It seems Benbecula are having a bit of a clear out, and are currently selling all their physical releases for a quid or two; £1.99 for albums, and 99p for EPs. If you fancy picking up Lemodie and Like Dust for just four fucking quid, then you’re in luck. Why not pick up some Christ. double vinyl for a couple of quid too? Talk about a sale. Wow.

Last year San Diego-based games developer Psyonix got in touch about licensing a couple of tracks in a tech demo/game called Whizzle, showcasing the Unreal Development Kit. Being a demo, it’s just a single level (for now, at least), but I’m glad it came to fruition nonetheless. Here’s a short vid of Whizzle in action:

If you’re interested in learning more about the UDK and fancy dipping your toes into the world of game development, then this video of Dave at Psyonix gives you a quick intro to the platform. The UDK is free to download too, so given a little free time there’s nothing stopping you from crafting your own titles.

Nothing quite like opening your front door, wearing your dressing gown and slippers, to be met with disdain by a burly delivery man already four hours into his working day. Nice. Shortly after he’d finished looking me up and down with barely-disguised contempt, and informing me of eight boxes with my name on it, I was proudly standing in my hallway wondering where I could store 800 CDs.

I’ve already annoyed the staff and patrons in the local Post Office by shipping the dozen or so pre-orders, so they are now well on their way to their new homes! A big thanks is in order to everyone who pre-ordered — I hope you received your instant downloads trouble-free (you’ve got to love Bandcamp!).

As usual, I’ve also sent a bundle of Lemodies to CD Baby, to make the postal fees a little easier on the pocket for US fans. I’ve added them to my Amazon seller account too, so if you’d prefer to order through Amazon’s checkout you’re free to do that (though you’ll have to put up with a slightly higher price and no download). Speaking of Amazon, if anyone wouldn’t mind dropping a quick review there, I’d hugely appreciate it (for any of my releases, not just Lemodie).

Anyway, I’ve ceremoniously updated the html in my shop to mark this momentous occasion, and hereby declare Lemodie in stock and on sale.

Back in tangible form.

At long last, after being out of print for over two years, I’ve finally managed to scrape together enough cash to organise a re-press of my 2006 sophomore album. It’s being manufactured as I type by DMS, and shouldn’t be longer than two or three weeks away, fingers crossed.

In preparation of its arrival, I’m taking pre-orders via Bandcamp here, which also covers an instant download in a variety of formats (I’ve also thrown in the CD hidden track as a bonus).

Now, I’m under no illusions as to how the market has changed in the past three/four years, and so have set the price at £6 plus P&P, which seems to me like the sweet-spot for CDs sans middleman.

Just a quick note to let you know I’ve added my meagre inventory of Like Dust copies to my shop, to help ease me through the Xmas period, and help fund more skydiving jumps.

And it needs you! Yes, I know you may have already done this (and I do apologise for the inconvenience), but it’d be awfully nice of you to click on it again.

Following my traditional of sporadic and occasionally regrettable social media suicides, I had removed my Facebook profile after inadvertently hosing the Ochre page (I thought it would be ‘hibernating’ along with my personal profile, but I guess not!). Now while I’m not missing MySpace, Facebook was a much handier means of getting snippets of news updates out there, and although Twitter has become increasingly useful for this, there’s no denying Facebook’s convenience and popularity.

I think it’d probably be a good idea for me to install some admin other than myself though, just in case I get trigger happy while aiming at my feet again.

Oh, and I am working on some new music by the way too, if I may self-consciously steer this post towards something a little more newsworthy. More details to come soon (demo track deleted from post).

If you’ve been following Bandcamp’s Twitter/blog updates you’ll have probably noticed a rather major update: the ability to sell physical products alongside your downloads. Needless to say, I sorted out a bundle for my remaining Midsummer Nice Dream vinyl, pairing up the double vinyl and an instant download for the current sale price of £5. I’ll keep it at that price until next week, so if you were thinking about either purchasing it on FLAC or picking up the vinyl, now’s the time to act. Consequently, I’ll probably retire the Ochre shop in its current state, and divert traffic to Bandcamp for sales.

I’ve also sent some vinyl to CD Baby, enabling stateside fans to get a better deal on shipping than ordering from me, although at the current sale price it’s probably still cheaper to buy direct.

