Overpoort Sketches 1994

I've just uploaded a collection of the earliest existing recordings of me and Inge, from 1994, before I'd discovered the saz and she the mandolin (and before we'd come up with the name "Ail Fionn"). We were still playing guitars at this point, improvising around simple themes. This was from the time we were living in the Overpoort cite in Ghent (the Overpoort is a notorious thoroughfare lined on either side with student bars and clubs, a place of banging techno, alcohol abuse and vomit, but we were tucked away behind a gate in a little enclave of tranquility).


The Overpoort cite (Britte visible in background) - photo by Inge
This is as rough sounding as anything in my archive (3rd or 4th generation copies of cassettes recorded on horrible little machines with the worst microphones in existence), and any attempts to enhance the sound digitally were bound to be limited in their success - but I've done my best. The playing, equivalently, is pretty wobbly throughout, but this stuff is very precious to me, as it brings back the magic of discovering improvisation and the making of music with Inge. Whether anyone else will get anything out of it is another matter.

Someone (Kris or Boris?) is playing bass on a couple of pieces, someone else (maybe Alan, probably Eva) a bit of percussion.

Some of the best bits were recorded in a nature reserve in nearby Merelbeke. A chorus of frogs ("kikkers" in Flemish) joined us, to great effect.

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Winter at Maugha 1996-97

A new collection from the Ail Fionn lo-fi archives. This is all from the winter we spent with Mike, Cathy and family up at Maugha, a farmhouse in the mountains of West Cork. A couple of traditional tunes mixed in with various original pieces we were developing at the time. The stuff that sounds like it was transcribed off a wax cylinder was recorded on a variety of terrible cassette recorders at Maugha itself. The slightly better sound-quality material was recorded on something considerably more sophisticated at Paul's house near Ballydehob (or Skibbereen?) one evening when Mike drove Inge, Andy and myself over there for a session.


the mountain behind Maugha - photo by Inge
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A Tiny Window lo-fi collections

I've been scraping the bottom of the ATW barrel, uploading the last (nearly!) few bits of my lo-fi recording archive to archive.org.

The first collection was recorded during the first birthday party for Alan's daughter Uisce. This was near Sneem in County Kerry, on the piece of land where Kris and Birgit were living in a little self-built cabin at the time. Inge and I were visiting from Cornwall, and Christy was there too. As with most first birthday parties, the key participant was fairly oblivious to what was happening, and fell asleep early on in the proceedings. The rest of us happily stayed up late around a fire playing tunes, jamming and generally being silly (any excuse for a party). I recorded most of this on a cheap-and-nasty plastic handheld mono cassette recorder. The next morning, the cassette was nowhere to be seen. The only reason these recordings still exist is because Alan magically decided to take a counter-intuitive route across the bog and stumbled upon said (damp but intact) tape which had somehow fallen from my clutches into a clump of reeds as I'd stumbled back to the cabin in the dark.


the roof of Kris and Birgit's cabin, Sneem - photo by Inge
It's pretty rough (I rather overdid the hiss reduction and then lost the originals, so it's got that weird hollow/metallic sound in the quiet sections) and my saz is barely audible throughout a lot of it, but I still consider it worthy of preservation.

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The other collection is an amalgam of bits and pieces from 1995-2005. As I've already compiled a "Miscellany One", this has become "Miscellany Two" (I think I was subconsciously influenced by the Dylan Thomas anthologies). There's:

• some stuff I recorded with Andy Man in West Cork the winter ('96-'97) we spent up at Maugha - these are the few selections without Inge, so I suspect they're from the week she was away visiting family in Belgium;
  
• an extended didg/bass/saz/percussion/wailing jam from the front room of the house Inge and I rented in the Phoenixstraat cite, Ghent in early 1995 (featuring Fifi from Oort Cloud);
  
• some wildness recorded in a little cabin in southern France when I was visiting Inge in 2002 (including a French woman's stream-of-consciousness rants about "médecin nucléaire" - having uploaded it, I suddenly realise that I have absolutely no idea what she's saying!);
  
• three excerpts from a session held at Tony's farmhouse in West Cork (the last session before he moved to the Canary Islands). This is the Tony who was once in West Cork bands called "Celtic Trip", "TranceZenDance" and "Solar Charge". Quite a few friends from Cork City (including Toby and JohnJohn from Wiggle) came down for this one, and Tony did a grand job of adjusting amplification levels, applying effects (as well as recording the outcome).
  

