The Dance Commander

Had a small test of the MIDI-Moov this week, for the Touch It gig, and it works really well! We’re thinking that the controller gets strapped to someone so they can dance to effect the music.

My friend Jason King is going to help us with the lighting by working on a midi program so they lights change with the person moving also. This should give more of a visual indicator for whoever’s strapped in, so they can see when they’re changing something.

Here’s a small video of Jason testing the MIDI-Moov. Whenever he moves around there’s a filter over the music that moves with him.

The Bridge – Squatting in Rotterdam

My sister Kelly was squatting in Rotterdam a few years ago. I went to visit her with this music project I wanted to make, inspired by the city, that would be based on making music from pictures of it’s buildings and places.

She had it pretty cushdy over there at the time. Squatting was pretty exceptable in Holland and it was legal as well so, if you were lucky, you could set yourself up with a pretty decent home and not have to leave for a while. Kelly had two! Never one to do things in half measures, she was making video work and her boyfriend at the time was a musician so they used one to live in and the other as a studio space. Kelly’s boyfriend was quite nice, but a bit mad. He thought he was mix between Sid Vicious and Clint Eastwood. Never left the house without his wallet, his speed and his razor (which he kept in his cowboy boots). He got caught speeding once, drunk with half a gram of coke, a gram of speed and a eighth of weed; he had his knife in in his boot and about four wasted friends crammed into the back of his van. The policeman couldn’t believe his eyes, he burst out laughing and let them go! He was stunned by the audacity of it and said there would have been too much paperwork anyway.

I spent a month there, got a bike and cycled around the city taking pictures of the architecture – which is pretty stunning, Rotterdam is like an architects playground – as well as the industrial estate, which stretches around 40 miles long. The idea was to contrast two very different visual elements and then put that into music. I chose to focus on the Erasmus Bridge, which connects north and south Rotterdam, and made each different song based on a picture from a different view of the bridge.

The music I came out with there was quite experimental, and it was the first time I’d began to use real recordings rather than samples and virtual instruments. This led on to forming Tumbling Squares.

Interactive Band – Touch It

Had a couple of reviews this week, which has been nice. I’ve been applying for some funding for the new project and needed some references to get it going. Thank you to Songwriting and Blushing Panda for that.

I made this picture for Songwriting, spray painted my studio ceiling for it, blew my nose a few hours later and it was literally bright green! I think I’ve just made it quiet a dangerous place to be.

So it’s about time I started talking about what the new project is gonna be [drum roll maestro!].

The working title is Touch It and the idea is to have a live band that members of the audience can interact with. I’m writing some dance reggae style songs with Kieron Allan and Kraz at the moment [all originals] and we’re then gonna start playing with ways that the audience can control our sound as we play.

One of the ideas is to have sound controlled by dancing. So we attach a small gizmo to your body and when you move around the music filters and changes pitch or echoes and distorts. How fun would that be!

I’ve been in contact with a development team called TangibleFX who will possibly be providing us with the MIDI-Moov which we can use as one of the controllers. Really cool.

The MIDI-Moov

I’m trying to have a regular ‘sports Saturday’ with my friend Paul but he’s turned his phone off so he doesn’t have to do it, lazy sod. So I’ve probably got time to upload another tune…

This is a Tumbling Squares song called Whistle Way, one of the first tunes I sung on.

Electric Bill

So my new project Touch It is coming up. I’ve been rehearsing with Kraz, from Tumbling Squares and Kieron, from The Five Sides. It’s going really well so far. I’m gonna have a couple of rough recordings done to post in the next week or so.

Was thinking about Tumbling Squares a little bit and thought it’s a shame that our old saxophonist Electric Bill can’t get involved. He was a funny bloke. I met him in a temp office job, in 2007, and he told me out of the blue he plays saxophone. He also told me once that he broke a guys ribs with an iron bar! I couldn’t believe it, he was actually a really nice, gentle kind of guy. Bill came from one of those posh boys boarding schools you always hear are notorious for adolescent buggery. He said the boys used to regularly have gang fights between the different ‘houses’ and someone getting a serious injury was pretty standard.

Anyway, Bill was a pretty shite saxophonist – he never practised and was always hitting dud notes – but he was wicked to play live with. He had this mad energy and he’d always be moving and dancing and grinning. The crowd loved him.

He went and did one of those TEFL jobs in Japan and stayed in east asia. He loves it now, think he’s living in Singapore.

We had a Tumbling Squares tune dedicated to him…

 

 

Big Beat

I’d been living in Hackney, east London, for the past year or so with a friend of mine till I got sick of the pure level of hipsters and fashion fucks. I saw him over new years and we had party round mine, played Fatboy Slim in my living room. We were talking the next day about how playing Fatboy Slim in east is like social suicide. “Put Fatboy Slim on!” – The room turns silent and you’re stared out until you meekly sidle your way out of the room, silently leaving the party. I have a hipster friend who doesn’t listen to music unless it’s sung in french… yawn.

So here’s a tune I made at around 16, my big beat obsession lasted a while.

Dance Rants – Older Brother

So, as I was saying before, I started reading Naked Lunch a few years ago and got really into it. It’s written by William S Burroughs who’s a part of the Beat movement in the 1940’s, although Burroughs is an entity all of his own.

I was working in this office at the time where I was employed to answer the phone, maybe, once a shift. I kid you not. It was the most specific type of phone call from someone who worked for the same company as me. When I did get the call I wasn’t actually given the information or the tools to deal with the problem – which was something to do with fitting a BT internet cable – so I was told to just transfer them to a different department! Bloody madness. They employed four people for that job! To cover shift changes and lunch breaks. The guy on my shift had been doing it for about three months and was so boring I filled the time writing angry rants about anything that popped into my head.

Me and Craz – the guitarist from Tumbling Squares – got together and wrote this tune at the time…