Musics I done

Thursday, March 30, 2006

a circle

pessimism = realism

pessimism is a luxury {quote: pessimism is a luxury a jew cannot afford {golda meir}. it happens to hold true for gentiles.)

realism is an ideology (quote: the third world is not a reality, but an ideology { hannah arendt})

thus, realism is the ideology of luxury.

hmmmm.

i was thinking about art, too.
i've always thought about art as something a person does in their spare time, and not for profit, that the money incentive ruins art. but take a person working at some hypothetical job that they hate, and does their art in there spare time. does it not make sense that this job could be any meaningless job? even ones in the 'creative' industries? furthermore, if a person could do their art in there spare time, and hold down a job, but is offered money for their work, why not take the money? does it make the art inherently less honest? it's true that if a person goes into business making 'art' then their motivation will change to one of their pocket, and not their expression. but with the same theoretical slant, that wouldn't stop them producing true, not for profit, art in their spare time!

see, it's okay to sell out.

so i will compile my sell-out enabler. it will contain 'love', 'purple milk', and anything else? the choice is yours.

Wednesday, March 29, 2006

touching opening ceremony

can't be bothered to write anymore today. i want to go to bed soon. you'll have to take laurence's word for my weekend.


so here's the new song, written and performed by dildano, produced by dj gallow slutt. unfortunately you can't here the original on line, but you can buy it from dilano's website.

from dj gallow slutt's diary:


touching, opening ceremony


the track starts with an outtake - i'd been listening to the track through with massive delay and reverb on the backing vocals (to accentuate the mad wails) and found this wierd haunting laughter at the end, left off the finished mix. so what's remixing but emphaising that which was subtle in the original, rejigging the balance? i hope the intro isn't too similar in effect to 'my superb'. i just wanted that first line to ring out in it's purity and optimism. we then enter a lofi section, i was thinking of doing something quite dubby, and this is how it turned out. then i run out of song, and from there on it's into the wilderness of my imagination.

i have to say, i scared myself during the recording of this song, and maybe i will scare you too. during what i might now call the 'degree absolute' section, i really felt like number six in 'once upon a time' (the penultimate episode of the prisoner). after a terrible journey home in which misery upon misery was piled upon me (i won't bore you with the details here) i came home, recorded the beat boxes, and then added the 'squeeze...hold... games' vocal line, and as the recording went on, just started moaning and howling down the microphone in a cathartic cleansing. later, in bed, someting really wierd happened..i suddenly started feeling awful, really mentally sick, then images of crocodile jaws flashed into my mind and i got heart burn.

this song demonstrates a couple of things i have been meaning to try out in other contexts; the beat boxing, which i'd like to try on the TOTF cover of 'the national anthem', and the synth sound which has been fashioned for 'new boyfriend'.

we then go into the electro section of the song, which was my original idea for the remix. i fancied going map capsule markets style at the end with a fat fast beat, but my hands don't seem to be able to make those anymore.



frost bitten

this is not really a remix, since i didn't have the source files to edit. the song is by my attorney. again, it is a song i loved so much that i wanted to contribute to it (it's funny but true, that's how love works - it's selfish). however, when thinking about what i wanted to do with the track - which consists of nothing but one guitar, found sounds and many, many vocals - seemed the kind that paul oakenfold would do a drastic 'perfecto mix' pillage of, making it 'safe to play in the clubs' so that e'd up dazzlefucks high on wkd and sash! could recognise it on the radio or something. so this remix consists of the full song (painstakingly time stretched to a steady beat - you wouldn't notice from the original but there are subtle changes in the speed of the playing, which made arranging the track initially a knightmare) with a horrendous drumbeat and synth line vomited over the top. it's meant to a be tounge-in-cheek, and knowingly kitsch, without actually being bad, which is why i didn't shout 'are you ready, malaga?' over the top and sing along to the last chorus in an attempt to 'liven up' the song further. i might add that for the album though. i'm particularly happy with the arpeggio at the end.



my superb


this song was written and performed by mr peter hawkins, aka dandy o. howitzer. you can download his original post-disco-metal version at his website. i really felt the song, and had to do something with it. the acoustic thing is basically a total reaction against the bleeps and distortion of the original (and an attempt to return the song to it's 'girl from ipenema' roots), as is the spacious intro. i could have got two remixes out of it by splitting the two styles apart, but why do that when i could put them into a single obfuscation? stripping down to the bare vocal and then building back up was the equivelent of knocking down a building except for the roof, but having been recorded to a regular, mechanical, beat meant putting all the acoustic guitars on (there are more than you think, and miking up was a hassle so they all blend into a hissy mixture) was easier than it could have been. i added some subtle vocals, and then joined in singing with the ending as did Rachel Weston.

