June 2010 - We Came Here To Save You and more Mouth 4 Rusty shows





It's been a fantastic couple of months since I last wrote. Utrophia has seen some wonderful shows, including the comedic post-apocalyptic '2020' by Michael O'Mahony and Katie Horwich's 'Page Three Girls', which has garnered attention from the likes of The Observer, The Guardian, Fat Quarter, The Sun, Sky and the BBC. The Left Side of the Barn space at Utrophia that I put my heart into creating late last year has had some incredible events, including two We Came Here To Save You music nights, co-curated with Melody Wood, which has brought us such wonderful acts as Nadine Khouri, Nicky Francis and The Quill, The Leano and a magical acoustic set from Now amongst others. You can hear some of the fruits of their labours in the barn on Utrophia's myspace page. The space also hosted this year's World Oceans Day event, curated by Angela Last, a musical jam session tribute to the seas inspired by oceanic and underwater footage, with sea shanties thrown in. A great night.





Meanwhile, Mouth 4 Rusty has been playing around town and getting some new songs together, ready to record over the summer. A show in Camden at the end of April saw my old friend Fiona Stewart (who sang back-up on a couple of tracks of our EP) back in the country, so post-gig Emma, Fiona and I played a few songs for a gleeful crowd at a vegan cafe open-mic night, which was a particular delight. M4R's next few shows see us visit The Old Queen's Head in Islington on 20th June, We Came Here To Save You's third event at Utrophia on 2nd July and The Glad in Borough on the 4th.

Lastly, my work as a soundguy has lead me to see a great number of really good bands and acts, some of which Utrophia will be approaching to play at our 6th festival in Wales later this year. Time to get booking..

April 2010 - Mouth 4 Rusty's first EP, gig photos, upcoming shows, R&B and We Came Here To Save You





Mouth 4 Rusty released our first EP, Time Over Money', into the world on 26th March at our Jam Circus gig in Brockley. Featuring four songs ('There's Just No Pleasing Me', 'A Wall of Wooden Doors', 'Good Men Now' and 'Joyful Under Water'), the EP comes hand-printed on 100% recycled cardboard, making every copy is a little different.

Recording-wise, some of it was recorded with Simon Nelson in the Left Side of the Barn space at Utrophia, while much of it was recorded in my little studio in SE London. I then used the Utrophia project space as a reverb chamber to add real live reverberation to the recordings using a powered monitor and a lovely little russian microphone, an Oktava MK012. The mixture of the ambience of the barn and the reverb chamber meant that absolutely no fake reverbs were used on the recordings. It actually really helped mixing to be using real spaces for reverb, it means the instruments are all sitting in the same room, which provides a sort of audio base for things to sit on. It was really good to hear the songs have some extra life breathed into them. More on reverb chambers here.

We had a lovely time at Jam Circus (as you can see below) and the guys and gals that run it are ridiculously nice. It also marked our first show with our new harmony vocalist, Emma Davis who joined us at the beginning of the year after Katie sadly departed to concentrate on her myriad other projects. Needless to say, Emma did us proud.





Our next couple of shows come in quick succession, on Thursday 8th April we'll be at King's Cross Social Club with The No Sorrows and Stephen Cracknell from The Memory Band, and then at Monkey Chews with all the people on the flyer below on the 14th. Yes, they spelt our name wrong, but at least they got our myspace url right..








'We Came Here To Save You' is Utrophia's monthly folk night to be held in the Left Side of the Barn space that I spent the start of the winter overhauling. Starting on May 7th and continuing on the first Friday of every month, Melody Wood and myself will be bringing you some wonderful music, spoken word and other creative endeavours. Details on all the acts coming soon.


Lastly, I forgot to mention this in my last post, but back in January a few of my friends and I started learning some R&B covers, culminating in our seven-piece R&B covers band, 'Club Club', which performed its first show at the beginning of February to celebrate a few birthdays. Video below, I'm on drums, enjoy..