Just a quick note to let you all know that my Benbecula releases are now on Spotify; I’ve added direct links for each release on the music page. ‘Midsummer’ will hopefully follow once Emubands hammer out a deal with Spotify.

Yes, actually. Time for an autumnal sale! The AMND double 12″ will be half-price, at just a fiver plus P&P, at the Ochre shop. For a limited period of around a week, until I thereafter hopefully remember to put the prices up again.

All proceeds will go towards a CD repress of either AMND or Lemodie. Not sure which yet!

There’s been a spate of plugins that have impressed me recently, and I’ve been demoing some of these to see if they’d replace any of my current software workhorses.

Softube's emulation of the Tube-Tech CL 1B

Now we’re seeing more officially sanctioned and licensed VST recreations of classic analogue gear—the analogue hardware fetish has spread to the virtual realm, enticing us with perfect photo-realistic renderings of the expensive hardware. In the case of the CL-1B VST, few of the usual advantages of software are present, apart from total recall and multiple instances. As far as I can tell, you can’t specify variables directly via keyboard input (as I like to do—I don’t especially like turning knobs with the mouse), there’s little feedback as to what value you’re dialling in, and of course the meter is a faithful, slow VU approximation of what’s really going on. It’s purely ears-only, and acts just like the hardware, or so I’m told. I don’t have a hardware CL-1B, which I’m sure will probably also be the case for 99% of buyers, so I have no idea how faithful the plugin sounds or behaves.

As for the sound, it’s not dissimilar to the UAD-1 LA-2A I already have, albeit more flexible, having control over the individual compression parameters (the release characteristics are a bit different though, dependent upon the different optical GR circuits between them). As a track compressor the CL-1B works superbly on similar material that suits the LA-2A. As a bus or mastering compressor I’ve had less success with it (again, like the LA-2A), preferring the PSP oldTimer for achieving results quickly (which can also sound quite similar at certain settings). Even with the fastest attack (.5ms), the CL-1B will let through a considerable amount of transients, meaning drums and program material will probably gain dynamic range using this compressor, whether you like it or not. Lacking a switchable high-pass sidechain filter, it also clamps down on bass frequencies too, which can take some of the weight out of kick drums. When attempting to be 100% faithful to the original, you’ll naturally have to also accurately model its shortcomings.

But the plugin does feature a separate sidechain input, meaning it is possible to set this up via a host supporting multiple inputs, such as Cubase, but as it’s not a VST3 plugin, you can’t simply send another filtered track to the sidechain. Instead you need to set up a four-channel group, sending the source channels to the first two of the group, and the sidechain channels to the last two of the group, and put your EQ of choice on the sidechain channel (I’ve tried using the Cambridge filters from 100-300Hz with variable HP slopes). In short, it’s a bit of a faff, especially when VST3 was created with multiple addressable I/O, to negate such needless faffing around. But it does sound brilliant, imparting a nice heft to the material, and means that in this state the CL-1B VST becomes much more useful for bus and mastering compression duties.

I’ll probably pass on buying the CL-1B for now, at least until the time comes to unshackle my UAD-1 cards, and the Magma case accommodating them, from my PC. But it’s definitely a first-rate VST compressor, that for me is only let down by the lack of internal sidechain filtering, as the manual workarounds mean I can’t use sidechaining in a host such as Wavelab (my mastering DAW of choice). Still, at the present rate of big hardware players entering the virtual market, it shouldn’t be too long before I go totally native (there’s even talk of an Elysia mPressor VST in the works!). Exciting times.

Say hello to a one-off Whispers/Dustlands 'Spectre' EP

A happy Ochre, last week.

It’d be nice to be able to sell odd one-offs like this, as they really are quite unique. Maybe start a line of Ochre ‘Auratic Artefacts’…

Now that I’m back in the land of music-making after a summer of ridiculous humidity, pink flamingos and pastel-coloured houses (guess where?), I’ve re-opened my shop and resumed mastering. Current mastering rates: £12 per track (plus £12 for CD compilation). Current shop inventory: double AMND 12″ vinyl for £10 (CDs now sold out). As ever, if there’s anything you’d like to see in the shop (more CDs etc.), I’ll try and make plans for it.

I now have a new website for the mastering side of things, too: Melograf Mastering!

Also added a nice new album review from The Milk Factory.

Along with my previous albums, you can stream the whole thing in its entirety here, and can purchase downloads through Bleep and Amazon mp3, with iTunes et al following whenever they get round to it. If you missed out on Lemodie CDs, Bleep now has Lemodie available in lossless wav, for a proper CD-quality download. I had hoped for a repress, but as Benbecula are closing their doors in November, that’s probably now not going to happen.

As for ‘Like Dust’ CDs, your best bet at the moment is to order directly from Benbecula, though I’ve noticed Juno, Norman Records and Rough Trade also have it up for sale. Hopefully the CDs will filter through the usual retail outlets in time, but as it was with Lemodie, distribution is expected to be somewhat spotty for a while.

A Midsummer Nice Dream CDs have now completely sold out; if there’s sufficient demand for a repress, I’ll organise one down the road at some point.

The Ochre tees and hoodies have been selling quite nicely, and I’ve added some more designs for the fairer sex too. Send me some pictures of you wearing your Ochre threads and I’ll put up a gallery of the best ones.

That is a legitimate term, isn’t it? Soft-release? Well the album’s out in the sense that it can be exchanged for hard-cash from the likes of Amazon mp3 and Bleep. If you’ve already swung by Bleep you’ve probably noticed that they now keep their lossless catalogue in wav format, rather than FLAC. While this might mean downloads are a little longer (less of a problem these days I guess), it’ll also mean greater player compatibility without having to decode anything, which is handy (always a step ahead of the pack, those crafty Bleeplings). Shame lossless still carries a premium over mp3, but I’m sure that’ll fall by the wayside eventually.

Anyway, for the CDs, we’re now looking at next Monday, unless you pre-ordered from Benbecula, in which case you’ll have it this week, I think. As ever, you can stream the whole thing on my music page, or Last.fm.

The Wire (click to enlarge)

Combi-post. Firstly, I’m very proud to present a new line of professionally-designed Ochre apparel (currently comprising of some sweet tees and hoodies) sporting Nate Reeves‘ flowing Ochre logo. Manufactured on-demand through Spreadshirt, the garments feature some plush flock prints (the kind that’s slightly raised and soft), as well as some special print treatments such as glitter and sparkle finishes. There are a generous variety of complementary colours available already, but I’ll probably add a couple more products, such as some ladies tees. If there’s anything else you’d like to see in there, then please feel free to make suggestions.

Worth noting: UK/European customers are probably best served by Spreadshirt.net, as it’s based in Germany, but for everyone else, you’ll probably want to buy from the US-based Spreadshirt.com.

Secondly, the first review has come back, from the venerable The Wire magazine. I’ve transcribed the review to text here, but you can probably read the original scan anyway, so here it is. Not a bad start to the album’s life, I hope you’ll agree. Now roll on Monday!

Have a good weekend.

P.S. Happy Birthday to me, antique-aged thirty…

Here’s a quick review of 5 online services and tools I’ve made use of and felt most helpful to me as an independent online musician, during the past year or so:

1. WordPress

As if you hadn’t already noticed, my site’s based on the excellent open source blog/CMS platform, WordPress, which continues to impress me with every update. It runs on PHP with a MySQL database, which allows me, as a non-programmer, to get a fairly complex site up and running without having to know much about the actual programming-side of things. Yet, it’s flexible enough that if you want to change the look of your site, you can do so without much more than a rudimentary knowledge of CSS—simply tweak your theme however you see fit, blissfully ignorant of the more complex inner workings going on behind the curtain. Even if you can’t be fussed editing your own theme, there are plenty of ready-made themes available to download and activate, from within the WP admin area itself.

Another great aspect to WordPress is its extensibility—there exists a veritable plethora of handy plugins written by charitable geeks, provided for free, affording your site some very handy bolt-on features. As with the themes, you can browse and install plugins from within the admin area—no tedious download/install needed.

Here’s a quick list of key plugins I’m currently running:

Akismet: This comes with WP by default and offers mean anti-spam measures, by comparing spam comments with a central database of comments. Essential, and very effective.

All in One SEO Pack: Provides a simple means of getting the most Google-friendly titles and descriptions on each post/page on your site, so search results come up with meaningful titles and descriptions. (SEO = Search Engine Optimisation.)