Wednesday, March 22, 2006

how to spend a weekend

i'm having so many nice weekends at the moment. well the one before last wasn't, that was purely functional (not to dig) but before that was newcastle and the next one is birmingham! the point is, i went to nottingham last weekend. didn't go on friday night for reasons already detailed. i got up especially early - about half 8 (the usual time, but this is a saturday so lets take that into account. changed at stoke-on-trent and derby (missed conecction at derby due to hunger, but there was another twenty minutes later). i met sarah at the station and we went to a nice big old old pub for lunch (the bell) (just a soup (a plain soup, it must be said) for me) and then to page 45 for hellboy and the record shop for the eels dvd. has anyone noticed those hanson pubs that are popping up everywhere recently? real ale and whatnot but still chains, as evidenced by the thouroughly-2star food (and that's by my standards, not AA). they seem to at least be maintaining guest ales and unchanging atmosphere. so then we went back to listen to music and so forth. the day passed quickly and pleasantly. sarah has the same guitar as me but it plays much better, so i need to have the action sorted out on mine, or something. so then we made a quick bit of pasta and headed out to tim's play, 'the retirement of tom stevens'

it was excellent, and tim's character was a work of perfect tragedy. the ending was unsatisfying, probably deliberately so, but i think the only problem with the play was when this horribly dysfunctional family deciding to play a drunken game of 'truth dare kiss command or promise', a toe-curling plot device, although it didn't go nearly as bad as it could have done. anyway, it was a deeply uncomfortable play, so very succesful then. afterwards we hung out with the cast, which sarah and i enjoyed lovingly. hung out in town, but avoided any clubs, it being gone midnight &c. shame we didn't go to the legendary rock city.. i don't know if we could have faced it. i've become so conservative in my extreme tastes.. no, i would have enjoyed it if we'd have gone at the right time or been an excitible crowd, and the indie night looked rubbish. so we went back home and watched spaced (but couldn't get the hoamge-o-meter to work).

sunday, we had a light fry up (sausages, egg and waffle) and watched the never-ending story! i refrained from pointing out what they'd changed all the way through, but with the knowledge of the book, the film doesn't work as well because it's about a different medium. but i had to make clear the ending of the first half of the book, that comprises the film - for which, you too will have to read the book 89). then we went for sunday lunch with everyone's favourite jolly biochemist, emma! and her boyfriend matt. we went to 'sausage', which i suggested, i think because in the back of my mind was jess's assertion that 'three jolly butchers' does the best veggie sausage sandwich in brighton. big roasts, and fine, aged belgian ale all round, it was a perfect lunch. except for the music. it started off fine. but then the james blunt acoustic session album came on. and we had to open our big mouths. we complained, and they turned it up and put it on repeat. the fuckers. i wasn't kidding, i don't just not like the blunt-ster, it very nearly spoiled my meal. but the killer was when they made a concerted effort to get rid of us, by taking the album OFF random and allowing the fullly heinous shite of his cover of 'where is my mind' to be played. as soon as we'd left, sarah got a text from her friend who was still inside; they'd just taken the blunt off. it maddened me that we'd left a tip and been treated like that.

then i went home.

how to redeem a swastika

crossing out a swastika can be tricky, since it itself is a cross at it's heart. but by putting the cross in the right place, a wonderful thing can happen.
this is what the regiciders should have done:

Monday, March 20, 2006

did you hear about the dyslexic synthesist?
she tried to modulate an ocelot!

Saturday, March 18, 2006

how not to spend an evening

leave the office after half 5, having finished packing up some point of sale bunf to send to customers, and in doing so missed the post office. walk to saisnbury's, get a text from ewa, who will be coming round to make some musics. i offer dinner too. i plan on making feta and spinach pasta (again, as i've still both ingredients left from the last attempt [which was nice] so i'll make it before they both go off}. so i need onions, garlic, and hell, why not, organic mushrooms and sundried tomatoes. what a feast we will have! i was delighted last time i had sainsbury's orgainc mushrooms, although i must admit, i cooked them very well.

6:15: ewa will 'set out in five minutes or so'.

7:00: text informing me she's running late. i've been internetting in the intervening time.

7:59: "i'm in the pub trying to get some energy so will be a while yet sorry. shouldn't be that long though". i respond with 'which pub? what kind of energy?' hoping i'm not being niave. i quickly text back with 'sorry, i meant why not go the pub here?'

8:40: text saying she's by the royal northern college of music. at this point i think she won't be too much longer as she is now 'in town' so to speak, the rncm being the official start of the city centre (in my book), and i chop an onion and boil a kettle (best advice my mum ever gave me) "i'm skint though so prob best to avoid pub. i'm just over tired love" she writes. i do not understand.

the feta's gone off, smells like quark, which i'm sure somepeople would like but it's not going to go with pasta. the other cheese i have is a mature farmhouse chedder - which must have earnt it's name because it smells like a dirty old barn. i throw them both away. i'm sorry regiciders. they were horrible. so it's just oniony spinachy pasta then. never mind.