22nd February 2010 - Next Mouth 4 Rusty gig

15th January 2010: Mouth 4 Rusty gig footage from The Slaughtered Lamb

5th December 2009: Mouth 4 Rusty gig footage, Kate Tempest in the Left Side of the Barn and a re-cut Pretty Wise Moves video





Above is a clip of Mouth 4 Rusty playing our encore version of 'There's Just No Pleasing Me' at The World's End in Finsbury Park, for the weekly 'In Thursdays W.E Trust' night. We started the set with the slow, brooding original and finished up with this more animated version. It was a good night, and our first set as a quintet (our new cellist Sarah is behind Katie at the start of the clip). I particularly enjoyed Mariam Razak's 'Turns Out I Was In A Forest' and Chris Bond's 'Keeping On', both of which I'd been playing on their myspace players in the week before the gig. Mouth 4 Rusty's next gig is at The Slaughtered Lamb in Farringdon on 10th December.

A couple of weeks ago I re-cut the Pretty Wise Moves video I made back in April with Morgan Peckosh and his flatland BMX skills. The original video had a solo demo of the song as the soundtrack, which I replaced with the longer trio recording of the song we made in Utrophia's Left Side of the Barn' space with Simon Nelson in October and redited the video to fit with the new audio recording. Here it is..

On the subject of the Left Side of the Barn, the space I've been renovating at Utrophia had its inaugural performance on 26th November, when poet and rapper Kate Tempest recorded a spoken word performance in front of an invited audience. Around half of Kate's 'Broken Herd' record was recorded that night. The album comes in a box with a book of illustrated poetry, a sheet of temporary Tempest-themed tattoos and a feather which you can use as a quill. It'll be a limited run of 300 and the launch is on Wednesday 9th December from 9pm at the Pure Groove record store and gallery. If you've not heard Kate before, check her out on youtube, it'll be well worth it.

14th November 2009: New recordings, upcoming shows and now we are five


Last week I finished mixing three of the recordings Mouth 4 Rusty made as a trio on October 17th with Simon Nelson engineering. Simon did a grand job, we used lots of ambient micing, which really brought the sound to life. There's almost no extra reverb on the recordings and I think they have a real depth while maintaining the intimacy I like on M4R songs. You can hear 'Pretty Wise Moves', 'Good Men Now' and 'A Wall of Wooden Doors' over on our myspace page and judge for yourself. To my ears, 'Good Men Now' sounds particularly good and has just the feel I wanted.

We've been looking for cellist or double bass player to come and fill out the low-end of our little band for a while, and finally we've been graced with Sarah Glayzer, who'll be playing cello from the next show onwards, making us a five-piece. After the energy that Steve Molyneux's percussionisms gave us at the last gig, I'm really excited about how Sarah's going to fill out that space between the percussion and the guitar, violin and melodica. Come see us in December to find out for yourself.

We've two gigs in December. On the 3rd we'll be at IN THURSDAYS W.E TRUST at The World's End, Finsbury Park, 21-23 Stroud Green Road, London N4 3EF. It's free to get in and comes courtesy of the good folks behind W.E LOVE SUNDAYS. It starts at 8 and runs til 11. Not sure what time we'll be on yet and other acts are still to be announced.

On Thursday 10th December, we'll be at The Slaughtered Lamb, 34-35 Great Sutton St, Farringdon EC1V 0DX. It's £6 - £4 if you want to be on the cheaplist, let me know via our myspace page. It runs from 7.30 'til 11.30pm and other acts are Shona Foster, The Wellingtons and Fox. We'll be on second, around 8.30.

Hope to see you there.

1st November 2009 - Mouth 4 Rusty Halloween gig footage





Here's a bit of footage from Mouth 4 Rusty's set on halloween night at the Utrophia project space, for the closing party of'The Disciples of Lucas Cranach' exhibition which has been running for the past two weeks. Also playing were 'Compost Meant Us', a trio comprising two members of 'Shimmy Rivers and and Canal', who sadly broke up earlier this year.

