50 People, One Question - Galway

And so, in the shadow of another day-surf-trip, and with a new job starting in just under two weeks - here is one of my favourite ever videos on the web.  50 people, one question, in Galway, Ireland.

One question, but an amazing sequence of answers.  My favourite answer?  6:00.

Thanks to Anna Oliwa for uncovering it.

Music, Waves, and Jack Russell terriers

Having not written anything for some time, there was a bundle of small stuff circulating trying to find a weak point in my brain and escape.  Normally I'd separate them into some sort of structure and blog separately about each, but seeing as they were all in there mixed up together, they can all come out mixed up together.  It's a more accurate representation, and it's been that kind of fortnight.

Frankfurt.  Musikmesse.  It's hard to believe that it's my 15th consecutive Musikmesse, but that appears to be the case.  Juggling a huge list of companies to go visit with a sudden-onset migraine on Thursday morning was no mean feat, especially given the cloud of pulsating colours occluding part of my vision - but luckily some guy in a tiny tradeshow-shop-cum-barber outlet hidden in the Starwars-like Torhaus was able to help me out by fetching from some hidden (no doubt gimp-holding) cupboard a packet of horse choking paracetamol.  They were of a mg size that I didn't previously know existed, let alone legal, and the packet and instructions were strangely all in Spanish.  The barber assured me that 1 tablet twice a day would be unlikely to kill me, so I risked swallowing one and got on with business.

There were some cool things at the show - like Club of the Knobs (an impressive beast for sure, but where might sales come from for such a monster?), and Elektron, who are now bringing out a knob upgrade kit for the Machinedrum.  This is particularly good news, as I find the knobs a bit hard and untactile - the new rubberised ones they were showing are a vast improvement.  On the downside, us existing hardware owners have to pay to get the new knobs - bah!  It should have been right in the first place, guys.  Anyway.  Nord have the Stage Piano 2 out which is rocking, and the Electro 3 HP (which stands for 'hammer action portable', obviously).  Both units look absolutely stunning, play brilliantly and sound amazing, as is typical for Nord.  I also found Innerclock Systems, who make a range of boxes for pushing and pulling MIDI Clock, MTC and Din Sync around the place.  It's for lining up old hardware with new sequencers, but it's also solved (possibly) one of my longstanding problems with how I want to play out live... more on that in the long distant future.

 A new company called Smithson Martin have a system out for DJing on a huge transparent touchscreen.  It's called "Emulator", and is basically a MIDI controller software that sits on top of Traktor.  It's as expensive as you'd expect a transparent multi-touch touchscreen to be though, and I can't see it getting bought by many normal DJs - it'll probably find a home in huge clubs full of questionable clientele, who will appreciate the DJ show.  Less lights, deeper bass cabs if you ask me.
 

 SPL (always the home of high-quality hardware) have a new desk out, the Neos.  This thing is an analogue summing mixer, so no EQs, no aux busses, no bells and whistles - just straight line in and mixing on to a stereo bus.  The difference - it runs internally on 120 Volts, which means it can generate astonishing amounts of headroom.  I tried it, and it's really amazing - even with all the faders maxed and everything at Spinal Tap settings, you just cannot get the desk to overload.  Even more important, with everything set to stun and nothing playing through it, you can't hear anything from the outputs - no hum, no hiss, no noise whatsoever.  Incredible quality stuff, and highly recommended for anyone looking for an external analogue summing solution.

I also stopped by the Apogee stand, where they have two pretty well judged new pieces - the Duet 2 soundcard, which is a gorgeous piece of 2-in, 2-out industrial design, and the Jam, which is a brilliantly thought out Hi-Z input for iPad etc, so you can jack your guitar in with really good quality for only $99.  Very nice stuff.  This is where the Frankfurt show got really interesting, as I met by chance Sophie Kipner from Apogee, who was able to wax lyrical about the new stuff.  I'm always a fan of finding out who is who when I get home, so running through doing the job on all the business cards from the show, I find that Sophie not only works for Apogee, she runs her own blog publishing strange and interesting illustrations and verse.  Well that's more interesting than the geek dead ends that most of the business cards lead to.  Following the rabbit through the net leads to Forth Magazine, some extended reading of which leads me to the most disturbing conclusion:  there is interesting, kooky art in LA.  To think that until now all I thought of LA was a great airport, NAMM, and some character-forming experiences at Sunset.  When randomness leads you somewhere, follow it - there might be something interesting at the end.

