8th September 2011

Been tidying up some ideas today. Often the last track completed from an album can seem rushed to me – perhaps running out of inspiration or patience. Luckily I have time on my hands to go back over stuff once I’ve given it some space. In this case, I’ve rearranged one piece from A Room, using the same tone rows but making it considerably more sparse and abstract sounding. Sounds less cheesy now (yes, I somehow managed to make a piece of cheesy twelve tone music).

I’ve begun considering ideas for the artwork for A Room – Sturmazdale’s artwork was done around the time of the album with a couple of suitable photographs – but it doesn’t seem to be something easily do-able at the moment. Perhaps I should start work on photography for Where Do We Go When The Roads Have All Cracked?, as it was a bridge near my current flat that inspired me to start work on it.

7th September 2011

I was reading back over my music journal, right back to 2004 when it started, and I noticed a huge, dramatic difference: back then, I was posting mainly positive things about my music, recording progress, and thoughts about music I’d like to make, maybe; in the last year, I’ve done a lot of complaining about my own music, my approach to writing and so on. I’d like this to change, I’d like to be more positive about what I’m doing and the music I’m making. In fact, I’d like not to have things to find fault with. I want to be pleased with what I’ve made. I want to appreciate my own music for what it is, not what it should be or shouldn’t be. I think the Ross Baker name should give me some freedom, not only because it is, in itself, vague and non-descript – there’s no artist name to live up to, I shan’t have the trouble with the whole ‘Second Thought sound’ thing, but also because it takes me back to my pre-Second Thought days when I recorded tapes just as Ross Baker. Sometimes I’d do tapes which were designed to evoke a particular atmosphere or mood, sometimes I’d just make tapes of music I’d written.

I suppose my point is, I’ll be taking a different approach from next year. Whatever I record is fair game. I could end up with another Second Thought style soundscape album – Sturmazdale is much like that – or a shorter, more abstract mood piece like the twelve-tone serial collection and cityscape albums I’m working on (I’m expecting both to be around the 40 minute mark), or a collection of individual ideas which won’t paint a scene, but just act as pieces of music in their own right. I must remember that this is all fine (it won’t be a 2010 style ‘release any old crap’ situation, however, as I’m going to make sure I execute a lot more quality control than I have of late)! Similarly, I’m removing the idea of ‘no go’ areas and unbreakable rules. I can’t see myself returning to using VST instruments any time, but I’ve warmed to the idea of owning a hardware synth. It might not be ‘acoustic’, but who cares as long as it sounds good? I do want to get more instruments and do more musical performance, possibly even recording to tape, but I don’t want to give myself some bizarre sense of guilt for using a computer. I don’t want to feel like I’m doing things wrongly by writing music for a reason or in a manner that isn’t in some grand plan. I never used to do that until the last couple of years, and it’s very unhealthy. It stops music making me happy, and that’s the main reason I write in the first place. And this blog, there needs to be more about the music and less about my neuroses, because they’re unnecessary. In short: whatever music I make, for whatever reason, if it’s good, it’s good. I have ideas of what I want to do, but that doesn’t mean I’m not allowed to do other things too.

I’m glad that’s out of the way. Now I can continue the blog in a manner befitting my newfound positive, music-based perspective.

Leaf Pass has now become my most-downloaded record and almost certainly my most listened-to. Thank you to everybody who’s downloaded it! It may have become my second favourite of all my records, behind Purlieu, so I’m really happy that it’s proving so popular. Fingers crossed it’ll remain that way.

The cityscape album I think will be taking the uncharacteristically long title of ‘Where Do We Go When The Roads Have All Cracked?’, which I think sums up the feeling of ruin and loss I’m hoping to portray in it (oh the happiness and joy, as ever). I think it’s going to be mostly live and electronically treated melodica and piano with a tapestry of field recordings. My girlfriend describes the melodica as sounding like a character or narrator witnessing the scene, which is a nice way of hearing the album and one I think really fits the mood. I’m incredibly happy with how it’s coming along, anyway.

