A day of disquiet...

Playlist

Cloudland Blue Quartet & Edward Spark - The Great Carving

Cloudland Blue Quartet & Edward Spark - O Superman (EP)

Zahara - Tus michis (Single)

Jazz Sabbath - The 1968 Tapes

Cornell Campbell - The Gorgon Dubwise

Cloudland Blue Quartet - Disquietmusik VIII

James Osland - Home Diaries 012

Richard Skelton - The Complete Landings

Ólafur Arnalds - re:member

Dustin O'Halloran - Lumiere

And November is gone...

Up...

Saturday...

One might argue that, these days, every day is Saturday for me and the Exec Producer...

But I won't...

Pre 6, just...

Scenes - filing, all done, for now...

The shelf - no new CDs this week...

...and tomorrow will be December...

Post breakfast (and post even more downloading of new music - spurred on by this excellent blog post from Whitelabrecs' founder, Harry Towell), to trying to find the leads/plugs which allow me to make a direct recording from my guitar, via distortion and delay, to the hand held recorder...

All searching was in vain and so, this year's "Disquietmusik", the 8th the in the annual series, was necessarily recorded via the small mixing desk...

Anne was out in the garden, doing her equivalent of me making music...

I commenced around 11:30...

...and the eight pieces were done by 12:37...

Then, to treating them...

Loaded onto the hard drive and manipulated, according to "Disquietmusik" Modus Operandi, by 12:50...

Then, to creating the bonus tracks - Reversed done by 13:17, 16 RPM Reversed done by 13:32 and 16 RPM done by 13:34 - again, all in accordance with "Disquietmusik" Modus Operandi...

Total creation time, 2 hours...

Total playing time, 6 hours...

A break for lunch and a new thing, the first two episodes of  "The Man on the Inside" with Ted Danson - we are enjoying this...

Then, Anne was off out to visit her mum and pick up a few provisions for her evening cooking plan...

Me?

It was time to listen back - someone has to do it and it can only really be me...

All through the afternoon...

...during which Queens progressed to the next round of the Scottish Cup, beating Arbroath away from home - a  fixture which will be repeated next Saturday in the league and so, a repeat result would be good...

A break in the listening around 6 for tea...

A top notch dish from Annie - Smoked Salmon Tagliatelle with Shallots, Mushrooms, Asparagus, Yellow Peppers, White Wine and Creme Fraiche, a cheeky wee ciabatta on the side and a refreshing glass of said White Wine...

Yowsah!

Playback continued via the room speaker - Anne is used to this type of music from her Executively Produced Beast...

Headphones reinstated at seven though, with the advent of "Strictly"...

Playback finally ended at 8:05...

Time for a couple of episodes of "Bosch" - top stuff - then, dishes washed, dried and put away...

And then, a third "Bosch", followed by some footie, pre a midnight lights out...

Let's just see those wee calendar cats again...

Aawww...

Highlight of the Day : New Disquietmusik created...

Today's New Music:-

Swift work can still be good work...

Playlist

Cloudland Blue Quartet & Edward Spark - HHA (Demos)

Various - GLASS ONION: SONGS OF THE BEATLES

Cloudland Blue Quartet & Edward Spark - The Great Carving

Kavall - Inmitten

Jakob Bro, Lee Konitz, Bill Frisell, Jason Moran, Thomas Morgan, and Andrew Cyrille - Taking Turns

Awoke super early and listened again to the 25 minute demo (and some tasty Beatles covers)...

HHA = Hip Hop Album - but it will not be that...

Anyway...

Immediately to work...

...re new music Friday - not that I "need" any new music...

...and the HHA with Edward Spark...

By 7:44, the full 63 minute Demo LP had been created...

I had AI create pictures of two men in various situations...

I asked for minimalist...

Then asked for it to be more realistic...

Then I asked them to be surrounded by synths...

...and, finally, that they should be bald...

This was my initial pick for the cover art...

I WeTransferred the 63 minute demo to Edwardo...

An hour later the 14 tracks had been split and revised artwork, the second pic, added...

"How did you do it so quickly, Dave?" I hear you ask - or I imagine I hear you ask...

 During our discussions over the course of the day, said this about what I'd done...

"As ever, the element of chance in what I have done creates "stuff" which is interesting...

I basically added various Disquietmusik guitar pieces to your tracks, amending keys and tempos to go with your pieces and underlaid the entire work with some tasty Short Wave Radio and slowed to 5% ambience from a New Zealand building site...

Now it sounds like you and me and that we'd always planned it - and your erstwhile friend's presence has been extinguished...

Very little thought went into it but the power of coincidence prevails as ever...

 I know it’s hard for you, having heard these as “songs” a thousand times but, other than the first couple of bars and deciding MOG was shite, I’ve not heard any of these pieces with words...

In fact I put this together mostly without even listening to your tracks apart from the first one...

I just checked the key and BPM and added the guitar (and on the 1st 3, extra drums - I was too impatient to do that with the rest!)...

Then, underlayed the SW Radio and slowed ambience...

...and, once I had all of them done, exported the whole thing - it wasn’t till then that I listened to any of them all the way through but this is a very nice LP, thanks to your painstaking work and my 30 minutes..."

It was, in fact around four hours' work to do it...

