Obligatory Periodical Update

As much as I've promised to keep this thing updated, I've had neither the drive nor the inspiration to do anything remotely music-related until recently. Deleted the RP Myspace recently as I was pretty unhappy of the image it gave of the project. I'd rather play my cards somewhat close to my chest and update only when I've got something to show for it.
Eitherway, with that being scrapped I have also scrapped anything I had to show for a new album, as I have been pretty unsatisfied with how things have been going on that front recently. Besides, with the upheaval at college, as well as having to find work, and generally being at an extreme low-point in terms of creativity, I thought it best to let it incubate for a little while.
However, I have recently started working on some new material and I'm pretty happy with the direction it's taking so far. Nice balance between noisy stuff and melody, and between pop-oriented sounds and experimental stuff too. Some of the previous stuff might rear its head in some form, but I don't know right now.
I'm currently staying away from my home flat, as I've had to take work down in Dunbar (35-mile commute on a bus = NOT WIN) and with this I've generally been writing exclusively on the laptop.
No hardware. Not even a MIDI controller :S Although I think I'll definitely pick up one of those sexy little Akai nano-keyboards when they're released. Rawr!
Yeah, having no keyboard really hampers your creativity, and I'm a BIG fan of their MPK keyboards. Very responsive and full-featured, and built like absolute tanks to boot - hell, I dropped mine quite violently and it didn't suffer a scratch!
Anyway, this super-extra-caffiene fuelled entry has gone on long enough. Shall update when I have more to update about. Pinkie promise!

Ahh baws.

In case anybody (IF anybody!) reading this is wondering why I never update or bother to promote this blog, it's because over the last couple of years I have been very busy studying for an HND in sound production. Of all the things the course (and education in general) has taught me, the thing that sticks out the most is that taking my hobbies and creative endeavours and try to make a living out of them is a really bad idea.

Sure, I've learned lots of other stuff like never trust anyone else to set up your gear, that everybody else is a fucking cretin (especially tutors), oh and a couple of things about acoustic theory and digital audio, but that's besides the point... On Friday, our main SSL/ProTools HD rig mysteriously crashed. We weren't told why, but were assured everything would be back to normal shortly. After coming in today to retrieve a few files off another machine, I was told by a fellow student who had been working in the SSL suite that morning told me that the cause was a mechanical HDD failure.
Everything that anyone who used that desk in the past 10 months or so is gone. Everything. My mixing and production assessment is null and void, with the very real possibility that I will have to return next year to resit, as well as many others who "were not dilligent enough" to back their work up. Great. Another year at this POS college.

What really awestruck me is the sheer lack of comprehension the staff have had in getting our 'amazing' new setup off the ground. Back when the new campus first opened, there were many complaints about various things that could have been handled better, all of which got the rather immature response that students were being 'ungrateful' despite us all channelling a rather exorbitant amount of state funding into the place to recieve a good education.
Where was the sense in purchasing four SSL AWS900 mixing consoles, each of which cost around £43 thousand (and ship with unstable firmware i might add), to then attach them to junkpile Dell desktop computers that couldn't have cost more than £300 a pop complete with a single piece-of-shit HDD that breaks down after 10 months?

I asked my tutor a shortened version of that question this afternoon, to be told rather nonchalantly that "it's a shame for the students who were not dilligent enough to back up their work". When I asked about a backup system, I was told that "ProTools doesn't support RAID". Well gee-whizz. Thanx for that total gobshite answer! Not only is that not strictly true (many users report successfully doing so), ProTools gives you the option to back a project up to a separate HDD as standard. Why was this not even looked at? Sheer idiocy. I'm seriously completely livid that they're blaming students for not backing their work up, when it would have cost them a nominal fee to outfit all the ProTools rigs with backup drives, in case of a crash.

Fuck it. I've wasted another two years of my life, getting an education that I'll likely never use. I'm done.

Lost Tracks

Some of my previous work from the planned release 'Cognition' is now up for free download on Bandcamp. Some of it had to be ommitted due to glitches in Bandcamp's upload software, but all of the stuff I really wanted to put out is up there.
In the coming days, I'll add more tracks, outtakes, some artwork, notes for each of the tracks and other things to fill it out, so please keep checking back.



Please feel free to do whatever with these tracks, and if for some reason you like them, do let me know :)

More changes...

Hey, sorry it's long time, no update, although that seems to be a pretty typical pattern of what I do these days. Urrgh, college and work are draining me.
I think I'm probably going to scrap the album I was working on entirely. I mean I'm still fond of it and all, but really, the songs in it are getting on for 3 years old now. I've changed a lot as a character since then, and I suppose I feel that I've moved on from what made those tracks as endearing to me as they were back then. Finishing them off, or even re-doing them would feel kind of contrived.
Not that I want what I've done to go to waste, I've wasted my effort on too much creatively in recent years, be it other music projects or my art. I'll probably do a quick mastering job and release the lot in its current form on a service like Bandcamp, draw a line there and start on a new body of work. I've been listening to a lot of different music recently, and am feeling rather inspired, although whatever it is I end up producing will probably sound a lot different to what I've done in the past.
I'm still waiting to hear back as to whether the track I did with Ali on vocals is going to get released on the Zero Demographic compilation, but all signs point to 'yes', so at least something productive will have come of the old work. I was quite proud of how it ended up sounding, although some of the backing vox I did were pretty iffy. Hopefully some folk'll like it.
I'll try to keep this updated more regularly from now on.