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03-May-12 : Update

Alas, through no fault of our own, the Generations gig didn't quite go according to plan. If you want to know about Generations then visit the Ion page. David has a good long rant at those he feels responsible, and it's a good read too. However, I do wish he'd stop sticking pins in that effigy. It's getting messy now.

Anyway, life moves on and, well, at least we have some good news to report.

Ion is still picking up sound track work with one piece, Logoscape, finding its way onto a trailer for an indie film due to be shown at Cannes and Sundance in the next couple of months. Another track, Blues for a Red Planet has appeared on the most recent Sequences podcast.

But the good news doesn't stop there. We have another gig to announce, this time for SKinMechanix, who will be appearing at the Hoppings Live Stage in June and hopefully supporting some of the region's best up-and-coming electronic bands, including Viva City and Riccy Noise.

We're also grateful for the support of internet radio artists such as Neil Fellows, Scott Raymond, Bruce Gall and Phil Marsh to name but a few who have been playing tracks from various releases in recent months. They all help keep the interest in our various musical adventures going.

We're currently working on a couple of other projects - a video back drop for a concert in July, and a possible iPad project with a well known local composer.

10-Feb-12 : T-Bass

Some time ago, I decided to resurrect the T-Bass concept through a project I christened Revive. I thought T-Bass still had some mileage left in it and that certain ideas were worth following to their logical conclusion.

However, that project has sat on the back-burner and quite literally festered for the better part of three years. One or two tracks were written but they didn't break any new ground or lead to any particularly mind-expanding insights either, and the old band members quite clearly didn't want anything to do with the project anymore. Hell, even the Christmas Cards stopped.

And with Ion moving from strength to strength as a proper band and with SkinMechanix still available as a solo venture, I've decided to end the whole T-Bass Revive project for good. I'll replace the place-holder with the old project directory over the weekend and return the project status to officially dead.

Years and years ago, a wise man told me that it's the stuff that you hang on to, that you're attached to emotionally, that holds you back. I knew he was right then and he is right now. It's time to let go of the past and embrace the future.

02-Oct-11 : Showreel

Following on from the success of our music licensing project, we're now moving into soundtracks for TV, radio and film. The Show Reel page has been provided for media authors so that they can get a taste of our preferred styles.

31-Aug-11 : Band Camp 2

All of the releases on the Thinking Metal label containing original material (as opposed to live material and.or compilations) are now available for download from our BandCamp page.

Actually, we've been so taken with the whole BandCamp philosophy that we've decided that this platform will now take over as our main outlet. Our own on-line shop will be phased out over the next year, as will those releases featuring live or duplicated material. So, if you don't have a copy of Connexion or MediaEvil then this is the last opportunity to grab the full set.

Finally, the whole BandCamp upload process was so smooth and slick that it made me start thinking about moving back into releasing albums again, rather than working exclusively towards our library music project.

Watch this space.

29-Aug-11 : Band Camp

We've been hearing lots of excellent reports about the Bandcamp service. The range of marketing tools and the user-friendly interface make it a more attractive platform for selling our music than many similar services and, consequently, we've decided to set up our own page.

The first album available on this new platform is Ion's Future Forever. All of the original tracks are present plus the three bonus tracks previously only included as part of the download package.

The remaining Thinking Metal albums by T-Bass and SkinMechanix will follow shortly.

07-Jul-11 : An overdue update

Hoppings TV Advert 2011 from FreemenOfNewcastle

Why has it been four months since the last update? The simple answer is that one of those chance in a lifetime projects dropped right into my lap and I would have been a fool to walk away from such a fantastic opportunity.

In short, I found myself involved with The Hoppings, a local fun fair which takes place annually on Newcastle Town Moor. As part of the Events Group, I found myself assuming responsibility for much of their digital services including TV and radio advertising, in a project that was more fun than it should have been and also meant that I was working with people and companies at the very top of the industry.

To read the full story, click here

As mentioned in a previous update, I joined the UK Government's STEM Ambassador Programme in December 2010. STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics and STEM Ambassadors are invited to visits schools and colleges to talk about their specialist subjects which, in my case, is astronomy and astrophysics.

Today, three of us were invited to visit Whitburn Church of England School near Sunderland. Dr. Pete Edwards of Durham University delivered a fantastic talk on the possibility of extra-solar life, Graham Darke, Chairman of Sunderland Astronomical Society, took the school on an extended tour of the school grounds in an attempt to illustrate the true scale of our solar system and I was able to fuse both of my passions, Electronic Music and Space Science, in a talk about Space Music and the Sounds of Space.

After each session, the children were able to play on a couple of old synths (SCI Pro One, Roland JD800, ARP Odyssey), and those with an obvious aptitude for knob twiddling where invited back to a later session where I got to teach them the art of improvising. Then, finally, the kids gave a short performance in front of the whole school using the tricks and techniques they'd learned earlier in the day.

My thanks go to Whitburn C of E staff Richard Oren for arranging the sessions, Ray Rose for his help and support, and Tracey Gibson for much kindest and hospitality.

My thanks to Gemma, Jenny and Louise for making this so much fun.

15-Feb-11 : General update

We finished last year on something of a low note - the cancellation of the Generations concert. Jules and I both found that episode particularly harrowing in that we put a lot of work into the project and we were genuinely looking forward to doing something unique. However, it was not to be and its time to move on. Generations will happen one day. Not tomorrow but certainly one day.

However, the demise of the Generations event proved to be something of a blessing in disguise in that we no longer felt constrained by the need to work around concert deadlines and rehearsals. We suddenly found that the pressure was off and we had a bit more spare time to devote to other projects. For me, it meant that I was, at long last, able to return to working on the new Ion album.

Looking through the archives, I discovered that I had more than enough material for one, maybe two albums. However, many of those tracks are three, perhaps four years old and, sad to say, many have lost much of their original lustre. They've become tired and over-familiar, and no longer feel as if they belong on a new album.

Indeed, it's been four years since Future Forever arrived. I say arrived because that album came about by accident, and by a series of happy accidents rather than by design. I think that's why the follow up album has been so long in coming. It's proved difficult to replicate the same conditions that gave rise to Future Forever.

That said, I've produced a fair number of tracks under the Ion banner in those intervening years. Many have been released on various compilation albums or found their way into live sets in one form or another. They've become public works and perhaps can be considered as fully released. Time to them fly off into the wild perhaps?

As a brief aside, I'm not convinced that releasing material on compilation albums does any good. They might remind a few people that Ion still exists and that we're still doing something but there's a general feeling that music delivered as free content or as promotional material has little or no tangible value. As a result, it's quickly forgotten, both by fans and non-fans alike. In truth, it just merges with the rest of the background noise.

Furthermore, I have to say that we've seen little or no tangible return on the tracks donated to these compilation albums. Certainly, we've seen no financial benefit. Any money earned went straight into the pockets of those releasing the disc as a means of supporting their enterprise, not ours. This wasn't the case in the days when magazines like Zenith or Sequences were around. Competition for space on those CDs was fierce, which meant that there was a selection process and only the best tracks made the play list. A place on Zenith or Sequences pretty much guaranteed healthy sales as soon as the next edition entered the public domain. Not so these days, where some folk seem content to chuck any old dross onto a CD and release it in the hope that it will sell maybe ten or twenty discs to the carefully chosen elite.

So, we've decided that there won't be any more give away tracks on minor, hobby labels that nobody has ever heard of, or will ever hear of.

Alas, the same applies to gigs. We have one gig scheduled for later in the year but I've decided that we won't do anymore until the new album is finished.

Back to the new Ion album. The plan is to produce as much new material as possible, aiming for a sound and feel that grows out of where Future Forever left off. I've started to rework one or two of those pieces that I still love, those that still give me a real buzz, such as Please Be Quiet, The Faraway Piano and Annoying the Neighbours. Others, like All The Small Things, have been expanded greatly so that they're longer and get a chance to develop.

