An insightful compliment

Some of you may have occasioned upon Steve Loya's 'Go Flying Turtle' blog, linked via March-pane (on the right hand column folks..) and will know that Steve and I share a common love of electronic music. We exchange compilation CD's across the Atlantic, and we've built up an online friendship based on that shared appreciation of all things electronica. In my most recent package to him, I popped in a compilation of my Straightman own stuff. He seemed to like it, but the breakthrough came when he was driving back one night from a long hike, he said the context of that drive home really helped the music.

This was flattering in itself, especially as Steve definitely knows his Plaids from his Autechres.

Steve is also a teacher of art at a school local to where he lives in Leesburg, Virginia, USA. A few days ago he set his class of 6 and 7 year olds a project. He played them two of my tracks; Not Today and Dead Not Sleeping (Roman 4 mix) and told them to paint what they heard. Again, this was flattering enough, but the results blew me away!

I really urge you to check out Steve's blog on this, dated 28th April, and have a look at the work these kids produced:

Click here for Steve's Blog

Steve told me in an email today:

"I played "Dead not Sleeping" and "Not Today" for them. They enjoyed both a lot but wanted to hear "Dead" over and over again. Heads were knodding, kids dancing in their chairs - wish I had a video - you would love it. I only told 'em that this is electronic music that my friend Bob from England sent me, so they thought that was pretty cool."

I find it very insightful that kids of that age have so completely hit the nail on the head in terms of what they say and paint, and can't help but think that these kids, untainted by adulthood and its tedious formula, could teach us all a thing or two about seeing the world unbridled. I am extremely tempted, appropriate permissions granted, to put some of these pictures in my next sleave. Brilliant - thanks Steve.

K9 Returns

Well, we're now 3 episodes into the 'second new series' of Doctor Who. I have mixed feelings about it and David Tennant so far, but in fairness its early days, and last year had its ups and downs too. Episode One, New Earth was a very poor start for me, but things picked up in the following weeks story - Tooth & Claw, with a fast paced run around. I'm very much looking forward to Stephen Moffat's episode, The Girl in the Fireplace. His Empty Child story last year was the absolute highlight for me and many others (Are you my Mummy?) and the guy really seems to know what makes good Who and this one looks a real humdinger. Of course, Episode 5, Rise of the Cybermen is similarly exciting for obvious reasons.

Episode 3 airs tonight, and features the return of Sarah Jane Smith, companion from the 70's and K9 after nearly 30 years away from the series. Barry is coming round to celebrate this fact, and pizza will be ordered. Of course, I've already met K9 in 2003...

On top of that, the old dog will be appearing in his own, CGI cartoon series aimed at kids, not really something I'll be watching, but nice to see never the less.

And What Have You Done With My Body, God?

No one will care about this blog entry, but me!

ZTT are releasing a 3 CD and 1 DVD boxset of very early Art of Noise tracks, demo's, unreleased tracks, samples and stuff that generally unded up on the cutting room floor. I can't tell you how excited this makes me. The collection, which is currently at mastering stage is titled "And What Have You Done With My Body, God?"

Move along now, nothing more to see here....move along.....

'I used to be somebody....'

I thought I'd share this with you all. Its a memento from Barry's and my time at Romeike in Peterborough. We lived together for about 12 months or so in a shared house and we found it a rather desperate time. This would have been 1996, we had just left college and its fair to say were expecting more than life had thus far presented us. We felt trapped, and being the pompous twats that we were, thought that we were better than any of it. On reflection, we probably were, but everyone needs to start somewhere and in the end, things turned out fine. In fact, the truth was, these two arrogant young bastards, fresh from art college, probably needed a major dose of real life, and we certainly got plenty of that.

