Floods for Real

In January I was at once in possession of the most awful and the most incredible luck. Caught on the edge of Brisbane's floods was me and my little recording spot.

When the water came we had warning. Residents around the corner had been woken in the night with little time to save the contents of their basement carparks. We had a couple of hours, and we got almost everything out.

60cm doesn't sound like much.

Uni-Mash

I imagine anyone returning to university finds the experience rich and interesting. Returning to the same university (to complete the course you left a decade ago) surely adds an extra sense of strange.

Buildings have smells. Maybe it's the gyprock and paint, maybe it's white-bread toast but they all have them. And they don't change, and I was never prepared for the Conservatorium of Music to smell the same.

What I've realised though is I'm completely different - and in a good way. I used to procrastinate by hanging with friends and getting up to mischief. Now I procrastinate by cleaning under the temperature dials on my stove.

I'm being challenged though. I've mashed up 7 tracks by Australian alternative artists, re-scored and re-recorded foley for a ghost film & written 3500 words comparing Pink Floyd's Comfortably Numb to the one recorded by Scissor Sisters. That was weird.

Do You Like Dogs?

In December, I composed and recorded some music for the short film, True Love.

Opening shots of a still dawn, drums kick in when we first see Melissa (Niki-J Price) digging. Music fades away as Trevor (Jamie Dunn) approaches, walking his dog and catching her burying her recently-murdered husband.

You might need to update your flash player to listen.

Trevor is an ex-convict - killer, no less - living straight and narrow. With her gun pointed, and panic in her eyes, they talk. Melissa's realisation of who her witness is seeps in. Piano drips as Trevor forces Melissa to consider her future. He wrangles the gun from her grasp. The piano evaporates when Trevor asks, "Do you like dogs?" Melissa nods. Trevor shoots, knocking her to the ground. Insisting she won't die, Trevor makes her promise to take care of his dog.

You might need to update your flash player to listen.

Sirens bleed in from the distance as Trevor puts his prints on the husband's body, the gun, the car. This is his redemption.

Live

I worked on a couple of live recordings with Scott Spark this year.

One of these was the spirited Robertson State School Cantabile Choir singing Eat Your Heart Out.

I recorded this with 2 microphones and a couple of lines in from the Whirlitzer and bass to a Roland VS1680. I took the recordings back to the studio and mixed it there.

Perfect Calm

Long-time friend and musical cohort Elisha Sando and I started working on a project in July. This thing, we call it I Am Perfectly Calm, is an ongoing recording project that's deliberately different to anything we've done prior.

The first to come from the collaboration is Orbit, a spaced-out electronic track that simmered for months, before Elisha and I gave it a final stir. In its entirety:

You might need to update your flash player to listen.

Production-wise there's a lot going on...

The main mallet motive is from a digitally fizzy M1 I bought in '09. I think I was making up for lost time; I've had eyes for this keyboard ever since my pimpled 14 year old face watched Pink Floyd's Delicate Sound of Thunder on VHS.

The crunchy drums I made from Microhammer ice samples which are just brilliant.

Vocally we used a rotary speaker effect on the delays, and a couple of the AIR lo-fi type plugins for other strange sounds.

The stammered synth in the chorus was made by side-chaining the electronic drums through a gate. It's a similar effect to what I used to do a decade ago painfully by hand using volume control changes.

Adventures In Extra-Spatial Glue & Circuits

The recording studio had some finishing touches put on it this year, and I made some discoveries...

1. Acoustic foam needs completely intoxicatingly strong glue to keep it on the ceilng.

2. When something breaks down it's often more fun turning it into something else than repairing it.

3. If the studio is *really* messy at the end of the day then I've probably achieved something.

Sequential Amputations

In September/October 2009 I composed & recorded a small suite of instrumental pieces titled "Amputations". I imposed time limitations on the construction of these 5 experimental shorts in order to Actually Finish Something.

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Beginning with an imagined body, the first amputation was the right leg, followed by the left. Right and left arms ensued, and finally decapitation.

Each piece was free from structural bounds aside from time signature.

Atlas

The Lifted Brow included two audio CDs with the publication of their 6th journal. The CDs contained songs by a diverse range of artists from around the world, including Big Strong Brute, Eddie Current Suppression Ring, Hannah Marcus & Rick Moody, Gifthorse, Because of Ghosts, and plenty of others.

