Reflecting on Bristow

Simply put, the Dirty Bristow launch party & fete fookin’ rocked!

That about sums it up and no surprise when you have a beautiful new boutique publication launching, brought to us by a pair of amazing gentlemen, a room full of lovely people and a bonkers idea set in the perfect venue. Everything from the cross-dressed door man, Danny’s dad with his face painted like a dart board for the retarded, the various games and stalls, and the broad selection of entertainment made this a really wonderful and memorable event! It was a lovely thing that left me feeling warm and hopeful for the future.

Of course this is about a magazine at the end of the day. One I hope to see flourish. A brave/stupid venture, brought to you by two very brave/stupid individuals and their band of willing supporters. Respec’!

Ooh, and for my part I pulled some silly faces…


Thanks to Pete Ashton for the great photo

Glatze, live and thrice live

Last weekend I played a thoroughly enjoyable gig at the Frog and Fiddle in Cheltenham. It wasn’t as well attended as I’d like but the room was ace, the sound system was storming and everyone who was there was there was lovely and seemed to really enjoy it! BINGO!

Having been concentrating on other things for a while I now find myself with three gigs in three weekends. Following on from Cheltenham I will be playing at the Dirty Bristow Fete this Saturday and the Whales EP launch party on the 5th of September. I’m really chuffed to have been asked (!) but I also have my concerns…

Apart from the usual nerves and self-doubts I am also a little worried about both gigs, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I worry that people who have heard my EP will expect me to sound like that. In fact I am billed as a “Romany Surf Step Supremo” by Bad Egg (see flyer below), which is cool / true but I only do one tune from my EP in my liveset. Secondly, I might be a bit of an odd act for the Dirty Bristow bill. I am particularly concerned what the Dirty Bristow lot are going to make of my raucous antics at 9:30pm…ho hum! Both of these might be non-issues and I will give it my all regardless but I just wanted to get these thoughts out in the open. Either way Glatze does what he does, so nehhhh!

Event flyers below (click each flyer for more info):

Open Sound Group

Yesterday I had the pleasure of attending the Open Sound Group session, run by sound artist and friend, Graham Dunning. Graham has been on residency in Rea Garden for a while now and he was keen to get local experimental musicians together to create compositions based on the space and objects at the Rea Garden site.

I first met Graham at Sonic Weekend. To open the session yesterday he spoke about how his time at Sonic Weekend was one of the inspirations for getting everyone together to make some recordings. As ever with these things I was a little unsure of the plan, and myself, to start with but Graham explained the idea and everyone was very welcoming. A few familiar faces helped too, in the form of AAS and Antonio.

Alongside the familiar faces there were many I hadn’t met before. I was particularly excited to meet Dallas Simpson, Sarah Farmer of Lombard Method fame and Andy Ingamells. Dallas had spent the previous day doing binaural recordings of the site, which were available to all as a form of inspiration for their pieces. Sarah was most pleasant and had a lovely approach to sound generation and looping, focusing on the sound of physical objects on an ancient turntable. Andy really blew me away. A young chap with some amazing ideas. I love people who focus on the voice and novel ways to score pieces. His piece for the group was made up of a list of words and phrases he had come across in the area and was scored using a visual score, based on the boldness of the felt lines he had drawn on sheets at the site the day before. The rain had randomly altered the score, which lead to an unpredictable cacophony of sound, with all of the group partaking. Great stuff!

Overall it was a really inspirational and stimulating event. It was great to see the variety of styles and working methods coming together so well. Having been very busy for a while now, with workshop planning and midi-octopus building, this was a welcome break. It was all consuming, yet lots of fun. If the outcomes are as good as it felt on the day then we are in for a treat. Good stuff Graham!