I am happy and I love vinyl

Yesterday the test pressing arrived.
A strange and joyous full circle - to play the vinyl versions of the tracks through the speakers they were originally recorded on, all those months ago, in that little room, my beloved echo chamber.
and to play them at the wrong speed as well, just for the fun of it.
Suddenly it's very real...

monday blues

nico-these days

slurring hawks and blurring hacksaws

Went to the luminaire in kilburn yesterday to meet up with papa chiz and some bristolians who were tour managing thee mighty Hawk and a Hacksaw, who really blew me away, much more so than last time. Just accordian and violin and some amazing chemistry. I swear there was a bulgarian tune in there somewhere, something in 7/4 that's in that wonderful melodic place that's both happy and sad, major key and minor key, but kind of neither.
He also has a wonderful drum kit played by foot pedals and a head-mounted sleigh bells / drumstick combination so he doesn't have to stop accordianning. Sadly in my warm guinessy haze I didn't get a good photo...


website
buy buy buy

my dream

make it happen
please

turn your back on a city…

…for 5 minutes and they close everything down. Sad days for bristol residents as I hear of the closing down of both Replay park street (just leaving a fopp on a street that used to be a great place to go - now just a tacky strip of identikit bars, cafés and chainstores - thanks Bristol City Council) and the Thekla. Not the greatest music venue in Bristol, but how often did you get to go and see gigs whilst technically being underwater? The beer may have been well overpriced, but I have a lot of happy memories from that funny little boat. My first time there - going to see the Numskullz play, me doing warm-up dj slots for Luke Vibert, Andy Votel, Herbert, playing a whole set of 94 era jungle after a venetian snares gig. Playing live sets there with the full rlf band or various combinations thereof to proper bristol audiences. Supporting the Bug that time, well maybe that’s another story. Being deafened by Melt banana. The farewell anna Big Ting extravaganza. Djing between bands when electrelane played there, watching the whole set from the lighting rig…
So here’s a bit of unreleased rlf action – we used to end the set with this brutal piece of bristol-inspired amen-break 2-step business. It lingered on in some early bass clef sets too, until I let it retire along with the other rlf tracks. It was time for a change. New music for a new leaf.

By the way, the title never referred to me, it was in tribute to the funny little man who often kept me awake during those long dark nights when I lived on Stokes Croft, blasting out the world service on his little ghetto blaster at 3am.
“this goes out to the bristol massive….”

rlf – the king of stokes croft

edit: link fixed!

st -st -st

Spent sunday at Snorkel Studios where the very nice Frank recorded me playing wonky trombone for three album cuts. That's the damn thing finished now - except for the final final no-more-changing-your-mind tracklist, of course...

Anyways, when I wasn't playing the trombone, I was busy marvelling at all the vintage gear kicking about - moog rogue, arpaxxe, a wonderful tape echo that looked super high tech from outside, only to reveal inside a crazy world of tape fractalling around in random little mini-loops...
So, in tribute to all that, I'm going to post a couple of tracks by a great hero of mine, Delia Derbyshire. Go to the site and read about her life - I won't do a bad summary of it. I'm sure most of you know all about it already. In my mind, there's some kind of engineer/musician genius heaven, where Delia, Raymond Scott and King Tubby hang out, soldering irons never going cold...

Delia Derbyshire - Blue Veils and Golden Sands

Delia's theme