Phoenixstraat crew, early 1995
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No doubt I'll eventually scrape together a few more old ATW relics, but next in the pipeline is the remainder of my Ail Fionn collection, which I'm a lot more excited about. Coming soon.

best Drone ever?

The recording doesn't quite bear that out, but it almost felt like it at the time!

A superb COTD session (at the Rainbow Studio, Crediton, last night), anyway:

John - whistles, acoustic guitar, mandolin, charango, voice, percussion
Henry - percussion
Richard - electric bass guitar
Keith - electric guitar, electric mandolin, mbira, percussion
me - saz, percussion


nearby Crediton Church - photo from www.stevebulman.f9.co.uk
I unleashed the howling feedback/distortion monster lurking within me, let out a big glob of sonic toxins via my saz and a nasty little practice amp with an 'overdrive' button. Felt a bit self-indulgent, but the others loved it! And listening back, it doesn't sound anywhere near as loud as it felt. I also got deeply into playing a little tambourine Claudia and Thomas brought back from Egypt for me this summer.

We even attempted something in five this time.

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Espers in Bristol

I was up in Bristol yesterday to see Espers at The Cube.

Arrived early enough to catch a manifestation of The Cube Orchestra (Ale, et al.'s improv collective) playing in drummer Richie's front room, as part of the Front Room Totterden Art Trail. A saxophonist called Nick Sorenson, quite majorly involved in the free improv scene, was playing with them, added a huge amount to an already impressive sound. They played an hour's set. Excellent drumming. The only other member I recognised was Barry, playing electric guitar, who was part of the crew I jammed with at the Sunrise Festival last summer. I had my saz with me, but wasn't intending to play - but Ale suggested I did. I declined the offer, as there were already enough players, and I had no amp. A next door neighbour present then went and got me his Roland MicroCube anyway, so I plugged in and played a bit of unintentionally overdriven saz during the last piece. I don't think it added a lot, but it was nice to be part of the event.

Also on display in the front room were some paintings by American artist Nekolina Griffin, and (on a loop) the video cut-up masterpiece Cutting Up My Friends by Cube collaborator Mr. Hopkinson.

Espers had sold out, I was troubled to find out, but by the time I'd come to accept this (Ale and I were planning to just meet up with Melski and have a music session), Melski got in touch to say she'd somehow got hold of the last three tickets...exellent news.


Espers - photo from www.alwaysontherun.net
We missed the first act, caught Starless and Bible Black (a curious Mancunian trio with stylish French singer, tasteful acoustic guitar and far-out 70's analogue synth weirdness) who did an excellent rendition of Billy Childish's "The Bitter Cup", and a nu-country (or whatever) singer called Edith Frost. Espers were excellent, although a bit shy, and they didn't play "Rosemary Lane" or "Black is the Colour", which I would have loved to have hear...The set leaned more in the heavy direction, with excellent versions of "Dead Queen", etc., and the cellist just shredded throughout (I hadn't realised how many of the abrasive sounds on their records were made by a cello)! They expressed their heartfelt appreciation for the appreciative, attentive audiences they were encountering in the UK and Europe, something they're not used to in the States, and clearly were very happy with The Cube as a venue, so there was a very warm, contented feeling coming from the stage.

Dub Magnitude

First session last night for the new Children of the Drone spin-off project, "Dub Magnitude".

This was motivated by Mick, the idea being that he works out some dub basslines, Henry plays drums, and various Droners are drafted in to improvise over the top of that.

Last night (at Prospect Park), it was:

Mick - bass
Henry - drums
John - mandolin, bouzouki, whistles, voice, percussion
Simon - laptop
me - saz, percussion

We tried out about seven basslines, and all get a good feeling that this is going to organically evolve into something most worthy. Simon was coming out with some particularly excellent choices of sounds, reminiscent of my favourite dub from various eras. A slight chance of a first gig before I head off to Wisconsin for a bit (that's in less than a month now), we shall see...