I bought a couple of (very) cheap wooden Indian style flutes in Canterbury on my birthday. It’s proving difficult to get a nice sound out of them, but I will continue to try! I’m sure I can use them at some point. I’m hoping to get a new acoustic guitar soon, and I want to collect my microphones and FX pedals from Hinckley as well as they’ll prove useful when playing instruments I think.

The twelve-tone serial composition collection has been given a title and a label! It will be called A Room and will be the first release on my Bullfinch Records label next year at some point. I’ll leave you to imagine how the title and music relate to each other for the moment.

4th September 2011

Some people might be mistaken in thinking that being one of those people who is constantly recording is a good thing. It’s not! Well, it has its down sides, at least. For a while I’ve been worrying that I’m actually working on too much music, but then I remember even around the time of Purlieu I was recording that, and almost an album’s worth of material that didn’t make it onto the album, and a couple of 2T Records, and a So Far So Good album, and some nonsense as Rory and the Smendles, and still at college and persuing a social life. So perhaps it’s not so odd that, given the fact I have nothing to do at the moment, I’m coming up with a lot of new music. It’s all being put into different boxes on different themes. I’ve decided to revisit the original ideas behind Vacuum Road Songs (long before it turned into the maddening journey through a city story it was planned to be a more grim sounding soundtrack to a rather scary part of a city – think Burial’s first album in mood), a ghost story themed album inspired by a car trip near Hinckley, the electro-acoustic experiments I’ve spoken of before, the old tape collage, and a box for general stuff that might get used in the future. I’m getting in touch with labels to see what will be released where and when. Hopefully a few bits and bobs will be out over the course of 2012.

I spent much of yesterday playing with a melodica, writing, recording, manipulating sounds. It works very well at forming an ambient backdrop, and I came up with some great sounds. I think I really need to get a guitar very soon. Given the opportunity to write tracks, rather than piece them together on the computer, it should slow down my progress without stopping me from being musical!

1st September 2011

This afternoon I’ve been piecing together some of my favourite bits of those old tapes I wrote about some months ago (nearly a year ago!) A lot of the strange noises and collages were inspired by The Beatles’ Revolution 9, and I’ve been putting those together in a fashion befitting their origins. Nostalgia is a funny thing, that led me immediately to consider my past and my music again, and, having had a couple of drinks, I felt quite nostalgic about Second Thought. Not that I’m regretting ending it, but just… memories, really. When it all started, ups and downs, how it ended.

Anybody with an ear for some beautiful music should listen to Tectonic Grind by Sensible Nectar. The tape’s out of print so it can be downloaded for free in the Out of Print section of Rainbow Bridge. Some of the noisier stuff might be hard to get through (I’ll be honest, it’s not really to my taste either), but the melodic guitar stuff is wonderful. The last track, Unsafe In My Own Shuffling, Weak, Dreaming Arms, is probably one of the most beautiful pieces of music I’ve ever heard and really should be listened to. If only I could create that sort of thing with my guitar.

If only I had my guitar!

28th August 2011

It’s been a busy time in the studio over recent weeks. I think I’ve completed composition for my twelve-tone serial collection, I just need a good piano sound for three of those tracks. The rest will be electro-acoustic and more experimental in sound. I’ve also been contacting a few labels in regards to a couple of other projects I’ve been working on. I’ve received positive response about the pure music electro-acoustic pieces I mentioned in a previous entry, but won’t know any more until later in the year about that. I’m also sending out stuff for some more piano and string based music I’ve been working on with a ghostly theme. I’m very proud of the tracks, but an interesting thing happened during recording sessions: I recorded a piece for solo guitar, and really enjoyed the writing, recording and listening process, moreso than using samples and a piano synth at the computer. I decided then that from now (for a while at least, I change my mind often enough to make no permanent promises!) I want to actually stick to instruments I have. I’d like to get more instruments and work with them. Instead of going “I want to write music for these instruments”, I want to take the approach of arranging the music around what I have: a continuation of the self-limited sample palette I chose as a response to the over-indulgence in wide ranging synthesisers. I’ll still be using samples in an electro-acoustic way, but it might be a nice challenge to return to actual music – composition and performance – instead of sitting at a computer screen clicking buttons.

