Track Listing
1. Sea Shimmer
2. Star of India
3. Stream of Thoughts
4. March of the Plank Spankers
5. Slow Waves, Always Returning
6. Interlude
7. The Air-Conditioned Digital Nightmare
8. Regiment
9. Where There’s Life
10. Up on the Hill MP3
11. Heavy on the Magick MP3
12. The Home Straits
I always like to have an idea in my head before I begin recording and with “Heavy on the Magick” the idea was to do the complete opposite of ‘Fade In/Fade Out’. So I cut back on the guitars, used more keyboards and took a more traditional rhythmic approach with the return of the drum machine.
Stand out tracks include the multi-ethnic ‘Star of India’, ‘Up on the Hill’ and the pulsing title track ‘Heavy on the Magick’.
One interesting story is that “Sea Shimmer” had previously been used as background music at my wedding. We were asked to bring along some music to play during the signing of the registration book and my soon-to-be wife suggested that I bring along some of my own music. So the morning of the wedding I quickly burnt that track onto a CD and took it to the registry office.
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Track Listing
1. Fade In
2. Vertical Slide
3. Today and Tomorrow
4. So Long
5. Jolly Good Mood Music
6. Now
7. Let the Power Fall
8. Let’s Not Forget…
9. The Return of Carter MP3
10. Lost on the Wind
11. Simon’s Song
12. The Forever Waltz
13. Just a Man
14. The Road Never Ends MP3
15. Fade Out
With the CD-writer and “Now Here” under my belt, my confidence returned and the need to record grew in me. As I had a little more cash, I bought a kit that enabled me to record onto my PC and turn it into a digital 16-track system.
The idea behind this collection was to record some guitar-based instrumentals without using a drum machine. Being never totally happy with my own drum patterns, I decided to ditch them and use the rhythm guitar as the metronome. So you have a much stripped down sound and a much more personal recording as I haven’t got any real FX or drum rhythms to hide behind. You could call it my “naked” album.
This is one of my favourite CDs and is the first collection that is well balanced. Stand out tracks include ‘The Return of Carter’, ‘Lost on the Wind’ and ‘The Road Never Ends’.
Track Listing
1. Now Here
2. Slipaway
3. Reverso MP3
4. Hevisqal
5. Acoustisynth
6. Joe 96
7. Nothing to Do
8. Deelai
9. Jazza
10. Tinkitar
11. Descender
12. The Road Home
Now this is a real hotch-potch of material. Despite being compiled in 1997 when I got my first CD burner and began transferring my tapes onto CD, the songs here were recorded between 1994 and 1997 – though I couldn’t tell you which were which.
The most noticeable thing about “Now Here” is the introduction of the guitar synth in my sonic armoury. Yes, in 1994 some cash came my way and I purchased a second-hand Roland GR-1.
The opener is a gentle ambient piece and it’s not until “Reverso” that you realise that I’ve got a bit experimental in the passing years. With this track, the rhythm guitar is a weird, grating backwards sound (played live with guitar FX) it works well and is probably my favourite track of this collection.
Track Listing
1. Ark 1
2. Ark 2
3. Ark 3.1
4. Ark 3.4
5. Ark 4 MP3
This recording marks my decision to stop trying to write song lyrics and to experiment with instrumental pieces. Not being one to be frightened of the limitations of the technology available, I decided to start recording the four extended instrumentals that were to be “Ark”. The idea was simple – let’s just try and fill up an entire 90 minute tape.
Anyway, despite it’s rough sound and terrible musicianship, I am proud of the noise I made here and how it all slots together. Recently, I have returned to a couple of ideas from “Ark” & “Afflicted” and given them a sonic update on “Without Words”. The sleeve is particularly nice too.
Track Listing
1. Soft Targets
2. A Twist in the Sand
3. Whole Lotta Nothing
4. Afflicted
5. Bongo Bash
6. Eventide
7. Behind You, Beside You
8. The Clock Keeps Ticking MP3
9. Sun in the Rain
There are very few redeeming features on this one. The playing is not too bad but it is the lyrics and vocals that I am not happy with. The one track I still enjoy is “A Twist in the Sand” which sees me improvising and overdubbing an instrumental with my 12-string and 6-string acoustic guitars. It is sloppy in places but for something recorded with a crappy £20 microphone in the front room of 115 Scotts Road, it is atmospheric in places.