Unsurprisingly, I recorded the whole thing. I may make the audio available once I've had a chance to listen through and edit it.

This project is particularly welcome for me, after playing so much reggae-flavoured music in NZ/Aotearoa (including the "saz-in-dub" radio broadcasts).

Motueka leftovers

This collection was compiled from the odds and ends from my MiniDisc recordings out in Motueka (Aotearoa/New Zealand).


source of Riwaka River - photo by Murray Neill
Including:

• Matua singing Maori language songs with three of his kids singing backing vocals, in Alan's music room
  
• a rock/reggae/saz jam at a barbeque in Matua's sister's garden
  
• part of a Fresh FM broadcast in which Alan featured my saz playing
  
• a few things recorded with Helen (including a Gadjo song played as a tribute to our mutual friend Fraggle) when she came over one afternoon
  
• a very trancey jam recorded with Richard and Cindy, a couple who Alan and I met at the source of the Riwaka River (Richard and I turned out to have mutual friends in Glastonbury - Stevie P, Mandy, Tim, et al.) - they were just starting to experiment with Vietnamese mouth harps they'd picked up in Hanoi
  
• some simple saz and djembe I did with Alan, just getting a few previously unrecorded tunes down
  
• jams recorded out at Riverside, some with Justin Clarke, a pretty amazing guitarist who Lilli brought along once
  
• a few things recorded with Alan, Paul and Kristina one Wednesday evening out at their place on Trewavas Street

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'Coustick thing in Glastonbury

A particularly pleasant evening at the Assembly Rooms, largely motivated by Stevie P, I think. I didn't play, just really enjoyed listening. Sym did a set of songs with Daygan (bass) and Gem (percussion) [effectively a semi-acoustic version of SunArmy (formerly "Tsunami") who I've somehow managed to never witness doing their electrified punkrock thing]...very refreshing to hear someone with a voice and guitar break out of cliched song structures. John E. Aris did some songs, as wonderful as ever, spent most of the rest of the evening sitting with me, bubbling with genuine enthusiasm and gratitude for the quality of the music and the company we seem to so regularly find ourselves in. Gem played some guitar with Dora (I think) who plays fiddle and sings beautifully - they did an excellent version of "Follow Me Up to Carlow", Rohan (who I jammed with a bit at festivals this summer) playing low whistle with them. Stevie, Jonno and Maya finished the evening with a set of mostly old Heathens All favourites. Maya sang "And No Birds Sing" (Keats' poem "La Belle Dame sans Merci" put to music) which I'd totally forgotten about - hadn't heard her sing that for years, and it was exquisite (as was all her harmony singing throughout their set). They did an Andean folk song too, really energetic and refreshing. Sam played a bit of clarinet with them on one number, as well as joining in for a ukelele singalong/intermission.

Stevie said he'd recorded the whole thing off the desk straight onto his laptop. It would be nice if some of what occured ended up in the public domain - we shall see.


I ended up staying at Sam's on Windmill Hill, then getting up in the morning and wandering the footpaths and lanes of Avalon, a warmish, damp day, leaves blowing about everywhere...I played a bit of saz on the Tor, then wandered down to Gog and Magog (the two very ancient oaks), up over Chalice Hill, etc.

Back in town, things were gearing up for the Glastonbury Carnival (or the "Carnivore", as Nathan - once of Dragonsfly - who I bumped into, calls it), so I decided to flee back to Exeter. En route down the High Street I was stopped by Dave from Badly Horsedrawn Boy, busking with his mandolin, his horse Blackthorn tethered to a lamppost beside him, munching carrots. He correctly identified my encased saz as a saz (I'm used to people telling me that it's a sitar, or banjo, or balalaika...) and suggested we play a few tunes together. It was cold, and we could hardly hear each other, but managed to get a bit of a modal jam going, then a couple of hectic versions of Irish tunes, before deciding to call it a day, resolving to continue where we left off around a fire somewhere less noisy at some point in the future.