So then, this 'cartoon' for want of a better description, is a newspaper cutting with our faces drawn over it. I did this a lot at my desk, since it was my job to read the papers, source material was in abundance. Thats me in the middle, tragically harking back to a time when we had something to offer the world (actually that was probably never) and desperately trying to convince the people standing over me that I used to be someone. They're all laughing of course, I'm cutting up magazines for a living after all and such a claim is patently ridiculous. They patronise and humour the old duffer. Thats Barry, on the far left, shriveled, totally bereft, a broken, destroyed man. All he can do is stare at the floor. I'm clinging onto past glories, he's just waiting to die.

It summed up how we both felt at the time, so much so that Barry kept it and recently unearthed it. My, how we laughed. Bitter sweet. Not long after this 'moment', I moved to London for a new life and Barry moved in with Penny and a new charity career.

Oboe, Mummy and the Cow foot Woman

I've said it before on this blog and I'll say it again: You can't beat good company. There's nowt like it. For the past week we have had two guests staying with us, Helen's mother Hushna, hence forth known as Mummy, (since this is what she requested) and Swazi, Hel's sister and general nutjob, hence forth known as Oboe (since I find it funny). I had only met the pair of them once before (maybe twice) and then only briefly - they seemed nice enough, but generally speaking, if there's one thing I've learned over the past few years, its that Hel's family are a bit 'special' and you're never sure quite what you are going to get. You can tell its special, because having been with Hel for 6 years, this is the first time I've met them....Shenanigans, that's all I'm going to say on the matter.

Well, I needn't have worried. The pair of them were lovely, and I had a hugely entertaining week, listening to their stories, being witness to their insanity and hearing tales of the Cow foot woman. Much wine was drunk and much quality food was eaten. great stuff. When the 3 of them get going, they don't half talk....

The house seemed very quiet on Thursday night I can tell you.

Creative Endeavourers

Well, a few things on the go on the creative front at the moment.

Firstly, with Rich's Humanform project and my Straightman stuff going onto iTunes, Napster, Rhapsody etc, we decided some cross polination would be a good idea from a marketing point of view. i.e. people buying Rich's tracks would find a link to my tracks, and vice versa. The way we intend to do this, is produce an album of tracks, consisting of each others remixes of the others work. This has already proved quite a fruitful idea, especially in terms of getting the old juices going again - Rich has near enough completed a remix of Silly Arse, in the big f*ck off drum and bass mould.

Secondly, I spent most of Friday evening at Barry's, catching up on his japanese adventures, chatting about life as a married man, listening to music and the rest, but also putting the final flourishes to plans for our next short film; Ashes. This is a simple piece that Barry has written, very much in the Coates mould. We need to get a few bits together and we are likely to film it this month, and probably finish it in time for May. We're trying to make each project more complex than the last, giving ourselves a chance to break back into it very gently.

Lunchtime Aspergers Part ...erm...something...

Woo, yeah! Its back! Lunctime Aspergers (can't remember what part, too lazy to check) with some more of my Top 50 albums of all time. Take it away!!

17 & 18. Biosphere - Cirque & Substrata

I discovered Biosphere ten years to late really, somehow they/he dropped under my radar when these two classic albums were produced, shame as the 21 year old me would have loved them. Biosphere is Geir Jenssen, a Norwegian gentleman, and I think his locale really plays a part in the music he creates. There is a definite glacial feel about some of these tracks, I hesitate to describe them as cold, because they're not. What they bring to mind are little cabins, with roaring log fires in the middle of a snow topped landscape. There's that kind of comfort in his work. This 'respite from the cold' feel is emphasised in tracks on Substrata like 'Chukhung' where it sounds like someone is in the room with you, strumming on the guitar, or 'Times when I know you'll be sad' where that same person decides to sing quietly to himself, lit only by the moonlight reflected off the snow. Cirque is similarly icey, but seems to take its cues more from the media inside the cabin - maybe during a party, as there are a gaggle of voices heard through out. Whichever album you hear, and I honestly believe they are as good as each other, these two albums are soulful, soothing and beautiful.