10:26: "i'm half dead, think i should be best to go home for a good rest, i had a late one last night..."

eh? where's she been? what happened? what about the food i'd made? or the music, it's not like we could have started doing anything at that time of night anyway. i couldn't bring myself to text back because i couldn't not say what i wanted to say without seeming angry her. i won't go on.

anyway, no lie in for me tommorow as i'm going to nottingham to see the guys and the play there. so that'll be nice.

xx

Friday, March 17, 2006

2 new works of art are available for download

the first:
what'ya call a wookie whose trousers keep falling down?
too baggy.

the second: dj gallow slutt's remix of the my attorney classic 'frostbitten' is available at his myspac (listen to th'original here). my inspiration was to do what paul okenfold did to street spirit and wide open space, and so forth.

things i'm unhappy with: it was made by up cutting every bar of music and timestretching to the bpm, so it does wander out of time (often at the start of the chorus, obivously the word 'rubbing' causes problems with my dividing skills). also, i made it using the terrible time stretching algorithm of cakewalk, so the song itself sounds quite nastily phased. and it doesn't have a dj gallow slutt vocal, which i may add tonight. it won't make it any better, but the idea of the song was to rape and corrupt something beautiful, i just wonder if having me shouting 'are you ready, malaga?' over the top would be the wrong kind of terrible.

Monday, March 13, 2006

how it feels

on a scale of nought to 'whatever and ever our men':

3% One Angry Dwarf and 200 Solemn Faces
2% Fair
9%Brick
0% Song for the Dumped
20% Selfless, Cold and Composed
12.5% Kate
25% Smoke
15% Cigarette
15% Steven's last night in town
1% Battle of Who Could Care Less
9% Missing the War
20% Evaporated

and as a cvg (circa 1993) review:
graphics: 87%
sound: 79%
presentation: 85%
gameplay: 92%
lastability: 48%
----------------
overall: 65%.
good concept but inherently bugged and over way too soon. sequal please!

{n.b.: if anyone can remember any other stupid categories cvg had for rating games, i'd love to include them (i'm talking mainly to andy and dan here). they did have presentation, i'm sure.. preceding the use of 'animated menues' as a 'bonus feature' on dvds by a decade. honestly, they rated the bloody menus! or was it another badly put together shit rag of a magazine where it was considered acceptable to have sentences that trailed off the page and dodgy adverts involving women with game gears postioned over their nipples, and charlie brooker doing adverts for special reserve games? anyway here i am trying to make light out of being dumped and i end up wittering on about computer games magazines from 1992. it's all a learning experience i suppose.}

on a different note, i invented the best word ever today: 'sargasm'. please use it, and then mention that you learnt it from me.

this is possibly the wierdest thing that's ever happened to me

i was in the shower, and found a small sticker on my side, with 'examiner no 69' printed on it.

what the fuck does that mean?

it didn't help that i'd dreampt of the xfiles, mulder and scully and i were talking to someone who'd been locked in a box with an alien corpse while someone had to ring the troops and tell them that they hadn't seen anything.

i was going to put up the 'valuntynes' tvgohome here, but it doesn't reflect my feelings at all so it would only be misleading. .

Saturday, March 11, 2006

“I could launch a religion and take control of you all, but I know that would be wrong”

grant morrison

i dream of spreadsheets

it feels like it's been a while since i've done a proper post. i've been trying to cut down computer hours outside work, for reasons detailed in the title. not this has stopped a quick post-pub email check into an in depth exploration of the deepest reaches of the internet. that's an exageration; there is nothing left on the internet. but it doesn't stop me checking.



so i saw andy in nescastle. sorry, newcastle. this seems a long time ago now (two weeks, as i said i haven't posted much) so it hardly seems worth writing up now. the only photo i've put up is on my flickr thing-> and it's of imogen's hands. but if you want to see 15 photos of andy looking at me (or other things), i'll email them to you. we went in oxfam and they had the first four series of the x-files on vhs for 13 quid each. as we were examining them, and arranging the tapes into their correct order (so that mulder's face looked right), a reciept fell out of one of them; it'd been bought a decade ago for 80 quid, and that was only one box. they could have probably got them for a lot more, if people still i said this to my mum, she said we should have bought them, sold them on a generic internet auction site, and given the profits back to oxfam. but they know what they're doing, this isn't the sally army in lockerbie we're talking about (dan, please can we go? please? i need a pilgramage), they had 'vintage vinyl' in there for forty quid! in oxfam! we saw chaché with imogen, and i a caught a cold but not the flu that everyone had. we went to durham for lunch with luke and imogen too, which wasn't the moving experience i thought it might be. i made my peace with the city last time i was there (was that the last totf gig?). but the food at the court in was a little rough - if i'd known that 'croque madam' meant 'loads of fried shit' i'd have got something else.

luke was fun, i enjoyed his company. he said 'you're a vegatarian, you should eat your salad.' i thought, 'dude, i get plenty of vegetables. you're the one who needs salad.' but i said, 'everyone needs salad.' which is more true, especially as me being vegetarian doesn't mean i always get as much salad as i should. there's plenty of veggie junk food! i had a great veggie burger at earth cafe yesterday (underneath the buddist centre). it wasn't really junky though, it was very wholesome indeed. ah, these fleeting meetings. i met barney and robbie humphries too, both for very short periods but both demonstrating how easily they could slip back into my life. i love those meetings. you can see someone for an hour in a whole year and really enjoy it. but it does fill me with sadness. can someone tell me why? is it because i miss these people, or because i feel the need to let go and clear up my head, and that thought makes me sad? wait, both of those are the same feeling, the missing of the friends.

btw, i'm going the green man this year, so if anyone wants to come along with me, you need to get tickets very soon because it will sell out.
must go now.

Monday, March 06, 2006

you won't like this

what's a hi-hat's favourite curry?

tikka tikka tikka tikka tikka...

slade joke

what did slade call their concept album about the jewish diaspora?

come on, flee the goys!



review of newcastle activity coming soon.

Wednesday, March 01, 2006

oh now we're really fucked

damn.

the pain necessary to see when they play in your town

euros childs:
march:
1 : CAERNARFON, GALERI
2: BRIGHTON, HANBURY BALLROOM
3: BRISTOL, CUBE CINEMA
4: BIRMINGHAM, ACADEMY BAR
5: LEEDS, THE FAVERSHAM
6: GLASGOW, MONO
7: NEWCASTLE, CUMBERLAND ARMS
8: MANCHESTER, STAR AND GATER
10: READING , SOUTH STREET
11: LONDON, BUSH HALL
12: NOTTINGHAM, SOCIAL
13: NORWICH, ARTS CENTRE
14: LIVERPOOL, ACADEMY
16: NARBERTH, QUEEN’S HALL
17: CARDIFF, CANTON LABOUR CLUB

ephel duath:
28th March UK @ Sanctuary - Pontypridd
29th Marc UK @ Ferryboat - Norwich
30th March UK @ Satans Hollow - Manchester
31th March UK @ Corporation - Sheffield

valerie:
manchester retro april 7th
april 8 lookin for gig
april 9 lookin for gig
april10 lookin for gig
april11 lookin for gig
april12 lookin for gig
april13 lookin for gig
bristol april14th
london april 15th
brighton april 16th

cult of luna:
april:
22 UK NOTTINGHAM Rock City
23 UK MILTON KEYNES Pitz Club
24 UK SOUTHAMPTON Joiners Arms
25. UK MANCHESTER Star And Garter
26. UK LIVERPOOL Barfly
27 UK GLASGOW Barfly
28 UK YORK Barfly
29 UK BELFAST Limelight
30 IRE DUBLIN Voodoo Lounge
may:
01 UK BIRMINGHAM Barfly
02 UK LONDON BARFLY

Robert Jesse and Simon Lord:
2nd March, Barbarossa hootenanny featuring Hush the Many, Elysian strings et yours truly,
Luminaire, Kilburn £5

13th March, spitz, with assorted guitar wizards come to teach us some hot shit, ouch.

free papers

i don't 'get' free papers. i don't trust anything that the media wants you to know for 'free'. someone's making some money here, and if not from you, then from somebody else.

however, i often have a disparaging nosey over someone's shoulder on the tram, and i spotted a headline that made me have to pick up the metro and write it, sic, here for you now:

"ARMS FIRM 'LINKED TO HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSE'".

i can only laugh and say 'like, duh'.


and then on the same page another classic pulp story. it concerns the davinci code in court over copyright theft, an argument from the defence lawyers presented as gospel: that the authors of 'the holy blood and holy grail' didn't own copyright over their own work, since it was in the public domain. well, it is now, anyway, since they published it now hang on doesn't that have serious implications for any one who claims to own copyright over anything. imagine if you'd made a documentry about something, and then someone came and spliced footage of harrison ford into it and made millions. you'd be furious.
using their same argument, i could go down to waterstone's, buy the davinci code , photocopy it and release it under a new name, since obviously what they mean by 'public domain' is 'available to the public'. the dicks.

i've redone my myspac. i'm a musician now. i still hate it but at least i don't have three of the sad fuckers now.