New tracks include Space walk and The Fall of Stars, which were aired recently on Bruce Gall's Sunday Synth show, and a collection of ambient pieces composed for a film project that didn't work out, included here because I felt that they were a step in a new and possibly exciting direction.

The plan is to release the new album through MusicZeit and CD-Baby only. We're undecided yet as to whether we'll release through Magnatune this time around because the company has changed so much in the last few years and I don't like their financial arrangements. Subject to approval, the new album will also be available as a licensed volume on Shockwave-Sound because that has proved to be an extremely lucrative outlet for our music.

Finally, the sixty four million dollar question : when will it be released?

I had planned to release the new album at Synthfest in March but that's proving to be a problem in that organising Synthfest has eaten up (and is eating up) so much of my time. Hence, we're looking at a summer release.

I also want to progress the whole Shimmer project but that requires the help and assistance of The Glimmer Room who did such a marvellous job on Please Be Quiet. It would be a shame to let that idea fade away.

So, here's to Ion #2.

22-Dec-10 : Adios MySpace

I tried to log in to our MySpace accounts earlier today and was suddenly bombarded by the new, much celebrated user interface. Somewhat bewildered, I wondered why those clever people at Myspace would inflict this monstrosity on their user base and then quickly realised that I didn't actually care all that much anyway. MySpace has simple ceased to be relevant compared to say Facebook, which is a lot more fun and much, much easier to use. Consequently, I've deleted all of our MySpace accounts. They should all disappear in roughly 48 hours. Merry Christmas, Mr. Murdoch.

20-Dec-10 : Gigs 2011

We're delighted to announce our first gig in 2011.

Ion will be playing another set for the Awakenings group on Saturday 10th September 2011 at Paget High School, Burton-on-Trent at 7:00 pm. Also appearing are Rene van der Wouden and Peter Tedstone.

17-Dec-10 : RSS Feed

I've started adding RSS feeds to all of our news channels so that visitors can subscribe to our news updates as soon as I remember to update the relevant XML file.

RSS stands for Really Rimple Syndication and you can set up your news reader to automatically check a large number of RSS feeds for you, without you having to visit each web site in turn. It's a simple yet powerful idea and is becoming more and more popular these days as the number of web sites grows ever larger.

15-Dec-10 : Updates

Right now, I'm recovering from fairly extensive surgery on my nose - the result of too many rugby/sports-related injuries in my youth. I simply couldn't endure another winter like last year where my nose ached constantly for at least two or three months and breathing steadily became more and more difficult. The constant blockages were also affecting my hearing so I ended up not going into the studio nearly as often as I used to. That's bad, given that I rely on my ears to make a living.

So, I'm currently sporting a rather fetching plaster cast right across my face which is about as attractive as it sounds. Plus it's itching like mad and the only joy in this sorry experience is that it will be replaced next Monday by a smaller version in time for Christmas.

As 2010 draws to a close, I have to admit that, musically speaking, this year has been something of a disappointment. We managed three concerts in total, two of which were local, which was good news even if we didn't go down quite as well as we might have hoped. At least we got off our arses and got out there.

Equipment failures meant that we had to postpone the Generations concert and, sadly, our attempts at re-scheduling the event for early 2011 have failed. Nobody is returning our e-mails and so, alas, I think it's time to give up on this one. Maybe in another couple of years.

I spent most of this year promoting our new astronomical society, Luna and whilst I delivered something like twelve public lectures and spoke quite a bit on our local radio station, I devoted very little time and effort to writing new music or promoting our extensive back catalogue. Indeed, I seem to have almost given up adding new entries to our 2010 airplay list, which is pretty shameful frankly. More so, Luna wasn't the success that we thought it would be and we ended up withdrawing our lecture programme after only eight months because of a lack of support from all quarters. People just didn't seem interested. My lecturing commitments continue into the new year though they have been scaled back dramatically in favour of spending more time in the studio.

2010 wasn't all bad. Some interesting avenues did open up such as The Guild of Northern Media Composers plus our licensing operation chalked up more than sixty broadcast licenses so there's been some progress. We also delivered our first albeit short streaming concert, delivered directly from our studio upstairs. This is quite exciting really as it means that we can perform live without having to haul our keyboard rig up and down the country. However, these are small successes and nothing quite like the gains I'd expected or planned.

So, I'm on a bit of a downer at the moment. I am annoyed at myself for allowing our slow, steady, positive progress in recent years to fade away to nothing in 2010. I'm annoyed that we allowed the potentially enormous Generations concert to slide out from under our noses for no good reason at all, and I'm annoyed that there's been no new album release even though I now have an extensive collection of tracks that are not far off completion.

2010 wasn't quite what we'd hoped but there are some promising signs for 2011, SynthFest at the Maker Faire for one. That has the potential to be quite massive. I think it's really just a case of refocussing the energy in the right direction again. We'll see.

All the best for 2011.

David

03-Nov-10 : Ion Web Casts / Guild of Northern Media Composers

Ion broadcast their first streaming video session last night, directly from the Thinking Metal studio, with a performance of three songs from their recent Awakenings concert. The tracks were:

• The Infection of Time
• Call from the Wild Side
• Wow!

We expect this to be the first of many such concerts and we're already hard at work on improving the picture and sound quality, as well as the lighting and camera angles. We'll also properly schedule the broadcasts so that viewers know when we're about to air.

Thinking Metal founder, David Hughes has been admitted to the Guild of Northern Media Composers, which was set up in 2009 to provide makers of visual media with a ‘one stop shop’ for all of their music and audio needs.

We look forward to a long and productive relationship with this new outfit.

25-Oct-10 : Awakenings Part 3

Ion were in action over the weekend. A good gig, from all accounts, almost certainly our most relaxed and confident in many years.

Check Ion's News page for further details....

14-Oct-10 : Generations Update

Sadly, we've decided to postpone the Generations concert until early next year.

There were a number of contributing factors but, essentially, it boiled down to the reliability (or otherwise) of our equipment. Our main studio computer, a Sony VAIO died last week and had to be replaced at short notice. The new system is currently refusing to read our backups properly and so we'll need to re-record these again. That will take more time and effort than we have available at the moment.

The concert has been provisionally rescheduled for January 2011. We'll confirm once we have a date back from the Cathedral.

06-Oct-10 : Updates

I've not added much in the last couple of months, which may seem surprising as we've been extremely busy with preparations for our two end-of-year concerts, the first of which is in less than three weeks.

The simple truth is that whilst we've been rehearsing twice a week for months, we've also spent much of that time playing Fix me up with various bits of studio equipment.

Our main mixing desk has experienced two major issues with its power supply. The first was a badly corroded wire that caused the whole desk to fail on a random basis once or twice every hour. It would blink out and then come back on again a second or so later. Finding the fault was pure luck, nothing more. The decayed lead was inside a piece of heat-shrink tubing and therefore pretty much invisible to the naked eye. I found it by playfully wiggling each wire leading to the voltage regulators and, given that there's a lot of power kicking around inside the unit, this is not an activity for the faint-hearted.

A month or so after I fixed that problem, the PSU failed yet again - this time with not one but two blown rectifiers. They're easy enough to replace but this is the third time I've had to replace them and the damage to the main PCB is now so bad that the job wasn't easy and the likelihood of future failures is high. I tried to find a replacement from Soundcraft but their £450 / $800 price tag was just ridiculous. So, I downloaded the circuit diagram and set about building a more robust replacement of my own. See, I knew having an electronics degree would prove useful sometime! Meanwhile, I found a second hand supply on eBay for £100 and installed that.

If that wasn't bad enough, two of the inputs on the desk have started to fail too. I suspect there's now a lot of bad karma around this desk and it may be time to sell it on.

To make matters worse, my test equipment in the workshop started to fail. My main tool, a twin-beam 20 MHz oscilloscope, died and then so did the spare. Both are sitting next to me on the floor, awaiting a trip to the city's recycling plant. Thankfully, we were able to replace it with a new digital scope so work on my new projects can continue.

