Here's a new track that I have produced. It started out in 2010 as a remix of Another Visitor (sticking with the Impossible Mission theme), but then it sat on a hard drive as an unfinished loop for four years. I finally grabbed a day recently to turn it into a more finished tune. I think this is better than the original; I'm much happier with the production but I definitely need some monitor speakers to get more control over the mixdown.
I've put together a new ambient mix. It was recorded live and then tweaked in Ableton. The field recordings were captured with my ancient (but trusty!) MZ-R50 MiniDisc recorder and a stereo condenser mic.
Listen to it here or go to the Mixcloud page. If you have an account it would be great if you could give it a like and a share to help it can reach a wider audience.
Track list
- Firstperson – field recording: Stamford morning
- Stéphane Kerecki & John Taylor – La Source (intro)
- Firstperson – field recording: Wet London street 1
- Carroll Gibbons – The Night Is Young
- Brock Van Wey – Forever a Stranger
- Bill Evans – Spartacus Love Theme (sample, looped)
- Firstperson – field recording: Rain on plastic roof
- Tim Hecker – The Star Compass
- Firstperson – field recording: Market day
- Firstperson – microphone feedback experiment
- Hallgrimskirkja Motet Choir – Jón Leifs – Requiem, Op. 33b
- Firstperson – field recording: Wet London street 2
- Future Sound Of London - Photosynthesis
- Stephen Crow – Starquake, in-game sound effects (C64)
- Arthur Russell – Another Thought
- Spooky – Orange Coloured Liquid
- Nick Drake – Hazy Jane II
Been meaning to get round to this for ages. I bought a Traktor Z1 mixer a few months ago and have been very occasionally dipping into Traktor 2 Pro. I also went on an ambitious vinyl recording spree, digitising the best of my records most of which are from 1994 - 1998.
However it was only when trying to put together a mix of old and new techno that I realised quite how much the genre has moved on in the past ten years. The 90s tunes are great but don't generally flow in with the new stuff (well, except for the timeless Basic Channel obviously).
I'll do a separate retro mix at some point in the next few months, which I imagine will be very different.
Anyway, I think this turned out OK given how rusty I am. There's a couple of clumsy transitions where the outgoing track ran out slightly too soon (haven't quite got the hang of looping in Traktor yet) and like a fool I managed to record it with the recorder's input gain at -12dB so I had to boost the finished recording by the same amount to compensate. Had it been recorded through an analogue mixer that would have killed it with noise.
About once every month I'll browse around on Boomkat or Bleep and spend some money on music; often tracks I've tagged through Shazam. If I can't find something there, or direct from the label's website I'll fall back to Google Play and then eventually iTunes (though its catalogue is less likely to contain what I'm after).
I just spent £23-odd, for which I got 34 tracks totalling 5 hours and 3 minutes of playback. That's the result of weeks and weeks of artists’ time and effort for under a quid a track. And I get DRM-free 320kbps MP3s or FLAC files to keep.
Does anyone else still pay for music? Presumably it's not just me otherwise it wouldn't be for sale. But I'm in a dwindling minority.
Spotify has its value, but it (famously) pays most independent artists a pittance for plays. If you enjoy listening to music I urge you to keep paying for it! And go direct where you can to cut out middlemen. Long gone are the days of paying £17.99 for an album at HMV.
I'd guess that at least a third of the artists I listen to have day jobs to support their music careers. The least I can do is buy them a beer.
April 2013: Interesting short documentary about the dance music scene in Brooklyn, and how gentrification threatens to stamp it out.
Via RA
Erol Alkan - "A Hold on Love" (Official Music Video)
The video for Erol Alkan's track 'A Hold on Love' is wonderful. Looks like it was all shot in and around Kendal in Cumbria.
via @iaintait
I'm biassed because he's my brother, but this solo piano sketch by Al Scott is rather lovely:
HMV has today announced it is to appoint an administrator.
I jokingly tweeted earlier that:
The only good thing about #HMV was that those little round pink price stickers always used to come off in one piece leaving no residue.
— Ade Rowbotham (@_ade) January 15, 2013
While it's true that those stickers were pretty satisfying to peel off (or is that just me?), it's a bit unfair to claim that they were the retailer's only redeeming feature.
The staff, bless them, were more often than not proper music-heads who knew their stuff. And (back in the late 90s at least) HMV stores tended to have a surprisingly decent selection of 12" techno and electronica singles from international independent labels (this being the focus of my musical interest).
But I've not bought music from HMV for a long time, for all the obvious reasons. They've always been overpriced. This 2004 post from Clive Murray sums it up pretty well. And that was before the days of SoundCloud and Spotify.
Yes, it’s unfair that Amazon have been able to sidestep paying UK corporation tax whilst simultaneously hobbling the high street. This is a massive factor. But the writing has been on the wall for HMV ever since the launch of Napster. And their token efforts to "go digital" in recent years have been too little too late.
I feel sorry for all those great employees, but have no sympathy for the company itself.
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