In other news, I’ve shifted over the physical releases from Jerky Oats on to a new label, Bullfinch Records. I want to release some electro-acoustic, modern classical and ambient music on CD in DIY packaging, and have a few artists lined up for release. It’ll be starting next year hopefully, and I want to release 2-3 CDs a year. Having a fresh label will not only help promote things, but also Jerky Oats really is a terrible name, thoroughly unsuitable for serious electro-acoustic music. So it’s much more fitting. Wish me luck!

3rd August 2011

Some of the pieces I mentioned in the previous two entries fall into the ‘pure music’ category – music that exists for the sake of it, music that has no meaning, no definition, is not intended to be evocative of a particular atmosphere or image, but simply be beautiful music. The one thing that I’m learning is that this approach can lead to some very beautiful music, but is not one I will be following much in the future, probably due to the fact that most of the music I listen to is on the atmospheric/evocative side. It’s been a very enjoyable experiment and I’ve been learning a lot about music. One of the pieces still needs some more live instruments, and I’m committed to finishing it all and putting it out at some point, as I’m proud of what I’m making. It’s just helping me refine my future working process in a way I wasn’t expecting it to at first…

20th July 2011

Expanding upon the ideas I was working on the other day, I’ve been playing with more instrument + field recording manipulations. The last one came out rather nicely, and might stand up well enough by itself. This time it’s a bit more abstract, slight similarities with my side of the Oncoming Storm split with Noisesurfer, so I think it’ll need more work. I’ve decided I can’t just leave stuff at ‘good enough’, I want to make the tracks as good as possible, keep working on them until they’re better than I imagined they would be. So live, acoustic instrumentation will be added at some point in the future, probably when I have it around me. I might split the longform track into sections, too, parts 1-4 or whatever. It’s a nice way to be working, as it’s currently entirely improvised, which comes as a complete contrast to my experiments with composing using twelve tone serial techniques. That isn’t doing much for me or my mood at the moment, so I’ve put those on the back burner and I’m considering other ideas currently. I’ll return to them at a later date. I’d really like to get more instruments, and get the instruments I own back with me – it’ll be nice to write for acoustic instruments after such a long time of in-computer sounds. I always used to put a huge array of sounds and instruments on my music back in the day, I want to get back to that process again. A mixture of computer manipulation and live performance is probably the most enjoyable way to work for me.

Stuff I have been enjoying recently:

Xedh – Vinduskarm
Max Richter – Songs from Before
Deaf Center – Pale Ravine
Gavin Bryars – Piano works
Sibelius – Symphonies 2 & 4

12th July 2011

I’ve finally got the Curse of Kevin Carter website sorted and online. The Curse of Kevin Carter is basically the final version of a band which started a very long time ago and mentioned on this blog way back in probably 2004. The initial line-up was that of myself, Thom and Ste, and we were going to be joined by Jo, Pete, Tom, Claire and Liam, but this never came to pass. We did record a few demos, a couple of which are still around. Eventually it whittled down to myself and Ste, and moved on from slightly jangly indie stuff to a kind of post-punk influenced sound, but that never really went anywhere; we went our separate ways, and he went on to play in the more shoegaze-inspired Eleanor Everything. Around the same time I began to put ideas together with Thom again. This took the punk sound further, being a jumbled mixture of melodic post hardcore (of the Yourcodenameis:Milo variety, not whiny 19 year old Thursday wannabes) and heavier sounds. At this point, both of us were writing lo-fi acoustic pop songs separate from the band. Eventually, the melodic side won out, and realising we were better at jangly indie stuff than shouty screamy angular nonsense, the sound unintentionally reverted back to something closely resembling that which we started with, and we began working on band arrangements of our solo songs. Cleverly, we chose this point to move to opposite ends of the country, and the project has hung in the air since. Needing a bass player, my beautiful girlfriend suggested maybe she could fill the role, what with her having a bass guitar and everything, and so became part of the collective. I put out the Second Thought sings The Curse of Kevin Carter EP last year, a halfway house containing the more experimental and electronic tracks I’d worked on, as an introduction to the project, and recently finished the first album, Almost a Leg. Although a solo project of mine, as I thought about expanding upon it, it seemed sensible to merge the band and the solo project, to form this rather bizarre occurance: The Curse of Kevin Carter. A tracklist for Almost a Leg is on the site linked above. We will be starting as an active band again within the next six months or so, and then exciting things will happen.

