Attention musicians: what are you up to?

I have lots fo tunes, lots of words and an axe for hire. Why does nobody want me?!

There's an MP3 of one track, and some pretty pictures that go with it here if you wanna listen to it. But I really don't feel like promoting/justifying/defending/being told it's shit right now.

If I can work out PayPal, I might put out the album myself and sell it over the internet cause I can't even think of a label that would be interested in this sort of thing, and besides, I'm just fed up with The Music Industrie as a nebulous whole.

But that's what I'm up to. And looking for a dayjob.

I'm producing an album by another electronic artist soon, which should be damn cool as I've got a free reign to go at it as much as I can. Looking forward to that one immensely. The same label might have an EP for me too.

Next up is a collaborative album, involving 20 artists. Details are top secret atm, but rest assured its a very interesting concept that should be a decent listen.

And to top that I'm putting out my own record next year, which I've had no time to work on due to all this other stuff. This isn't really a problem as its only a bit of tidying up that needs doing. As soon as anything concrete is in place over it I'll tell all.

I've been playing drums for my friend Ace's band Th3 M4nn3qu1ns, which occupies that singular sonic niche between Cindy Lauper and KISS (she hates when I say she sounds like Cindy Lauper).

I've been recording a bunch of rap songs with some beats my buddy Jerry (above-mentioned Ace's boyfriend, guitarist from my ex-band) made; I was really surprised at the variety of stuff he'd cooked up, and at the rate we're going we'll have a full-length recorded in the next month or two...woohoo!

I've also been recording some new stuff at home with drums and loops and bass guitar and keyboards and voice, building up some material for a trio I've been putting together.

And then there's the acoustic guitar + singing stuff. And the improv keys/drums/tenor sax trio. But I think that's it for now.

Question: If you're in a band that emphasizes improv, what do you do to avoid the trappings of losing that feel while multi-tracking, yet still sound good and getting what you want???

Nick, when are Th3 M4nn3qu1ns going to play a show? Hugo is pretty tightlipped about the whole affair.

Hated anthology -- one step forward, two steps back. Now that the mixes are done, some members of the band are advocating cutting some of our best and best-known songs from the package due to musical and moral discomfort with what we sang and played at the time. (A necessary byproduct of what Dan calls our "Man on the Mountain/Boy in the Basement" lyrical stance.) Friendly battle has been engaged and I am hopeful that the cuts won't happen and everyone will be ok with that, but that'll take time and delicate negotiation. I think that Spring 2004 is realistic for a release date, and we may do something special to mark the occasion.

My solo project Honeybourne are also contributing a cover for the ONS CD - a version of "Living by numbers" which is rather groovy. Since my wife wiped some of my recordings for my album earlier this year, I'm having to work from scratch, reworking some old songs and writing some new ones again, but it's a bloody slow process with not enough time to do everything I want to do. It's either guitar stuff with beats, or all electronic with Fruity Loops, any VSTs I can handle and my old Juno 6 and CZ101. Still, my sunburst Jagmaster is finally repaired after two years out of action, which is nice. Paul, the other Cloud Minder, is in the process of turning 3 C90 of old recordings of mine into 4 CDs, which should be good fun to listen to.

Oh, and still practicing in church every Wednesday and playing every Sunday, either guitar or bass depending on what everyone thinks sounds best.

If anyone in the Chicago area is interested, though, let me know.

Sarah and I are recording an album under the name the Petrified Forest. We each recorded some drum tracks, and it works like this: one of us will add parts to a song until we get bored of it, then the other one takes over and adds some stuff. It's a mix of really poppy rock music with some more sinister weird stuff. It should be awesome when we're done, we've got 10 songs so far.

Sarah, me and my girlfriend Sarah should be in Chicago by January and we'll be looking for new musical projects. Email me more about what you guys want to do if yr interested. My email address is backwards.

Besides playing in Mama Digdown's Brass Band, I'm getting a new trio going that I'm really excited about. It's guitar, upright bass and drums, and until we have enough original material we're doing some stuff by the Bad Plus, Tortoise, Radiohead, Masada, and some modern classical guitar stuff adapted for trio improv.

I've just mailed re that CD I promised months back...

Jez

Hang out in front of TDsCDs&LPs for about a half an hour and you will probably run into a half dozen people putting up flyers in the cubbyhole of the entrance.

Have written some things I'm not to happy with in the last few weeks. Seems I was too interested in doing stuff that sounded like "this or that style" (my attempt at an italo disco track nearly made me smash my instruments this past weekend! Awful. Lifeless.) as opposed to just working and letting something come up on its own - which is how my best things have been made. So I'm in a state of reassessment, so to speak .

*PLUG* More info on my blog: www.thebubblelab.blogspot.com

And trying to make funky/electro/disco noise on the 4track and make it not sound like a 4track. it's fun!

Where the hell IS TDsCDs&LPs?? I've been in the neighborhood where it's supposed to be, but there are no outside signs or anything, as far as I can tell. Also, earlnash, does your band gig in B-town?

It is in the basement of a big old house on Kirkwood that has been converted into stores, right across the street from the Monroe Public Libary. This house has "The Laughing Planet" burrito shop and a coffee house inside. If you go to the basement of the coffee house, you can walk into TD's or you can enter from the back of the building, where the cubbyhole I mentioned is located, along with a blue dozen flyers for band people looking for band people.

I went to school at IU and played in a few different bands in B-ton from 89 to 95. I haven't played a gig up there with my new band, but am going to work on a booking up there sometime.

If you are into indie/punk/whatever and are underage, a good way to meet people to play music is to volunteer at the all ages club Rhinos or at WIUS, the small watt AM station on campus.

