To the people!

People, I need your advice!

I have made websites for a number of years now but finding the time and “headspace” to make my own great is often hard. I plan to address this though and I welcome any advice.

Firstly, I have this site, which is just a blog with some bits in the sidebar, such as a crappy audio player. I aim to add sections and richer content but I’d like to know what makes a good artist site a great one, for you! I’m keen to hear different perspectives, from fans, non/future fans, labels, promoters, publications etc. Obviously the likes of Sound and Music offer good advice in this area but I want personal feedback and comments. If you have something to say, please leave a comment below. Thanks.

This site is my primary concern for now but I also have: www.samski.net / www.midi-octopus.co.uk / www.glatze.co.uk / www.thereminday.co.uk. That may seem excessive but they all serve different purposes. I welcome any comments on these / consolidation etc…

BTW: I don’t do MySpace or Facebook.

Grin Scab is alive…

Back in September 2009 (!) I briefly mentioned a new project I was involved in called GypScab, with my friends Grinner and Seamus (with Justin doing the artwork – above). As part of that I did a liveset about a year ago as a test. It went well but then I got busy with other things.

In the meantime I have worked on some really interesting sounding stuff as part of this project but nothing will be formally release until next year.

Recently though Seamus and Grinner got fed up with waiting for me, took the live recording I did and fleshed it out into a fully-fledged 39 minute long tune! They also got scared of offending travellers, so we are now named Grin Scab. Behold…

Grin Scab on SoundCloud

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!