I spent a bit of today playing with some organ and rain sounds, and turning them into an incredibly long, beautiful ambient piece. It’s not done yet, I want to add some piano or guitar or something to it, but it’s turning out rather nicely. Not sure exactly what I’ll do with it yet, mind.

6th July 2011

With Sturmazdale complete, I find myself in an interesting position which I haven’t been in for some years: I don’t have a follow-up planned. Near the end of the Purlieu sessions, I had decided I wanted to record something that continued from the album, leading to Vacuum Road Songs. VRS was to lead on to the long-scrapped Dead Hymns; Safernoc gave me chance to record Since Every Hour, an album I’d wanted to do for years, and that direction pushed me to record a full on experimental classical album, Sturmazdale, via the ‘return to samples’ approach Leaf Pass. Now, however, I don’t have an album I ‘want’ to record. There’s no real musical or conceptual theme that I feel like I need to record next.

This doesn’t mean I’m out of ideas, but realising that I no longer feel tied to a series of linked albums is such a liberating feeling. I’ve actually got several ideas I want to work on. A couple are based entirely around field recordings, which is something I’ve wanted to do for ages, one is a re-recording of an old tape from 1997 named Cliff Edge, and I’m expanding upon the atonal sounds I played with on Sturmazdale by getting to grips with serial composition techniques. There’s also a bigger project I’m planning for a long way into the future. The main point is, it doesn’t matter which order these come out in. Album-wise, everything from Purlieu to Sturmazdale was sort of set in stone, whereas now, I can work on what I want, when I want, and release it when it’s finished (the release schedules that have plagued me so much over the last eighteen months are no more!). This is a wonderful feeling, and I think I’ll be able to record at a sensible speed from now on.

4th July 2011

The first album I’ll be releasing under my own name is done and label stuff is, staggeringly, sorted. It should be coming out on an established CDr label with whom it should be entirely at home. I’m very proud of the record actually… it’s a continuation of the modern classical sensibilities of Since Every Hour Is Too Late and a continuation of the melodies and sample-based textures of Purlieu. There are some atonal pieces and some more conventional almost Second Thought-ish tracks. The album will be called Sturmazdale, and the tracklist runs a little like this:

01. Oncoming Storm
02. Rain
03. Rectangles
04. Talnoa
05. The Deck
06. Upper Path
07. Hillside
08. Caves
09. 75
10. Underview
11. Vars
12. Lower Path
13. E Ccc

I really miss my guitar. I haven’t played it in at least a year. I was listening to Current 93’s Music from the Horse Hospital last night and it made me want to actually do some performance. A jam with other musicians. Once I’m settled somewhere, I want to find some musicians who’ll be interested in doing that. It’ll be nice to get back to actually playing music for once, as opposed to just sitting at the computer. I used to do that a lot more a few years ago (hmmm… nine or ten years ago), when guitar appeared much more in my music – on Second Thought or in my So Far So Good stuff – and when I did collaborations with Gregg and Laura and people. Purlieu even had a non-electronic track, Nsepan, which was performed by myself on piano and my friend John on viola. That kind of thing was great fun and I really miss being a musician sometimes, as well as a sound editor. Anyway, that’s something for the future.