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Lovely weekend of freezing weather and fog. The slight chill in my feet and Papa M on the stereo transport me back to first year at university. I love this time of year.

Doing some net surfing around early electronic music and came across this charming picture of John Cage collecting mushrooms. From this odd (but nice) site

In the 2nd person

You get the inkling that you're a bit bonkers when you react with immense joy to the delivery of custom cut primary coloured perspex to your door. You think - if I were an artist this is how I would feel every day.

More blah blah

I read about 'slow blogging' where you think about what you're going to write and write it properly. I prefer my own brand of psyche soul-coughing. So random sentences from my brain to the keyboard.

Doing open heart surgery on the suitcase synth - those dry joints will come back to haunt you....yep...why isn't that LFO working...anyway read this quote in ITs interview with jessica rylan

'It's nice if you can rely on your equipment,' she says, before we stop to go and find some cigarettes. 'I know how to deal with my own equipment'.

Kinda sums it up. I was ruminating on the fact that I've perhaps spent the last 2 months or so soldering bits and bobs rather than making any music with them. Is it in anticipation that I will make some music with them at some point? Or a way of avoiding making music?

Where can I see more gigs where this happens:


rather than this


I want to see more machines. Not speccy blokes with laptops looking like they're playing minesweeper.

On patchbays

Remember when we saw that awful band at the Harley whose entire set was synchronised from laptops? They had dance moves and a light show which was made up of argos rope lights and desklaps that turned on and off in time with the music. Half way through they went to this huge fake patchbay and began a choreographed routine of pulling out and replacing wires, discussing with each other in mimed "shall we patch this to this?" "why not - oh yes that sounds wonderful".

I was thinking about this you see, as I'm trying to build all my future electronic thing with patchbays. There's something about them and that band knew it. The idea that you're actually manually rewiring something. I think it encourages improvisation and the gradual creation of a sound.

My current favourite Hemingway story

Chapter IV

It was a frightfully hot day. We'd jammed an absolutely perfect barricade across the bridge. It was simply priceless. A big old wrought-iron grating from the front of a house. Too heavy to lift and you could shoot through it and they would have to climb over it. It was absolutely topping. They tried to get over it, and we potted them from forty yards. They rushed it, and officers came out alone and worked on it. It was an absolutely perfect obstacle. Their officers were very fine. We were frightfully put out when we heard the flank had gone, and we had to fall back.

From 'in our time'. I just can't get that "It was absolutely topping" out of my head...what a thought as you're killing other people. Powerful.

RE: Survivors

Let me first say I'm a strong supporter of the BBC (christ that feels like one of those "I'm not racist but..." openings).

When anyone questions the license fee people usually say "oh but they make good dramas don't they?" and they do - I loved State of Play and Bleak House, for example. But FFS Survivors is so crap. The acting is so wooden! The writing is full of holes...it's determined to have all these shots of places strangely empty...roads, car parks....utter crap, of course I've been glued to it.

I just discovered my crummy camera has a time lapse function. That could be fun. I keep trying to take pictures of my latest creations but the camera is crap and there's no light. Winter. The thermometer on the way home read 5° C, one degree.

What with all this synth messing around I'm going to turn into John Foxx



UNDERPASS!

We're obsessed with this in the band. Apparently 'Burning Car' is better but I can't find it on youtube.

Searching for something I'd emailed myself from work I came across an email where I was extolling the virtues of Sheffield to a friend who'd moved away I said (rather embarassingly) that I'd been to a gig and there's at least five people whose 'creativity is genuinely exciting' - contrasted with my uni years when perhaps two or three in four years. I can't think of who those five people were. Depressing eh? Even more depressing is that I don't think anyone is excited by my creativity either (still ruminating on terrible review on ceefax - 3/10 - banal social commentary apparently...like criticising Kind of Blue for not having any fast-uns). Looking at the flower electronics site again and thinking if someone said 'can you build me one of those' I'd be over the moon.

Blogger has added a weird function where you can search a blog and it comes up with all the posts with that word in. I typed in 'snow' for a bit of entertainment. Makes me realise how much I repeat myself on this 'ere blog. For example November 2004:

"In 2000 I got up around 7 and flicked the TV on. I saw a report which chronicled the night's events. The first part being that Gore was said to have won on most American networks. I only saw this part of the report and so went back to bed assuming that all was well. How wrong I was."

Suppose I'll be telling this story in 2012 too? Yes I can.

I have these electronics projects on the go and to try and reign in the worse parts of my personality (I get obsessed with completing things and work way past the point where judgement goes using fucking the entire thing up) I'm trying ever so hard to do 'a bit at a time'...spend 1/2 an hour soldering WALK AWAY. It seems to be working, although I'm racking up projects in my notebook...I bought an A4 squared exercise the other day to put circuits/ideas etc in (square so I can draw straight lines easier). I love proper stationary shops where you can browse and buy things in ones - must remind myself to never visit staples again...you go in there and you have to buy like 20 exercise at once. Their text n' graphics 160gsm paper is quite nice for sleeves though......Coupland-esque enough for ya?

Anyway I found this rather wonderful site which is sort of run by this wonderful person and got all inspired. I built a filter an it works...oh joy...now WALK AWAY...and solder it tomorrow. Back to the point, not only are her machines pretty cool she sells them for like $300! (altough profit can't be that much - economies of scale really matter here - and not buying from maplin...christ the markup on some of their stuff £1.52 for a f'ing bananna connector)...anyway...A scheme...an ETSY shaped scheme was forming in my head. The dilemma remains: anyone interested in noise music (the noise community as she puts it) is probably building them for themselves right? Who'd want my completely basic - straight of the 'net oscillators. Sure I've put them in a pretty package and I think making them totally patchable is pretty cool but...

