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Still sounds totally amazing to this day. I think the original is beautiful too but the super sparse and simple arrangement make this so striking. And then his voice………

(subtitled mild rage, subtitled ‘I don’t what it means anymore’)

I came across the above photo via the lovelies at The Sound Is Not Asleep and their Facebook page (I think it originates from Jamie Tate of The Rukkus Room (looking in the corner)).

Whilst I do note a wry irony in the making of music on a gamillion pounds worth of equipment only for it  to be consumed on cheap kit using a form of data compression that removes a whole lot of the frequency spectrum, that’s not the noteworthy point.

Without the mp3 format I’d imagine about 98% of the music made in studios wouldn’t be heard by anyone beyond the friends and family of those making it. And there’s the rub. Mp3’s crappy quality aside, they allow us to share what we create so easily. And it’s the sharing that’s the important bit, getting people to hear what you do. We can bitch all we like, we just want to be listened to. And that’s also why we bitch. Or is that irony?

 

 

 

I went to a gig on thursday night. Not your usual gig, this was a theatre gig for “people who don’t really ‘do’ theatre”. It featured two ‘acts’. The first one, Sylvia Rimat, turned out the lights, asked me how I thought I got here and asked me to sit somewhere I wouldn’t normally sit. After a curious walk aorund the stage, a letter to a psychotherapist and some chalk board writing her ‘set’ ended with me and the rest of the audience standing on stage necking rum!

We were then asked to clear away the chairs so we could enjoy the next act – who were an amazing band. When we came down to the performance area, Sam Halmarack was waiting for us and his band. Slowly and with a joyous subtlety, what happened next was an incredible journey that brought audience and performer together as one in a way that I (and everyone else there) will never, ever forget.

This isn’t the first Performance in the Pub show I’ve been to. I’ve been to nearly all of them. They are always something different. They are always thought provoking, engaging, fresh and entertaining. To carry the the idea of ‘the gig’ a bit further, it operates on a ‘pay what you can’ basis (a la Bandcamp) – an idea that is not only mind blowlingly simple and honest but also really brave. For this night, Hannah Nicklin ( Performance in the Pub creator and organiser ) actually printed up for the costs for putting it all on – when was the last time your favourite DIY act did that for their new record?

But it’s not just the art that I enjoy about these nights. Through these events I have met new people and new ideas. I’ve bumped into fellow attendees at other events in the city and have struck up conversations about what we’ve watched here. When the acts are finished there’s no polite banter over the merch stall – you can actually sit and talk to the artist about what you saw and felt. In fact it’s that in itself, the thinking about it all, that goes on for days after, that I really enjoy about these shows.

You should totally come along to one and be amazed too.

You could pick anything from this record as it’s so good but it’s rarely talked about these days. We ought to do something about that…

There’s no need to add anything else, I think.

I’ve just come back from a week away on the North Norfolk coast, a place very close to my heart. Whilst there, I found myself thinking a lot about permanence and ephemerality in the things we make – be that art, architecture, even communities. When you’re in a landscape that changes twice a day, where certain spaces only exist at the discretion of the tides and you see it’s effect on everything, I don’t think you can help but think about it.

On coming back home, I was glad to see and hear La Cosa Preziosa ( Susanna Caprara ) latest minature kind of touch upon this.

You should totally check her Soundcloud out and follow her on Twitter too.

I’m playing the Leicester Fringe Festival Thursday 16th August at The Cookie Jar in Leicester. Better still, one of my most favouritist singers is playing – the wonderful Natalie Squance.

On the morning of the Monday 25th June just gone, I was walking along the beach of Charlestown, Cornwall. Working along the small bank made by the tide heaping up the washed and rubbed stones of pebbles and sand. As I went further away from the harbour wall, the sounds changed. Along side the waves came the sounds of birds from the cliff. The wave sound became softer, the displaced pebbles from my footsteps more pronounced. I picked up two flat pieces of clay and struck them together but you couldn’t hear them at all.

The following morning, back at home in Leicester, I was hanging out the washing, 0645, in the morning sun. Garden birds, the hum of traffic from the motorway carried on the faint breeze, me dropping clothes pegs. A different sound all around but just as vivid as the morning before.

Later that evening, I sat in a room rubbing two stones that I’d collected on the beach that previous morning together and listened to how the sound moved around the room. Which obviously lead me to Akio Suzuki.

It’s no secret that I, like many, miss the ‘objectness’ of hard format releases – the sleeve, the notes, the pictures, the format itself (I’ve never truly got into CDs), the everything . As we go more and more digital, trying to make up this gap – and it is a gap – is something I often think about. So I was pleased to read about the latest 12k releasse from Simon Scott. ‘Below Sea Level‘ comes in a variety options but the thing that makes it interesting for me is the option of being able to buy the download and a book.

Then there is this release from Celer and Machinefabriek. Again, my love of postcards is pulled upon here and it’s a particular idea I’ve had myself for a while but I love the way this has been put together. You can buy from Machinefabriek’s Bandcamp site here – Machinefabriek Bandcamp