Thursday night Drone

Very nice Children of the Drone session here at Oblique House on Thursday night - the first one here in a while. Melski stopped by (again, first time in a while) to play some flute, percussion and do some random readings from a book of Modern English Usage. She's recently moved from Bristol to the Totnes area and is working one day a week in Exeter (music therapy), so we should be seeing a bit more of her for the next while, we hope. We had two basses happening for quite a bit of it - Keith playing Simon's acoustic, and Richard playing his electric. Everyone seemed to thoroughly enjoy the session (there were six of us - me, Keith, Richard, John, Henry and Melski), and it was particularly nice to have the French windows open so the evening birdsong could mingle with our playing. Vicky's new iron doorknocker (a birthday present designed by her and hand-forged by a Hampshire blacksmith) was even involved, briefly, as a percussion instrument. The music even veered into a sort of psychedelic dub direction for a while during the penultimate piece.

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recent Beltaine gathering

Three weeks ago I was out in West Wales for a Beltaine gathering with various old and new friends. Wild music was played around the fire each night, as one might expect.

Some situations, like this, I find inappropriate for recording. There are practical reasons (the fire being the centre of activity is the ideal place to position the microphone, spatially, but...Also, the darkness can result in people tripping over wires, things being dropped - and then there's the background noise, people talking, etc.). But there are also other, more subtle, reasons. Even if people don't realise they're being recorded, the presence of recording technology seems to have a detrimental effect on the 'musical atmosphere'. Some music is best left unrecorded, I think, a gift to the Universe, not meant to be captured. Sometimes, despite one's best efforts, it seems to resist being captured (something goes wrong with the equipment, batteries die, discs get wiped, etc).

In this case I'd decided to leave the fireside jamming unrecorded, but on a couple of occasions couldn't resist... I captured less than 20 minutes of sound, but it's really quite nice, so I've uploaded it to the Internet Archive Open Source audio collection (link below):

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new archive material

I've just finalised the uploading of various MP3 audio files from my personal archive to the Internet Archive Open Source Audio collection (links below):

Ail Fionn (me and Inge):

Sint-Niklaas, Belgium - November 1995 (just us)
Cadamstown, Ireland - May 1997 (with Andy Man on percussion)
Sint-Niklaas, Belgium Spring 2001 (with Sven van Mol on percussion)
Lodes, France - October 2002 (just us)

A Tiny Window (me and whoever):

The Yoga Studio, Stevens Point, Wisconsin, USA - April 2002 (with a group of local musicians, never having played together before)
Last Train to Tortoise Central (with Stef and Inge, whilst travelling with the Dongas Tribe, West Cornwall, 1997-98)

plus:

TreeWalk 1997 (an unaffiliated group of people I was part of, who walked hundreds of miles around Ireland in the spring of 1997, planting trees, visiting schools, talking about the environment, and playing music.

North Bridge session

Another session with Kristof last night, at the North
Bridge Inn, probably the pub I feel most comfortable in, locally. I played a brief solo set to fill in time early on, and when things got a bit busier we played three of his songs - minor P.A. problems, etc., but generally quite a success. Very nice open mic evening - sensitive guitar duo, poets, an unaccompanied folk singer with a truly beautiful voice, and Ruth (who I think is/was part of "Thing Quartet"/"Directory of Light" with Simon Drone) borrowed K's guitar and my capo in order to deliver a blinding version of Syd Barrett's "Gigolo Aunt", plus a few of her own brilliantly quirky songs (I particularly liked the one lamenting the deaths of her various 'useless' feline friends).

I've just uploaded some more MP3 collections to the Internet Archive Open Source collection - still some administration/processing details to deal with, but it should all be sorted within a day or two. There's various Ail Fionn stuff (me and Inge), plus the Treewalk '97 collection, "Last Train to Tortoise Central" (improvisations with Stef and Inge in West Cornwall, '98-'99).

There's a Drone session tonight at the Rainbow Studio in Crediton, but as it's Vicky's birthday, I shall have to opt out of that one. A very nice Drone piece from St. Stephens church, October 2003 is currently playing on the computer (thanks to the random playlist feature).

Cathedral Green session

Kristof, who I met in Gent a couple of months ago (see below), arrived in Exeter yesterday with a coachload of his fellow horticultural students, on some kind of field trip. After running through a few of his songs back here at Oblique House, he got a phone message from his mates that we should come down to the Cathedral Green and entertain them.


I ended up having one of the best nights I can remember in Exeter, one of the best little performances I've ever been involved with - and it took 30 Flemish horticultural students to come over for it to happen! We played in one of the alcove-like spaces between two external butresses to the main cathedral wall (see above), attracting the attention of various local types, very amused by the Belgian takeover. A whole sequence of Kristof's songs, delivered with gusto, plus a re-working of Roger Waters' "Mother". My saz playing was really happening last night, felt really attuned to Kristof's playing, can't remember feeling so on form since the Hill of Uisneach around Easter 2003. It all got quite raucous (and unfortunately a harmonica fell into the hands of a drunk individual...) with one song being requested three times, dancing, drinking, full-on party vibes, but no response from the authorities, fortunately.


Looks like the whole contingent will be packing out the North Bridge Inn for the open mic session tonight...


I'm hidden from view here - the one in the blue anorak.

'A Tiny Window'

I've finally processed the recordings from my recent (Feb-March) travels - just over four hours in total, from the seventeen minidiscs I came home with.

This has now been uploaded to the Internet Archive's Open Source Audio collection.

I've decided to adopt the name "A Tiny Window" for the time being. I wanted a sort of umbrella name under which I could operate along with whoever I end up working with.

The recordings are divided into four phases:

Phase 1 - Bristol (with Ale Fernandez of the Improvised Crime collective, including excerpts from our performance at the Watershed Arts Centre's 'Random Function' event) and Cork City (with Toby and JohnJohn from 'Wiggle', and Christy from Sumu).

Phase 2 - West Cork, and Sneem, Co. Kerry, Ireland (with Christy, Andy Ra, Andy Man, John Lynch, and Kris)

Phase 3 - Southern France (with Inge, and Colin playing some faint percussion)

Phase 4 - Belgium, London and Exeter (with Sven, Kristof - a singer-songwriter I met while waiting for the coach from Gent to London, Pok SpaceGoat and Stef)

This is in addition to the Children of the Drone material which has already been uploaded to the Archive.