Orbis Tertius?

a couple more low-key public appearances for the new trio, which seems to have become called "Orbis Tertius?" (an obscure literary reference involving an ultra-bizarre short story by Borges):

On Sunday 05/10/06 we jammed in Henry's music room while he and his wife Lucy had their house open as part of an Exeter Open Studios initiative - she makes beautiful raku ceramic objects and had quite a few people passing through, some showing quite a bit of interest in and enthusiasm for the music we were making in the adjacent room. We had another rehearsal-of-sorts the next Tuesday, then played a set in the bar at the Picture House (local small, friendly cinema that shows interesting foreign films along with all the usual stuff).

When we arrived, Lou Gare, once part of the legendary free improv group AMM, was playing an extended saxophone solo, quite amazing stuff. Another sax player followed, then we got to play a ninety minute set to a small but surprisingly attentive (and appreciative) audience. The sound was quite OK, and we all felt that we'd risen to the occasion - our usual long, rambling jams were instinctively pared down, more to the point, there was a greater sense of urgency and willingness to take risks. Keith brought his fretless bass along, but only used it on one piece, using his fretted acoustic bass guitar for the rest.


The Picture House, Exeter
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Amazingly, Lou Gare (who Keith got talking to after buying one of his CD's) has shown an interest in coming along to a COTD session. Henry had just been saying how COTD is crying out for horn sounds...That would be quite a coup to have Lou Gare Droning with us, although I don't know how satisfying he'd find it. We shall see.

We're all happy with the way this project is evolving, looking forward to involving various fourth players.

As I'm now renting a room in Henry's house for the time being, there are plenty of opportunities to practice the saz-and-drums side of things.

a return to Droning - St Stephens 08/11/06

My first Children of the Drone session since returning from Aotearoa/New Zealand. I'd missed two while away (neither recorded), and was pleased to find that the first-Wednesday-of-the-month session had been delayed for a week this month, at least partly so I could be there. A largish group, which has been acoustically problematic in St. Stephens previously - but this time everyone seemed to be appropriately sensitive, so when the sound did occasionally get a bit muddy, we tended to instinctively back off and thin it out. Steve's bass playing is just perfect for what we do, and gave Richard a chance to explore too, I think.

The sound stayed fairly consistently in 'traditional' floaty COTD territory. It was a pleasant reminder of what we can now so easily conjure up, but I look forward to Simon coming along with his laptop and stirring things up a bit in the near future.

Steve - six-string electric bass guitar
Richard - four-string electric bass guitar
Brian - keyboard, percussion(?)
Keith - electric guitar, mandola, percussion
James S - saz, vocals, percussion, singing bowls, khamak
James T - piano, percussion, poetry, water
Henry - percussion
me - saz, percussion

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my last day in (and around) Motueka

After spending most of the night following the Hot Mama's gig sitting up talking in Alan's kitchen, we managed to get a few hours sleep and then get transported in Chris and Helen's van to our "gig in Heaven", as Alan called it - the Riwaka Steiner Playgroup Spring celebration...


The Riwaka Steiner Playgroup Spring Celebration 2006:
me, Alan, Helen (her twins Tui and Maya either side), Lilli floating overhead
We were woven floral wreaths and then played music to accompany a maypole dance (in late October!). Incredibly gentle, but somehow very much in the same spirit as the previous night's musical wildness. The other side of the coin, as Alan put it.


me and Alan, florally enwreathed
Later that evening, some of us ended up 'round at Helen and Chris's music room for a last (quite folky) session.

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the most fun i've ever had playing through a PA!

This was a hastily arranged gig at Hot Mama's a friendly cafe/bar in Motueka. Alan had recorded his busking CD a few days earlier, so this was a sort of launch party for that (although there were no copies for sale - however, the entire CD was being FTP'd up to the archive.org server in San Francisco while were actually playing.


Ras Levi + Helen, Saan, Matthew, Alan, Alex, Ras Judah
Amazingly, the same group of seven musicians somehow managed to reassemble itself (we really didn't expect that), and we played a storming three hour set with no breaks, no setlist...A group of enthusiastic dancers showed up from Riverside and elsewhere, and the energy level was just incredible throughout.


spontaneous circle dancing - Karma and friends (Helen, me, Judah and Paul's knees visible beyond)
We ran through most of the songs on Alan's CD, did some Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, a couple of Ras Judah's African songs, some nyabinghi jamming, freeform saz, etc. It just kept flowing, no one ever seemed to stop and wonder what would happen next. Hugely enjoyable. And my saz stayed in tune throughout, miraculously.


the gig poster, hastily constructed by I'n'I
Having heard about the terrible acoustics at the venue, as well as having had countless bad experiences with PA's, I almost didn't both going along to this one! I very nearly judged that completely wrong, then. Many thanks to Paul for letting us use his PA, and to Richard and Cindy for helping us move it.

