January 29, 2004
Escaping a snowbound, gridlocked country to fly to another snowbound, gridlocked country, doesn’t make too much sense, but to compound the agony, I’m off to frosty Finland for four days on Friday (depending on whether there are still any flights leaving Germany, that is).
Saturday’s performance in Helsinki will mostly consist of improvisations, interspersed with the occasional blast of light relief from the Centrozoon back catalogue of bright and breezy tunes (or suicidal dirges as they’ve been more accurately referred to on more than one occasion!).
Last night’s rehearsal was a sometimes glorious clash of fractured beats, plastic noise and intriguing loops, and a sometimes Godawful racket.
Regardless, thermal-clad and replete with astonishngly stupid hats, the Centrozoon Arctic Symphony is in preparation for its auspicious debut.
On my return to the UK, full membership of Masochist’s Anonymous undoubtedly awaits.
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A productive meeting with One Little Indian on Monday has meant that the next major project I intend to embark on is a full-scale solo album for the label. Hopefully, mostly in collaboration with the talented and reclusive sonic miserablist, David Picking (the Howard Hughes of post-Trip Hop), ideally the result will be something worthy of comparison with the recent No-Man albums, but sufficiently different to make its own mark.
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‘The Butler’ prepared the first album length edit of the ‘voiceloops’ project just in time for my trip to Germany.
Surprisingly coherent and perhaps more accessible than I’d imagined, encouraging responses from Markus (who singled out the two ‘songloops’) and Derek at OLI, suggest there’s some life in the project yet.
Listening:
With nothing much new out, it’s been back catalogue time again, with Laub, Lambchop, Massive Attack, Jeff Klein, Bjork, Miles Davis and Mark Eitzel/AMC providing the bulk of the fun.
Reading:
After the funny, imperfect, yet strangely moving and sad Pat Hobby Stories by F Scott Fitzgerald, it’s back to Douglas Coupland and his early novel, Shampoo Planet.
Watching:
Lost In Translation
Podge And Rodge (RTE)