I'd have to brush up my woodworking skills too.

Well blows me down, there's a new buddha machine.and I saw it in the window of rare and racy yesterday. Excellent. Might buy two.

I wonder if I am cursed. Every Saturday something goes wrong. My back, the car, last week I snapped my key in the lock, now today the oven is on the blink.

2 stories.

First Found Wire Story:

Walking home from town I found a piece of wire on the street. I love these presents from BT, like the red rubber bands from he post office. Once a careless engineer had obviously done some serious re-patching and left a huge cache of discarded wire by the local box (you know these green things on your street, they're full of a multi-coloured spaghetti of wire). It fuelled my circuit bending adventures for months. I don't suppose I'll get much mileage out of this foot length of blue and green solid core but it reminded me of that happy day.

Second Found Wire story:

Remember when you rented that house and the burglar alarm would go off at all hours of the night? It was infuriating to the point where I suggested just smashing it wit a lump hammer. It took 2 weeks to get the landlord to do anything about it. Who becomes a landlord, why are such a percentage vile layabouts with no care for their tenants quality of life?* Anyway, the company who installed the alarm in the first place said they wouldn't do anything about it...it took daily phone calls, a personal visit and threats of legal action before either party did anything. Meanwhile no one in the house (or neighbouring house) could sleep because the alarm would go off every 2 hours. They finally sent an engineer who set about the system with a pair of pliers. I netted all the wire. It kept me going for years. I was using some the other day.

*when something goes wrong here my landlord sends his jolly dad who reminds me of my favourite uncle. They're not all bad I know, but putting my statistician hat on I conclude with 95% confidence a correlation between being a vile cunt and being a landlord.

Found this amazing BBC publication about the radiophonic workshop

When the cardboard amp runs out of battery it sounds absolutely evil.

Finished work on another project...the cardboard amp. This is based directly on Fotosis' one and the MakeZine 'Craker box amp'



although my schematic came from the good ol' Nicolas Collins book. Now...comparing circuit I reckon the MakeZine one is a lot more reliable. My one is minimum components. It doesn't even have a volume...just one setting 1960's nasty fuzz. It's prone to picking up radio and self-oscillation which I guess is what all those extra caps are for in the MakeZine circuit. I might make a Mark II at some point. I'm going to have to build quite a few LM386 amps if I'm going to see through my next project...

In a conference the other day talking about deprivation. The person speaking got Jeremy Kyle and Jeremy Vine mixed up and ranted about parents being more interested in watching Vine than caring about their kids. Amusing mental image of neglectful, politics obsessed parents.

How does one arrive at

"Memory is a fickle siren song"

and such a beautiful melody at the tender age of 22.

The Fleet Foxes are so good it makes me cry that I'll never do anything that good. I'm not adjusting to being at an age where if I was going to do something brilliant I'd have done it. What to do now?

I finally got round to reading 'The Gum Thief' by Douglas Coupland. It's unusual for me to be the fan of a contemporary author and be looking forward to new books. I'm used to dead authors with fixed oeuvres. Oh, I like Coupland but always get this strange feeling when reading his books. When does having 'themes' or 'Couplandisms' become repeating himself? I liked the bit at the end when Roger's book is reviewed by his tutor. Was this a nod to criticisms of Coupland's early work? Characters that appear to normal? The setting being real life?

I really though www.edmatheson.com at the end was going to be a spin off website. It's not.

Oh well. Otherwise life goes on. I spend my weeks wishing it was the weekend and the weekend dreading the week to come. And yet, things still get done and I don't know how.

I'm finally building the 'synth in a suitcase'. I bought a briefcase at a jumble sale perhaps 4 years ago. I remember this as a happy time when we'd go to jumble sales at the weekend and my job was low-commitment and rent was low. Anyway, when I got it home one of your house mates said "why did you buy that" and I said "I'm going to build a synth to put in it", they rolled their eyes. And now...it's coming together. Four years in the making. It's all based on Nicolas Collins hacked CMOS circuits. NAND gate oscillators, Hex Schmitt Trigger LFO, pitch divider....All linked with patch cords for that retro synth feel. Is it clear on the picture? Probably not. The patch chords also mean that the circuits can be combined in any way. So you can have the LFO modulating a vactrol which modulates an oscillator which is controlling another one This isn't really a proper keyboard synth that you're going to be able to play Enola Gay on. Rather a sort of noise creator in the spirit of synths before Moog worked out that a conventional piano keyboard could be used. It makes noise.


The idea being to look something a bit like this:


Or this

Funnily enough it was the lack of a keyboard that put me off building it for so long. What was the point if you couldn't 'play it'. Then I was inspired by these guys. Although their stuff is finished a lot better than mine (and they sell it for like $300 on etsy). At some point I may post up a sound sample or something.

So yes we can. I wanted to say that Churchill quote about the Americans always doing the right thing, after exhausting all other possibilities. It's not quite right but it's almost there. Of course the sense of history was palpable and I can't really think of the words to write. Leave it to the political bloggers eh?

So I need glasses. They suit me a little bit. I had a hair cut too so now I feel like I'm in disguise. A worrying thought whilst taking a drive with them on, how the fuck have I been coping all this time. Imagine if a policeman had asked me to do a number plate test. Ha ha.

I love a good election night. I had a vivid memory today of turning on the TV at about 6am in 2000 and seeing a tiny bit of a report with democrats cheering etc (of course the report going on the say...and then...) thinking Gore had won and promptly going back to bed blissfully unaware of what had unfolded till sometime that afternoon when I idly mentioned to someone how relieved that Gore had won. Innocent days...