Contact Form 7: A simple but flexible contact form, so folks can get in touch with you without having to fire up their own email client. Also features built-in Akismet link to check for spammy email addresses and URLs. Does what it says on the tin.

Gigs Calendar: Well, I’m not actually running this at the moment as I’m not currently gigging, but it is one of the most thorough calendars actually catering specifically to the gigging musician that I’ve found, so if you’re running WP and haven’t checked this out yet, then give it a shot.

PHPlist: Simply adds a field somewhere on your site allowing folks to easily join your PHPlist-based mailing list while on your site. Simple and handy!

There are about eight gazillion more plugins out there, some no doubt handier and more frequently updated than others, but such is the nature of open-source—it’s always a moving project, and is sometimes a challenge keeping up with updates, solving the odd incompatibility between plugins and the latest WP version. The good thing about such a popular platform is that if you do encounter problems, chances are someone somewhere has also encountered the same problem, and can offer a solution—WP has a huge help community.

2. Bandcamp

Every indie artist should get their music up at Bandcamp, pronto. Not only is it a stellar music hosting service, but it also provides the means to share Flash player widgets of your music, allowing fans to embed your music on their own sites and blogs. You can also sell downloads directly from Bandcamp in an assortment of relevant formats, from lossless FLAC to iPod-friendly AAC and open-source OGG (provide a PayPal micropayments address and you’ll save on PayPal fees too!). All the format conversion is completely automated, handled by Bandcamp’s servers—simply upload a FLAC and sit back while it’s transcoded.

Other extremely handy features include the ability to collect email addresses in return for giving away music (to be added to your mailing list), create download codes (which I’ve been including with vinyl sales as a value-added extra), and even have sales logged and passed on to SoundScan for charting purposes (though you do need a UPC/barcode, and optionally ISRC codes for each track). I don’t expect the last option to be of much use to me, but still, it’s an inventive feature few music services have implemented so far.

Bandcamp does seem to be getting more and more popular, and justifiably so, so it will be interesting to see how it copes with this sustained growth. At present the transcoding queues do seem to be growing a little longer, but it’s still a very snappy and reliable host for your back-catalogue. In my opinion, it deserves to eclipse MySpace as the premier destination for sampling artists’ work; it’s certainly leaps and bounds ahead of MySpace in ideology, for functionality and usability.

3. SoundCloud

Like Bandcamp, SoundCloud is another stellar indie music host, with one of the sleekest and most innovative interfaces I’ve seen. Unlike Bandcamp, SoundCloud brings a whole host of networking tools to the table, with the usual befriending, messaging and commenting facilities. As such, it seems to be emerging as the de facto platform for hosting remix competitions and other such community-oriented projects. It has a free component to it, in addition to pay-only packages that up the amount of storage you have etc. A handy dropbox is also implemented for every member, allowing you to easily send and receive music (I’ve been testing this for my mastering service, for instance, as an alternative to FTP, though I found it handiest for sending/receiving the odd single track rather than whole albums).

SoundCloud also has arguably the prettiest player widget on offer, displaying the actual track waveform within the player, and allows you to make timed comments, referring to specific moments in the track (good for private collaborative projects to easily pinpoint areas that need work, for example, or just to say “this bit rocks, woo!”). Like Bandcamp, SoundCloud allows widget-sharing, so you can deploy your music across the net. I’ve been using SoundCloud to present demos, works in progress and live sets—the timed comments really work well for live sets and mixes in particular.

4. thesixtyone

On the face of it, thesixtyone could be just another faceless social networking site, but it’s actually rather novel. By recognising hierarchical social music listening habits (i.e. we tend to turn to the tastemakers who have an informed and varied music taste for our musical tip-offs) and by incentivising listening within the t61 community, you have a rich network of music fans eager to listen to new music. Sure, it provides charts of all the most popular artists in a particular genre, all the new submissions, the current movers and shakers, much like any other social music network site. But, it also motivates listeners to get involved by creating a levelling, RPG-like structure, whereby you have to complete a variety of tasks and challenges to increase your level, and therefore increase your subcultural capital—your respect and standing within the community.