Ronnie Scott, the 'Brow's editor, asked me to master the 43 tracks so the whole work sounded somewhat sonically cohesive.

Have a look at The Lifted Brow's website for more info on what they do.

Music For Coral Reef

Beautiful, dark, splendid and full of strange aquatic creatures (in the space of about 45 seconds).

You might need to update your flash player to listen.

Sample an old metal bed-head, pitch it down, stretch it out. Steal a sample from that old song you never finished and make it water.

Music for Coral Reef accompanied a short 3D piece by Patrick Walsh.

Adventures In Extra-Spatial Dust & Paint

I'm always amazed by how things I assume to be difficult turn out to be pre-formed and simple, and vice-versa. Take those metal strips that might sit in a doorway to keep neat the join between carpet and some vinyl. Turns out they just fit. Who'd have thought? What about window blinds? I thought they'd be wrapped in plastic, made to a range of particular window sizes. Nope; you've gotta cut 'em up yourself.

This year I built a little studio (with a generous serve of help from friends). It's interesting how close you can feel to a space when you've stripped it back and dressed it how you like.

Serious Symmetry

I'm a sucker for structure. Maybe I listened to too much Pink Floyd. I'm not sure, but I think designing an album to be a sort of musical palindrome is probably the most tedious thing I've done. Always Tomorrow:

You might need to update your flash player to listen.

Some people do what's best for the song, and while I agree that should always be the case when producing songs I think when I was putting this Manzuma album together it was equally important that the form be clear and accurate. The end is the beginning and the middle is perfectly centred. Full Circle:

You might need to update your flash player to listen.

I wrote a whole load of stuff about the way the album works, and how I recorded it. Grab a quick run-down. I also kept a studio diary while we recorded.

Globe-Viz

Jime Lemoire did some stunning visuals to accompany a Manzuma gig in June. I'd like to say we worked with him, but he did it all himself.

We, as Manzuma, provided our second album Hollows as Jime's soundtrack. From there he painted an intimate abstract and constantly moving interpretation of it. If it's ever available - either standalone, or from the show - I'll be sure to post some of it here.

Can We Go Home?

Round numbers cause celebrations, and make you think about time, right?

In April '08 some old band mates and I, as Ionesco, got together to mark 10 years since the release of the first album we ever produced.

I recorded on multitrack the small show we played - on a Roland VS1680 of all things, with limited tracks to cover a couple of keyboards, some programming, guitar, bass, two vocals & a couple of room mics.

And warts n' all, here's Every Night at About This Time:

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We were a bit rough, but it'd been 8 years since we'd really played together (and we actually forgot to practice this one before the show).

Darker Spaces

As part of a 3-piece Manzuma (with Vanessa Cronin & Dale Watkinson), I recorded our EP Darker Spaces.

This was recorded to Pro Tools using pretty much our entire available collection of instruments. I remember using my Yamaha YC45D to generate a bunch of sci-fi inspired blips and sweeps.

You might need to update your flash player to listen.

Darker Spaces was the slicker and shinier than our previous work. I'd like to think it was a reaction to our studio surrounds at the time which was also a huntsman clubhouse and even a river once or twice.

Side Project

Dark, acoustic, at once reserved and aggressive, Jim Flin's material carries with it an uneasy sensation while they try to tell you everything's okay. You know it isn't.

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I recorded these guys over a couple of evenings, adding pump organ, Hammond and piano to their staples of acoustic guitar and vocals. This is the guitarist & vocalist from Temple Mount.

Adventures in Extra-Spatial Mountain Ranges

Fifty-odd metres of 35-degree incline (at an estimate only) brought about sixteen aching legs. I relocated home and studio to a serene - if vertically flawed - location in the trees. I was still partially underground, but half way up a mountain in a spot counting more resident snakes than people.

Deep in the Green

Recording at home has unique challenges. It may be avoiding capturing the piercing sound of a particular bird, isolating yourself enough to not record your housemate's movie marathon upstairs, or just making enough time uninterrupted by hanging out your washing and cleaning up the cat's litter.

The recordings I've done with Julie Walton over the years have been plagued by each of these and still survived. Deep in the Green is sort of an addendum to her album. We had fun with tempo changes on this one.

Half Circle

Even before pressing Hollows I was remixing bits of it. Always Tomorrow received a meandering down-beat sort of treatment, running it out to 10 minutes. The last track, Full Circle also felt like an interesting choice. I sampled my Korg Poly 61 and recorded several tracks of hand claps.