This was the first time we'd played as a four-piece, with Steve Molyneux playing floor tom, hi-hat and cymbal, giving me the freedom of my feet again. The song in the clip is 'What's An Open Soul To Do?', which we played as the second part of a medley with 'Pretty Wise Moves'. It looks like we have gigs lined up for November and December, I'll post dates when I have them. Happy halloween.

19th October 2009 - Barn renovations, Mouth 4 Rusty recording session, a Marching Band film and a Monolators remix





I've been doing some renovation work on one side of the Utrophia barn for a while, it's going to be a nice dark space for smaller, quieter music events and projects, theatre rehearsals, puppet shows, projections etc. I'm edging towards the finishing line with it now (just have some more shelving units to paint, the floor and a few bits of guttering to work on) and I thought it'd be a nice space for Mouth 4 Rusty to do some recordings in.

So on 17th October, my friend Simon Nelson came over with some portable recording gear and we worked on seven songs as a trio. For those as geeky as Simon and I, we used 414s on the violin, accordian, melodica and Katie's vocals, 319 on my vocals and guitar, 201 on kick (which I swapped out for a floor tom after a couple of takes), a pair of MK012s for stereo ambient micing, and a 219 as a mono room mic to fill the gaps. I can't recall what we used on the hi-hat, something of Simon's. Simon's mixing at the moment, I'll post some of the songs on our myspace page when they're done.

In the meantime, Mouth 4 Rusty's next gig will be at the closing show for The Disciples of Lucas Cranach exhibition at Utrophia on halloween, 31st October. Free entry for all good people, so come down!





On 4th October, Utrophia's Marching Band did a 40 minute march for a friend's mum's 60th birthday across Brockley and Deptford, ending with a party at the Utrophia project space. It gave me a great opportunity to film them, and ruin my calf muscles for two days after running across town, setting up shots that captured them from all kinds of angles.

Lastly, I remixed a Monolators track, 'We Fell Dead', from their 2006 LP, 'Our Tears Have Wings', which they've posted on their blog. I stuck to my method of only using the original tracks and processing and editing them as opposed to adding beats, samples and sounds, resulting in 'Krautrock Blues is Dead', have a listen here.

28th September 2009 - Zeppelins, dance, film, and more Mouth 4 Rusty





Above is a little bit of Mouth 4 Rusty's set in front of the zeppelin for the closing night of Emily Paige Short's 'Sail 'O Tin Town' installation at Utrophia on 25th September. Plagued by cold and flu, we fought on regardless; the set featured a new song 'A Wall of Wooden Doors', and also marked the first use of Katie's accordian playing, which worked beautifully.

One night a few weeks ago, there was a fire in the yard at the back of our building. It seemed to start in a recycling cart, spreading from there when the bottom of the cart burned thorough, dropping fire onto the ground. I don't know what was on the ground to catch alight, but before long the fire had spread to a car, blowing up the petrol tank. It became a big fire, making the firefighters who arrived look like toy soldiers. Eventually the fire was put out. Nobody was hurt, only the car was seriously damaged and the fire didn't touch our building. Gavin Housley filmed the scene and handed the footage over to me, which I made into the video below..





On Saturday 19th Sept, I curated an hour of short films, on behalf of Utrophia at Sanford Housing Co-Op's Folkus Festival. The films were projected inside a converted bus, and featured work from Stephen Molyneux, Cat Westwood and Riccardo Attanasio, Robert Bidder, Sam Pullen and Jono Allen and myself. There are a couple of photos below...

I also performed with Cat Westwood (Blue Bag) at the Folkus festival, providing improvised music on acoustic guitar for Cat's Butoh, which began with her gathering people up in red string and leading them to where we would perform. It was an interesting performance, I knew that as Cat moved around, she wouldn't always be able to hear me, so I watched her constantly and played to her tempo rather than suggesting my own. If any photographs or footage turn up, I'll post them here.

I've also found myself tinkering again with the Rigsby Smith record, 'Home Made' that I started late last year, and the accompanying videos. I got a fair bit of stuff done over a couple of days a few weeks ago, it was good to hear again and felt good to be working on.

