I was utterly thrashed last night on the first play of Uwe Rosenberg's Sagani, bewildered and discombobulated even though it was comparatively simple for a Rosenberg.
Feeling slightly less out of sorts today, though very apprehensive approaching the studio, as my feeling was that the last two days of recordings were complete washouts.
I'd planned to keep things simple and very very relaxed, having some kind of ambient delay Frippertronics thing in mind, but what eventuated what quite different from what I was expecting. Perhaps something to do with my rearrangement of the studio layout somewhat.
Quite happy with the result, all in all.
Followed it up with a session of Shem Phillips' Raiders of Scythia, in which I did the thrashing.
After spending several hours trying to make a 303 sound somewhat melodic and coax a tune out of it, I gave up and hit Bitwig instead. It's a bit of a rough noodle, but a tune of sorts it is. And it beats disco duck.
Overcast and occasional showers, make for a mostly relaxed day of quiet contemplation, making full use of the opportunity of the empty house.
Fortunate, as I was beset with an epic weariness, due to the late night spent in the studio last night. Some progress on mixes that have languished in the To Do pile for some time, which is a fine thing to see. Didn't kick off until about 11pm, following an epic game of Sorcery, and didn't wrap up studio activity until around 4am.
There was a time when wrapping up at 3-4am was pretty much standard for me. Not so any more.
The fuzziness today is probably due mainly to following up a couple of glasses of red over dinner with a couple of tumblers of whiskey. My stamina for such things is apparently not what it once was.
Getting up today the zip on my favourite – pretty much my only decent – pair of corduroy pants broke. Thus, such small events, microscopic, nay quantum level, in the scope of the vast swathe of creation and cosmos, completely fuck up my day, or rather fuck up my state of mind for the day.
Under normal circumstances I'd go outside and do some taxing physical work, but the lawnmower is broken and I'm too physically unwell to use the the brush cutter at the moment.
Can I turn this day around? Tune in later for the scintillatingly exciting conclusion to this thrillingly terrifying cliffhanger, the answer to which is utterly vital to the very philosophical being and core of humanity.
4:05pm
So, I hear that Monty Don is retiring from Gardeners' World. I'll miss Longmeadow.
I woke with the idea of a Can-esque motoric beat in mind, and spent ages tinkering with delays and other methods of injecting elements of surprise into the recording process. The infuriating thing was that the emphasis, ie “the 1” of this the most basic of rhythms kept flipping and completely changing the feel of the thing. Feeding arpeggiators into delays can make for incredibly subtle changes of rhythm that fan out butterfly wing flap cyclone reverberations. Interesting, but also annoying when after a few hours, all you really want to do is for something to fit nicely.
A cool change has made life a slight bit more pleasant. Fortunate, as I spent the afternoon out working on the land.
To say that I dislike Tolkien would be an understatement, but I and my two sons played Reiner Knizia's “The Hobbit: There and Back Again” last night, and enjoyed it (myself mainly due to the fact it's only tenuously related to the books), so thusly today's track is named.
Awaken from unsettling dreams to my eldest son presenting me with a touching fathers day gift, so all is not lost.
Yet more waves of dry heat, searing my brain.
Thinking of my own father, who died in 2020. A great appreciator of synthesizer music, particularly Vangelis, from whom I inherited my love of emotive bleeps. This one is – at least potentially – in a series of tracks dedicated to him.
More heat, and thus more haze of the brain. Still, I spent a notable portion of the day that was not occupied with rewiring a bodged together exhaust fan tinkering and learning a new synth. So, even though I wouldn't say the recording today was notable in any artistic way, it was a worthwhile learning experience in terms of a new addition to the studio palette.
In other important news – we managed to play our first game of Garphil's Skara Brae. Highly enjoyable!
Some kind of viral infection is knocking at the door. Sixteen hours of sleep seems to have had a degree of effectiveness in fighting off the worst of it (knock on wood).
Listening back to the first few days of recordings. I'm happy to note that the first one that I'd deemed a complete failure wasn't as bad as I was thinking at the time. Perhaps my poor mood was influenced by my having taken on board a viral passenger?
5:00pm
Having cooled down, partly due to the weather, and partly due to a glass of cool white wine – it is Friday afternoon happy hour after all – a song has sprung into existence. Quite happy with it while playing it, we'll see if I'm quite happy while listening to it...
