2011-10-06
Another long time between drinks, hope you've all been well. I'm currently sitting in Phuket airport waiting for my flight to Bangkok. I came down here to check out the Vegetarian Festival, and that was certainly a whole bag of crazy (and then some)... Glad to be moving on though, it seemed as though the rain just would not stop and I spent my last day here sitting around the hotel editing photos and surfing the net due to the constant downpour.
Thanks to everyone who came along to the Ektoise show a few weeks back, that was great fun indeed and it was certainly an enjoyable way to get back into performing live again with the group. Although there are still a few things we want to change in order to make things better, playing live feels much stronger now (thanks mainly to having a second drummer) and it no longer feels like we're performing pale imitations of our recordings, rather it feels as though we're presenting beefed up reinterpretations of the recorded works.
At this point in time I enjoy 'Subquanta' and 'Square Peg' the most, as the first rocks like all fuck and the second has that glorious doom riff that is just obscenely enjoyable to play. I also like that both of those tracks are nothing like anything we've done before, and I daresay we're going to continue that trend. The ideas I have for the next record are so different to all that we've already issued, and after listening endlessly to the new M83 album I'm more inspired than ever to put vocals into the mix. Not that we'll sound anything like M83, don't worry! But it sure has put the proverbial fire under my ass.
As far as my solo stuff goes, yeah I still plan on putting out a record of my own sometime soon. To be honest it's really not a priority though so that'll happen when it happens. I've spent so much of the last few weeks preparing the Ektoise art editions, organizing the remix companion to Kiyomizu and sitting at work that I haven't really had too much of a chance to get things done, and when I get back to Australia I'm going to do a bunch more mixing and mastering work for The Astro Creeps and Fingerless before I bunker down too seriously with my own music. Sometimes it's nice to give yourself a bit of a break, you know! Helps regain perspective.
Looks like there are a few collaborations on the horizon alsol but I'll keep my lips sealed on those for now, I'd rather see how things turn out before I go serving up the details. But things are boding well for some fresh energy and I daresay if these come off as I think they will then we'll have some glorious music on the way soon.
Oh yes, while I remember, we're going to do some more soundtrack stuff with Ektoise, and I realize we never issued the last soundtrack material we made so we'll have to get some sort of a release together from all of this stuff. I don't know how many people would have gotten into that last one we did, it was some gruesome, nasty sounding stuff that would appeal mainly to those who like our dark ambient stuff, so it'll be good to balance that with this new work, which will be in a more melancholy vibe rather than downright blood-curdling.
OK I'm off, going to get back to the hustle and bustle and get my luggage checked in for the flight.
2011-02-05
It's been a while between drinks again but then I think that will always be the case. I'm never really not busy - if anything, I pile my proverbial plate so high that I could never hope to get everything done in a timely manner, and as anyone who works with me will tell you, I'll get it done but it may take a while! Props to my editor at Tsunami especially on that front...But anyway there are a few things to report. First off, I have another live show with Jim / Subsea at X+Y this coming Tuesday (the 8th) so if you're in Brisbane then you should get along to that. It's free so there are very few excuses that are going to cut it! Hah.
The day prior will see the latest 777 Operations release go out to the world, this time around we have Tetra - Live at Gallery of Modern Art. Quite a dark, abstract record and rather different to our album. It's even more minimal at times and gets to some very strange places that neither Jim nor I have any real idea of how we got to... Neither of us even remember playing most of this so it's actually as enjoyable for us to listen to as for anyone else, which is nice!
Of course the 777 release prior to that is the new Ektoise single Remember Well, which we're terribly proud of as it shows a whole new side of the band that may in fact come as a surprise to those of you who haven't seen us play live, and it also features remixes by Danny Hyde of Coil. Pretty much anyone who knows me will be well aware of how Coil-obsessed I am so you can only imagine how thrilled I am with this! You can download it for free here.
As for everything else, it's all ticking away... I was working feverishly on two new albums for Ektoise that I'm hoping to put out around the halfway mark of the year and also quite a lot of solo material but the current heat wave has stalled progress somewhat. I'm still ripping my CD collection to FLAC; it's turned out to be an even more epic mission than I had realized but I think I only have another fifty or so disks to go... Fuck I'll be glad when it's all done and I'll have the whole bloody lot in perfect quality but with far greater convenience than ever before.