Could it get any worse? Yes, it could. On Monday, my Sony VAIO desktop also died. It was this machine that really changed the way I write music (in a good way) and got me recording again so it's passing is causing much sadness. The machine will boot and run a couple of utilities and, sadly the loathsome Freecell, but Scandisc fails every time. Sourcing a replacement disc on such an old machine is almost impossible although I can buy a complete unit for £70 on eBay. That said, it's not an option I am willing to look at because the technology itself is so flakey.

So, life has its challenges but we're not screwed yet. We still have other options like the Business iMac, which can edit audio and burn CDs but can't leave the house for obvious reasons. However, unless we can find a replacement for the VAIO then we'll have to resort to using the old Akai DR8 HD Recorder for live performances again and that's fraught with so much worry that it doesn't bear thinking about.

We'll see what turns up in the next couple of days. I'm optimistic that we can source something suitable. In the meantime, as the poster says, Keep Calm and Carry On.

25-Jul-10 : ImpulsePay - pay for downloads over your phone

We've added ImpulsePay.com to our official distributors. You can now purchase CD's, CDr's and, in particular, downloads via your mobile phone.

This is a trial service, to see if we can kick start sales via our on-line shop, which have been flagging in recent months.

25-Jul-10 : YouLicense

As part of our on-going plan to conquer the broadcasting world, we've added YouLicense.com to our list of licensing agents.

23-Jul-10 : Generations

We are delighted to confirm that the proposed Generations concert will take place in St. Nicholas Cathedral, Newcastle upon Tyne on Saturday, 20th November 2010 at 1 pm.

22-Jul-10 : New Blog

I've started a new blog, in an effort to keep up to date with the latest developments. I've been using Facebook but it's currently too heavily polluted with too much junk. I also tried blogspot but that was also a non-starter because it couldn't host the images I wanted to use. I had to set them up and link to them from another page. Too much trouble, frankly.

I've started using the re-blogging service, Tumblr, which delivers the goods in terms of ease of use and feature richness.

The all important address is http://skinmechanix.tumblr.com. Bookmark and enjoy.

09-Jul-10 : Concerts

The end of the year is shaping up nicely in terms of live concerts. There are three events currently on the cards, one confirmed (Awakenings) and two still in planning but we're optimistic that all three will go ahead.

Jules and I had a brief rehearsal the other night, essentially to dust off the cobwebs a little, and it all came flooding back very quickly.

11-Jun-10 : Freemen of Newcastle Magazine, Issue 8

There's an interview with Thinking Metal's David Hughes in the latest edition of the Freemen's Magazine, which is now available for download as a PDF from the Freemen's web site, here.

As some of you may know, David is a hereditary Freemen of the City of Newcastle upon Tyne and currently the Junior Steward of the Coopers Company. He is also a Trustee of the Town Moor Money Charity, which offers means-tested assistance to Freemen and their surviving spouse, and extends to assistance towards mobility aids, and to their children in full time further education aged 18 to 20 years.

26-Apr-10 : What? No news?

In case you were wondering about the lack of updates...

Yeah, I decided to take a couple of months off. I lost count of the numerous lectures and gigs I've organised/fronted in the last six months and began to realise that they were slowly wearing me down to the point where I felt that I was losing focus.

I figured that I needed to just sit back and take stock for a few weeks, then get back into the studio and get on with writing some new material. Thankfully, that's slowly starting to happen.

We certainly haven't been idle in the meantime. We've also been checking out a couple of new venues/events for possible gigging opportunities later on this year, plus some new air play outlets.

So, we've not fallen back into our old habits. Just resting up for a bit, recharging the batteries.

22-Feb-10 : The Second Annual Disillusioned Singles Night

Bridge Hotel, 20th February 2010

• Ladies and Gentlemen of the Canyon
• The Girl with the Replaceable Head
• The Gospel according to John Lee
• SkinMechanix

For the most part, we enjoyed ourselves, and this probably one of our better performances. The regular rehearsals and a shortened set in a support slot paid off dividends in that I think we were relaxed and able to deliver the goods. With the pressure off, we came up with something we enjoyed. Just a shame that the audience wasn't really into it but this doesn't bother me that much because we're now gigging locally again with another gig in two weeks and possibly more to follow.

An extremely funny and sadly unprintable episode happened shortly before we were due on stage. I promise to detail it in full in the memoirs, if ever I write them as this is just too funny and too priceless to be left undocumented. Proof that the Universe has one colossal sense of humour.

Ladies and Gentlemen of the Canyon	John Lee
The Girl with the Replaceable Head : David Hughes	The Girl with the Replaceable Head : Sylvie Hughes
Skin Mechanix : David Hughes / Jules C	Skin Mechanix : David Hughes / Jules C

Yes, you're right. There were two David Hughes on stage tonight. Confusing, isn't it?

08-Feb-10 : Gig news III

Thinking Metal Music are delighted to announce another gig, this time for the Awakenings group.

October 23rd 2010, Awakenings, Padget High School, Burton-on-Trent

This will be a full, 50-minute set, probably under the T-Bass Revive project.

25-Jan-10 : Gig news II updated (again)

Thinking Metal Music are delighted to announce another local gig, this time at a venue we know and love.

20th February 2010, The Bridge Hotel, Newcastle upon Tyne.

This will be a short, 25-minute set of electronic rock, as part of the event The Second Annual Embittered Singles Night :)

We're hoping to announce another couple of other local gigs in the next week or so. These are all support slots, since we're still learning the art of gigging locally.

To help spread the word a little further, I've added a page for promoters featuring selected tracks from our recent live sets. You can see it hear :)

I finally remembered to update the Events page.

15-Jan-10 : Gig news

Thinking Metal Music are delighted to announce our first local gig in quite a few years.

This is a short, 30-minute showcase gig for Insangel, the North East's longest running independent promoter. The gig will take place on Tuesday March 9th 2010 at The Three Tuns, Sherrif Hill.

It's been a long time since we played on our home turf and this should, hopefully, be the first of many such gigs as we try to build a local following. Please come along and support the band. We'll be billed as SkinMechanix though we'll be playing pieces from all three of our current projects, T-Bass, SkinMechanix and Ion.

Please note that all of the contact forms have been restored. As expected, the hackers quickly found someone else to pick on so normal service has resumed.

21-Dec-09 : Contact forms

Sadly, we've had to remove the contact forms from all of our web pages - for the time being at least.

Over the weekend, we received nearly 100 'zings' - a warning of an attempt to hack our web pages - and, whilst there's code in the PHP processing scripts to protect the servers, the risk of being high-jacked was too high. Hence, we've replaced the contact forms with a plain, simple 'click this to e-mail XXX' utility. Not very exciting but... well... yeah...

This shouldn't affect anyone too much as the forms were not used a great deal - except by the hackers - so it's no great loss. I'll wait until the hackers go pick on someone else before restoring the facility.

Meanwhile, Dave and Jules at Thinking Metal Music would like to wish all of our customers - past, present and future - a Merry Christmas and a Happy and Prosperous New Year.

17-Dec-09 : Local gigs / Licensing / Our Place

This year was supposed to be the year we got our act together as far as local gigs were concerned. We didn't quite succeed and I'm not entirely sure why. It just didn't seem to happen.

We did however, organise a fair number of radio interviews - another trip down to Harborough FM to see the wonderful Terry Hawke, plus two extended appearances on Stillstream and a double-length interview on ARFm with the excellent Bruce Gall.

Equally, we did get our licensing act together and that has been very, very successful - nearly 50 licenses sold in less than 10 months.

As you get older and more experienced (I'm nearly 50 and becoming something of an ancient, knackered-out, ill-tempered old war horse), there comes a time when you feel the urge to start passing on some of your accumulated wisdom to the next generation. I've been doing this with my other passion, astronomy, for a couple of years and my lecture schedule for the first few months of 2010 is now so busy that I cannot actually contemplate taking on any more work.