19. Aphex Twin - Complete Ambient Works 85-92

I remember, early nineties, ambient music was entering its revival phase, with the Orb at the front as champions. I had The Orb's first album, and The Ambient Collection by the Art of Noise and I loved them and wanted more. So this word ambient was being bandied about and then I read an article talking about this 'ambient' thing and a few of the bands were namechecked. The two I recall were Horizon 101 and Aphex Twin. Now, I have no idea what happened to Horizon, but Aphex went on to become one the most important electronica composers of the 20th Century and that'ss not over estimating him at all. This is the first album of his that I bought, and as far as I know, his first album. Production wise its VERY sparse and simple, but at the same time its unique. All of the usual 'techno' sounds of the time are there, the TR808 drum machine lends its distinctive sounds and there is little in the way of samples, allowing the simple synth sounds to shine through. Its the way he uses them though that marks him out, huge wet reverbs, melancholy bass lines and pulsing rhythm's - this is a really emotive album, at times dreamy (Xtal) at times uplifting and summery (Heliosphan) and at times sinister (Schotkey 7th Path) all at a time when things were very much of the 'dumf dumf dumf - take you higher and higher!' variety. Thats not to say this album doesn't have its share of 'dumf dumf dumf', it does, but right back in the mix where they hypnotise you rather than make your feet move. Once upon a time he wa sindispensable, every release was vital. Beautiful and as he was later to prove he could do ugly very well too - shame then that he now seems to spend his time musically jacking off into his fans faces...

20. Nine Inch Nails -– Downward Spiral

This is one of those albums that took me by surprisese, at the same time as I was listening to Aphex Twin's first album, Barry was listening to a lot of industrial stuff. Normally, in my early 20's and strict electronica man, I would have steered well clear (that is until I discovered the Beatles, and a whole new world opened..). But progressively, over the weeks, this playing in Barry's room in Carlisle, started two worm its way into my system initially it was the more electronic tracks like Closer and Heresy that grabbed my attentionon. I say electronic, this was different to the stuff I had in my collection, aside from the obvious lyrical content, this was dirty and distorted and broken. I loved it, this was as sound I didn't know and it wasn't long before a purchase was made. I think that this album is Trent Reznor at the very top of his game. Its angry and self pitying at the same time and the sounds are wonderfully evocative of a man in a bit of a state.

21. Beatles - Magical Mystery Tour

I love every one of the Beatles albums from Rubber Soul onwards, with the possible exception of Let it Be or the White album which for me would have benefited hugely from being a single disk. I seemed to stumble upon them at time when they were becoming fashionable again, just as Oasis were starting to rip them off fine style. This was entirely coincidentalal - I tend to shrink a little from what is 'fashionable' if I can help it (I still hate Oasis if that helps). I got back from college in 1995 when the Beatles Anthology series was on TV and watched them, half heartedly. It was a weird thing, I watched and watched and slowly came to realise, deep in subconsciousus, all of these songs were buried and I thought 'hold on, these songs are all AMAZING' I couldn't believe that every track they had made was perfect, and that they had sat, ignored, filed away in my brain for so long. So, with nothing else to do except try and find work, I started spinning Mum and Dad's LP's. A revelation. All of it and wentet mad for them, started buying the CD's (when I did finally get work!) started buying books and reading everythinng I could get my hands on - I had 30 years of catching up to do! Enough of the back story - why have I chosen Magical Mystery Tour? Well, 'in my life, I love them all' and I know, in some ways MMT doesn't qualify as a PROPER album, but its just so 'whacky'! And maybe, for a production consciousus guy like me, this rings all of the bells that need to be rung from the technical standpoint too - it just sounds amazing every trick and gag is pulled off brilliantly, its just full of fascinating effects and sounds. Strawberry Fields is my favourite Beatles track of all time, and is a good example of the madness in the studio - mellotrons, slowed down tapes, splicing and reverbs. I am the Walrus is my second favourite, for its almost dada-ist lyrics. Both are genius, and this album is proof to me that it is George Martin who should be regarded as the fifth Beatle.