As a listener, your aim is to discover great new music as soon as possible, and then ‘heart’ it (though you have a limited supply of hearts, so you can’t simply go round ‘hearting’ things willy-nilly and hope to thrive—spend your love wisely!). As far as I can gather, by carefully ‘discovering’ new tunes and hearting it, you will then receive points as other people listen to and also enjoy/heart it too. Your good taste stock rises, effectively. So the earlier you can find good new—and prospectively successful—music, the greater your chances of rising through the rank, gaining points and eventually subscribers (people who recognise and respect your musical taste). The extra challenges are provided to supply you with bonus hearts, as well as unlocking features on the site, such as access to individual genres, for instance.

I haven’t seen anything that works this well at motivating listeners to discover music rather than simply listen to the top of the charts (and thus only sustain the chart-topper’s hegemony) this successfully before—it really does get seem to manage to expose the majority of the music submitted. There’s much more movement, much stronger currents that reach down into the site’s murky depths of the Long Tail, dredging up new music. The only criticism I can level at the site at the moment would be the classification of the music—the genres tend to be rather hit and miss, relying on the artists to correctly classify the music, which perhaps seems strange for a site that relies on so much community action. Perhaps Last FM-style tagging should play a greater role in dividing music accurately into genres.

But what about artists, I hear you ask? There’s little information on the site about how artists level-up, but I’ve discovered that it’s very much a simple case of earning hearts to progress up a level and thereby unlock more upload slots (you’re stuck with just three track uploads by default—so choose your best tracks!). It’s been quite an eye-opener for me, discovering which tracks work and which don’t. Bluebottles didn’t do so well, it seems, which suggests that tracks with a more digestible immediacy to them will work best, while the slow burners will reflect that in their heart count.

5. FatFreeCart

After using E-Junkie for selling downloads for a short while, I since transferred downloads to Bandcamp, and moved over to E-Junkie’s free version, the FatFreeCart, for selling physical music formats in my site’s shop. There are a countless options available when considering site stores, but I settled on FFC as it uses the same cool cart as the non-free version, complete with support for both PayPal and Google Checkout, wrapped up in a neat, minimal and customisable interface. The downside to using this is that the core javascript running the cart is still hosted by E-Junkie, so if that goes down for any reason, your shop does too. Still, it’s worked well for me so far, so I see no need to change this any time soon.

A few WordPress store plugins also exist, but for my purposes, selling just a single release or two, they tend to be overkill, packed with too many unnecessary options.

Anyway, hope that sheds light on some of the tools I’ve made use of—please feel free to fire away with any questions or requests for other topics, or share/retweet if you’ve found this useful.

I don’t think I’ve really spent much time discussing equipment, so I thought since I’m currently unable to write music within my usual surroundings, I’d publicly fantasise about some of the things I hope to purchase at some point. Starting with Waldorf’s barely-released software synth: Largo. Now, any of you who have used Waldorf’s Attack VSTi will probably have cottoned-on to the fact that I’m a huge fan of its sounds, and have used it in practically every piece of music I’ve written. What may not be obvious, is that I’m also a heavy user of Waldorf’s hardware too—I’m a proud user of their Micro Q synth, which can most recently be heard at the start of Circadies and Whispers (the FM modulation kind of gives it away—it’s one of the many unique features I seldom come across in other virtual analogue synths).

Largo takes the Q feature set and synth engine and recreates it as a software VSTi, and although I can’t yet vouch for its accuracy in reproducing Micro Q sounds, I’m hoping it’ll be nigh-on identical (doesn’t look like we can import Q sounds directly, though—yet). I’m happy Waldorf have resisted the temptation to cut-down the feature set for their software, as it seems most hardware manufacturers are reticent to potentially cannibalise their own hardware sales (or at least they’ll tether a hardware interface/DSP onto it, a la Virus TI). I’d love to see more manufacturers with the experience of building hardware instruments enter the software market with fully-featured synths, as while there are plenty of innovative software VST companies around, the instruments often lack some very handy performance-oriented options (such as different legato fingering or envelope retriggering options—essential aspects hardware synths wouldn’t think of omitting).

Hopefully the interface won’t be too fiddly in use, as Largo definitely looks to have packed the Micro Q features and controls into a multi-page interface, but as Attack still works well, despite its age, I’m not too worried (though it would be nice to be able to type parameter values in—quite a few soft synths seem to snub this handy feature). So that’s one for the wish-list. In the mean time, I’ll be vicariously experiencing the synth through user reports on KVR.