Re the artwork and titles, I explained to Ed that "the two guys look to me to be railroad barons carving up the land - other than "The Great Carving", the track titles are taken from names of North American Railroads"...

Listening back...

Then, out with Anne - a 30 minute walk to the dentist...

Various X-Rays taken - nothing untoward found - some fixing re overbite and sensitivity...

£50 away...

To the tram...

Into St Andrew Square...

Xmas shopping for families...

...was followed by a well deserved lunch at the Rendezvous...

Three courses for around the same as the dearest starter at the Golden Dragon on Monday...

Didn't mange to catch the banana fritters before they mysteriously disappeared...

An X18 chasing a 26, which it caught and home from the terminus...

November almost gone...

Listening back again...

"Milwaukee Road" is the fave for both me and Sparky...

I will soon receive the full stems for his music and work can start in earnest...

Today's work will no doubt be included in a bonus stylee...

Liking the Amsterdam screen saver that's popped up out of nowhere...

On telly, "Intelligence" came to an end - we were disappointed to find that "Season 3" comprised just one double length episode...

Oh well...

Remains of Anne's lovely home made soup for tea...

Caught up with "Shetland" after sleeping through it on Wednesday...

The Aussie "Death in Paradise" continued and was good...

As was "Have I Got News For You"...

Late on posted some CDs listened to this week for CDFriday...

...then, preceded to fall asleep again, before heading to bed at midnight...

To be fair, it had been a busy day...

Highlight of the Day : Creating...

Today's New Music:-

One man's stupidity can lead to the potential for good things...

Playlist

Various - The Klaus Devore Remixes

Cloudland Blue Quartet & Edward Spark - O Superman (EP)

Haydn - 2032, Vol. 12: Les jeux et les plaisirs

Il Giardino Armonico & Claudio Monteverdi - The Collected Recordings of Il Giardino Armonico

Haydn - 107 Symphonies

Abba - 1973-1982

After Crying - Starless - A Sampler

Laurie Anderson - Songs and Stories from Moby Dick

Arcade Fire - The Suburbs

Arcade Fire - Arcade Fire EP

Ark - Ark

The Album Leaf - An Orchestrated Rise to Fall

Ayreon - Universal Migrator I & II

Badly Drawn Boy - Have You Fed The Fish?

Alonso Arreola Project - Musica Horizontal

The Beatles - Yesterday

The Beatles - 1962-1970

Asia (Featuring John Payne) - Aura

Abba - 1973-1982

The Blue Nile - Rarities 1984-1996

Cloudland Blue Quartet & Edward Spark - HHA (Demos)

A day on which I stopped taking pics at breakfast...

So it goes...

Anyway...

Up as usual...

...just after six...

...and working pre breakfast, on this and on listening...

Breakfast...

Decided to try and ensure that my huge collection of CD-Rs from the old days is on the hard drives - so got down to this...

And listened to a few too...

An enjoyable project...

I was half way through "B" when, just after midday, a message from Edward Spark arrived...

He'd been f*cked over by his "friend" MOG, the one whose misogynist and racist raps got Sparky fired from his Sheffield Record Label deal (I say "deal" but the earnings were in the pennies)...

The album they did together is up - Sparky wrote and recorded ALL the music...

But, somehow, not a single mention of him anywhere...

"Not one single word from him regards our 50/50 collaboration album.  You'd also think that he'd be kind enough to credit me for writing and producing 100% of the music wouldn't you. You know, with it being 50/50 and all.  It's on all streaming services too"

So, I said, to try and cheer him up...

"What I'll do is I'll steal all the instrumental passages and create brand new tunes with me singing and give you 50% credit"

...and Sparky said...

"I'll give you all the instrumentals"

I started listening to the LP - the music was great, the rapping was super-annoying - even more so due to the broad Scottish accent...

I had to turn it off half way through the first track...

I let Sparky know the opinions from Crispycat Towers...

"I was playing it there - Anne came in "what's that shite - get it off - it's absolute rubbish.  It's banned from this house"  Fair play.  She is the Exec Producer!"

Sparky laughed at this but was still pretty down...

"I get shafted at every turn. Used and abused but egotistical maniacs"

So I said...

"Send me the instrumentals - no work required from you and let's see how long it takes me to do the songs - I won't listen to the dickhead's version - it'll be like the Ed Sheeran LP I did which you loved"

I continued with the CD-R work...

At 5pm, the files arrived...

By 6:15 I had my first 10 minute demo, using the first three of the twelve tracks...

I also wrote three new lyrics, with view to these becoming songs...

"Petrol Station Flowers", "Vitriol" and "In the Red"...

But no singing was done...

I did not send my work to Edwardo...

Anne was off out to the Pickelball Xmas drinks night - I gave Lynn and her a lift to the Sports Club where Jamie, Keith and I once played to an audience of Paul Reynolds...

Back home via Lidl, having bought some macaroni cheese for tea...

Enjoyed "The Batman", which was so long, by the time it finished it was time to pick Anne and Lynn up from what they advised had been a very enjoyable evening of drinks and chat (no music though - should have asked me!)...

My 10 minute demo soundtracked the taxi trip...

Back home, I fired up the machines again and, by 10 past midnight, the demo was increased to 25 minutes, incorporating the first six tracks...

Tasty!

Off to bed - a productive day...

Highlight of the Day : Creating...

Today's New Music:-