..and so to the autumn, it's been a very busy summer.

7th September 2009 - Mouth 4 Rusty live band, festivals, new songs





The video above is from Mouth 4 Rusty's set as a duo at Utrophia's Cwmback Festival in Wales (28th-30th August), which Jono Allen and I booked the bands for. Joining me on harmony vocals and melodica was Katie Weatherall, co-organiser of the monthly Kit and Cutter folk night at the Deptford Arms, SE8. Katie and I started the set by leading a small procession of people from the bar, clapping our hands and encouraging them to do the same, so we'd have the rhythm for the first song when we got to the stage. Of course, people sped up a little and by the time we got to the beautiful pine forest stage area and begun 'What's An Open Soul?', we were playing a pretty rapid version, which worked just fine as it turned out, and Katie played a mean melodica break, far faster than we'd ever rehearsed. As well as guitar and vocals I've taken to playing a kick drum and hi-hat with my feet and Katie is taking on some percussion parts, it's early days, and the percussion is very much still playing a simple, supporting role so far.

Four days after we returned to London, Utrophia had a Cwmdown event at Shunt in London Bridge, where Mouth 4 Rusty played its first gig as a trio, with Natalie Sedgwick (previously of Sixtoes and Shadow Orchestra) joining us on violin. Personal highlights of both events were playing drums for John Bisett alongside the much respected James Dunn, and watching Thrulk, who I found while perusing myspace and excitedly asked to come and play at The Cwmback. By the time we got to Wales, I'd listened to some of their songs so much that I found myself dancing through some very cool time changes. You can see some clips of other Cwmback performances, including Thrulk, below..





Since last writing, I've also added a couple of new songs to the Mouth 4 Rusty myspace page: 'What's An Open Soul To Do?' and more recently, 'A Wall of Wooden Doors', which I wrote in a little shed in Wales while we were setting up the Cwmback festival. I recorded a humming vocal and guitar version of the song in the shed on Alex Wendt's (Klex) portable recorder, which he later used as part of his audio/visual set at the festival. Both songs are so far just simple demos without Katie or Natalie, but we hope to record sometime in the not too distant future. Meanwhile, our next show is at the closing event for Emily Paige Short's Sail 'O Tin-Town installation, which features an amazing wooden zeppelin set on grass, with a beautiful wooden walkway from which to view the zeppelin from, evoking photos of the majesty of early zeppelins at air shows at the turn of the 20th century.

Lastly, I've been busy curating a section of Sanford's FolkUs Festival, which takes place at the housing co-op on 19th September. The film section of the festival as a whole is being curated by Sanford's Anna Babini, who is keeping a blog about it here. I'll also be performing alongside Blue Bag's Cat Westwood to provide a folk-orientated dance and music performance at the festival.

July is for street performing





July was a month of street performing for Blue Bag. We took drums, guitars, melodicas and a battery-powered mini-marshall stack with a microphone attached, that we used as a megaphone and spread what we hope was some form of joy to the people who saw us. As well as impromptu performances in Central and South East London, we also took to rehearsing publicly, in parks and in Ha'Penny Hatch, a commuter cut-through by the river, as seen above. All of this culminated in our two performances at Southwark Playhouse, London, on July 23rd.

14th June 2009 - Blue Bag, Mouth 4 Rusty, flatland BMX, hula dancing and more..







Been another interesting few months. The videos above are both from my new little folk project, Mouth 4 Rusty. I'd started coming up with some lyrics and vocal melodies while working on the new Rigsby Smith record in December, and in February, I finally wrote a song-song again. After that I found I was writing a few songs and enjoying it again for the first time in 12 years, so it seemed a good path to follow for a while. There are four of us now and we're working towards live sets in the near future. In the meantime, you can hear more early Mouth 4 Rusty offerings here .

I have to thank Nom Kinnear King for her wonderful hula dancing in the 'Joyful Under Water' video; and Morgan Peckosh for his awesome flatland BMX skills in 'Pretty Wise Moves'. I'm so pleased with the way both videos turned out.