Recently, I was invited to talk to a group of young people at Stockton's Our Place Project, a scheme for encouraging kids who might not have gotten off to the best start in life into the work place. I took a few instruments down to their offices and put together a quick session on writing songs and composing music. It was loud, quite chaotic and stressful but fun - most of the time. The kids wrote the lyrics to the song, based on their life experiences. I contributed the music, with the brief that the tune should be something they would want to listen to rather than something I would want to hear. The end result is called Dreams. It's a short song, more dance/trance than sequenced electronica and therefore not something I would normally write but it was so far out side of my comfort zone that the experience was highly rewarding. I only hope the kids got something out of it too.

As I already mentioned, I like to start each year with a plan. 2007 was about developing Ion. 2008 was about airplay and breaking free of the ghetto that is the UK Electronic Music scene. 2009 was supposed to be about gigging but, as mentioned, that didn't quite happen as planned. Instead, it morphed into getting more personal air-time and maintaining our airplay figures, which is critically important. Next year, 2010, is going to be the year we start gigging locally. Hence, I've tried to get out to a few more gigs, trying to move in the right circles, maybe see who the players are and who I need to talk to if we're to be more successful.

Last weekend, I went to see the farewell performance from Mushi-Mushi at the Cluny 2 in Newcastle. They were supported by the excellent Bubble Project and I really enjoyed this gig, even if I did spend the duration up in the Gods like billy-no-mates. I really wish I'd seen the Mushies before now - their music is excellent and their drummer is a force of nature. I also look forward to seeing the Bubble Project again. There are rumours that they've split or are about to split, which would be a real shame.

Last night, I took in another 3 electro/indie bands at The End in Newcastle, a bar that I used to frequent many years ago with ex-Caterpillar support man Malcolm Ormiston when it was known as Rockies and their Friday-afternoon entertainment was, err... unusual. The bands were Green Man says Go, Live Like Lions and Razzamataz Lorry Excitement. All three were seriously good, especially Razmataz who is probably one of the North East's finest exponents of Drum 'n' Bass 'n' Dance Rhythms.

The only disappointment was the turn-out, which was pisspotically low at just 5 or 6 paying customers. I wasn't too impressed with the organisation either. I've mailed them three times asking for information about playing at a future date and not received a response. More so, their main man spent pretty much the whole of last night playing Tetris on his mobile rather than listening to the bands. Probably one to skip...

Still, I'd like to think that if we pick the right pieces and rehearse properly, we'll be able to establish Ion (or whichever name we choose to go out under) as a strong contender in the local scene.

Best wishes for Christmas and the New Year from everyone here at Thinking Metal Music. See you in 2010.

03-Dec-09 : T-Bass - The Return II

The new T-Bass site is finally moving forward and features the return of an old friend, Billy, our logo from the early days of Thinking Metal.

The original Billy was created on a state-of-the-art Silicon Graphics R4K Elan workstation running at, wait for it, 100MHz with 64 Mb of memory and took 20 minutes to render a complex frame. This version was produced on an iMac and took around 5 seconds to render. Isn't technology wonderful?

I've returned to this earlier theme in an attempt to get back some the sense of adventure that was a very, very strong component of the whole enterprise in those days. This image is a little gloomy but try viewing it with your browser set to maximum width. Then you'll see the full size of the image. I think it looks pretty cool.

30-Nov-09 : T-Bass - The Return

As mentioned below, we're delighted to confirm that we've decided to resurrect the T-Bass project.

As with Ion and SkinMechanix, they'll be solo affairs (though Jules will almost certainly return on keys for the live outings) with other musicians added as circumstances arise.

Why have we chosen to revive a project that was, as far as we were concerned, dead and buried? The answer is simple. Pressure from fans and pressure from radio stations.

Both Ion and SkinMechanix have their own niche. Ion is our (very successful) licensing project but geared more towards symphonic, more complex pieces. SkinMechanix seems to be morphing into a heavier, more industrial sound though that journey is far from over.

In recent months, I've been trying to add guitars to the whole Ion sound, a move that I thought was pretty cool but received something of a cool reception from fans and our licensing people who felt that those compositions were not as marketable the original Ion material.

Those pieces, in particular Shiloh, Mountain and Hello, Space Boy still need a home and a revived and revised T-Bass would seem to be the perfect place for them!

So, another journey begins...

23-Nov-09 : Streamer

At long last, I remembered to change the music playing in the background streamer. It's been stuck on the Universal set for the last 18 months and a change has been long overdue.

Given the amount of interest in T-Bass at the moment, I thought I'd go for one from the archives. It's been a while since I listened to this album...

And so we are delighted to present, for your enjoyment and edification, The Infection of Time by T-Bass. To hear the album, click on Listen in the Menu Bar above or on the image to above.

21-Nov-09 : Knackered

I stayed up into the wee hours to join around ten or twelve Stillstream listeners in their chatroom whilst Ambientix played on Stillstream's Mysterious Semblance show. It was a lot of fun and I had a chance to talk to some of the Stillstream regulars but the set didn't finish until around 3 am and it's left me happy but very, very tired. (Bags under the bags under my eyes!)

There was only one small cock-up - a minor corruption in Gordie's mp3 file which caused playback to drop out a bit. Otherwise, it was mostly plain sailing.

Whilst the audience wasn't huge - around 99 people in 12 different countries - it's more airplay and 100 people is a good-sized gig these days so who's grumbling? Well, Jules for one! :) When I eventually rolled into bed at around 3:30am, I woke her and the dogs up and so wasn't the most popular person in the house this morning.

Hey ho. The perils of being an electric muso, eh? :)

20-Nov-09 : iTunes Store

We've made it significantly easier to buy Ion's Future Forever and The Secret Life of Angels by SkinMechanix from Apple's iTunes store by creating a page with links directly into the iTunes store front.

Just click on the Buy Stuff link in the menu bar and follow the iTunes link, or click here to go there directly.

19-Nov-09 : The return of T-Bass? / Ambientix

Aimlessly wandering through our extensive audio archives the other night, I came to realise that I now have small but interesting collection of pieces that seem to have no home other than under the old T-Bass banner.

These pieces are too bright and cheerul to be SkinMechanix and they're too energetic for the Ion camp so what do we do with them? Do we leave them sitting around gathering dust or do we release them to the masses? If we release them into the wild then do they go out under the T-Bass banner or something new entirely? Judging by the amount of airplay generated in recent months, T-Bass is still held in some regard by anyone old enough to remember those heady, far-off days of 1995. However, at the same time, we've said on many occasions that T-Bass has bitten the dirt nap sandwich and is officially an ex-band. It is no more. It has shuffled off this mortal coil, joined the choir invisble etc.

So what do we do? Decisions, decisions...

Whilst T-Bass just stopped being fun for reasons that are many and complex, it's easy to forget that T-Bass started out as a solo effort, as a name to hide behind in case the whole concept went horribly pear-shaped. To kill the project and the idea behind it - that electronic music could be melodic, structured, accessible and above all, fun - somehow seems wrong. I mean, what do I do with pieces like Shiloh, Mountain, Dacota Plains and Hello, Space boy? I don't want to leave them forgotten and abandoned, and they're perfectly good tunes.

So... I'm tempted, very tempted to kick T-Bass back into life. If I did then it will be a solo effort, an attempt to get back to the good old days because those days really were fun, watching the whole adventure starting off. In many ways, it would be a return to old ground, sort of retro but with a twist.

Obviously, Ion and SkinMechanix would continue as they are, as separate and independant entities in their own right. I think this idea has legs and I will let it run around my head for a few days before deciding.

Gordon MacMillian aka Tange has been in touch and confirmed that the ambient / collage album, Ambientix which was discussed below, will air tomorrow night on Stillstream.com at 6pm EST Friday 20th November, which is (I think) 2 am UT. Ambientix is a collection of ambient/abstract pieces that due to their nature seldom receive airplay though are nevertheless still part of our core output. Most of these pieces have been used in soundtrack projects in various forms and we decided that this was a good opportunity to give them an airing.

