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!

Wasson?

I’ve been on holiday. Half my time was spent at home working on projects and for the other half I was forced to enjoy myself by leaving my shed and studio behind, to visit my home village of Par, in Cornwall.

Here is an update (in list form) of what I achieved:

  • Got airplay of my debut Glatze EP on The Big Paws, Brumcast, Phantom Circuit and Brap FM – I thank you very much for your support!
  • Got lots of positive feedback about my Glatze EP. People seem to choose different tracks as their favourite, which can only be good news?
  • I even sold a few copies so far through my Bandcamp. This means a lot – cheers!
  • At the fantastic Port Eliot Festival, which I thoroughly enjoyed attending with my ueber-cool dad, I handed copies of my EP to Grayson Perry, Gavin Turk & Deborah Curtis, Tim Smit and Jarvis Cocker. For some reason I was too scared to give one to Martin Parr.
  • I have had a couple of Glatze live dates confirmed. I will be playing my reworked liveset (including the song “Glatze” from my EP) at The Frog and Fiddle in Cheltenham on the 20th of August and then at The launch event for the fabulous Dirty Bristow magazine, on the 28th of August.
  • I have been working hard on my midi-octopus to get it sorted and music written for it, for my debut performance at The British Science Festival, in September. The associated workshop is coming along nicely too!
  • I have been in working on updated noise box / optical theremin designs for my workshop at The Digital Media Centre in November, and I will soon be announcing another similar workshop and performance(s) at an upcoming festival (a favourite of mine), once details are confirmed

So, all in all it’s been a busy holiday. Rather productive though and I did nearly finish reading a book too…