I also started some movement and sound work with Russell Bond this year, which lead to the formation of 'Blue Bag', now a quartet of movement, sound and visual artists, completed by Cat Westwood and Riccardo Attanasio. Our first performance will be at Southwark Playhouse on 23rd July. Flyer below, and here's our press shot as well..

We've also had some great shows at Utrophia, from the surrealist portraiture of the aforementioned Nom Kinnear King to the performance art festival of 'Long Did I Build You'; from the enchanting 'Visit The Cryptic Lagoon' installation to Chicago's rocking Icy Demons, who played at the project space in May.

With everything else going on, the new Rigs record, 'Home Made' has been neglected of late, but all the pieces are written and most are arranged and part-recorded, so I'm sure some slow and steady work on that will mean it appears in the world at some point.

In the meantime, I covered a Now song, 'With It' for their AMC is One compilation, created to celebrate the one year of anniversary of Now's A Music Club, in Stoke Newington. You can listen to it here. Now haven't recorded their version of it yet, but there's a couple of videos of us playing the song live, back when I was playing drums for them, below..

19th December 2008 - Things are Afoot

It's been a really good few months since I last wrote here. The Utrophia space has hosted some wonderful exhibitions by the likes of Molly Palmer, Jon Moscow, Jenny Moore-Koslowsky, James Ferris, Charlotte Thomas and Gandt as well as a show of work by the students of the Goldsmiths Open Book project, which focuses on work from people from less advantaged backgrounds and situations, who'd often not generally follow an artistic bent.

We've all been finding new artists to show work at the space. One of my recent achievements has been meeting and discovering the beautiful work of Nom Kinnear King and Adam Oehlers, who will be doing shows at Utrophia in March and May, respectively. There's lots more exciting stuff to come at Utrophia in the New Year, so check often, and why not subscribe to the mailing list for updates and info on events and such like.

I've also been working on some new music and have five new pieces in the pipeline, all with an acoustic leaning, as in this little preview I made the other day..





I'll be sure to write when the work is all done and it sounds as it should. I've taken the decision to ask someone else to mix the music this time round as I find it so hard to hear my music with objectivity so close after finishing recording, and I think another (like-minded) perspective will really help bring about a beautiful sound to the record.


I also spent a few months playing with the band Now, playing a series of gigs, recording some demos and appearing on one track on their most recent album. I also made a video for them, made from re-shooting their youtube videos with a camcorder..





I've met some really great people of late, all of whom have enriched my life and inspired me. There are a few projects underway, and I can't wait for them to come to fruition and I can share some of the results from working together. Things are afoot.

Happy christmas all x.

2nd September 2008 - Two New Records Here To Download!

I've just uploaded two brand spanking new collections of my stuff onto the music page: 'What Are We Without Our Work?' and 'Striking Back At Buildings'. That's 22 two pieces of music for your aural pleasure, so what are you waiting for?

1st September 2008 - We're back!

...slightly wobbly gif and all. It's not just a new look, the site's also had a bit of a rearrange. For starters I've put up my recent EPs and albums up on the music page for you to download and enjoy. Each release is wrapped up neatly in a zip file, with all the tracks as 192kbps MP3s, as well as cover artwork in case you want to burn your own CD at home. If you like what you're hearing, feel free to donate a couple of pounds or a dollar or two, whatever your currency.

I've put my art page back up, largely due to interest from a nice bunch of French guys who are quite taken with my paintings. Most of the paintings are around ten years old now, but the interest is very welcome, it's always really nice to hear good stuff about yourself and/or your work.

The about page has been fleshed out, with an unabashed view of what I actually do, including what I offer other acts and artists, in terms of recording, session work, reprocessing, mixing and the like. There's a link to older news posts there too from my now defunct blog, which acts as an archive, and features a more in-depth history of the musical work I've been involved in. The film page is looking as healthy as ever, and features one or two new things since the site went down a couple of weeks ago.

Hope you're digging the new look, version 4 of this site, which was, as ever, Coded By Idiots.