To listen, just visit Stillstream.com and click on Listen.

10-Nov-09 : Pod Cast news

I've been a fan of Carl Sagan and his wife, Ann Druyan ever since Mr Sagan first appeared on UK TV in 1975, presenting the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures. Indeed, I have many of their books - Cosmos, Comet, Billions and Billions etc, and Cosmos was pretty instrumental in my career choice way back in 1980.

Today, I discovered that Ion's Flying Over Blue Waters has been used as the background music to an interview with Ann Druyan and her son, Nick Sagan over on the sci-fi podcast site Galactic Watercooler.

Wow... As a fan, this was more than just thrilling and after a truly shitty week, this was good news, and perhaps the best news I've had in a while. Today, the towel was well and truly on the point of being thrown in.

I miss Carl Sagan's common sense, his humanity and his sense of optimism. I miss his ability to communicate complex ideas in language that the layman could understand and I'm just over the moon that the producers chose this little choon for their show.

Just a shame that Carl wasn't around to hear it for himself.

05-Nov-09 : Ambientix (Compilation)

Ambientix is a little job I've been meaning to do for many, many years - assemble all of the ambient/drone/noise tracks from the various albums and library discs released since 1995 into a single disc and submit the compiled collection to one or two radio stations whose main focus is relaxation/atmospheric music as opposed to our more usual tune-based/bombastic/pedal-to-the-metal/four-on-the-floor output.

I finally got around to the job last weekend and finished the compilation on Wednesday night. Here's the final track listing:

• 1. Inferno ("The Infection of Time", T-Bass UK)
• 2. Asylum ("The Fabulous Neutrinos", T-Bass UK)
• 3. Fallen Angel (SkinMechanix)
• 4. The Secret Life of Angels (SkinMechanix)
• 5. The Journey Home (SkinMechanix)
• 6. Elementary Theory (SkinMechanix)
• 7. Eternal Flame (Ion)
• 8. Overflight (SkinMechanix)
• 9. Logoscape (Ion)
• 10. Hell Choir Part One (Ion, unreleased)
• 11. Quartz (Ion, unreleased)
• 12. Interlude at the Edge of Known Space (SkinMechanix)
• 13. Hellchoir Part Deux (Ion, unreleased)
• 14. Faraway Piano (Ion, unreleased)
• 15. Glow (SkinMechanix)

Most of these tracks have been released on existing albums although some (HellChoir, Faraway Piano) have never been properly released and one (Quartz) has only been available on a library collection. By their very nature, they tend not to generate much (or any!) airplay although most have been used in various web, TV or film projects. Anyway, this was an opportunity to air them in public and perhaps to an audience that weren't all that familiar with this side of our output.

Gordie McMillan, who produces the show Mysterious Semblance on StillStream.com, has agreed to broadcast the entire collection on his Friday 13th November show. Note that this actually airs at around 1am, GMT, on Saturday 14th November. UK listeners might want to record the show. :)

If there's sufficient interest then we'll consider releasing this collection as a limited edition CDr. There's also the possibility that we could tie up with another record company and let them release it for us.

03-Nov-09 : Thinking Metal Promotions

This activity had been scheduled for earlier in the New Year although circumstances have pushed us down this path a little bit ahead of the plan.

Regular readers will be familiar with our attempts to organise concerts and events intended to showcase our various activities. They will also be familiar with our fairly dismal lack of success in this area too. Not all of it was our fault. Indeed, much of it was not our fault at all. I just wish that certain events organisers would be straight forward and honest with us. If you're not interested in what we're doing then just say so. I won't mind. I won't be offended. Just do me a favour and don't tell me that you're up for it and then give the gig to someone else time and time again. You're wasting my time and your own.

With this in mind, we're setting up our own promotions company, Thinking Metal Promotions, or TMP for short. The idea behind TMP is that we won't need any body else to put on gigs for us. We'll do it ourselves. We'll also pick and choose who gets to play. It's our ball now.

There's a certain amount of paperwork to go through first. We need to apply for a temporary license and then go visit the Police Station to make sure that her Majesty's finest don't object. If that all goes to plan then we'll be announcing our first properly promoted gig in the next two weeks. The venue is quite small and intimate, and entrance will be by ticket only, which will be available on a strictly first-come, first served basis.

Watch this space.

02-Nov-09 : Football (and life's little lessons)

When I was a small lad, all of 10 years old, I had a football. It was a good one too. Large and white with black patches, it was just the right size for a me and my friends to play kick-about down at the Leazes Park in Newcastle.

On a Saturday afternoon, we would make some goal posts out of jumpers and play for a couple of hours until it went dark. Afterwards, we would go round to Nana's house for some tea and biscuits.

There were some other boys, older boys, boys from the other end of the village. They liked football too, and they had their own ball though they would always play on the top pitch, which had proper goal posts, better grass and the locals (generally speaking) didn't let their dogs shit all over the keeper's box. On occasion, the council would even paint lines on the ground so that it actually looked like a proper football pitch.

However, for some strange reason unknown to us, they never let us play with them even though we asked if we could. Their answer was always the same - an emphatic "No!".

Then, one day, the other boys came to us and asked if they could use our ball. Their ball had burst and they couldn't play anymore. So, we said Yes and, as a reward, they let us join in, even though we were far smaller than them and not very good really.

At the end, when it was dark and time to go home, everyone agreed that it had been a fantastic game of football even though my Dad got angry because we were still outside after dark, and we were late going to Nana's for tea.

The next week, the older boys had a new ball and so they didn't need us any more. But, never-the-less, they still let us join in their game even though we were smaller and weren't very good, and we absolutely had to be home for tea before it got dark otherwise we'd be in terrible trouble from our Dad.

That didn't matter. They let us join in because the game was better. Why? We played a different game, a faster game. We were smaller and more agile, and the older boys had to change their game because we could get in places that they could not. We could score goals simply by playing the same game but in a different style.

We all learned that, even though we were different sizes and played different styles, the game was far, far better if we helped eachother out, shared resources and worked together.

Just something to think about on this cold, winter's morning in November.

20-Oct-09 : Revostock (Licensing)

Thinking Metal are delighted to announce the addition of yet another library to our licensing section, Revostock.

We received approval last night and we're busy uploading material right now though it will take a couple of days to get all of the samples edited into shape. We're optimistic that the addition of Revostock will further extend our adventures into film, radio and TV.

10-Oct-09 : The Future

I deleted the highly caustic post regarding the demise of the GoldTri newsgroup. This is why.

I spent last night at the Datarama #6 event, which is held every couple of months in the Tyneside Cinema, Newcastle.

The evening was a celebration of Geek-dom, a veritable Triumph of Nerds : in other words a room full of intelligent, thoughtful technicians and artists all doing something different, something unusual, instead of just drinking their lives away in one of the City's many flea-pit drinking dens.

I was demoing a new piece of kit that we're developing at Infection Music - more on that a bit later - but I came away from the event with some potential investors, several requests to join the beta-testing group and the possibility of a gig at the City's Star and Shadow Cinema. So not a bad evening's work, really?

I didn't mind that it was starting to rain as I walked back to the car, or that I received some funny looks from one or two somewhat puzzled undergraduates - the prototype unit is truly Heath Robinson and looks more like a bomb that a music synthesiser.

I also came away with the feeling that time spent thinking about the events and people surrounding the whole Goldtri scene was time wasted. The future is does not lie with these people. They're gone. History. End of story.

The future is here, now, with new people and new possibilities. Forget this lesson at your peril.

09-Sep-09 : Updates

We've performed some minor internal house keeping on the Thinking Metal site (adding server side includes to be specific). Ideally, you shouldn't notice anything unusual. However, if you do, please let us know via the Contact page.

03-Aug-09 : ARFm Interview / Facebook

The interview with ARFm's Bruce Gall went off okay and didn't sound too bad at this end, apart from some annoying clicks that I think were related to the audio stream. Did anyone else notice this?

