Ongoing progress……..

Tomorrow I’m going to do a to-do list. It’s one of the things on my to to-do list.
So here’s what’s happening. I’m continuing with Continental and have finished two more tracks, Conquering the Romantic and The Day Star.. I’ll work a couple more days on this for the moment and then need to switch my priorities to preparing a few new things for some live shows which will be confirmed, hopefully, in the next day or two. What has been already confirmed is that I’ve been kindly invited to play Lumiere at the NFT (national film theatre) in London on December 2nd. For this show, as it really seems an appropriate place to be able to perform, I’ve decided to do a new cut of the film, and add about 15 minutes of unseen footage, thus giving me a few new scenes to try out a few of my newer pieces of music, namely something from Mysterious Skin and some things from 19 Crescent, along with, of course, some of the original Lumiere music and a couple of pieces from Imperial. And, I’d be a liar if I said I wasn’t going to play some Continental stuff..
That said, I’ll be moving into film editing and compositing mode for the next week or so, which is always a nice change of discipline after such a busy studio schedule…
Hopefully I’ll be in the US in a few weeks time, in the bay area, so if anyone has any plans for me to entertain them, just post you ideas.. I’m telling you now though, the two young miss guthries, need food and clothing, so while it may seem amusing to make a comment inviting me to play in your living room for free…don’t… (unless you are jack, who has earned the right, by living the plan just like Ruth Fisher.)
So… What else? Well I’m on the jury for the 49th Times/bfi London Film Festival – Sutherland Trophy which is a great honour for a marginal artist, creating marginal music, for a marginal public. Perhaps, we’re talking marginal movies, I don’t know. What Ever.. The point is, I get to watch 12 movies…and it’s called work..
I tell you, apart from the pay, which sucks, the lack of security, the mind-numbingly long hours, the tedium of waiting around for a soundman called Rick in Philadelphia to turn up, the annoyance of trying to release a disk that doesn’t have some glaring typo on the artwork, The frustration of having ex-cocteau twins stamped on every bloody concert poster, the loneliness of being a solo artist on stage, the responsibility of listening to peoples demos even though there’s not really a damn thing I can do to help them, the spending more hours in the office than in the studio………I still have the best job in the world….
BTW if the producers of any of the films at the festival would like to contact me about bribes, I’m all ears.

by the way, I changed my piece of shit 3com router for a netgear one…now, and I shit you not, my netgear network media player doesn’t work…..Some other mediocre piece of shit for me to deal with at some point.. No music in the house ’til then….

Midnight twenty five here.. bed..

Last Week….

….was quite intense. A few months ago I played a show with Harold Budd in England and had the good fortune to meet Mr John Foxx who was also appearing alongside Harold.. He was very complimentary about my guitar playing, which, of course, always gets me listening…. Said he’d like to sing with it, and I immediately said, why not? John possesses a voice which is very choral and pastoral and when I thought about it for a moment I could imagine something special.. So, to cut a long story short, (because I want to go to bed) he came over from England last week and in just a few, intense, days we created seven pieces of music (songs?) which, as I’m listening to them now, please me greatly. A very natural and organic piece of work. I don’t think it’s a full album yet, we need another few tracks, but the essence of it is there.
I like and enjoy little projects like that, that come out of the blue. There was no pressure, if we had finished the session with nothing it would have still been educational and enjoyable : to finish with 35 minutes of music is a bonus… It sounds, perhaps not strangely, like we both imagined it could when we talked about it before. The marriage of very atmospheric vocals and very atmospheric guitar is intense. The listener is bathed in a wash of tones…Lovely.
My father in law, who happened to hear some of our work when we were playing it back said it would be dangerous to drive while listening to it.. I think I know what he means….
And Violette is asking when John Foxx in socks is coming back….
Tried to work a bit today, but got sidetracked by discovering google earth, and wasted half an afternoon zooming around the world looking down peoples chimneys… most enjoyable, if you like that sort of thing…

Mixing – Creating – This weeks model

The next mix I have ready is called Amphora. I made a CDR and went and listened to the 5 mixes that I’ve none already and I was not too displeased. There are a few little adjustments here and there to be done but the essence is there. However, I always find the beauty is in the details, so I will be tweaking them a little over the next few weeks.
I have a guest arriving tomorrow from England with whom I plan to create something special. He’ll be around for a few days so I may not be able to post much.. We’ll be busy. It’s not often, these days, that I’m creating with another person, so it ought to prove an interesting experience. Well I hope I can just let my control freak within take a holiday for a few days…

Mixing – Creating – Enduring

Today has been a very gentle roller-coaster of problems and satisfactions. Very gentle, no real life tragedies, just a bunch of computer shit trying my patience, which from time to time is the payment for maintaining a, how can I put it, …. excessive, network of computers in my home and workplace. Compounded with the fact that I live in a small village at the very end of the internet and I have to deal with France Telecom, who redefine the meaning of the word service. Actually, as an aside, I should point out that the word service doesn’t actually translate into french as anyone who has ever tried to order a big mac in the middle of the afternoon will attest. I could go into this, in detail, this total lack of customer care, as I have much experience in being a consumer in this fine country, but I won’t, because it’s also quite pointless. Oh, how I yearn for a ‘have a nice day’ or ‘your welcome’.. It cost’s nothing, of course it means nothing, but is ever so much more pleasant that what I am confronted with on a daily basis.
Which gets me back to France Telecom, the fuckers, who have redefined the term 8mb to mean 2mb, but have managed to charge me five euros a month more for the privilege.
what ever….
So satisfaction…. mmm, did another mix for Continental today, a lovely instrumental piece called Radiance. The mixing process was plagued, as usual, by little gremlins, little tech problems, but they seem a small price to pay for ending up with a lovely piece like Radiance.
I’m enjoying the process of randomly picking a piece of music that I have created earlier in the year, whether from 19 Crescent, or something else I’ve had tucked away for a while, and actually finishing it.. It’s good to finish.
Also, not being a slacker, and realising that rendering video takes a long time, I’ve started editing more material, possibly for an extended version of lumiere which I’d like to perform this winter…
OK, so that was my day .. bedtime