#12

You know my twitter handle? That name was given to me by an African-American roughneck on an oil rig in the North Sea. He was built like a linebacker. About 6’ 5" tall. He looked me up and down, took one look at my hands, and said - “yo - bitchhands!” :slight_smile:

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#13

@kburwash @fourhoarder @MaartenVos @lilskullymane @mwilliams -

thankyou so much for your support. It’s very humbling and I don’t take it lightly. Very much appreciated :slight_smile:

That is a very long story - here’s a very short version :slight_smile:
I lived out of a bag for the best part of 20 years and travelled and worked in a lot of different countries in SE Asia mainly. I also went to school in the Middle East In the 80’s, UAE, Bahrain, Oman which was pretty much desert at that time. I think from that experience I got the travel bug. I spent 10 years in mainland China and watched that country grow from run down cities to brand new mega cities - Shanghai, Beijing, Chengdu, Shenzhen. I eventually settled down in NE Thailand which is my wife’s family home. It’s pretty remote countryside and quiet, which is exactly what I needed, after decades of travelling and living in cities. I am surrounded by farmland and paddy fields. There are no street lights. I’ve lived longer overseas than I have in my home country - the UK.

You might know my Ciat Lonbarde albums under “Hoan Kiem Chess Team” I used to live a few blocks from Hoan Kiem lake in the centre of Hanoi. I lived there for a couple of years and used to watch the old folk play chess in the square in the evenings. At that time I also received a 40h from the first run of a newly formed monome. I think that was around 2007.

@spqr6510 Ps - Dundee. I did my first offshore training course in Montrose in 1993. I got called up one day on Xmas Eve to go offshore on Xmas Day one time. I drove all night from Manchester to get to Aberdeen via Dundee in a snowstorm. A lot of guys I worked with lived there. I went offshore Xmas day. When I arrived on the rig, the boss told me I wasn’t really needed for another week.

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#14

Some more lofi videos I made - see more at the top thread

this video below was Ansible Earthsea, Just Friends and w/ live looping

this below is Arcologies, Crow, Just Friends and w/ live looping

This below I used Orca’s Heart, Just Friends and Mangroves

This below was Ansible Kria and Mangroves

this last video - Softcut - I will add as a bandcamp, download only, bonus track - not available on cassette or streaming. That was the 000000 script using 2 loops from a track on the album called How The West Lost.

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#15

Hi everyone, the album has now been released as part of bandcamp Friday.

Thanks to everyone who bought the album. I’ll be shipping cassettes early next week.

These are the last videos.

this track below called Rise was a Buchla Easel

this track Makeshift Camp was Meadowphysics and Mangroves

Btw - I also found this video of me rehearsing an early live take for a track that eventually ended up on the album called Circling - Ansible Earthsea, Just Friends and W/ live looping. So you can see the process for that particular track. I think the video was the very first take with a few mistakes. The second take went on the album.

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#16

Picked this up and loving it. Makeshift Camp is probably my current favorite. The chilly Texas weather goes lovely with it all as well.

#17

excited to see if the bullfrogs made the record. must admit I’ve been playing around with them myself…

#18

Picked this up and loving it. Makeshift Camp is probably my current favorite

Hey thanks - it’s interesting you mention that particular track because a couple of people were asking about it when I first posted a video on Vimeo a while back. I think more than a year ago. I said it would be on the next album for sure. So here it is :slight_smile:

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#19

It sits nicely between the classic in-the-box sound of Laurie Spiegel and the classic out-the-box sound of Suzanne Ciani, which is my personal sensibility so you know…a lovely spot to strap a tarp between two trees and hunker down for a bit.

Thanks!

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#20

I’m afraid no bullfrogs on this album :slight_smile: I deliberately made this album to be as uniform, straight road and melancholic as possible. There are no major curveballs on this album. But there will be on future albums.

I kept the more esoteric sounding stuff, off this particular album. Just a bit wary of mixing that material up with the more traditional synth type stuff, on the same album. Sometimes it works, but a lot of time it doesn’t, and it ends up alienating the audience, who end up only liking certain tracks. The biggest issue for me when releasing albums is whether to put a big mix of genres on the same album, or keep it uniform.

I’m not someone who wants to release the same sounding genre of stuff, album after album for 7 albums. It’s too safe. I need to push myself and dip my toes where I can’t touch the floor. That’s what interests me most. I do like a challenge. So the bullfrogs will be back for sure. I want to do more improv, some electro acoustic drone and feedback stuff and Serge / Buchla bleeps and bloops to follow. I also want to do some heavy beat driven glitch coding stuff, but released on separate albums.

The next album will be a Serge 4u improv album.

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#21

I totally get that and I really like the way you keep the different systems pure, the clarity of intent is something I aspire to.

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#22

Heavy beat driven glitch coding? Logtechre would be no joke.

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#24

:wink:

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#25

If anyone is wondering why the album is not on any streaming services - it was rejected due to “editorial discretion” :grinning:

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#26

That is bizarre, any idea what the reason could be? I mean, it’s an instrumental album and there’s no offensive imagery, what could trigger something like that?

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#27

I guess they don’t like it :slight_smile:

I do find it a little strange. It’s an instrumental album, there’s no offensive song titles, images. The music isn’t anything extreme, strange or controversial. I already have 5 releases on DistroKid. 2 x Chess Team and 3 x mudlogger albums on that same account. No issues with previous mudlogger releases. I see other artists releasing similar kind of music without problems, so not really sure what the deal is - other than it won’t generate them income and I’m not Beyoncé :slight_smile:

All I can say is - hats off to bandcamp! - they are definitely doing the right things

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#28

i’d put my money on the second case. — small (self releasing) artists will increasingly run into issues with distro, especially if they have no back catalog or low play counts. i assume the platforms see it as work w/o any direct return of investment and decline … bummer …

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#29

Absolutely insane! I use CD Baby and have never heard of anything like this.

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#30

Huh. Maybe they’ve spent too much time looking at Urban Dictionary.

That said, I finally got stuck into this last night, walking the pup in the dark to a field in the moonlight, a hailstorm, retreating through a small forest with Hamish in my coat, and finally returning to the woodstove. Really great stuff, well suited to the adventure, and I’ll probably make my own soundtrack for it. Just gotta work up a quick “Hamish’s Theme.”

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#31

Hey thanks - I used to listen to the masters walking in the paddy fields behind the house with the dogs. I used sit in fields and watch the monsoon thunderstorms and swarms of dragonflies roll in. A little bit surreal, but that’s what that album reminds me of. The Circling track is about 100’s of swallows circling around the house picking out dragonflies with the flashing storm clouds lit up in the background. We actually get a lot of farmers / buffalo’s here killed by lightening because they sit out in the fields under trees.

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#32

@prussian_zen @Whinger @niall I ditched Distrokid and joined CDbaby and the album is now up on all the streaming stream services :slight_smile:

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