UPCOMING PERFORMANCES

ON THE HORIZON

Thu, 27 May 2010 20:16:41 +0100

So many many exciting things in the works. I will list some of them, in no particular order.

A trio record with Ray Evanoff (of Atemnt) and Iain Harrison that has been recorded and is in the process of being mixed.
A solo Drum/Keyboard improv record that will be called “P-P-P-Piano, P-P-Percussion”. Some recording done.
A solo album filled with a shmorgishborg of stuff called “Constantly Rodrigo”.
A duo album with Richard Knight on no-input mixer. We are in rehearsals at the moment.
A drum compilation album I was invited to play on. Other performers include Chris Corsano, Glenn Kotch, and Greg Saunier.

NUS LABEL LAUNCH PARTY

Sun, 28 Mar 2010 02:16:39 +0100

After joining The Noise Upstairs last year, Anton and I put a lot of things in motion to help The Noise Upstairs grow and improve. Among them have been excellent workshops, podcasts, and now a new Sheffield Noise Upstairs, but one of the biggest has been The Noise Upstairs Records. We just released our third CD by the amazing Huddersfield duo Atement (formerly Gift of Life, which performed back in November last year). We decided it was finally time to make a big deal about it so we had a label launch night party.

We had a great performance of John Zorn’s COBRA by workshop participants, then I did a solo set, with Atemnt closing out the night.

Below are some pictures and videos from the night.

GEMDAYS FESTIVAL

Sat, 13 Feb 2010 01:37:56 +0000

After speaking at the Max/MSP Symposium at last years GEMDays Festival, PA Tremblay mentioned that he’s going to try to get me to perform at this years festival. One year later, it came to pass. I shared the night with Phil Archer. We were both interviewed before the concert, which was wonderful to hear how similar our paths had been, even though the results were rather different (we were both still playing on the ‘circuit-bending’ night).

Click here to download/hear the interview.

The performance went great, I felt. It was my first gig with my new drum setup. I modified a 16” floor tom into a nice little jungle bass drum. It sounds massive and boomy. Mmm mmm. I also bought a decent 12” Sonor rack tom, which I converted into a floor tom, along with piezos so it would work as a Sidrassi-Tom. It was also my first gig with my completed Party Bus mixer/8-bit looper/sampler.

Below are some pictures and a video of the performance.

XIU XIU & ME AND YOU

Mon, 25 Jan 2010 22:03:45 +0000

So like, one of my bands, Deaf To Van Gogh’s Ear is opening up for Xiu Xiu next month (February 23rd). This is super, absolutely, truly, amazing. It’s the second time we’ve opened up for someone ‘starstruck-able’, the first time being when we opened up for Extra Life last year.

Awesome

THE PARTY BUS Finished

Sat, 23 Jan 2010 18:52:09 +0000

Finally finished building this little box. It’s a Where’s The Party At 8-bit Bendable Sampler and a buffered 4 to 1 mixer, all in one. It took months to finish, mainly due to problems discovered during my poorly functioning first build. I had to solve clock bleed, a noisy mixer, and other tasty details.

Click here to find out more about The Party Bus.

I AM YOUR DENSITY

Fri, 1 Jan 2010 19:01:46 +0000

I am very excited to finally present “I AM YOUR DENSITY”. This CD has been in the pipe for over a year, being sidetracked by Drum & Bass and Jew Point Owe. It is finally done, and it is a doozy.

I AM YOUR DENSITY is a composition written for a group of improvisers. It was written in 2008 and has been performed twice, once at The Noise Upstairs, and the other time at The Arches in Glasgow, in conjunction with the Red Note ensemble. It was recorded in late 2008, and subsequently mixed by Dan Escauriza. It is being released on Noise Upstairs Records.

The CD comes in a DVD case with the score included as a booklet. Click here to view score.

You can purchase the CD for £4.

Here are some pictures from the performance and recording sessions.

PIANO + LAPTOP IMPROV

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 03:16:24 +0000

Had the opportunity to open up for Ingrid Laubrock as part of The Noise Upstairs Presents. Since the venue (Cross Street Chapel) has a nice grand piano, I decided to forgo my recent ‘solo drums’ improv and do a piano set. I invited Scott Hewitt to join me on Laptop/Sampling. We hadn’t rehearsed prior to the gig, and had only played together as part of larger ensembles at Inclusive Improv sessions, so it it’s pretty fresh as far as fresh goes.

We are both very happy with how it turned out and each plan to use bits from the recordings on future records.

Here are some videos.

TAKAHASHI ON TOUR

Sun, 1 Nov 2009 23:39:14 +0000

Just finished a tour with Takahashi’s Shellfish Concern. It was amazing. We played in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Manchester, London, Huddersfield, and finally Manchester. Some amazing highs (Edinburgh & London), and some horrible lows (Glasgow).

Check out the Takahashi webpage for more detailed information.

Here are some pictures from the tour.

Drum & Bass: And The Horse You Rode In On

Sun, 27 Sep 2009 19:01:46 +0100

I am very excited to present “Drum & Bass : And The Horse You Rode In On”. This is a duo CD with PA Tremblay that was recorded in early 2009.

We shared a stage in 2008 and after exchanging some e-mails we decided to hit the studio. I showed up at Huddersfield University’s Studio with my ‘drums’ setup. PA had his 6-string fretless bass + Laptop setup, and we let it roll. After months of editing and mixing we carved out this gem. It’s 13 tracks of pure joy. The improvs range from textural laptop-scapes, to grimy stutter-hop, to some smooth jazz, and many other things that I can’t pretend to come up with names for (those above are inadequate enough).