Anyway, part 2 is next week. I have a recording of part 1, which I'll add to the site in the next couple of days.

If you have a Facebook account then you can keep up with events at Thinking Metal by joining our fan group, Thinking Metal Music. This a new group (just created this morning) so there are not many members yet but don't let that put you off.

31-Jul-09 : ARFm Interview / Facebook

Version 2 of the interview with DJ Bruce Gall, who produces Sunday Synth for on-line station ARFm, went ahead last Sunday afternoon. The first version was ruined by a technical problem that we didn't spot until after the interview had concluded, and so we decided that we would do it again, which also served to get rid of some of my rubbish answers too.

We spent so long talking that Bruce wants to spread the interview over two programmes, the first of which will go out on Sunday, 2nd August 2009 with the second part following a week later on Sunday 9th August 2009.

Picture Left: I was asked to step in at the last minute and operate the mixing desk at the Staggerin' Jon Lee gig at the Bridge Hotel in Newcastle on Friday night. Strange that I look bored, which was absolutely not the case. I was 100% focused on the band (and their lovely sax player)!!!!

That B*h***ger mixer is one of the dumbest designs I have ever used.

Thanks to Mr Speed aka Dave Newton for the photo.

18-May-09 : Short film 'Fall Comes to Lac La Ronge' airs later this month

We received a message from KCDC last week to let us know that their short film, Fall Comes to Lac La Ronge, will air on May 31st 2009 on the Saskatchewan Channel in Canada. See here for more details.

Ion's The Silent Scream features in this 15 minute movie detailing the cycle of the seasons as they slowly transform from the glory of summer to the splendor of fall.

As the regional public educational broadcaster, SCN delivers programming that reflects the unique people, places and culture of Saskatchewan to 90% of Saskatchewan households and audiences across Canada.

23-Mar-09: Terry Hawke Interview / Stillstream Gig / Site Facelift

The interview with Ron Berry on the Terry Hawke show has been re-scheduled for next weekend, 28th March 2009. Sorry for the confusion. Terry suddenly realised that there was a conflict in his calendar that couldn't be avoided.

The postponed StillStream gig has been re-scheduled for the evening of April 17th/April 18th. Sadly, this is not a very Euro-friendly gig but we have to fit in with their US-based broadcast schedule. It's going to be a long night. :)

The site facelift continues apace. New graphics, a new look and feel, starker imagery.

The late 70's / New Wave / Post-Punk / retro feel is deliberate, mainly because I've been listening to a lot of music from that era, trying to get back to that wonderful experimental, anything goes vibe that was kicking around back then.

Was the music really any better in those days or am I wearing my rose-tinted glasses again?

10-Mar-09: Licensing

A few structural changes to the site...

The Gig Guide section has been moved over to the Events section essentially because it just wasn't very popular and also because it was full of crap jokes, most of which have been removed. If you missed them, well, sorry, but they really were awful.

In its place is the new Licensing section, which has been included because our licensing project is now paying dividends. Whilst we're not yet millionaires, it is starting to generate a lot of interest and with the slowdown in direct sales as a result of the recession, this is one area that we want to push hard.

One of the quirks of licensing your stuff in this manner is that you rarely, if ever, find out where your stuff is used and we'd like to know. If you do hear one of our pieces of music on a TV station then let us know and we'll send you a freebie of some kind.

You should also notice a few more graphic embellishments throughout this site including the news section itself because I just realised that this page really is just a long, boring wodge of text which is about as readable as the small print on my mortgage contract. It needs some pictures.

24-Feb-09: New styling / Dave's Section extended / Licensing

Most of the site now boasts the same curvy styling, which feels a lot nicer than the boring, boxy style is had before.

Ion continues in its efforts to take over the entire Western hemisphere with new dealerships announced and a funky new licensing outlet that is already paying major dividends in terms of exposure. The Ion camp have now started calling themselves soundtrack composers in a feeble attempt to get free coffee and chocolate from the vending machines but that doesn't rub with us.

After a period of extended arsing about, Ion removed themselves from their Second Life concert scheduled for April on the grounds of creative differences. Knowing the effort that Ion put into the gig, knowing the pressure they're under to deliver and having been party to the discussions that took place and seen the e-mails coming back from the organisers, I don't blame Ion one iota. Indeed, the phrase that springs most readily to mind rhymes with Oil Tankers.

Dave's Section has been greatly extended to help detail all of his activities this year, which are considerable. The blog is still there, constantly being topped up with pretentious bollocks and a constant worry to our lawyers who fear that one more extended rant will see us all up before the beak looking at a major hit to the pension fund and a couple of years in Pentonville.

That's all for now.

05-Jan-09: ARFm Best Electronic Album of the Year

Staff at the UK's Premier On-line Prog Rock station ARFm have voted Future Forever as the "Best Electronic Music Album of the 2008". This top spot was shared with The Glimmer Room's Home Without The Journey. Congrats to Andy C of The Glimmer Room!

04-Jan-09: ARFm Long Track of the Year

Listeners to the UK's Premier On-line Prog Rock station ARFm have voted Tangents by Ion as one of their "Long Tracks of the Year". Tangents was joint 5th in the poll, which is excellent because we feel that the field was very strong indeed. It Bites took the top spot whilst our friends, The Glimmer Room were joint 6th. The full poll results are shown on the Ion page under news.

05-Dec-08: Time for another facelift

I've given these pages yet another facelift. Yes, I know the last one was only in May but I got totally cheesed with the bland, boxy styling that screamed CSS and decided to add some curves. I've also changed the colour scheme to something that might look a little more modern. Big, bold, bright primary colours. Will this attract visitors with ADD? Possibly.

This is the second attempt at adding curves. The first was a miserable failure and taught me that whilst everything may look fab and groovy when viewed through a Firefox browser, not everybody uses Firefox. My thanks go to Susan Baird who pointed out the error of my ways. A very loud and vulgar raspberry goes to those dimwits at Microsoft who chose not to implement the before:: and after:: tags, which are (after all) in the CSS2 specification. Typical really. I wonder if anyone at Microsoft can read.

If you really want to know what the old style looked like then follow this link:

As of today, some of the pages have not been converted to the new format yet. I'll finish the job over the weekend.

07-Nov-08: Ghosts in the Machine Festival

We're delighted to confirm that we'll be playing at the Ghosts in the Machine festival in Swindon on June 13th 2009.

28-Oct-08: What do you think?

I've been having an interesting discussion with respect to selling stuff and our current sales policy with Susan Baird of Dreamaiden. The policy we apply (as best we can) is that this site is, first and foremost, an information site. We're not heavily into sales and selling stuff. I got bored with visiting sites that seem to do little more than ply the wares of their various owners, often applying a sales pitch that walks a fine line between a Gordon Gecko-style hard sell policy and desparation. So, we made a concious decision to pull back from the hard sell and concentrate on providing an information service. We felt that others could do a better job of selling than we can. Also, we wanted to make sure that there was plenty of information about our various activities so that visitors have a good idea what we're doing.

Well, visitor numbers are certainly up on this time last year though they're hardly spectacular. However, sales from our on-line shop have bombed. This could be because it's easier to buy from sites like Magnatune and iTunes though what we earn from those sites certainly doesn't mean we'll be able to retire to the Bahamas any time soon.

What we'd like to know is... What do you think? Does this site do a decent job? Could it be improved? Will you come back later? Tell us, we'd like to hear what you think. If we think you're talking sense, we'll do what we can to put your ideas online and give you a credit. Get in touch via the Contact form above.

20-Oct-08: T-Bass: The End

Following the success of our recent Ion concert and the the amount of airplay Ion is currently receiving, we've decided to end the T-Bass project completely. Further information is available under the T-Bass banner.