August 14th 2008 - The Day The Hackers Came

Once upon a time there was a website called rigsbysmith.com. It was a happy and peaceful place, full of music and art and film and ponderings. Then one day in mid August, when nobody was looking, a bastardo or bastardos unknown did terrible things to rigsbysmith.com and left it bruised, battered and information-less. These were terrible times. Construction began anew, but these things take a while, especially when one's back-up files are 120 miles away, so in the meantime, one would suggest that interested parties who want to hear some delightful music pop along to Myspace, and those that would like to see some video delights should head over to Youtube. We'll be back, you bet your bottom dollar, your shiniest pound, your crinkled euro.
Til then, much love x.

July 12th 2008

So, my Moving Paintings exhibition is going rather well down at the Utrophia Project Space in Deptford, London, and you can see a preview collage of some of the work below. The show runs until 26th July, so if you haven't seen it yet, there's still time. See the Utrophia site for more details.

June 13th 2008

An exciting time for me as I'm currently working towards my first solo art exhibition to be held at the Utrophia Project Space in Deptford. The show will run from Saturday July 12th until Sunday July 22nd, and focuses on films of ink falling through prepared water, garnished with stills and a sound installation based on the sound of projectors. It's going to be pretty awesome, even if I do say so myself, so why not join us for the private view on July 12th, where you'll be able to see and hear the work and hear some amazing live music from acts that I'm currently begging to come down and play. More on that soon, so keep checking back. Here's a still from the show..

In other news, I've been busy recording Sabor Legume's first record for them, which I'm currently mixing, recording James Dunn's incredible home-made synth, working on the Immortal Kittens record that Evan, Scott and I started in Boston late last year and gradually working on a few new EPs under my own name. Hang tight, they'll be forthcoming as and when.

I've also been putting up films on my youtube page, mostly consisting of drumming auditions, which has lead me to playing with the band Now, so I'll be heading out to play some gigs with them at some point too.

All of this has meant that my new live band idea has been placed on hold, too much to fit into one life, and a boy's got to earn a living too, y'know? Phew! Good times ahoy.

April 8th 2008

It's nice to have a bit of a change now and again, so I spent last night changing the colours and some of the style of this site. The myspace page has also had a bit of a facelift, so you might want to head there next.

March 10th 2008

Just a quick update. February 16th saw the grand opening of the new Utrophia Project Space, and to celebrate I showed three parts of my forthcoming Utrophia film, based around all the work Utrophia has created and hosted throughout the last few years. You can see those three parts below..

January 10th 2008

Wow, what a busy few months. First off, I've been putting a new group together to learn material new and old and take it all out to play live again. We're still busy rehearsing, so it'll be a while before we're out there on the circuit, but I'll post dates as soon as we're good to go. I've also been playing with Tile, Steve Moleneux's (Naciente Quartet) side-project, you can check out a video of our first (slightly shambolic) live performance below..





Below is a three-part film of my trip to New York and Boston in December last year. I finally met up with some of the great New Yorkers and Bostoneers I've been chatting to for the last few years. I played an improv gig at Purchase University, Upstate New York, with five of them, and started making a record with Evan Sobel (Bass, La Otracina/ Tiger Vommit) and Scott Craggs (Drums) under the name Immortal Kittens. We recorded a bunch of improv stuff and a tune called 'Tidy Little Walk' which I wrote at Paul Rubenstein's house in Queens. If you've checked out the friends page, you'll know that Paul is also known as Ubertar, creator of many fantastic stringed instruments, his site is well worth a visit. Also featured in the film are members of Lance Romance, Heart Dotting, Blue Velvet, Donny Who Loved Bowling and many others, some of whom played the Purchase gig with me.









I've taken a few months off mixing and finishing off the 'Free Will' album, but recently returned to it. It's all mixed bar the closing piece, which needs a single cello overdub and mixing before I finally send the whole record off to be mastered.