The CD comes in a hand silk-screened cardboard package with artwork by Angela Guyton.

The Noise Upstairs hosted a CD release party on the 27th of September and PA and I performed an improv set. I will put up some video as soon as I finish editing it.

Here are some pictures from the recording session.

JEW POINT OWE : The Making Of

Sun, 19 Jul 2009 17:48:20 +0100

What started off as a simple idea of writing a few klezmer inspired folk songs to improvise around, turned into over a year of writing, performing, recording, and eventually book-binding.

Jew Point Owe, my second full solo album, eventually ended up as an 11 track variety-fest, with tracks ranging from an acoustic guitar duo, to an electronic noise orgy, to a quasi-jazz freak-out.
The recording of the album was a challenge as each track is a different lineup and approach. The packaging was also a MASSIVE endeavor as it is being released on Concrete Moniker, as a limited edition of 40 hand-made (by me), hard-cover books. Real books. Each one contains the scores to the acoustic tracks, as well as artwork by Angela Guyton.

Below are some photos and videos from the various recording sessions, some live performance leading up to the recordings, and finally, some photos of the book-binding process.

If you would like to purchase a hand-made version of the book, or would like to download it on a flexi-pay basis please visit my Store, which will link you to the Concrete Moniker page.

Circuit-Bending Workshop

Thu, 9 Jul 2009 19:58:05 +0100

I ran my first Circuit-Bending Workshop, as part of The Noise Upstairs’ new quarterly workshops. I limited it to only a handful of toys to guarantee that everyone had a ‘winner’ at the end, to avoid what happened to me with my first bend (nothing happened, at all).

Here are some pictures from the workshop, as well as a performance video.

Check out The Noise Upstairs webpage to find out when future workshops are taking place. The next one is a Laptop Workshop run by Scott Hewitt, in October and is going to be amazing.

WE NEED NEW NOISE

Mon, 8 Jun 2009 12:30:57 +0100

Anton invited me to co-run The Noise Upstairs with him. And by invite, I mean, kick him in the ass, and organize a bunch of crap. Who did what is really besides the point. (It was me)
The point is that NUS is celebrating it’s two year anniversary with a bang. We’re adding a webpage, quarterly workshops, podcasts, and much much more.

If you’ve never come down to the jam night, or haven’t been in a while, no better time than now to get back into it.

This quarter we have:

JUNE 11 - PIERRE ALEXANDRE TREMBLAY JULY 9 - CIRCUIT-BENDERS ORCHESTRA AUGUST 13 - THE NAVIGATORS

ELECTRIC WHISK FInished

Sun, 24 May 2009 23:58:58 +0100

Finally finished another new instrument. This one isn’t a self-standing ‘instrument’ per se, but more an instrument to play other instruments with.

It’s basically a regular whisk, just made from scratch so that every prong of the whisk is isolated, and connected to an alligator clip on the other end of the cable, so that I can make connections by striking surfaces, or touching the whisks together, or grabbing them with my hands etc...

They are particularly useful with my Ciat-Lonbarde Kitten-Nettiks, but they can be used with any electronic device that can be driven by making/braking connections (nearly everything).

For more pictures and detailed info click here.

DRUM & BASS : And The Horse You Rode In On

Sat, 23 May 2009 23:46:38 +0100

The recording session I did with PA Tremblay back in February is finally coming into shape. The title is going to be “DRUM & BASS AND THE HORSE YOU RODE IN ON”, and above is the cover art, as usual, by Angela Guyton. We’re still narrowing down tracks and working on general mix/edit stuff, but I’m very excited about the project. It’s all improvisations that range from textural laptop-scapes, to grimy stutter-hop, to some smooth jazz, and many other things that I can’t pretend to come up with names for (those above are inadequate enough).

We’re both very busy at the moment, but it should hopefully be out in a couple of months as, most probably, a self-released, hand silk-screened type thing.

I AM YOUR DENSITY : Live in Glasgow

Tue, 5 May 2009 16:11:29 +0100

I submitted “I AM YOUR DENSITY” to an open call for works for the Red Note ensemble, and it was one of the chosen pieces. I asked my ‘usuals’, and Angie, Anton, Ramsey, and Holly all agreed to take part, and make the drive up with me (Anton actually did the driving).

The performance was to take place at The Arches. I’ve only driven through Glasgow before, so I had no idea what the place was like. As it turns out the venue is massive! The performance took place in one of the many ‘arches’ underneath the train station. You could hear/feel the trains passing overhead every so often. On top of that, we actually had a dressing room and everything.
Getting down to the dressing room (Dressing Room B) was an experience in and of itself as The Arches was hosting some kind of interactive event in all the corridors downstairs. We took a huge freight elevator down, which opened into a nearly pitch black storage area. We followed this down a few pitch black corridors while some kind of spooky soundtrack-esque music played throughout the building. Had I been alone, I would have been VERY frightened.

DENSITY was going to be performed by the Red Note ensemble, which on this night comprised of supremely talented Flute, Trumpet, and Cello. They were joined by another Flute and Trumpet, Electric Guitar, Circuit-Bent Drum Machine, and Namasitar. We had one hour rehearsal time before the performance, which turned out being plenty. I adapted the piece slightly for the performance by leaving out the last page altogether. This, combined with the fact that the group I brought with me all had some prior DENSITY experience, made for a fast learning curve.

The performance itself came out amazingly. I stood at the front to issue cues in case we got lost, but I never needed give cues beyond the ones the piece actually requires. It was a pleasure hearing a primarily acoustic rendition of the piece, as the previous performance, and subsequent studio recording both leaned heavily towards the electronic side of things.

Here are some photos and a video of the performance: