Ryoji Ikeda

Studio 7 at the BBC is always a weird venue to work in, most noticeable because it isn't a venue. This orchestral rehearsal space has the best acoustics of any venue in Manchester, bar none! Unfortunately, it is just not set up for the general public. The heavy security to the main entrance to the BBC building on Oxford road had a real problem even letting the staff into the venue, but as it came closer to the start of the event, most of them went, leaving nice security guards who seems just happy that there shift wasn't as boring as usual. The security conditions of FutureEverything putting on a gig here was that each person had to be personally shown to their seats (or if not in person, at least in small groups). Working as a skivvy meant that was my job. Ear plugs were given to every single member of the audience and they were all warned, Several times, and christ did they need em!
Arriving two hours early for my shift, found me sitting in in Kro2 next door (apparently the FutureEverything Hub). The bloke we were sat with, I gathered, had just landed in Manchester from Berlin; trouble with the volcanic ash. It soon occurred to me that this was Mika Vainio, the supporting artist for the nights performance. I attempted to gather some kind of conversation with this fella, but he was quiet, shy, (typical musician,) and having none of it.
He played a devastating set, going from complete silence to white noise, the volume of which would make you gran cry, and back again, accompanied by bleeps, hums and synthesised tinnitus. The shear dynamic range of his performance made ear plugs mandatory.
A rushed, fifteen minute interval (which isn't a lot for a 340 people) was all that stood between one form of pain and another. Ryoji Ikeda,was a lot more palatable (as far as sonic art ever is) and gave a lot more structure to the constant, lung rattling sub bass and white noise, glitch accents. The front lit projections looked a little bit like that black and while thing that appears at the top corner of your telly when ITV are about to go to adverts, only massive, cool, and proper messed up!
An incredible, brain rearranging experience... I can quite honestly say that I don't want to hear anything like that again for a while, but I'm incredibly glad that I went, and would highly recommend it to anyone!
At Kro2 after, Ryoji Ikeda sat on his own at the back with a glass of brandy. I let him know my thoughts, and I was surprised at how genuinely lovely he seemed, and genuinely happy that I had let him know.

So, It's that time of year again, for a "more arty than ever" FutureEverything. Looks like they have got some real money from somwhere this year, and spent it all on staff! There's more paied workeds than voulenteers this year! After a few problems last year, I'm not taking a week's hollidays and hurtling round manchester at a hundred mph trying to sort things out. Instead concentrating on getting some solid experience. This year, anyone interesting in production had to sumbit a CV. Which means I now have a CV for Music Event Production, (and it looks supprisingly impressive, It's amazing what happens when you remeber stuff!). So I have 2 gigs working front of house (BBC and Cliub Academy), then Event Production work at Sound Control for 2 days, which I'm quite looking forward too. What I'm not looking forward to is missing the opening 'free wine' and the enormous amount of "Lack Of Sleep" I'm going to suffer, working two full time jobs!

My New Timelapse Camera

So I decided that enough was enough, stood pressing my camera button with my watch in my hand. A plan was needed. To start with, I needed to externalise my camera's shutter trigger. Luckily I managed to find a service manual for my camera, which contained disassembily instructions (very useful when your as inpatient as me!) - Incedently, if anyone else feels like doing this, you might wanna discharge the flash capacitor with a resistor, and not a screwdriver... a 330 Volt instant electrical discharge can be a bit of a shock first thing on a Sunday morning :).

   My camera has a mini jack socket on the side labeled "AV Output". I've never used this, so instead of drilling a hole is the side of my camera I though I'd use it to route the trigger through. The service manual contained circuit diagram and schematics, allowing me to find a couple of test points on the PCB for the shutter and the auto focus. I removed the AV socket, insulated it with kapton tape, soldered the wired from the test points on it, and superglue it back on. Re-assembling the camera, I found, to my astonishment that it had worked!!!
   My new improved camera can now be controlled (by a little Adruino app I wrote) to generate timelapse photography on it's own! - This isn't quite as easy as it seems, beleive it or not. You have to think about the macro scale of what you are filming, which isn't anything I was thinking about when I built the damn thing, now I have to spend the next few weeks trying to learn how to use it! :)

Volcanic Sunset

The Volcano that went of in Iceland has grounded all the planes, but they said on the news it would make the sunset look good. At sunset I took one photo every 10 seconds. Stringing them together was not so easy. I found lots of programs, but none would let me fade between one picture and another (thus producing a smooth video) so I decided to write one myself! I found a language called "Processing", very similar to the "Arduino" language, only based around visuals. Apparently it is a form of JAVA (which if no-one know, is a really clumsy and awkward way of going about existing!), but the end result is now I can produce lovely movies like this. Out to take some more soon I think :)

Summer Music

Summer is just around the corner, so shake of the throws of winter and let's see if we can make a compilation for people who aren't insanely happy.

Time was I would create 2 summer compilations on CD and play them in my car, but now Spotify is here, I thought I'd have another go!

So here is the more standard "Summer" compilation.

And hear is the more eclectic "For The Last Three Years I Have Been Staring Directly Into The Sun", compilation :).

Compilation for No Planes

Yesterday, all flights in the UK were grounded, due to a volcanic eruption in Iceland! The ash is hanging around in the troposphere, too dangerous to take planes through. Jet engines easily overcome by small particles. So we are having two days of no planes! So to celebrate, here is a compilation :)

(Over half of these weren't on Spotify, hence the reason for a blogged play list!)

Pavement - Grounded
Massive Attack - Weather Storm
Pink Floyd - Goodbye Blue Sky
Longpigs - Blue Skies
Chris Watson - Birdsong
Pink Floyd - Learning To Fly
Red Hot Chili Peppers - Aeroplane

ASIWYFA

Its not often that you get to legitimately call a band "And You Will Know Us By A Trail Of Good Recommendations" but "And So I Watch You From Afar" were just that band.
To be met with a half full Ruby Lounge was a bit of a surprise but the majority of the audience being young blokes with t-shirts and semi-expensive haircuts was really not.


So for me it was 'Does it offend you Yeah' playing in Sheffield or a night out with my dad in town, not much competition. The limited research i had done (3 last.fm plays during my day in the lab at work) had convinced me that a trip over the peak district to listen to a band who blew me away the 'In The City' before last could be better avoided. The Ruby Lounge as it is, a small an perculier shaped venue, hosted not only a night of a quality performance, but also a sound system that was manipulated to within an inch of it's ability to produce a night that would leave even the deafest engineers ears ringing in the morning, (if sans earplugs!)
It was the bands bass sound that kept the mood riding on a buzz, and the Irish guy's sound sported a bass distortion that roared at a frequency much less than that of the instrument, threatening to rip open the chest cavity of all those who dared not to pay attention (which I must admit was verging on zero, ASIWYFA are not to be ignored). The band, most completely hidden in smoke bathed light to all but the front row, played a set not only acceptable, but ideally timed in terms of it's length and variety, but well composed, if only for playing their 'hits' in the unreserved encore.
It's not often that you get to discovered a band twice, but Oceansize's support off their last tour really did 'cut the mustard'.

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