That's all for now, I'm tired and am about to attempt to defy this bullshit Australian heat and traverse to dreamland. Hope to see you at the gig!
2010-12-28
I forgot to mention that the debut album from Tetra (an ambient project featuring Jim Grundy and myself) is up for free download at our BandCamp page. It's called Alluvium and it's a spacious, slow moving album that is well suited to rainy days and sleepy mornings. Hope you enjoy it!2010-12-27
Finally, some free time to sort out some of the massive accumulation of projects on the hard drive... Japan was crazy; a beautiful, refreshing, productive few weeks that's left me with around a thousand photos, an album's worth of new tracks and several gigabytes of audio and video recordings. I also managed to buy a handful of records and a couple of fuzz pedals - a Dallas Arbiter Fuzz Face and a Fender Blender, which qualifies as the most wretched fuzz I'd yet played and was thus an essential purchase!As of writing, I've been assembling a set to play at Ric's on the fifth of January, I'm doing a show with Jim that I want to be entirely different to the last set I did. I've been digging through a bunch of folders I haven't visited in many years and I've dredged up psychedelic 4-track cassette recordings I did in high school and ambient guitar landscapes that I laid down in 2005, both of which I'm going to work into the set alongside fresh material that I wrote in Japan.
I've also been doing a little more production-for-hire than usual; I did a remix of Adagio for Strings for Deep Blue, mastering for No Filter, production for VOID and Foundation as well as the mastering I'm about to get stuck into for Fingerless. It's certainly been a busy few months, especially with going to work every business day, but I'm hearing some very inspiring results so I'm not getting burnt out.
And last but not least, I'm still working on the Remember Well single for Ektoise. We did intend to have that out a few days ago but needless to say we're running late. Nonetheless, I daresay it will be worth the wait, and I'm especially excited to get the Danny Hyde remixes out to the world. It's a little bit more of a sombre occasion what with Sleazy passing away and so as we've mentioned on the homepage, Remember Well is dedicated to his memory. Peter was a huge inspiration to me and I'd like to think that his memory will live on forever.
2010-09-29
Starting to think about what sort of a set I should do in Japan. I'm only going for two weeks this time but I'd like to cram in as many shows as I can manage so I'm trying to come up with a good blend of old and new material that I can rearrange afresh every time I play. This means dusting off some tracks that I haven't listened to in years, which has been interesting... Sort of like looking into a timewarp and seeing a younger me at the mixing desk.The new material is coming from a different place but it's nice to see that the end-point has always been the same: to make engrossing music that enables you to travel deep inside yourself and just forget about the bullshit around us for a while. It's a cool thing being able to go back and make the old material that little bit better and I'm enjoying the fuck out of Ableton Live for giving me the means to be able to mash this stuff together in such a musical way.
2010-09-27
I've finally got this site to the point of being even remotely functional. Been quite preoccupied making not only my own music but also some other people's stuff as well. I'm producing a track for an atmospheric metal band called VOID at the moment and also working on getting the 777 Operations back catalog mastered to 24bit so I can put everything up for download in better quality than ever before.
First up is Tetra's debut Alluvium, then the Departures album. I'm just going to put all of these things up on Bandcamp because I've been really happy with how they do things and it's been a pleasure to use them for our Ektoise releases. As far as the physical side of things go, we've found out firsthand the many varied concerns of doing vinyl pressings but thankfully we've still ended up with a record we're very happy with.
As far as the listening menu for the present moment, I've been really enjoying Coil's Colour Sound Oblivion DVD box, Neurosis Live at Roadburn 2007, Grizzly Bear's Horn of Plenty, Meshuggah's Alive DVD, The Black Dog's seemingly endless array of podcasts, Nine Inch Nails' The Fragile (looking forward to the reissue, whenever that eventuates...)
I'm going to get back to it. Got a surprise release for Ektoise that I have to upload for this evening then off to the print shop to get some inserts and CD covers run off.