This will be old news to those following me on twitter, but it’s so cool that I’m compelled to write a little blog post about it too.

Designer Nate Reeves has knocked up a very cool intricate and flowing Ochre logo, which he then sent to a bespoke engraving outfit to produce a very tasty 3D laser-engraved skateboard deck, with the detailed Ochre logo embossed across it. How cool is that? Talk about a unique artefact. Along with the Ochre logo, he sent a couple of other designs along with it for the same treatment, such as his artwork for Narita’s final Terminal compilation, and a third design of his own.

Check out more superb pics of the decks in all their glory here.

Minor rant ahead. Last week I pulled the plug on my MySpace page, though admittedly not without a certain amount of hesitation and deliberation—it took a long time to amass those hard-earned 120k plays after all, that’s for sure. But, once I thought about the ridiculous valuations MySpace has bewilderingly managed to achieve on the back of advertising potential (not to mention the many millions of penniless and uncompensated musicians bolstering its value), as well as its corporate bedfellows, I felt a little better about ditching it.

It seems I’m not the only one who’s gotten fed up with numerous bugs and annoyances that litter the site, as various stats from the Guardian seems to portray a pretty sharp, but consistent, downturn of MySpace users and visitors over the past year. Personally, I got fed up with tracks inexplicably skipping part-way through, as well as the many error messages that used to plague the site, plus the tortuously inefficient attempt at page customisation, innumerable adverts and insufferable amounts of desperate spamming.

Of course, it’s still a free service though, so perhaps I shouldn’t grumble too much about its numerous shortcomings (though once its Google trust fund runs out next year, it’ll be interesting to see how it pays for itself). It does provide a familiar interface for those wishing to pop by and hear an artist’s music, without too much fuss. But unfortunately for MySpace, it’s no longer 2006, and there are much better alternatives for showcasing your music on the net. There’s Bandcamp and SoundCloud, for starters, both of which provide many more options and forward-thinking features, music widget-sharing facilities and greater general flexibility than MySpace ever could. They’re independently run, have no shareholders to appease, and appear to be run by genuine enthusiasts rather than advertisers and marketers. I don’t know how long that will last, or how both site’s growth will affect their continued operations, but for now things seem good.

But, as we’ve seen with countless other music showcase sites over the past decade, the online environment progresses swiftly, and if they don’t adapt and progress to meet the expectations of their users, these sites will quickly fall by the wayside. As soon as MySpace proves to be more of an unprofitable millstone around the necks of its parent companies, it’ll be discarded just like the rest before it. If there’s one thing we’ve learnt about the online economy, huge page views and users don’t equate with profitability, and as soon as one free service bites the dust, another will pop up, until it too realises it can’t squeeze money from users expecting a free service, and so on.

I’m getting fed up with hopping from site to site, keeping up with the latest ‘social’ trends, so I figure it’s perhaps best for me, at the end of the day, to concentrate on my own site, rather than spread myself thinly across various social outposts. I’m not earning a living from this (not by a long shot), and have never drawn much of a crowd regardless of how much I plaster myself over the net, so I don’t feel the need to advertise my ‘brand’ the way as a more… radio-friendly act might.

I do find it ironic given the continued fanfare we read weekly about the net’s ‘empowering’ or ‘democratising’ effects on indie musicians, only for us to end up having to connect through the mediation of a huge site like MySpace or Facebook in order to stand a chance of being heard, even if that chance pales against, say, winning the lottery. As for networking and communication—what’s wrong with email? At least we can control our communications that way, rather than relying on infrastructure set up for us by MySpace and Facebook, according to their own whims and advertising needs. Twitter has shown us that our networking online selves can essentially be boiled down to efficient sound bites, necessarily so in order to keep on top of the endless communications torrent (insofar as we ever can), and for that it does do a very good job. It goes to show though, just how far we can quite happily pare down our online selves to the bare minimum required, when needed.

Anyway, I’ll stop there. Hopefully, somewhere within that ranting, there’s some insight as to why I pulled the plug. Thanks for hanging in there.

