Michael Jackson
Winter blues, singing along with The Flaming Lips & remembering Rostropovich
2009 is rolling along inevitably towards a bleak winter and new year; mid-November already and I can barely remember October at all beyond a general dark cloud of bullshit college stress, being tired and fighting off a cold. Oh, I did go and see "This is it" with Matt on Halloween night - a great film no doubt, so tragic and bittersweet. Left me feeling slightly raw, though. I guess this is our generation's Lennon or Elvis "is gone" moment. Surreal. |
| Dudley gets bigger by the day, and he's totally integrated into our lives now, it's hard to imagine what we did without him. Such a sweet pup, Matt and I had a minor scare when he ate a pig's ear a few days ago.... one minute he was happily chewing on it, next thing we knew he had gulped it down and let out a big burp. We freaked out for a bit, not knowing what to do. We looked online - which is probably the one thing a slightly paranoid puppy owner should NEVER do - and scared ourselves silly reading stories of dogs that died because of intestinal blockages, etc. We made such a fuss, but he wasn't bothered. He's a little toughian. Who will never get to nom on a pig's ear again. |
| Finally, I recently dug out some old Rostropovich recordings to compile into a mix tape for a friend - Lady MacBeth of Mtesnk District, the Shosta Cello Concerto and his wonderful recording of Britten's Cello Suites. Too good for words, honestly... I can't even begin to blog about how special these recordings are. I encourage anyone who likes their soviet era music to be bleak, tragicomic, intelligent, powerful and bleeding with raw downcast emotion to seek them out. Particularly the Lady Macbeth double disc from 1979. Perfection. |
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Glasto & Swiss Holiday Roundup
Glasto was fabulous. Warm and sunny most of the time, the highlight of my weekend was Neil Young (I’m in love with another old man, what is wrong with me!), probably the best gig I have ever seen in my life. I’m not a person prone to making lists of things (my mate Liz is quite “high fidelity” like that) , but after witnessing that performance I would have to say my top three gigs of my life so far would be:
1.) Neil Young @ Glasto 2009,
2.) Morrissey @ Livid Festival 2002,
3.) Meshell Ndegeocello @ Jazz Cafe 2008.
Oooh after writing that I suddenly feel so... nerdy. Other awesome bits included a spine tingling set from Bon Iver, the always beautiful Bat for Lashes, Spinal Tap, Metric and of course the Boss.
It was strange hearing of Michael Jackson’s death while on the site - lots of whispers and rumours floating around on the Thursday evening left us wondering if it was really true. You feel so cut off from the real world while inside the festival. Once confirmed, it took me a few days for the news to sink in - I kept thinking it was an elaborate set-up - that Michael would pop up on the Pyramid stage as the secret special guest, wearing his zombie getup doing the Thriller dance, mending all our broken hearts in the process. And it has left me feeling philosophical about my small role in the tragedy as a ticket holder to his now-cancelled shows. I am sure there are plenty of blogs out there poring over the subject, discussing and dissecting if not just remembering and mourning therefore I will not attempt to add to the number. I would only want to comment that I am finding the whole thing immensely sad.
On the way back from Glasto we picked my Mum up from Heathrow. After our 6 days of camping in the muggy heat it must have been a pretty funky car ride back to Bedford for her. We decided as a present we’d take her to the Swiss Alps, and that’s where we’ve been for the last 5 days. The scenery over there is to die for.... I had been told about it and had seen pictures but I wasn’t really prepared for so much beauty on such a large scale. Click the “leave a comment” link to see some photos if you’re interested.
All photos here taken by Matt Roles (whom I think is getting pretty nifty with the camera these days... though with scenery this good I think it would be rather difficult to manage a shite photo!)
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DEMONIC by David Keith
I did this score over three nights during a work week ... and I think it turned out alright considering that David saw fit to use the first draft I sent him of the score. I get a bit of a kick out of working quickly like this, efficiency is an underrated virtue these days - especially in music - so often having too many ingredients spoils the dish. I limited myself to 1 melodic motif and a sound palette of piano, celeste, strings and backwards reverbs. I created the creepy animal-like sounds by putting piano reverbs through Logic’s vocal transformer and messing with the formants. Fun!
You can check out some more of David’s short film work HERE.
In other news, I got my Michael Jackson tickets! 30th of July, me and Liz will be there ready to either be blown away by the best and biggest pop comeback of all time, or slightly disappointed but yet fascinated by a train-wreck of gigantic proportions. It’ll be music history either way. And I’ll be there! Whoop!
Eyelashes of Gina swept into my little studio for three days last weekend and left behind two shiny new song nuggets. We uploaded them to the band’s website (which is linked just to the right of this blog). If you actually go and listen to the music I want you to keep two things in mind: 1, remember that it’s only supposed to be a laff.... and 2, that all tracks were conceived, brainstormed, performed and recorded in a few hours. Keeping in mind those two points, I think things turned out ok!
I thank the gods for creating Melodyne! Man I love technology...
x
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Morgan's Theme and EOG are coming to visit...
Morgan’s theme: written for a character in David Keith’s new short film “Demonic”.
click here to hear it
Starting tomorrow night and for a few days, the Eyelashes of Gina will be moving into Glory Box Studios to work more on their upcoming album. This means I need to stock up on whisky and cover the furniture in plastic... My boyfriend has vacated the house, off on a ski holiday - everything is set in place and I can feel some genius music coming on. :)
In other news? .... not a lot! Just generally chipping away at the mountain of half-started projects I have here.
I find myself constantly fantasizing about two things these days:
one of these:
.... and being able to earn enough money making music so I can teach less and compose more. Teaching music full time is not where I want to be in 5 years time, despite how much I love it. I just need a couple of big jobs to come in, jobs that actually pay, then I might be able to scale my hours back. (snap out of it Leah!).
Then again the full time job might allow me to pay for an extortionately priced ticket to see this!
oooooh!!!!!!!!!! I’m not ashamed. I admit I am (like all Aussies) desperately uncultured, no matter how much I bang on about Shostakovich I can’t deny the King of Pop! Must. Get. A. Ticket.....
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click here to hear it
Starting tomorrow night and for a few days, the Eyelashes of Gina will be moving into Glory Box Studios to work more on their upcoming album. This means I need to stock up on whisky and cover the furniture in plastic... My boyfriend has vacated the house, off on a ski holiday - everything is set in place and I can feel some genius music coming on. :)
In other news? .... not a lot! Just generally chipping away at the mountain of half-started projects I have here.
I find myself constantly fantasizing about two things these days:
one of these:
.... and being able to earn enough money making music so I can teach less and compose more. Teaching music full time is not where I want to be in 5 years time, despite how much I love it. I just need a couple of big jobs to come in, jobs that actually pay, then I might be able to scale my hours back. (snap out of it Leah!).
Then again the full time job might allow me to pay for an extortionately priced ticket to see this!
oooooh!!!!!!!!!! I’m not ashamed. I admit I am (like all Aussies) desperately uncultured, no matter how much I bang on about Shostakovich I can’t deny the King of Pop! Must. Get. A. Ticket.....
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