Timblr Exile

In the flow…

Mon, 13 May 2013 09:32:10 -0400

In the flow…

Audio

Thu, 23 Aug 2012 18:47:35 -0400

Trying to carry 3 skis might result in one of them cutting your...

Fri, 29 Jun 2012 13:42:02 -0400

Trying to carry 3 skis might result in one of them cutting your arm off

Video

Wed, 20 Jun 2012 07:17:32 -0400

Turin bakes

Thu, 07 Jun 2012 12:04:08 -0400

Turin bakes

21 Again

Thu, 31 May 2012 07:57:58 -0400

Last Saturday I was here. It’s my magic hill, home of the Cherhill white horse and Lansdowne Monument http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lansdowne_Monument. In my late teens/early 20s I wandered up here almost daily and I could re-taste every drop of that same flavour. It all came back: wild and pure dreams of embodied sound-music, gestural performance machines, travels far and wide.

The last few months have been reflection zone. I’ve not really known where next and with so many more considerations than I had 10 years ago there are many more trees and a lot less wood. Going up my magic hill was fresh and vivid insight. On one hand I’ve done so much of what I dreamt and on the other I’ve been so distracted from it.

I’m still transfixed by the idea of the ultimate music machine for making the ultimate music. Real, tangible, morphy, shapely, contoured and textural sound touched by skin. My mind quite singly wants to go there… and I don’t think permanent confusion will be evaded until I at least try.

So for now I’m 21 again… following this unadulterated dream. All other professional considerations can take their back seat until I’ve done this thing. Maybe it just needs 6 months (I’m quite far already)… maybe it will need 2 years or more. Either way the various distractions of doing gigs, releasing music or software, being someone etc can all wait patiently.

Permanent confusion

Wed, 04 Apr 2012 10:55:47 -0400

So the solution to the conundrum of how to be a musician and a developer remains elusive. Over the past few years I’ve tried a few approaches… from being completely anal and business minded about things (so dry… so graspy… so… soulless) to being completely chaotic and letting the process do the talking (nothing ever gets finished). I’ve learned the places that my mind tends to end up pretty well but there’s still no solution… maybe that’s the solution… my Koan.

Nonetheless as I slide down from the initial dream of the music growing machine into a fractally unfolding pit of complexity, created in response to just how dull it is to sit behind the brushed aluminium portal dragging boxes around, I realise I still have a pretty pure dream which hasn’t left me for a very long time… to make the ultimate instrument for writing and performing tracks in the way you might pick up a guitar, dick around and remember what you did in a natural alloy of muscle memory, endorphines and well-trodden neural pathways.

It seems I might have to drop the ‘ultimate’, but somehow it seems that dropping the ultimate might be the key to realisation. After all what I think this machine is going to be is never going to reflect what it is, only push my me in a direction which may or may not end up being similar to what I think it is now.

Can’t wait to get back out there playing though… really can’t… need some real body music.

This week’s track made out of material I grew with the...

Fri, 02 Mar 2012 18:33:32 -0500

This week’s track made out of material I grew with the music growing machine I’m making. Happy weekend!

Audio

Fri, 02 Mar 2012 13:02:12 -0500

Video

Thu, 01 Mar 2012 07:40:42 -0500

Photo

Wed, 29 Feb 2012 21:29:36 -0500

The first cultivated track as promised… all the melodies...

Fri, 24 Feb 2012 06:41:00 -0500

The first cultivated track as promised… all the melodies and harmonies are grown and selected rather than written. Small first steps…

Growing Music: Practice vs Project

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 13:03:59 -0500

It’s now over a month since I cracked out Pro Tools again to write some tunes, having burned myself to a conceptual crisp with about 4 years of pretty pure dedication to improvising electronic music. The excitement is there… the joy of listening back to my first album, Pro Agonist… recalling the reckless enthusiasm of an earlytwentysomething who hadn’t yet tasted RSI or the wide emotional orbit of releasing an album, touring etc.

I’ve got the bug, in fact a whole hive of them. In the effort to escape the starting-in-3rd-gear slog of beginning a new tune… looping, editing, tweaking, mixing til the inspiration tank is dry… I’ve decided to follow a whim which has been gathering braindust for a number of years: to make the mother of arpeggiator/sequencer/parameter morphing/live/jam/arranging tool that’s designed for writing rather than performing. The plan is to grow music… choose it and cultivate it like a practice rather than a project.

So I’m also trying to go about developing it in an organic way… a couple of days of developing, then writing a track with what I’ve got. And so it goes/grows… I hope. Will put some clips up forthwith.

Video

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 10:18:00 -0500

This machine is outside my studio. It has two big pipes going...

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 14:11:47 -0500

This machine is outside my studio. It has two big pipes going into it. One for Jo, one for the mother?

My latest effort… first in a while… a remix of...

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 14:04:39 -0500

My latest effort… first in a while… a remix of Thomas Dolby

Circuit-bender extraordinaire Squidfanny. Fine work....

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 14:02:00 -0500

Circuit-bender extraordinaire Squidfanny. Fine work. Doesn’t sound too circuit-bendy. Cylob vibes

Daniel Bowling - Mindfulness, Conflict Resolution & Neuroscience

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 13:58:12 -0500

Daniel Bowling - Mindfulness, Conflict Resolution & Neuroscience:

Great story, great links between dharma, neuroscience & life

Hello Tumblr

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 12:08:01 -0500

Hello Tumblr