This week I started back at college, studying horticulture. The workload is… ‘significant’, shall we say? Certainly unlike anything I’ve done before, what with my course at Leeds Met being an absolute joke that required no work at all. With this in mind, realistically I’m going to have to knock music on the head for the next nine months really as I won’t have much time. I am going to still play guitar in my spare time, but generally as a way to relax really, and I don’t plan on doing too much writing or recording over this time. I’m also calling it a day with Jerky Oats – that stopped being fun ages ago, and I don’t have the time to really do anything with that at the moment.
In order to get everything clear before delving deep into the world of Botanical Latin, I’ve spent a couple of weeks going over and rearranging all of the music I’ve written this year in order to have a release schedule sorted in my head – one that’s not going to have me thinking and worrying about it at every available moment. Sturmazdale has been sent back to the drawing board, but may turn up again in the future in a very different format. With that out of the way, this is, tentatively, what will be happening between now and when I get back to recording:
The Blackbirds’ Revenge – most importantly, this is the first ‘proper’ album. When breaking down all of the releases, as mentioned in previous blogs, I managed to fit together an album of all the potential tracks I had. It’s mostly acoustic instrumentation, both electronically treated and in its natural state, and is formed from four long pieces (8-25 minutes) and two shorter tracks, one of which features lyrics. There’s no overall concept or story here, and it doesn’t all flow together as a soundscape, there are GAPS between the tracks (gasp!). It’s very much a new approach and draws a line between Second Thought and Ross Baker. I’ve kicked down a lot of barriers that prevoiusly restrained me to come up with a much better album than I would have if I’d kept up the ‘flowing conceptual soundscape’ approach that I’d run into the ground. Whichever way you look at it, I’ve enjoyed writing, recording and compiling this album more than anything since Safernoc/Canal Seven/Leaf Pass in late 2009 – so I’m taking it as a very good sign. The final thing is very good too, if I do say so myself! Otherwise, there are a couple of short records that should appear too:
A Room – the twelve-tone serial record that I’ve spoken about before, which runs to about half an hour – as it is effectively a modern classical work, the length is fitting. It’s arranged for piano, field recordings and orchestral samples. I’ve spoken much about it before. This effectively marks the end of my obsession with academic/formal composition. Might be out early in the year.
Revolution – a twenty minute collage of my early musique concrete/experimental tape work recorded throughout my teens. I’m hoping to have this released on tape.
That’s about it for 2012. I’m not putting together anything else between now and the end of the course. Jerky Oats has four releases left – Austin Cassell, Jesse Conner, Gregg Jackson and Memphis – so a nice balance of two song-based records and two electronic works. Bullfinch will start up properly next summer once I have the time and money. I’ve just completed work on the design for the Ross Baker website (the second one actually, the first seemed to fit my pretense of being a contemporary composer, but wasn’t very honest).
All my talk of ‘breaks’ in the past has never lasted for more than a few weeks, even if not directly creating music I’ve been doing artwork, arranging releases and schedules and so on. I do have some demos to send out soon, but other than that this really is the end of a huge long music-obsessed period which started almost two years ago – upon my arrival back in Hinckley in November 2009. It does feel nice to be taking a break now, as it’ll give me chance to get back to music being something I do as a form of relaxing, rather than the main part of my life, and when I return to properly writing and recording next year, hopefully I’ll have a whole better attitude towards it than I have for the last couple of years.
I’ll still keep everybody updated when anything exciting happens, of course. 🙂
enofa 