Ray – New Days

A little more about Lawrence…

I had the chance to meet and chat with Lawrence. I passed on copies of my albums Futurology and 2 Smargaid Maerd’s Unconsciousness half – which he seemed encouraging about. We discussed the opportunities of playing soundscapes live in Brisbane and about some people I should network with to make that a possibility.

In the weeks since getting my RAM established I’ve been working probably harder than ever at generally every project. Nothing to boast of yet in the way being finished, but some new twists and turns are leading me down new avenues. My previous soundscape work (linked to above) was largely based on automations, samples and in some cases noise. Now, things are moving in a much more melodic ambient direction. I am getting deeper into using tape-loop processing to build large progressive pieces using my guitar as the main input, not dissimilar at all to Robert Fripp’s method. I’m working on being able to perform this live. It may prove to be a more direct voice for my unrestrained ideas, being less of the compromised-commercial variety (like some of my works in progress, ala Paradox). Ideas are floating about to play in conjunction with art-gatherings, or non-pub venues.

Along with everything else being worked on, I will share some of these slow melodic pieces soon…

corn7.36-d

The title is somewhat a joke and in full keeping with the idm-inspired instrumental-title-format fashions of the last 10 years. Also, did you know that Corn has absolutely no nutritional value whatsoever?

Other than that do check out another new song entirely done by Alex: Effective – a wonderful example of his sensitivities and imagination.