Thursday, December 14, 2006

Pie, potatoes, pickles’n’peas...

Playlist
Various – Jukebox Shuffleplay
Timo Maas - Pictures
Various – Ministry of Sound Clubbers’ Guide to Ibiza 2006

Tonight, to the home of my webmeister and Creek backbone, Mr Craig Sutherland, to view his new music creating set up and to decide whether I wish to implement the same thing at Crispycat...

But before I got there, a few events – I couldn’t remember my PIN to obtain funds from the bank – at least it seemed that way. When I tried my card at a different machine using the same number it was accepted – weird...

Then the road I was trying to take to my destination was closed and I had to follow a detour and I missed my turning and had to reverse along a very dark main road to get back to it...

A quick visit to sister Sheila’s to discuss and organise the purchase of our Xmas present for our mum and then off to pick up fellow Creeker, Stu Cobley, photographer of the parish...

Again, I am missing turnings and doing three-point turns all over the place...

Eventually we arrive at Craig’s, around an hour or so later than planned....

We spent some considerable time watching as Craig demonstrated his controller keyboard and the various different pieces of software it controls in order to create pieces...

The effect of Stu’s mum’s home cooking was creating a bit of an atmosphere in the room – he advised he’d had pie, potatoes, pickles and peas – which set him off on a bout of giggling merriment from which there was almost no return...

In the past, the way in which Creek’s music has been created is for Craig to produce a bed of rhythm, bass and, sometimes, basic chordal sweeps, over which Stu, Alan Brodie and I improvise to our hearts’ content...

We are planning to start work on some new music early in 2007 (our last album was released at the end of 2004) and Craig wants to move to a more conventional, structured method of music creation while Stu and I still favour the improvisation of old...

We’ll see what happens when we re-convene but if I get the same set up as Craig then both of us will be capable of creating basic Creek tracks. The ideal would be for all four of us to have the same system...

Around 11, talk turns to downloading – Craig downloads tons of stuff and, it turns out, he usually burns albums to disc purely for the car and, after a couple of weeks, he chucks these discs into an old shoe box – he invites Stu and me to help ourselves...

Stuart shows great restraint, taking just Brian Eno’s last album and a couple of others. For my own part, I partook of the following:-

The Killers –Sam’s Town
Scissor Sisters – Ta Dah!
Sarah McLachlan – Bloom Remixes
Various – Ministry of Sound Clubbers’ Guide to Ibiza 2006
Various - The Orb : Back to Mine
Lupe Fiasco – Food & Liquor (Craig is a huge fan of rap and hip hop music)
Timo Maas – Pictures
Anthony and the Johnsons – I Am A Bird Now
Faithless – Forever Faithless
Sasha – Involver
BT – This Binary Universe (If you click on the link, you can se BT holding a keyboard similar to the one we will be using)
Ice Cube – Death Certificate

Finally, Craig shows Stu the latter’s upcoming Photography Website which should go live “soon”...

I took Stu home after agreeing to meet up again in January, then sped back to Crispycat and Anne and Meg the Black Cat while listening to some excellent Timo Maas and finished off the night with "This week" and some banging club music to send me off into the land of nod....

Highlight of the Day : A visit to Castle Sutherland

No comments: