Jamming Under the Influence of a Steve Reich Box Set

This stuff was all recorded in the latter half of April in my trailer at Cannings Court Farm. Jim on concertina, Joel on hurdy-gurdy, me on saz. The Steve Reich influence is audible in a few places, although as it's all improvisation, there's nothing like the harmonic complexity (or precision). Lots of repetition though! Jim's GCSE music teacher at school had performed as part of an ensemble playing a debut of a Reich composition some years earlier, so she introduced him (and Mike, also of Red Dog Green Dog, a classmate in Liverpool) to Reich's work. Mike switched Joel onto it quite recently, and Joel lent me the retrospective box set Phases when I arrived. I knew Different Trains, having heard the Kronos Quartet debut it on Radio 3 in 1989, but not much else. Music for 18 Musicians has been a near continuous soundtrack to my time at the farm.


Steve Reich at 70 - photo by Jeffrey Herman
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And Mike's heard that the Edinburgh/Marseille-based Scottish/French MC Ghostown has made a beat out of one of the tracks on the Red Dog Green Dog album. We haven't heard it yet, but I've been in touch. Oh, and their track "Dave" (from the same album) got played on Radio 3's "Late Junction" recently, too.

more sounds from Glastonbury Abbey crypt

I've just spent another two-and-a-bit weeks out at the farm in Dorset (now back in Exeter again for various things). In between writing, WWOOFing and playing music with whoever was around, I managed to finally edit a load of MiniDisc recordings that go back to 2000-2001. Kelfin gave me some copies when I was in Ireland almost a year ago, and it's just been one of those things that's just had to wait for the right moment.


The Lady Chapel, looking west - photo from arcsoc.org

Cryptozoology 3             Cryptozoology 4

Collection 3 is mostly folktunes (or folkie jams), collection 4 contains a lot of Stef's mandolin playing (solo, or accompanied by Emma's singing) interspersed by some fairly free jamming.

I've also added some newfound excerpts to the crypt session from 21/02/03 (the one just before Iraq got invaded). The full version of that is now here:

Cryptozoology 2
There are rumours of further MiniDiscs floating around the Avalon area, so there may be further installments in the Cryptozoology series.

back in Exeter for a few days...

I'm back in Exeter for a few days, sorting a few things out, and playing a lot of music with Henry and friends. Two sessions with just me (saz) and Henry (drums), both excellent, although the one on Monday night felt among the very best music I'd ever played. I kept picking embryonic tunes from a list in one of my notebooks, and then we'd jam on them, every one turning out to be the freshest, most exciting and creative version I'd ever played. Henry's trying out all kinds of percussive textures which then sort of subliminally suggest new avenues of melodic exploration for me to follow. Typically, I've not been recording any of this.

Unfortunately Keith's not around, as we'd been hoping to rehearse as Orbis Tertius?. I've put a demo together and Henry's going to try and get some low-key local gigs for us in the next few months. On a whim, I had a look to see if the Borges story "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" was available anywhere online, and it is - here - one of my very favourite bits of writing. I'm not sure about it as a band name, though - sounds a bit pompous and Latin, and would generally be translated as "third world", which rather misses the point. Another name I'd been thinking about is "The Honesty Box", but I've just discovered that a synth-pop duo from Huddersfield got there first! (Non-UK readers may be unfamiliar with "honesty boxes" - these are left out on un-manned roadside stalls with peoples' produce (fruit, vegetables, eggs, jams, etc.), usually in rural areas, based on a basic trust that most people will be decent enough to pay for what they take. Cannings Court - the organic farm where I've been staying the last few weeks - has a whole honesty shop!)

Last night the jam was me, Henry, John and Richard, mostly working on material associated with the Pulse-related project which has been developing "waves" for 5 Rhythms dance groups. That's been Keith, Henry, John and Richard, and they've been getting an impressive sound together (based on the bits I've heard). Pulse has given way to a more subtle, less "insistent" sound, and the 5 Rhythms crowd seems like a perfect target audience for this. We also did a couple of unstructured Droney things, Richard coming up with some very interesting basslines - one very angular and funky, something COTD rarely gets into. And another session tonight (probably just me and Henry).

I've also been Google Alerted to this: A German web-developer called Guido who likes both Everlast and Ail Fionn (we've since disappeared off his chart, but I can assure you we were there!).

The Organic Beat Cooperative rises from the ashes!

Stef arrived at the farm on Sunday night, and we've had some excellent jams and recording sessions since. Some of these were just me and Stef, others involved Joel, who was playing his tabla as well as his hurdy-gurdy.

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the nearby church of St. Thomas à Becket, Pulham
An idea we had six or seven years ago came back to life during the week. We'd been listening to a lot of hiphop back at the end of the last century, and had thought about attempting to make beats entirely with unprocessed recordings of acoustic instruments. The opportunity then arose to give this a go when UKhiphop.com ran a beat-making competition (they supplied acappellas). We left this rather late, and our entry involved me travelling up to Glastonbury early one morning, then spending the rest of the day in someone's front room putting together a saz/mandolin/acoustic bass/percussion/concertina beat for Roots Manuva's "Juggle T'ings Proper" on a TASCAM 4track cassette machine - the deadline was the next day, and we just about got our MP3 in. We entered as "The Organic Beat Cooperative". The finished product was OK, but poor sound quality and the rushed nature of the project meant that it could have been a lot better. We've since meant to do more, but haven't seemed to find the time.

So, with a Sony ECM microphone and my old IBM Thinkpad, we managed to make up some very unusual sounding, trancey acoustic beats. We'd start by recording a percussion jam, then listen back and find some appropriate loops, pick one, jam over it with strings, listen back to that, pick out loops, and so on. I'll be uploading some to archive.org soon. The Organic Beat Cooperative lives on! Next time I will be armed with a CD of hiphop acappellas, and we'll hopefully put together a demo EP with some of our favourite MC's flowing over our sounds.

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The funny thing was, we were right in the middle of an organic farm, a very easy stonesthrow from the polytunnels I've been gardening in the last three weeks. And that very morning, I'd been planting out organic beetroots (for the first time in my life).