…that being said, I just finished a new demo and sparked a great solo-live concept that I think pretty feasible and pretty cool. so thank you, distractions?
edit: and so it seems in posting this I somehow deleted the previous, perhaps for the better… hmmm…
It’s been a pretty great few weeks.
A (beautiful) wedding in Scotland.
A bit of backpacking Amsterdam & Rome, including meeting an absolute Max/MSP guru. Talk about inspiration.
Stateless at the Union Chapel and Daedelus‘ Archimedes set, a European debut, at Koko, both in London last weekend. And of course, more hanging out with the newly-weds.
And now a week of hanging in Dubai. The United Arab Emirates are a very interesting part of the world. Quite the cultural diversity. Beautiful architecture. Amazing food. Insane driving.
Working out of the National offices for a few days where a co-conspirator spends his desk hours. No shortage of excitement though. Writing lots. More music soon.
…Is it ever hot out.
It’s been an adventure of a few months between a 28 date American tour with failing bus and razor-drone music (only the best), flying into a return headline performance at a favourite festival in Helsinki, stopping at family-home in Ottawa for a week of 7-months-of-life catch-up meals and drinks and walks; a brilliant festival first in Portugal (and an awesome day off in Aveiro) into a 3-man acoustic production- vj’ing for solo acoustic performance and comedy? -rolling through Brighton, Southampton, Newton Abbott, and from Exeter to Walton-on-Trent rounded out as a 4some of the nerdliest flock of pigeons in metal, to a redeemed return performance and great hangout at a favourite UK love-fest.
Arriving back to home-west, the city doesn’t offer the kind of palette I’m particularly interested in negotiating in the exploration of new music. So off to the forest we go…
The site was a little broke for a while but looks like we’re up and running again. Just finished a week long run of festivals and acoustic shows with the Devin Townsend Project. As usual, awesome guys, great music and a self-inflicted learning curve steeper than most scholastic institutions I’ve had the pleasure of funding.
Back to Vancouver tomorrow for the first time in almost 2 months. Soaking up the west coast city and forest for two weeks before rehearsals begin for November; then a wedding in Scotland! September’s looking pretty good!
Back on the road with the Devin Townsend Project! A week of festivals and an awards show in Europe (creating & operating lights & visuals) then a month in the USA! Summer is on…!
See you soon and feel free to drop a line and come hang out if any of the tour stops are in your town!
Been up to a whole shenanigan worth of adventures. Some of it captured on the YouTubes…
Starting with the most recent…
Check out Math Rosen’s Mix Tape Volume I
I’m a little behind posting this, but it’s well worth the listen if you like electronic awesomeness.
A new adventure starts tomorrow 
Some pretty rad sounds in the airwaves today…
Lady Gaga is criticized by the Ann Coulter of the pop/music industry:
“Gaga [is] not just unsexy, but also “stripped of genuine eroticism”; [her] embrace of freaks is insincere because she herself has a privileged background. [She is] a corporate shill; Paglia also trashes [Gaga's] fans as emotionally impoverished, and (diehard baby boomer that she is) expresses longing for fleshy 1960s heroines such as Tina Turner and Janis Joplin.
Ann Powers breaks it down for the LA Times.
Haven’t read Paglia’s ‘attack’, but Powers’ editorial links to a lot of interesting sights around popland.
Sacha Baron Cohen will be playing Freddie Mercury in a new Queen biopic.
Sounds pretty rad to me.
More at Yahoo News.
eMusic, a subscription digital music service 12 years into their venture, looks to be making bonds with major labels.
Whether this will provide them the needed library and push to get a grip in the online music industry, who knows.
“Unlike iTunes, where users usually buy songs for around 99 cents each, eMusic members pay a subscription fee of around $12 a month through which they can buy 24 songs.
The company would also like to launch a digital ‘locker service’ that would allow subscribers to listen to songs they have bought wherever they are and through whatever device they use.”
Google Music is going to rip iTunes a new one. Couldn’t come too soon.
“An online music store not unlike iTunes, but run entirely through the web browser (and perhaps an app on Android devices). But users would have the choice of downloading some content to their mobile devices to take on the go, or immediately putting it in a cloud storage locker, which users would pay around $25 a year for. From this locker, all music bought could be streamed to any web browser at no additional charge. And again, music could be downloaded to a mobile app for when you’re not going to be online.
Every song on their service could be played once in its entirety once for free by any user. Currently, services like iTunes only allow you to hear 30-second snippets of songs before you have to buy them.
Users might be able to share music playlists with friends — which, when combined with the one free play rule, could be very powerful. Undoubtedly, Google’s upcoming new social service/layer/whatever will be a part of this Google Music experience as well.”
And if you haven’t heard it yet, you should really check out Math Rosen’s latest Mix Tape.
and Like this page.
sxsw’s daily chord has got to be one of the best sources of legitimate, significant and interesting music industry news on the net.
Neil Young’s “Le Noise” out this month.
Pick the wake-up music for the final shuttle flights
effects processors for your iPhone
Kings of Leon turn down Glee and Ugly Betty
Bjork and Ennio Morricone deamed rad
Well there’s a lot going on these days. I mean a lot. Relative to the stars and the moons I guess it’s not a whole lot of movement, but given my ambitions and goals, I’d say we’re headed towards a nice waterfall of epic. How I land at the bottom is all but the big question on my mind lately, but let’s not drag our heels, no time for that. There are big plans in the works. In the mean time, that is until I start finding it in myself to blog about the 140 character status updates I fire off into the tubes, I’m going to start posting links to what I’m reading every day. If you’re into music, you’ll probably find it pretty interesting. And if you don’t find it interesting… well maybe you’ll like my music.
First news posts coming up.
∞