So back from Frankfurt and just the dog in the house for a few days plus a promising swell forecast, means a one-day return dash to the West coast chasing waves.  I've tried Tullan and never really got on with it - last time I was across, it was Rossnowlagh for the first time.

 I loved the waves, although the water quality wasn't the best.  I've tasted worse - the aforementioned Sunset being a prime example.  This time there looks like a good bit of swell, 14 feet @ 12 seconds straight out of the North West, which in my amateur judgment may be a bit beefy for Rossnowlagh, and will certainly render Tullan a train wreck.  Combined with a wind which is starting onshore, but likely to swing around from the South later, the die is cast - the South wind will be crossshore in Tullan and Rossnowlagh, but close to offshore at Streedagh, which will also be a bit more sheltered from the guts of the swell.  3 hours chase across Ireland later, I walk over the dunes at Streedagh to find that I've been spot on interpreting the forecast - there are waves heaving on to the beach, and spray ripping off the top of them in a near-offshore - beautiful!  The only thing is that instead of peeling neatly one way or another, they are closing out and slamming shut in huge sections - one of the hazards of Streedagh.

Still, first surf of the year, so into the gloriously cold water of an Irish spring, followed by 50 minutes of battling with the elements.  It would have been longer, but I started to get a strange sensation after a while - dog guilt.  I didn't know that such a thing existed.  With the rest of the family humans in Cork, and the dog home alone in Dublin, it started to feel wrong to be out there.  I'm not sure if the dog needed me home, or if I needed to be home with the dog - but it suddenly felt very far away.  Something karmic was not right, and I couldn't fight the feeling - so five minutes later I was heading back up the beach, packing up and roasting off in the car.  When I made it back to Dublin, the dog, of course, was fine (if slightly desperate to get out to the toilet) - but things were definitely better just being there.  Nearly 6 hours driving and 300 miles for only 50 minutes surfing might be considered a poor return - that's how I felt at the time - but in retrospect, it was worth it.  I even attempted (just for my own personal amusement) to pop up on the board the wrong way around on one wave - right foot forward - and didn't fall in.  Not for the first second anyway.  Something I might pursue, as being able to pop up either way around would be a huge bonus if I ever get even half good.

Being prepared to be bad at stuff seems to be a skill that we lose as we get older, which is a shame, as it's so often a prerequisite for becoming good at stuff.

Signature SP1200 project

I've been quite lucky in salvaging a couple of things that were getting thrown out at work. Deemed surplus to requirements - one of them was an original SP1200 sampling drum machine. Killer 12-bit angry sampling, drum noises go in weedy and come out like a lump hammer. It's not hard to see why it's popular.

Then, in the course of an office clearout, I discovered that I'd also come in to possession of the full service manual for said SP1200...

Which was even more interesting. Component lists, circuit diagrams, engineering troubleshooting - everything that went into making this machine the legend that it is.

But then at the end, it got even more interesting - the credits page, not present in the end-user manual (not the end-user manual I have anyway).

I pondered over that list of people responsible for this most legendary of machines. Then I realised that I had buried in the house at home (another thing I got in trouble for bringing home!) - an unused overlay for the SP1200.

Never before stuck on a machine. Virginal. Still with the sticky back ready to go.

So this has me thinking. What if I could rustle up everyone on the list of original SP1200 credits? I know where to find four of them right now, another guy I'm sure I can track down through the first four - and I think I've located another four, which would leave only four heads to find.

What if I could get the overlay to them all individually?

What if they all signed it, and got it back to me, and I pulled off the overlay on my SP1200, and stuck the signed overlay on it?

Would I then have an SP1200, signed by the entire original team that put the machine together?

Is it just me, or would that be not only unique, but a physical piece of music and sampling history?

