recent stuff
Time for an update on my recent sound studio work and music-related stuff.
"I remember Dust That Collects. Ron sent many cassette albums to GAJOOB for review. Hope all is well with him.
Who did you use for manufacturing the vinyl? What did you get? What was the cost?
Sounds like you've had many receptive outlets for your work recently. Must be inspiring!"-- bfbaker (on 10/11/11 07:26:38)
First off, the Six Heads "Cardboard Oracle" LP was launched on Sept. 3 at the Tranzac Club here in Toronto! The launch went really well, the club was packed, the performances by Dirty Door, Fleshtone Aura, and Roman Pilates were all excellent, Six Heads also turned in a great set (if I do say so myself), and we had a really enthusiastic and supportive crowd. All in all a fantastic evening! Copies of the LP are available from Wintage Records and Tapes at wintagerecords(at)gmail(dot)com
I've been continuing to digitize my old four-track cassettes (see previous blog posts). Actually, I took a break from it but am getting back to it now. Still working on Four-Track Tape #3. One good thing related to this work is that, since I had to set up a new Mac in my studio, I took the opportunity to upgrade my Mac version of Audacity from 1.2 to 1.3. Works much better in general and handles recording of multiple inputs (i.e. 4 or more) in a much less quirky fashion than 1.2 did. It also means I have the same version running on my Mac and Linux computers. Bonus!
Other studio work. I've gotten kind of obsessed with early 80s minimal synth, cold wave, etc. lately and I have ambitions to release some material of my own along those lines. It may never happen but I have been doing some initial experiments in the studio. My starting point for these experiments has been a free software called CBasiCore64. It's a standalone MAX/MSP program that was made to replicate the early Commodore 64 sounds, mostly for use in 8-bit/chiptunes (which I also quite enjoy), and to provide rudimentary sequencing/pattern programming of those sounds. It's super easy to use and a lot of fun! I'm only using it for creating drum sounds and patterns, its bass and synth sounds are a bit too 8-bit for what I'm going for. Anyway, I'm making these drum patterns in CBasiCore64 on my Mac and then recording the individual drum sounds as wav files which I then import into LMMS on my Linux PC (LMMS, aka Linux Multimedia Studio, is a sequencer package I quite like). At that point I can replicate and elaborate on the original CBasiCore64 drum pattern, or create a new pattern using the same sounds. LMMS also includes the great softsynth ZynAddSubFX which I'm using to add noises and textures to these pieces (for the time being I'm avoiding melodic elements). Eventually, the idea is to fill out the compositions a bit and then add lyrics/vocals. We'll see if I make it to that point!
Elsewhere in the news, on Sept. 10th I did a Songs of the New Erotics performance called "Slow Bells" at a cathedral in Hamilton, Ontario. S.O.T.N.E. performances are few and far between these days so it was great to be given the opportunity to create and present something new for that project. Thanks to New Harbours Series and event organizer Rich Oddie (Orphx) for that! The trip to Hamilton also meant I could reconnect with my old friend Jim Dejong (Infant Cycle/The Ceiling label)! Was really great seeing Jim again and we did talk about the possibility of future collaborations (Wax Infant revived?).
On the improvised music front, I was very happy to see another project momentarily revived - my guitar duo with Arnd Jurgensen called Sen/Son. Arnd and I did a set at Somewhere There (here in Toronto) on Sept. 21st and I also sat in with the ensemble Built To Suit (Arnd Jurgensen, Matthew Poulakakis, James Bailey, Alan Bloor, Guy LeBlanc) on the same evening. We received standing ovations for both sets! Of course, the audience consisted of only one person. Oh well (a typical evening at Somewhere There). BTW, that one person was Ron McFarlan of Dust That Collects. Some of you home-tapers may remember him.
What else? Well, I've also been helping Kevin Crump/Wintage Records with the upcoming Nihilist Spasm Band LP. Just doing a bit of audio editing/mixing and I'll be helping with the graphics a bit this coming week. NSB are awesome! Six Heads jammed with them a month or so back and had a great time!
One last project I'm going to mention today is a mix CD I recently made for my friend Steve Venright on the occasion of his 50th birthday. The CD consists of 50 one-minute selections from my "Tape Sketchbooks" (basically, the archive of my studio work through most of the 80s and 90s) which were chosen in a strictly random process (no decision-making, editing, or censoring!). A quickie job that only took a couple of hours to put together but it turned out really well! Pretty interesting listening, actually! I've been thinking about putting out a series of mix tapes that would be (more or less) random selections from my studio archives, so this little project may be a forerunner to that.
There, that oughta hold ya! See you in the next update!
- William A. Davison