The other stand out track for me is “The Clock Keeps Ticking” which contains the best lyrics I’ve ever written. It is more of a poem than a song and I still am not totally sure where it all came from, the words just poured out onto the page. I know that there are a couple of references to TS Eliot’s work and I was trying to encapsulate the masculine angst of several archetypal characters. Pretentious stuff! 😀
The sun came out and we spent the last two days involved in Bacchanalian pursuits. Luckily, the hangovers were slight and the drunkeness minor. Hurrah! It’s good to flex the booze muscle once in a while.
Visited the local Woolworths recently and was impressed by the number of Sony PSP games being released on Thursday. It seems that Sony is making much more of an effort for the European release than it did for the US one and Nintendo did for Europe. Man, I might have to smash open my piggybank. Yes, yes, I know it is sad for a 34 year old to play computer games but I only play for half an hour or so when I am in bed to send me off to sleep. If I’m not reading, I am having a quick game of golf. So that makes it OK, OK? 🙂
Do you ever get a twitchy eye? I do when I’ve been using the PC too much. Got a twitchy right eye at the moment and it is driving me nuts. The booze didn’t manage to cure it. Now I am walking around with my right eye closed to rest it, so I am typing this with my one good eye.
In the post: Scenic – Sage EP & Curb Your Enthusiasm Series 4 on DVD.
The theme of the day: door handles.
With DIY giant “Homebase” offering a 10% discount, me and The Missus decided to grab some cheap brass door handles for the newly-repainted doors I had finished several weeks ago. (Yes, we’ve been living in a house without door handles all this time, which suits Alex the Wonderdog just fine as he doesn’t have to ask us to ease his passage through the house as the handleless doors upstairs are left ajar).
We purchased some handles and brass keyhole covers, but it turns out they were the wrong size. Not a problem, we returned them. However, we’d managed to make a mistake when buying the replacement handles and needed to replace them again. Ho, ho, ho. Back to Homebase again. This is why I don’t do DIY – because I am a moron. The devil is in the detail. Anyway, handles are fitted to doors and I can now have a movement with the door closed – so that’s my fun spoilt!
Keeping with the door theme, a joke.
Q. When’s a door not a door?
A. When it’s ajar!
I love those old jokes.
Also yesterday, we’ve been splashing the cash and bought a new radio for the kitchen. The radio reception in our area is “piss-poor” – trust me, that’s a technical term and in order to enjoy the various broadcasts out there, we decided to finally invest in a new player. So we bought a DAB one. DAB or Digital Audio Broadcast is digital radio and so there’s no hiss, cracks, pops or farts. However, you STILL have to get a good signal for the thing to work so this involved me trailing the wire antenna behind the kitchen shelves. It’s a very nice unit though and I thoroughly recommend it especially for all those “new” stations you would normally need the Internet to access such as BBC Radio 6 and 7. The purchase of this new sound system gave me an excuse to terrorise The Missus with my own music on CD over a cup of tea. Ah…in sickness and in health, for poorer and poorer, with good music and bad…It’s good to have a captive audience.
Talking of audiences…are you a musician and ever wanted to shoot your audience? Well now you can with the MIDI Gun. Those crazy kids…I remember when MIDI devices had black and white keys.
Meanwhile, while out shopping yesterday, I realised that my entire personality is based on TV catchphrases gleaned from watching too much TV. My current favourite TV show is the comedy programmed “The Mighty Boosh”, which can only be described as “The Goodies” on hallucinatory chemicals. And so I have been wandering around saying things like:
“My legs are my best feature. I have the legs of a young antelope.”
“You’re ‘aving a larf. This is an outrage.”
“I’m old Gregg. Wanna drink Baileys from a shoe? Wanna go to a party where people wee on each other? I love you…I wanna hurt you.”
Etc.
I desperately, urgently need to get a life. The past three years of captivity has softened my credentials somewhat.
Anyway, you watch episodes of “The Mighty Boosh” courtesy of the BBC website…you know where to go. Just look in the TV section and you’ll find them there episodes. It’s all part of the BBC’s digital strategy to get TV shows online. Bravo, say I, but ditch the crappy RealMedia and make so we can download them and watch them on our widescreen TVs when we want to. Afterall, we DO actually pay for all those TV shows…so techincally they belong to us. 😉