01-Oct-08: Updated events list

I've updated the events log for the forthcoming Dundee Live gig and added some vague details about the Generations event. There have been some developments in this area in recent weeks though they're in the early stages but it's possible that we could end up with some major backing and hence major publicity.

27-Sep-08: Airplay Log IV

We did it! Over 100 airplays this year!!!! I'll be writing a special letter of thanks in the next couple of days to all of those who supported us by playing the choonz.

21-Sep-08: Airplay Log III

There have been further updates to the airplay log. Essentially, we're rapidly approaching the magic 100 plays, which will be a major landmark for us. I've not actually been pushing the airplay a great deal in recent months because I was concerned that I was pushing too hard and that people would get sick of hearing us. I guess I was wrong because there's been a strong, steady, consistent growth in plays in that time, which is very, very encouraging.

Rehearsals for the Awakenings gig next week are in full swing. Jules will be joining me on stage again despite a fairly nasty injury to her right arm. I'm looking forward to the adventure enormously.

21-Aug-08: Airplay Log II

I've updated the airplay log again, this time with even more Magnatune podcasts and an equally impressive collection from StillStream.com. Plus, there are some further licensing details to add, which I'll sort out later. All of this adds up to a very impressive 8 months.

My goal at the start of 2008 was to see if we could push through 30 tracks played on air, either in a pod cast, streaming radio or on direct-to-air radio. This seemed pretty reasonable at the time. I thought we could do it, if we pushed hard. I didn't expect that we'd more than double that figure in less than 8 months. Phew.

I'd like to offer special thanks to all those DJ's who have helped and supported us this year.

27-Jul-08: Airplay Log

I just updated the airplay log with a whole bunch of Magnatune podcasts and, well, the log is finally starting to look more than a little impressive. I've been told that there are a few more entries to include for July - StillStream.com played quite a few tracks last weekend - and these latest additions will almost certainly take the tally this year to over 80 tracks. That's more airplay than I think we've ever had before.

Now, just 80 plays might seem pretty pathetic to you and perhaps it is when compared to some of the major players. However, if you're able to cast your mind back to where we were this time last year then you might just conclude that something, somewhere, is starting to come together.

Of course, this list doesn't include all of the stations that we don't know about yet and I'm optomistic that there are fair number of those because just a few casual minutes spent ego-googling turns up new additions to the log every time. Hence, I'm pretty sure that the word is getting out.

Which begs the next question - Where to now?

That's the next chapter. Watch this space.

10-Jul-08: Facelift/Firefox bug

Minor changes to the HTML code on the T-Bass and SkinMechanix pages because they were not displaying properly in Firefox. Other browsers (IE, Safari) didn't seem affected but Firefox would leave borders in the wrong place. Hi ho, hi ho...

02-Jul-08: Free Music / Work-in-Progress

A short piece, released simply to say "Thank you!" to the many folk who have supported us over the last couple of months! The number of people downloading the Ion album Future Forever has been very, very encouraging indeed.

The title of this piece gives a small clue to the inspiration... :)

Click here to listen to Annoying The Neighbours.

Enjoy.

26-Jun-08: Secret Life is Number One on Magnatune

SkinMechanix The Secret Life of Angels is currently sitting at number one in the Magnatune download chart.

To say we're thrilled is a bit of an understatement, given that Ion's Future Forever grabbed the top spot last week.

As ever, special thanks go to Jan Hanford and John Buckman of Magnatune for their faith and support, and especially to all the legions of customers who have paid good money for this album.

15-Jun-08: Future Forever is Number One on Magnatune

Ion's Future Forever is currently sitting at number one in the Magnatune download chart.

Needless to say, we're thrilled.

Special thanks go to Jan Hanford and John Buckman of Magnatune for their faith and support.

02-Jun-08: Radio Interviews

An edited version of Saturday's interview with Terry Hawke is available here.

30-May-08: Radio Interviews and Podcasts

Some news on up-coming radio interviews and podcasts.

Terry Hawke Interview

Nearly forgot this one. David and Jules will be studio guests on the Terry Hawke Chill Out Sessions tomorrow, 31st May 2008, from 2200 hours onwards. Terry will be playing a couple of rare and unreleased tracks by Ion and SKinMechanix as well as talking about recent developments and some very special news about an upcoming gig.

Also featured on the show is an interview with Susan Baird of Dreamaiden. We've known Susan for about a year now and she's a wonderfully talented musician whose work has been seriously under-rated so far. Strangely, we've never actually spoken in person and so this will be a weird kind of first conversation, over the air and with a couple of thousand listeners tuned in!!!

To listen to thow show, follow the Listen Online link from the Harborough FM web site.

Robocaster Prog 22

Ian Price of Robocast Radio mailed to let us know that Ion's Evensong is the first track up on their latest podcast, Prog 22. Click the graphic below to have a listen...

22-May-08: Site Updates III

Corrected some minor fluffy stuff. No real news.

• Corrected the style sheets so that the boxes all line up properly and the overall appearance is a bit sharper.
• Corrected one or two details in the discography and Buy Stuff pages.
• Updated the Events page to reflect the change of date for the Dundee Live gig.

17-May-08: Site Updates II

Added a lot of minor corrections, mostly spelling and grammar, and some corrections to the flow and organisation of the site so that pages link up and return properly. Thanks to Jules for wading through the mass of new material.

10-May-08: Site Updates

Recent visitors may have noticed some changes to the front page.

Yes, we've been busy. We've greately extended and enhanced the content on this web site over the past few weeks to provide a better experience for all of our visitors, new and old.

First and foremost, the news section has been greatly extended because, well, that's what you've asked for. You want to know more about what we're doing and what we have to say. For instance, the new albums from T-Bass and SkiNmechanix are long overdue. So what's holding them up? Will there be another Ion album? When and where is the next gig? Secondly, we've added several new sections as well as restored several old favourites. The new introductions include The Gig Guide, which is an attempt to review all of the gigs over the years from our perspective. As you might expect, it's radically different from the often biased and politcally motivated opinions you might read elsewhere. However, don't imagine that this is a whitewash of events. We've tried to be honest, often brutally honest, when reviewing our past glories as well as our occasional failings.

Another new arrival is the Radio Play section, which attempts to list and promote all of the radio stations who have helped and supported us over the years. This is intended to help and support new musicians working in this field because nothing feels as good as hearing your own work on the radio and finding an outlet that will listen to your stuff is never easy. Hence, we've included dates and time, the tracks played and the contact details for the various DJ's at the relevant stations.

We've also restored the Discography, which is now as up-to-date as possible and, although there are still gaps, it's improving constantly. For various reasons, much of our archive is incomplete and we need help to develop the resources. If you have any pictures or recordings of our concerts then please get in touch. We'd love to hear from you. For instance, one of our fans mailed us to ask if we'd ever heard of the German Schwindungen Radio auf CD series of discs in which we appear to feature rather a lot. This was completely new to me and a very pleasant surprise.

Then, of course, there's the re-appearance of Dave's Blog, which many punters had thought long gone but which has, in fact, been running continuously for more than a year now. Finally, there's a new Downloads section, featuring loads of free choonz and lots of high resolution images sized specifically in wallpaper format for your PC desktop. Cool, huh?

Why are we doing this? Well, it's simple. There's been a huge resurgence in interest in our music in the last couple of months. For instance, I checked the Magnatune Top Ten this morning and was astonished to find that Ion's Future Forever is back in the charts again, this time at number 6. More so, the amount of airplay we've received since Christmas 2007 has been astonishing and this, in part, has to be the main reason that fans are checking us out. We feel that the tide is once again turning in favour of music that has soul, music that has passion, energy and drive, music that rocks your head and your heart in equal measure. Time and time again, we read reviews of our discs that beg and plead for the scene to make a wholesale return to a style of music that actually does something and actually says something. Music should never, ever be about the amount of equipment you have or a competition to see who can produce the weirdest noise or who can sound closest to a band that moved on to pastures new 30 years ago.