I've also contributed a tune called 'Eat Your Heart Out' to a new compilation that's due out soon from the same folks that brought you the 'Out: 17 Modern Guitarists Salute Derek Bailey' CD last year. 'Eat Your Heart Out' features nylon-string acoustic guitars and bowed mandloin, and it's a pretty little thing, even if I do say so myself. All the artists on the compilation are approving masters right now, so it shouldn't be long before you and I can get our hands on that too.

Work on the next EP has been slow but sure. Most of it's been recorded and some of it's mixed, so I'm sure that's something else you'll get to hear later this year.

Happy new year!

July 28th 2007

Here we are then, the Hands Up Baby Hands Up EP release party. Grab yourself something from the bar, pass me a vol-au-vent and check out the sounds.
For £3.50 it's all yours, delivered right to your door..

May 24th 2007

So the 'Hands Up Baby Hands Up' EP is mastered and ready to go. I'm sending off the covers to be printed and when they're back it'll be all systems go. I will of course post here about how you can get your hands on it once it's all packaged and ready for sale.

Work on new material is going well too, spent last weekend recording drum parts in my wee studio and dug out my amp to lay down some guitar and bass parts (that's the last time I store anything that heavy at the back of a deep cupboard). Three songs in the works at the moment, definitely less electronic so far than 'Hands Up'. I seem to have a taste for clarinet at the moment so there's a fair bit of that too. It'll be interesting to see how it all turns out.

May 8th 2007

Still working on the site but the art page now has live pictures and paintings within, recording photos coming in the next few days. I've been really pleased with the response to the Sea Shapes video and started making a video for the opener of the EP earlier this week. It's going to take a while though as it's a little more complex than the one for 'Shapes'.

We're on the home-run with the mastering for the 'Hands Up Baby Hands Up' EP, Jon is making the last few alterations and we're done. He's been awesome, I can't recommend him enough.

Played percussion at a wedding with one of my favourite drummers last weekend. I saw a little film of me playing timbales and realised I look nuts when I'm perc-ing it up. Hey ho, there are worse things than looking a little crazy.

Managed to break every single string on my cello bow while bowing a cymbal this week. Doh. Time to get a hardier bow. Oh, and yes, I finally did align the text, you were right and I was wrong.

The merch page is done too, so you can hop over to cafepress and buy a t-shirt or mug. From the pictures it looks as if the logo comes up standing proud but I'm assured that's not the case.

May 2nd 2007

So yeah, I'm quick to update so early on but it's just to let you know that the site is filling out with content. There are mp3s ready to download in the music section and soon enough they'll be images on the art page too, so do check back for updates. And no, I will not align the text on this here homepage, I like its scrapbook look, no matter how 1997 it may seem to you - you know who you are. I also uploaded the video for Sea Shapes to youtube, the sound is quiet because the mix is as yet unmastered, but you can take a look below..

May 1st 2007

Lots of music-related stuff is finally getting finished right now. My new EP, 'Hands Up Baby Hands Up' (see the releases page) is being mastered by Jonathan El-Bizri at Hearfeel Sound as we speak (I type and you read). I've also been making a video for 'Sea Shapes', the EP's closing track (you can hear the unmastered mix of that tune on my myspace ), the masthead at the top of the page is a still from that video. It should be ready to put on youtube any day now, I'll post a link in the films section here when it's up. The album I've spent two years on is three-quarters mixed and the last few parts are being laid down on the final couple of tracks so that should be ready soon enough too. In addition to all of that, I'm working hard on a new EP that should be ready by the end of the summer.

In other news, I found a yamaha portasound keyboard in a dumpster a couple of weeks ago. I've tried to find details about it on the net but to no avail. It's a Yamaha Portasound PSS-103 that comes with a card reader for its sounds. Well I think so anyway, the thing that makes me unsure is that while i can't access anything except a rather tasty fake piano sound, the demo button reveals a whole new world of drum, bass and keyboard noises. Anyway, great fake piano, so it's ended up being in a new tune along with lots of bowed and plucked mandlolin, drums and bass.

Lastly, I did another show for creot radio last week, some great new independent music from artists all across the planet. Check it out here

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