Just a final reminder that I’ll be closing the mastering service and shop before the end of the week, until August, as I’ll be off to concentrate on my thesis work over the summer. I’ve got 7 Midsummer Nice Dream CDs left in stock, which would be nice to clear; considerably more vinyl is available, so don’t worry about that — plenty left. If you need any odd tracks mastered, please arrange to get them to me by Wednesday at the latest, just so I’ve got a couple of days to work on them and get them back to you.

I’ll still be online around here though and obviously contactable via email—not going to leave the face of the planet while I’ve got an impending album release.

Yep, my next album ‘Like Dust of the Balance’, is now available to pre-order directly from Benbecula, to ship on the 20th of July. It’s quite far off, I’ll admit, but then if you order early enough you’ll have long forgotten by the time its release rolls around, and you can surprise your future self with a gift.

Just a quick note — my mastering service will be put on hold from the end of the month until the beginning of August, as I’ll be away from the studio for a while. So, if you envisage needing my services over the next few weeks, then please get in touch ASAP to see if I can fit you in before the summer break. Once I return, the service will be back with a vengeance, hopefully with some exciting new toys to play with.

As an ignorant English pig, I sometimes forget that the internet does in fact consist mainly of non-english web pages and users. So, in the name of strengthening international relations, I’ve added one of Google’s translation widgets to my sidebar, to turn my steaming tower of babble of a website into something a bit more understandable to non-english readers. I’m sure Google will occasionally produce something resembling a rather garbled patois, but it should be enough to get the general gist of it. I ought to find a way of getting something on individual posts too, so whole posts and comments can be translated, but I’m not sure how to do that without ruining the look of the page.

Of course, writing this post in English means few people are going to notice/care anyway! Hmm.

As I’m sure we’re all aware, playing electronic music live is often fraught with difficulties and conundrums: how do I recreate studio tracks, yet remain spontaneous? Should I even bother recreating studio tracks? How can I balance the familiar with the improvised? How can I be more interesting, visually? And that’s just the choices that will be reflected on stage. Never mind the logistical nightmares of hauling half your studio, fragile laptops, hardware synths, keyboards, and equipment stands around a foreign city without injuring yourself or your gear, getting lost, or getting stuff stolen.

Up until this point I’ve been playing live with a laptop, a copy of Ableton Live, and three small Faderfox controllers. They do their job nicely enough; Live allows me to recreate and remix tracks to a fair competency, without (so far) glitching and crashing all over the place (even on my aging IBM R40). The controllers afford a decent degree of flexibility with effects, recording and loop-launching. Yet it’s not the greatest visual spectacle ever bestowed upon the stage—that holy pulpit of ritual communication and adoring/abhorring feedback. Plus, it’s increasingly dull for me—never mind those unfortunate to have to stand there gazing at the back of my laptop, while their arm aches with the weight of a slowly-warming plastic pint. But as a one-man act it’s all I’ve got, all I can currently muster, and certainly all I can carry.

But it’s not good enough, so I’m putting live gigs on hold for the time being. The kind of music I write these days doesn’t especially lend itself to live performance anyway; refreshingly hype-free it may be, but ‘downtempo electronica’ is never going set hipsters’ diaries alight for the weekend. What’s becoming clear is I need some sort of ensemble to help me perform, and something that I can actually be a part of, rather than uncomfortably knob-twiddle, hunched behind a laptop or similar techo-fetishised contraption (I’m thinking bass guitar, perhaps). And as a side note, since when did ‘all-hardware’ set-ups become some sort of audience draw anyway? Pressing play on your Machine Drum can’t be that much more exciting than eliciting a MIDI start command from your controller, can it? Or am I missing the all-important blinking LED factor?

I was pleased to go and see Stars of the Lid play, quite a while back now, when they toured a limited number of venues in the UK—all of them churches, I think. This careful decision to tailor their environment to suit the music was probably the most crucial part of the gig. Not to suggest that the music wasn’t great—it was brilliant—but actually being able to sit down and listen to music in an environment not built for the sole-purpose of drinking and wildly flailing limbs (itself a problematic combination at the best of times), was what made the event essential, rather than merely worthwhile. Clearly aware of the incompatibility of performing ambient music in a bar or club, their decision to use the natural reverb in a church, unfettered by beats, was a masterstroke.