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saz in dub

For a couple of years, I've been talking about recording a saz-in-dub CD. A simple enough concept: just find a dozen or so classic dub tracks that work for me, record myself playing saz over them. It's not something I could put up on archive.org for copyright reasons, but it would be a nice gift and/or demo to help bring about possible collaborations with dub DJ's/creators in the future.

Anyway, this is one of those projects which I'd get round to if I had unlimited time, but it's never been a priority. But in Motueka, staying with Alan and his stacks of reggae vinyl, we knew the time was right. We were able to use the Fresh FM studio, working from 10p.m to 4a.m. one night, prerecording pieces to be broadcast as part of his programme the next day. That programme (in which he chats with me about my saz, the way I play it, my interest in dub and reggae) can be heard here. We went through a large number of albums track-by-track, with me fairly quickly deciding whether or not a track worked for me or not. The ones that did often involved subtly adjusting the turntable speed in order to 'tune' the track to my saz.

I chose a lot of Augustus Pablo and King Tubby material for that programme, also one track from Aotearoa dub favourites Fat Freddy's Drop, some Bunny Wailer, the Wailers' "Rainbow Country" (worked particularly well) and others.

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We'd actually chosen twice as much material, but because of Alan's taste in reggae, half of it was Lee Perry-produced Black Ark sounds. So we decided to put together a second programme the next week, a Black Ark saz special. Because of various other musical projects, we never had time to prerecord those tracks, so I played them live over the radio. This didn't go as smoothly, but we were still quite happy with the result - you can hear that one here.

recording Alan's busking CD

Alan's had been talking about doing this for years, and the time was finally right. He had a set of songs written in Belgium and Ireland, which he's been busking endlessly. He wanted a CD to sell while busking, as well as to finally record these songs so he can 'move on' and write some new ones. We tried to capture the organic nature of a busking session, with a group of seven of us (including Alan's father Alex - former member of the Belgian Senate! - playing a shaker) playing into one microphone.

We ran through each song three times, and I spliced together usable versions from these the next day, with Alan's oversight.

Here's my set of recordings from that evening.

Here's Alan's final product (with a couple of spoken word pieces recorded sometime earlier, as well as his daughter Uisce singing a variant on Burning Spear's "Wadada means love in Africa").

Ngatimoti Festival, 22/10/06

Ngatimoti's a little village a few miles out of Motueka (top of the South Island, Aotearoa/New Zealand). We'd passed through and planted some trees on the Treewalk a week or so earlier. This little festival was a fundraiser for the school there, I think. We played for tea and cake.

It was a very rainy day, so we were happy to be in the cafe space under a roof. Originally this was meant to be more of a performance (Helen, Paul and Kristina), but that fell through, so they invited some friends along for a bit of a jam.

A mix of folk tunes, reggae songs, wholly improvised songs, folk tunes and jams. My saz was a bit too close to the mic, which is a bit of a shame. You have to kind of "listen through the mix" a bit with this one.

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The Green Ark, 19/10/06

Inspired by Lee "Scratch" Perry's legendary Black Ark studios and record label, Alan and I decided to call the music room in his new house in Motueka "The Green Ark". I recorded and edited quite a lot of MiniDiscs during my stay in The Green Ark...Here's what we got up to one fairly normal Thursday evening.


Ras Judah; Matua
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Motueka Treewalk 2006

The Treewalk's last school visit - Lower Moutere School:
(left to right) Saan, Lilli, Paul Taxi (seated), Vanessa (obscured), Alan, Alex, Deco (obscured), me
Definitely one of the most fulfilling weeks of my life, musically and otherwise - walking and camping with the most harmonious group of people imaginable, visiting schools, planting trees, playing music. This was initiated by Alan, inspired by similar walks in Ireland which we were both involved with. More details, photos, etc. in due course.

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