[Live] The Miller Test

Two Miller Test gigs coming up - one tomorrow at the Bully in Oxford and one on Saturday at the 229 Club in London on Saturday the 2nd of June. Jubilee celebrations indeed...

[Live] The Miller Test 10th May

I am playing with the Miller Test tomorrow... here are the details:

THE MILLER TEST IS LIVE AT THE WORKSHOP, OLD STREET, THURSDAY 10TH MAY, 8PM 

(Actually, the website is questionable - here and here might be more useful.)

£6 on the door, no messing about.

[Live] The Miller Test - 100 Club

The Miller Test return with a gig at the infamous 100 Club this Friday 20th April at 8pm. We've been working really hard on our set and are looking forward to playing this gig a lot - should be a lot of fun.

If you haven't heard what we do, you can hear it here on the "Ear, have a listen" page.  

[Live] The Miller Test at Nambucca

Oh, yes, The Miller Test returns to Nambucca, this Thursday, 15th March at 10pm. We love it in there as the sound is great. So come and have a few shandies and a jump around.

[Live] The Miller Test and The French Electric

I played with The Miller Test on Friday at the Bowery which was a great gig, lots of people there, good venue and more importantly we played well. 

On Saturday (after about 4 hours sleep) I had to run sound again using the dreaded Yamaha 01v. This was for an Amnesty International benefit gig at the King's Head in Islington. The line up included Gagarin both solo and with Roshi on vocals and keyboard - I am something of a fan of the music they create together and really rate Gagarin as a solo artist. He's also worked with all sorts of people, Nico and John Cale  amongst them.

Also playing were the Rude Mechanicals - who are absolutely brilliant fun. 

Grassy Noel was reciting some of his poetry. There's a video of him doing just that at the Foundry on YouTube. Great to see him as I don't think I have seen him since the Foundry closed. Don't get me started on what happened to the Foundry - suffice to say I think it was criminal the way it was closed down and the reasons for it - it was the last outpost of anything decent in Shoreditch - an area which was truly re-established by the artistic community which has now been completely ousted by corporate crap and moronic lowest common denominator "entertainment".  At least the Foundry managed to stick it out for longer than  most.

There were other people playing but I can't remember who they were! Brilliant accordion player and a good singer songwriter.

After doing the sound I had to scoot off to a gig with The French Electric at a burlesque night at Dusk Till Dawn (or what used to be the Archway Tavern). It went pretty well. The picture above is of Simon (left) and Jim (right) at that very gig - thankfully I am not in the photo!

[Recording] The Miller Test

The weekend before I headed off to Bristol The Miller Test spent a weekend recording over in Willesden at the notorious Theorem studios. Ably engineered by the one and only Mark Aubrey who is an excellent engineer and is very good at getting the best performances from people. As ever it was great to get some advice from him about equipment and just to watch how he goes about his job as an engineer.

It was a fun weekend and I think we've got some really good takes - the songs were Place Your Bets, SSCB, Misleading and Devils in the Soul. We had the usual core line up along with Emma Gosnell on backing vocals and a very pregnant Catherine Earnshaw also on backing vocals.

And yes, Sam "The Kid" Taylor was as pesky as ever... but then he would be wouldn't he?

Unbelievably we managed to get two of the backing tracks down in one take for each - Place Your Bets and Misleading. This was followed by a celebratory curry and beers down the road.

Hopefully we'll be uploading some mixes to the Miller Test website soon as well as the inevitable myspace and bandcamp  sites.

Stay tuned for some of Al's pics of us all looking stupid and incompetent.

[Live] The Miller Test

Playing live with The Miller Test at:

The Comedy

7 Oxendon Street

London

SW1 4EE

Not sure how much it will cost or what time we are on... as ever, no one has told me ;-)

[EDIT] Hilariously we managed to miss the gig as it was actually booked on the previous Wednesday! WHOOPS!

[News] Gigs, Recordings, Java

The next Miller Test gig will be at 229 - a club on Great Portland Street - 229 - we'll be on at 8.30pm and we'll be "showcasing" our new backing singers and some songs you haven't heard before. Emma and Ida are great singers and we've been working on harmonies for them, in fact we're doing more this afternoon in  the luxurious environs of The Premises.

I've submitted a track for the forthcoming Classwar Karaoke compilation - a kind of weird, glassy, algorithmic, downtempo electronic thing. So, all three Vultures will be on it as solo artists (Astrometria - ie me, Will Connor and murmurists - Anthony). As I mentioned before there will be some famous names on this one including Fred Frith.

Seth and I have done some more work on the video looping project, well actually, to be fair Seth has digitised a load of old video material ready for looping. I am still trying to work out exactly how to display it and use OpenCV to control the program or patch I write for it. I'm going to forge ahead using Pd/GEM but I also had a look at using Java. I programmed Java professionally for a few years and one of the things I used was QuickTime for Java. Having not used it for a while I was a little saddened to see that it has been deprecated. In fact Apple did that in 2009 - shows it has been a while since I looked at that API!

I had a look at Java Media Framework but I just don't think it will cut the mustard for what I am trying to do which is a shame. I have seen a similar application to the one I am trying to write built with Max/MSP/Jitter - but I can't afford Max so that's a no go. I just need to work out how to display and manipulate several videos with audio in Pd/GEM I think. I could try Processing but the overhead is immense compared to Pd so that choice is a no brainer.

Some people I have mentioned this to have asked why I don't program this thing in Flash - the simple answer is twofold: I can't afford the development tools and more importantly Flash is the only thing that makes my computer so hot that the fans in it are running so quickly it sounds like it might take off... remember the sound of the nine (?) fans in the old G5 Mac Pro things when you booted into single user mode? Very similar... 

[Live] The Miller Test at Cargo

We're playing at Cargo on Friday 13th May. I don't think we'll be listed as it's a last minute booking (obviously).  We're on at 7.45pm.

We'll be playing a new song amongst the other stuff too.

If you come to see us it's a fiver to get in - the usual price is £20 so if you like the place you can get in for £5 and stay all night. Just think of all the extra beer you can afford...

[Website] Updates

I have finally uploaded the other improvisations from Und to my website. These were performed by me, Seth Guy and Mark Pearce. Mark contributed vocals - some improvised some from texts and some old songs.

Mark also shot a couple of short videos of me and Seth explaining what we were doing and how. I can't say I really like seeing myself talking on film but, it's documentation I suppose.

I've also uploaded two videos of The Miller Test from a recent gig (13/04/11) at Nambucca a brilliant venue on Holloway Road in London. Apparently some of the PA was rescued from the recently demolished Astoria and it really does sound good in there. Turns out it is owned by the same bloke who owns the rehearsal studio we use who very kindly made us a cup of tea when we got there and shouted us a few drinks - not something that happens regularly!

[Live] The Miller Test, tonight

The Finsbury

336 Green Lanes, Manor House
London, U.K., N4 1BY UNITED KINGDOM