You might need to update your flash player to listen.

The final result is remarkably different from the original, of course, but I don't think it destroys the intent of the track.

Small Pulses

As Manzuma, Vanessa & I did most of the work on Hollows in early 2006.

Limitations can cause incredible creativity, and my memories of this project all relate to work arounds, sticky tape and making old things into new things.

It took us another 2 years of fiddling, fixing and general messing about before we got it pressed. We're like Peter Gabriel like that; we take our time.

Frozen Stones in Tanawha

Following on from preliminary work in late 2005, Julie Walton and I completed work on her album, Pagan Fire.

We recorded a little bit of this at a stone circle in Tanawha, in the middle of the night, in winter, in the rain. It was good fun, and a complete techno-challenge.

You might need to update your flash player to listen.

The track above is my favourite from the album. I particularly like the delayed acoustic guitar and its interplay with the piano; nice.

Choosing Friends

Temple Mount is hard rock. The cover of the EP I worked on stylised a small piece of broken glass, and I imagine that's how the surface of my eardrums looked right after the few shows I caught.

The band recorded locally, and I overdubbed some organ and other keyboard parts before mastering the EP. Probably the most difficult thing with this project was fitting the keyboards into the already-dense sonic image.

Feathers

Marlinchen returned to my place in '06 to record a 7" called Feathers. No longer an instrumental group, this time round they'd recruited a beautiful voice.

The lead track is how I imagine drowning in dark waters at night must be. It's an impossible temperature, vacant yet present, and at once traumatic and comforting. It blurs my senses.

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Marlinchen split soon after they released this I think - and in my most humble opinion it's a shame.

From Inside the Serpent Skin...

...to outside of it. Vanessa & I finally released our first album as Manzuma in February 2005.

We started recording in 2003, in a 2 week block with rain pouring outside and a new kitten sleeping against a guitar cab inside, and completed it only a few weeks before the launch in February 2005 by re-recording the 10 minute finale.

You might need to update your flash player to listen.

The album received a nice review from Scene magazine - praising our potential to be all things to all people without diluting our artistic integrity. That's a massive call, and I was worried people might think we'd paid money, or offered lewd sexual favours for the review. Which of course we didn't.

Street Justice

I mastered a couple of Moscowine projects in oh-five, and played organs & some bass on them too.

Our Town was a predominantly acoustic album with sparse percussion and some electrics thrown in. Street Justice, although half the length, was considerably more complex.

You might need to update your flash player to listen.

Moscowine is a pretty challenging listen at times, but it's from there the greatest aural rewards come.

Drawing a Cat

Local band Marlinchen recorded their first EP in my studio. It was an instrumental piece constructed from a base of drones and given shape with mallets and guitar spikes.

I don't know if they would've liked being called 'ambient' because the term belies the disquiet in their music. It's gentle, but not easy.

Remix, You!

I commenced recording Julie Walton's Pagan Fire album towards the end of the year. One song was launched as a single while we were still recording the album, and I remixed it too. This got me using Pro Tools in new ways (the grid, you say?), not to mention making manual synth arpeggiations.

You might need to update your flash player to listen.

This was to have a profound effect on the way I work, by the way. Previously when working with loops I'd tended to arrange them in Acid, then use Pro Tools like a straight up multitrack recorder by overdubbing live instruments. In retrospect, the 8 hours I spent remixing this for Julie changed my recording habits completely.

Old Wood

I embarked on a project mid-2005 to write & record an entire album in a week. I failed in spectacular fashion managing only 2.5 tracks, but the idea lingers.

Old Wood was of slight concept - in what I've come to know as normal - where the structure is of equal importance to the concept (I would explore this in stupid detail on Manzuma's 2nd album).

Based on Robert Braiden's production of Sweet Eros (for which I designed a poster & postcard), each song was a scene as named by Rob; 'No, Don't', 'Sex Offstage', 'Ant Finale'. This is one little track I'm particularly fond of. Nothin' but Estey and voice; Leave With One Rope:

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Coupling this 'found structure' was the other restriction that I'd use only my Grandfather's old Estey organ and my voice. The organ was destroyed in Brisbane's 2011 floods, so I guess I'll never finish the project in the way it was intended. So I'll air a bit of it here.