Weapons of choice.

Sorry for the lack of posting and finishing tunes.

This is mostly due to us finishing off and releasing the Hair Thieves EP7 cracking on with the new Hair Thieves EP.  Which I can announce will be called EP8.  This is obviously my main priority.

I have also released an EP of instrumentals under the name Sineglider and a couple of other instrumental tunes.

I have been chipping away on Sweet Lemon Mechanism, Sour Grapes, Tabinad and Persephone, but not enough progress has been made to be able to let anyone hear any of it.

Other than that, I have been in gear acquisition mode.  Having bought a couple of new midi controllers (Ebay is great for getting things cheap) and Native Instuments Komplete collection.

So a lot of time has been spent just playing and learning new tools and soft synths and getting to grips with it all.

This now leaves me in the position of having a plethora of synths and multi versions of various types of effects.    So it is now time to make a decision on a subset of tools that I will use on the album.

I really want to limit myself to a few soft synths and effects, to stop me spending days playing with multiple things to find the perfect sound.

Luckily,  Cubase allows me to create effects subsets.  I have one which contains just the plugins E and I have in common, for use on Hair Thieves tracks.   I plan to do the same for this album.  Choose my weapons of choice, so to speak.

So yes, progress is being made but not at a speed I'm happy with.  I need to ramp it up over the coming months.

This is probably my last post on the album for 2015.  

2016 will see the release of "A Winters Memory", which was written as part of 2015's Fawm competition.   So I really should release it before Fawm starts in February 2016.  

Yes I will be taking part in Fawm again next year.

So wishing you all a very Happy Christmas / holiday season and a productive and happy 2016.

A Musical Journey - Part 5 - Now

This is the final part of my musical journey.

Bands I've got into listening in the past 5 years.  So this should be short.   I'm still listening to lots of music from the '80s (a lot of XTC as I write this).  Still listening to the bands I've got into during the '00s.

First off is Of Monsters and Men.

E (guitarist in The Hair Thieves) got me into these and dragged me along to see them last month.

Of Monsters and Men - Crystals

Agnes Obel - Someone posted a link to one of her tunes on Facebook.  I fell in love with her voice and bought both the albums that day.

Agnes Obel - The Curse.

Passenger - I saw Passenger support Ed Sheeran a few years ago (pre Let her go fame).  I really enjoyed his set and bought a couple of his albums the next day.   One of my favourite recent lyricists.

Passenger - I Hate

Paper Aeroplanes - I was searching for instructions on making Paper Aeroplanes and google linked to a torrent by this band, so I downloaded it.  I ended up going to their Bandcamp site and buying their entire back catalogue.

Paper Aeroplanes - Same Mistake.

Rue Royale - Another band I discovered from a Facebook post.   Another band I went and bought their back catlogue off bandcamp.

Rue Royale - Set out to Discover.

Erica Nockalls - I went to a little day festival in Bishops Castle a couple of years ago.  Miles Hunt and Erica from the Wonder Stuff were in the audience.   One of my friends mentioned that Erica had just released her first solo album.  When I got home I googled it and found the Mannikin video. I thought it was totally bonkers so bought the album.

I was lucky to photograph her when she supported P.I.L a couple of year ago.

Erica Nockalls - Mannikin.

Ferocious Dog - I have had the pleasure of photographing these at several Farmer Phil's festivals.  A great live band.

Ferocious Dog - Criminal Justice.


Right that will do you for now, other than that lot, Royal Blood, Hozier and collaborations like Storm Corrosion mostly I've been listening to more unsigned music from bandcamp.

So now we are up to date with my musical journey.  You can probably see why my music output is quite ecelctic.

Normal blogging of the album and lack of progress will now resume.   I may do the occasional blog on a song though.

I will leave you with some Storm Corrosion though.

Storm Corrosion - Drag Ropes