[Releases] Under a Big Red Sun

Under a Big Red Sun was released in August in the US on Zos Kia Sounds but we've only just got some copies of it over here in the UK recently. Vultures Quartet features quite heavily on it with a piece by the three of us and a solo piece by Will and one by Anthony. 

There are alos a heck of a lot of other people we've played with on there: FluiD, Anton Mobin, Akoustik Timbre Frekuency, Philippe Petit and PAS.

And all the proceeds go to Oxfam - so if you want to buy a copy, contact me via my website.

[8-bit] C programming directly to /dev/audio

My friend James sent me a link to this site yesterday. I have never actually seen anything like it - obviously being an old git I have heard all this stuff before - remember playing Specturm and C64 games in the early 80s? I used to program bits and pieces of audio on my BBC B Computer but it was almost as hard as Supercollider to do - without sounding good. SuperCollider does sound incredibly good by the way.

I've had a really fun day playing around with this stuff and it is making me want to pick up my K'n'R book again and get back into C - let's face it, C does not muck about - it gets the job done and faster than pretty much anything else.

I've just been playing around with stuff today and it has been hilarious - just changing the algorithm in putchar() is daft as a brush and you never know what will come out.

I was using the wrong sample rate to come out of it - but I think this, in itself, makes the sound evolve.

Brilliant fun.

As ever uploaded to my site - the last few things on the page - or at least, the above pic is a screenshot of the site, so I suppose that makes them easy to find.

[All Sorts] Busy, Busy Busy!

Well, it's been a while since I posted an entry on here. I've been kinda busy - rehearsing, recording, gigging and even had to do some live sound.

Played a gig with The French Electric last week which went really well. Did some recording which will be used on some new Vultures Quartet sometime in the new year. I had to do the live sound at a friend's birthday - which was scary as I had to use a Yamaha 01v which is a pretty old digital mixer - not amazingly easy to use as it is menu driven. 

Vultures Quartet played at The Cube in Bristol which was excellent and a brilliant venue, really friendly and I saw lots of the Bristol theatre people. Thanks Anna for giving me a lift up there and somewhere to stay - and the same for James and Leila the next night.

More gigs coming up in the next few weeks.

Also look out for the new Classwar Karaoke online compilation - I've got a piece on there made with Daniel Thompson - an electro acoustic piece with realtime Pd processing and acoustic guitar. Have a look at the site - this will be the 16th "survey" so there's plenty there to listen to before it is released on the 30th of November.

Also, Seth and I listened to what the Goldsmiths students on his MA course had to say about our prototype for the video piece we've been working on for ages. Thankfully that went really well and they had a lot of positive things to say about it.