So to continue this public musing a little more, what should I do? I can either attempt to put together a small ensemble of people who are willing to do this with little-to-zero financial incentive (it was just about worthwhile on my own), in a venue that actually suits the music, or I could take the route others have taken, and realise it’s just not worth playing this live.

Ochre – Lunar Suburbia on a HDD Speaker from Ochre on Vimeo.

The track is ‘Lunar Suburbia,’ taken from the next Ochre album, ‘Like Dust of the Balance,’ playing through an old hard disk soldered up to the headphone outputs of my sound card.

Yep, it sounds terrible. But looking at the little drive head vibrate and bob in time with the music perhaps redeems it a little.

If you fancy making your own hard disk speaker, there are a few articles dotted around the net documenting the process, step-by-step, such as the one at the ever-handy Instructables.

I’ve decided to take advantage of one of Bandcamp’s latest feature additions, and have generated a few download codes for A Midsummer Nice Dream.

Anyone who buys a copy of the album on vinyl will receive a download code along with the album, so they may download a high-quality digital version of the release for their iPod, car, PC etc., at no extra cost. The codes are, as far as I can tell, good for one single download only, so choose your format wisely! mp3, flac, aac and ogg are all present and accounted for.

I haven’t yet decided how to present the codes — I could use stickers on the shrink-wrap, but risk buyers throwing this away with the packaging, or I could put paper slips in with the vinyl, and risk them being ignored at the bottom of the envelope. Could email them, but that’s more work for me and could still be ignored. Hmm. Any preferences?

EDIT: Limited-time demo removed.

I’ve just uploaded a new track demo, following a tentative test-airing on the kind and gentle folks at em411. It’s a little different to my usual output, actually containing intelligible vocals, and due to my vocal delivery probably has a slight eighties tinge to it. (That makes it hip, right? Or am I 18 months late to that luminous yellow and pink party?) So far I’ve been called a Bowie-esque crooner with hint of David Sylvian, Gary Numan ‘09, and somewhat damningly, Flock of Seagulls.

Dissenters rest assured, I don’t plan to abandon instrumental electronica any time soon, but I will say that this was a lot of fun to record. I kind of want to put out a 7″ with a couple of synthpoppier tracks on it.

If you haven’t seen/heard my remix of Jay Bharadia, you can listen to/download it from SoundCloud, as well as the other remixes from Lone, Airliner ‘67 and Implosion Quintet.

I’m actually on SoundCloud, and although currently mainly using it as a means of receiving mastering files, I’ll be uploading demos and sketches now and then, so if you’d like to ‘follow’ me to be notified of track uploads, please visit my page. SoundCloud is a very nifty service, totally optimised for listening and commenting to music—you can comment on particular sections of tracks using the natty timeline while listening. As far as I know there are also the obligatory widgets for posting/sharing tunes too.

The server can occasionally strain under the weight of users, as it’s getting rather popular, but it seems pretty responsive these days, ironing out its initial teething problems.

Meanwhile, back at Ochre HQ, the new album is back from mastering, coutesy of panicStudios. Sounding warm and punchy after being fed through some ridiculously expensive analogue gear, waiting patiently for a release schedule to slot into. I’ll be able to spill some more beans once I’ve got a definite plan to unveil.

Midsummer Nice Dream CDs and vinyl continue to shift nicely, but there are still a few copies left if you fancy one. If you’d rather have a download version, it’s slowly making its way through the usual download stores like iTunes and Napster etc. At the moment it’s currently selling for a ridiculously cheap $1.69 at Amie Street (for 320kbps mp3, no less), though given the dynamic pricing used there it’ll probably creep up slowly as people grab it. Also on Bandcamp for a flat $6, in just about every digital format available ever.

I think that’s the current news round-up sorted.

Yes, I’ve finally succumbed, after repeatedly finding myself reading about the apparent usefulness of Twitter. Suck on my tweets.

Should mean that little posts like this, better-suited to ol’ tweetsie, will see the light of day.

I’ve received a box of the remaining Midsummer Nice Dream CD stock from Toytronic, and have added it to the shop. There are quite a few less copies on CD than vinyl—about fifty—so please act quickly if you want to secure a copy. As ever, the price is a very reasonable £6 plus P&P.