Part of why I have no time is that I've been scoring a friend's video game as my first electronic/computer/sampler-based project. I've generally operated in the guitar-bass-drums-vocals world all my life. What a challenge: to learn the technology, and to come up with short loops that are motivating yet unobtrusive.

My handle, southern lights, will be the name of my next project when I get around to it. I hereby claim rights to the name. Or maybe somebody else has. That project will probably be solo and computer-based, but will hopefully sound organic.

Got a little project with a virtuoso drummer doing a hella/don caballero style thing, where I play classical style guitar on electic. He drums like Zach Hill (he's a god!). We do sound a *lot* like Hella, and we admitt it, but its fun! Although he lives far away and we rarely get to meet up, but its a good technical exercise when we do write/jam, starting to gig around christmas hopefully.

My 'proper' band, kind of mathy/rocky pretty music with occasional vocals is doing well. We have been given a little fully soundproofed studio on a farm which is the most amazing thing ever! We're all 17/18 with too much time, no bills and money from working all summer. So we've writing and recording for the last year or so in our nice new studio.

I'm sure some of you will be able to relate to this, we keep improving too fast, hearning new things, getting new ideas - this seems to happen in 2 song steps. After 2 songs we'll jump to a new level and the older songs become obselete - annoying when you want to get gigging and a coherent cd finished!!

Also trying to do a 2manyDjs style thing on my own with traktor and some old record decks - but, hmm, no, it'll never work.

Anyway, that was fun!

I'm mainly working on the Cleft and Cloven project (which is turning into lots of hot beats, odd-time signatures, polyrhythms, and an even split of programming and live stuff). Right now we're basically trying to achieve self-sufficiency with the home studio, but one of my friends from the Youngblood Brass Band is doing his horn tracks this week for a tune.

Besides that, I've been doing brass band gigs as usual but have basically stopped doing jazz gigs on drumset for the meantime, just not feeling it right now.

Will put up new recordings very soon. These are shorter and actually have pro performers and recording quality. Er, I got accepted/invited to perform at the Society of American Music conference next year. Am hoping to be able to do some teaching and playing gigs in the new school year while I try to finally get my thesis done. Which means I should probably get my ass off here and do something productive now.

I think AOL is my fave of the three, the way that the harmonies build and peak on the "Warm... but alone" line.

Pretty much!

need to do some more recording.. meanwhile my band is supporting chris knox on the 10th of september, here in christchurch )as part of the hep c. benefit gig at the media club).

It's very cartoonish and absurd, and we do a bit of the "Carmen" opera by Bizet. So I think people will really like it.

Aside from that, I've been doing the odd thing here and there. Recording fake breakdance music, pulling together samples from experiments with my television, etc. You can create the most insane electronic wave loops using a TV and a videocamera.

http://www.valentinerecords.co.uk/download/

enjoy!

Ian and I, this summer

now we're back and adding some overdubs and mixing and should release the album in a month or two. rock!

http://www.thehundredhanded.com

* Hot-rodded my G4 with a faster CPU chip, which will keep me going for another year.

* Wrapped a track for 18-Year-Old R'n'B Diva. It's my first successful attempt at writing and programming a song in that vein. The lyrics are pure Cheez Whiz, but then again, that's kinda the point.

* Euro-Trance Girl #1's album is done. Now if I can just convince her to get the tracks professionally mastered instead of getting This Guy She Knows to do it. Sigh...

* Finishing a song for my singer-songwriter friend. It's a big, Coldplay-style rock ballad.
I'm sorry.

* One song left to mix for Euro-Trance Girl #2, then...

* I pull out my Daft / Modjo / Jaxx filter disco house whatchamacallit out of mothballs so I can remix it to club length. My DJ friend (who actually has, like, real house music label contacts and yargleblargle), has been bugging me for a full-length version for months.

* The studio moves to a larger suite in April, so I'm pushing my partners for a new mixing console. I'll be paying for a large chunk of it, so I don't think I'll have a problem convincing them to do it.

Next weekend we go on our first mini-tour, hitting Indianapolis, Louisville, and Nashville. And the weekend after that we play SXSW in Austin.

In late April we finally go into the studio to record our first full-length, which we hope to have mixed and mastered in time for a late June release.

I'm playing a recital of modern classical guitar music on the 18th at York.

I defended my composition thesis a month ago and have been accepted to do my Ph. D. at SUNY Buffalo starting September.

I was in Eugene a couple weeks ago to play a prepared electric guitar improv piece (sort of a skewed tribute to Hendrix) at the Society of American Music conference. Everything was great except for the attendance.

I was accepted to the Young Composers' Workshops for the Arraymusic and Madwaska String Quartet ensembles, which I'll be working on this spring and summer.

I'm still taking Karnatak voice lessons, the first time I've tried any type of singing lessons. It's a slow and painful process but I think I'm becoming more tolerable.

The Cleft & Cloven record is about 75% done. Each song that gets finished is definitely better than the one before, and hopefully we'll be totally finished by mid '05. I'm not sure what will happen then. (oh, in about a week there will be a website re-launch with some new mp3s)

Mama Digdown's Brass Band has been playing a lot, the Green Mill gigs in Chicago went pretty well. We've got a week of gigs in Switzerland coming up in a couple months. Preparations for the next cd are very slow however.

still the same 14. finding the time to organise the remix to be finished is proving to be headachey, coupled with the fact that nearly three years after starting to record, i don't particularly like this album anymore..

Congrats! I am sometimes regretful that I don't have more formal musical training. I did Royal Conservatory for piano, but only got to Grade Six, and there are days when I could really use more knowledge of theory.