Pulsate

Where music, visuals, technology, UI and meditation collide...

Check out Andre Michelle's flash audio gadget, Pulsate. Click to make at least two circles, and then watch and listen.

Hypnotic, random and beautiful. Bravo!

Man On Wire - tonight!

Just a quick note for those in Ireland/UK - the epic Man on Wire documentary (probably my favourite film of the last few years) is on Discovery Channel tonight, 9pm.

If you haven't seen it - don't miss!

Jordi Forniés - "Tír na nÓg" (land of eternal youth)

Dublin people - you will need to be quick to catch this, but I highly recommend you do go and have a look.

Jordi Forniés is exhibiting again in Dublin, for the briefest of times, and his stuff is really great.

Mixed media paintings, with a variety of materials (canvas, paint, latex, plastic, concrete, gold leaf, you name it!) used in ways which makes the paintings amazingly physical and three-dimensional.

I bought a "Jordi" last year, and ever since it has formed the inspirational backdrop to my work in the music studio. Highly worth it, and much more compelling in the flesh than you would imagine, even if you're not an art person (and I'm not, really).

The latest exhibition, "Tír na nÓg" (which translates as "Land of eternal youth") runs in Filmbase, Curved Street, Temple Bar, Dublin 2, from July 26th to July 30th.

The KLF / JAMS - It's Grim up North

Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty have always been up to wierd stuff. Cauty is from Liverpool, and Drummond is from Scotland. For a few years in the 90s, they formed "The KLF" together, and launched in to a bizarre and temporary career as art-pop terrorists, foisting a unique, strange and fascinating series of pop/dance singles on the charts.

One of their later singles was "It's Grim up North", and although I didn't understand it at the time, it's come to seem more and more significant to me as I've grown up.

The "North" in the song refers to the North of England. A place of stunning scenery, post-industrial waste-towns and cities, riven with unemployment, it's generally experienced from one of the few major motorways that arc across this part of England. The main artery (the M6) runs from Birmingham directly North, passing between Liverpool and Manchester before trailing up all the way to the border with Scotland. On the other side of the country, the oscillating disaster that is the M1/A1 grinds slowly up the East Coast, passing Hull, and eventually reaching Newcastle, before snaking up and around in to Edinburgh.

Linking these two is the M62, which cuts directly East-West from Liverpool to Hull. Driving from, to or through "the North", you spend a lot of time on these motorways, gliding past parts of England forgotten or deliberately neglected for huge parts of the 80s by London and Thatcher, with the attendant social problems and unemployement that resulted.

In "It's Grim up North", the KLF somehow captured this atmosphere in one of the most surreal tunes ever to make the UK charts. Set entirely in front of a rain-drenched motorway underpass, a searing industrial kick drum thunders out underneath klaxons and horns, as a litany of distored Northern English placenames is intoned from a guy standing in the driving rain in front of the biggest pile of back-floodlit speakers. Political parties seeking to fight the BNP should at least have to watch this video and soak it up a little bit.

It somehow captures the bleak and resiliant spirit of the North, in the context of the never-sleeping dirty motorways that constantly stream through it. The most amazing moments of the tune are halfway through, as the grinding industrialism breaks and slowly melts into the plaintive and powerfully epic "Jerusalem". Tied up in "little England" psychology (check Jerusalem at the last night of the Proms from London for some idea), nothing is guaranteed to fill the hearts of middle class England with more pride.

Two completely disparate atmospheres, one track. As musical pivot it's incredibly skilfull - as a cultural counterpoint, it's jaw-dropping.

Jordi Fornies

I've never been one for much art (as in the visual, rather than the musical) - either traditional, modern, sculpture, or what have you.

But I'm making an exception for the Barcelona born artist Jordi Fornies, whose "Metaphors" exhibition opens September 3rd in Dame Street Gallery, Dublin.

There's something amazing in the way that he mixes textures, colours and materials that's very immediate - and more than that, many of his paintings seem just so inspiring.

As a couple of examples, check the following two paintings:

"Broken Silence"

"Here to There"

Check Jordi's site out here, and also at his agents site here.

Great stuff.