We're doing this because there's a strong trend in the media to do away with the minority interest radio stations who play our style of music and these stations need the help and support of listeners and musicians alike if they're to avoid total extinction. But there's also a new breed of broadcaster, the Podcaster, the internet equivalent of the college radio station, and these guys need your help and support just as much.

We're putting the effort into this site in the hope that you'll support us, talk about us, listen to us and therefore help keep this adventure running a little bit longer. First and foremost, this site isn't about earning money. It's about promoting the music, about promoting an idea that music shouldn't be about equipment or bleepy noises. It's about music that moves you into a better state of mind, music that lifts and enriches, music that, for want of a better term, kicks ass. More than anything, it's about a style of music that looks forward to a brave new world instead of endlessly wallowing in the past.

What you won't find here is an endless list of adverts for downloadable albums and home made CDr's. Yes, you can buy our albums through this web site and you can down load them from any number of download sites like Magnatune and Amazon but that isn't the main focus. I've grown bored with the number of musicians who proudly proclaim, in a snooty and condescending manner, that their main reason for creating and producing music isn't finanical and yet, when you visit their web site, the focus is almost exclusively on buying their discs and/or downloads and, worse still, providing a useful source of information is nearly always a secondary consideration.

So, enjoy the site. Have a look around, read the blog, the gig guide and listen to the choonz and then tell us what you think.

Best Wishes, David and Jules, Thinking Metal Music

30-Mar-08: Radio Interview Harborough FM

The interview on the Terry Hawke Radio Show on Harborough FM went fairly smoothly. Terry is keen to organise a follow-up interview at the end of April or early May. Next time, I think I'd rather we drove down to the studio and did the interview face-to-face because I find that the phone is less than ideal.

Click on either of the pictures of Dave above to hear the full interview.

29-Mar-08: Radio Interview Harborough FM / Tangerine Dream Fanzone

As mentioned below, I'll be appearing on the Terry Hawke Radio Show on Harborough FM at around 1040pm GMT tonight.

Apparently, I'm also on the Tangerine Dream Fanzone Podcast as well.

All part of my dastardly plan to take over the Universe...

28-Mar-08: Radio Interview Harborough FM

I'll be appearing on the Terry Hawke Radio Show on Harborough FM at around 1040pm GMT on Saturday 29th March 2008.

Terry is a big fan of Ion and SkinMechanix and we'll be talking about the evolution of those two outfits and where I plan to take them in the near future. The plan is to play maybe 5 or 6 tracks from Future Forever and The Secret Life of Angels so there should be lots to listen to. I just hope I can avoid swearing on air.

15-Mar-08: On-line shop woes

What a way to spend a Saturday night? Fixing problems with our blasted on-line shop.

I found an error in the shell scripts that process PayPal orders and this stopped all transactions from proceeding. Argghhh!!! No wonder the shop has been quiet for a week! I checked that it was working after I made the changes but something must have been stuck in the cache. Proof positive that I should not be allowed anywhere near a text editor! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Slaps forehead with palm of hand!!!

If you've tried ordering a disc or a download from the on-line shop via PayPal in the past week and the transaction failed then please try again. I've checked everything out and I know it's all working properly. Honest.

14-Mar-08: Airplay this weekend

Ion will headline at an Awakenings event later this year (probably September 27th). Jules C will be assisting on keys and moog-aerobics. We'll publish more information when it becomes available.

This weekend, music by Ion and SkinMechanix will feature on the TD Fan Zone Podcast and on Terry Hawke's radioshow on Harborough FM. A live, phone-in/link-up is scheduled for April 2008.

A couple of other stations said they would be playing tracks but they haven't confirmed. We'll add more news when we have it.

 13-Feb-08 Tangerine Dream Fan Zone

Ion and SkinMechanix both feature in the latest podcast, dated 13th February 2008 from the Tangerine Dream Fan Zone site. Thanks to Chris Neumann for his enthusiastic support.

 13-Feb-08 Links

As discussed in a previous update, we've restored and revised the Links section. This page hasn't been in the right place for a couple of years and so wasn't generating much trafic into the site. The list of linked sites has been extended a little whilst a small number of bad links have been removed. One or two organisations/individuals who we no longer deal with have also been removed. If you're one of them and you're not happy with being tossed aside in such a casual and yet highly amusing manner then all I can say is "Tough Titty" - you should have replied to the e-mails I sent you.

The general revision of the whole web site continues. I've removed some duff/invalid links that turned up in our web activity log over the last couple of days so some of your old links may not be valid. They should still re-direct you back into the site. If they don't then please let us know.

We're also looking at putting on some gigs sometime in the near future. The venues will be quirky and interesting, if we can get permission/insurance and, critically, an audience. You see, everything depends upon one simple factor - attendance. We'd love to put on a large number of decent gigs featuring well known artists from around the UK, Europe and the States but there's no point if nobody bothers to turn up to the event. It isn't really about the money - well, yes it is because the company has to fund such exercises out of its own pockets - but I can't see any point in spending two or three months organising a gig if only 6 people and a bored dog turn up on the night.

So, if you want to see a couple of Thinking Metal gigs in the near future, please use the Contact form and let us know who you'd like to see perform.

 12-Feb-08 Promotion update / Concert tracks

We are delighted to announce that James Friedland has joined our ranks to help promote the bands currently signed to Thinking Metal. James has been playing in local bands for the past 20 years and is very knowledgeable and passionate about electronic music. We're sure that he will be a great asset to the team.

The Ion/SkinMechanix gig performed last December as part of the Man and Machines Symposium at Newcastle University has been released under the title of Universal and is now available as a streaming audio broadcast.

The Universal performance was the follow-up to a lecture given by David Hughes entitled Software Systems for Musical Improvisation and features a mixture Ion and SkinMechanix tracks. These were largely improvised using a range of hardware and software sequencers to give a practical demonstration of the techniques outlined in the talk.

To listen to Universal, just click on Listen in the above menu bar. The concert runs for 22 minutes and the track titles are as follows:

• 1. Altitude
• 2. Sancho Panzer
• 3. Garden Party
• 4. Aurora
• 5. Waving at Mono

Ion's Future Forever is currently sitting at number 17 in Magnatune's Top Ten and is also the featured disc over at the MusicZeit download site.

 03-Feb-08 Major site update

The online-shop has been fully revised and updated. The layout is hopefully more logical and easy to use, the links page has been restored and some of the unusual page formatting problems have been corrected. I've also updated all of the individual web pages so that they're using the same style sheets. Whilst this means that the web pages all look consistent and, more importantly, they work, they don't have their own identity. That's the next step, to break them away from the Thinking Metal style sheets and into their own.

Both Ion and SkinMechanix have been enjoying a lot of airplay recently, far more than in recent years. This is very, very encouraging.

 04-Dec-07 Ion / Skin Mechanix straight into the Magnatune Top Ten

The debut albums from Ion and SkinMechanix were released on the Magnatune download service over the weekend and both albums jumped straight into the Top Ten chart.

 12-Oct-07 Ion / Flying Over Blue Waters video

The pilot version of the video for Flying over Blue Waters is now available on YouTube. This is the pilot version only, meant to illustrate the idea and to see what sort of technology was required to complete the project. The video has a few problems but we still felt that it was worth releasing because it looks pretty damned cool.

The video was filmed entirely in the virtual world SecondLife, using avatars in place of real actors. They're easier to work with than real actors, don't have hissy fits at inconvenient times and don't try to score with your girlfriend when you're trying to sort out a problem with the lighting.

Yes, there are some technical flaws. At the time the video was put together, we didn't know how to get rid of the digital on-screen graphics. That's been fixed and so the next step is to finish the video, ready for full release. That should be in a couple of weeks.

 10-Oct-07 Face lift

This section of the site is getting something of a makeover. I just looked at it for the first time in a couple of weeks and it's as dull as dishwater.

 17-Sep-07 Ion / Future Forever on Echoes

John Diliberto of Echoes Radio send an e-mail last night to let us know that Ion's Future Forever will feature in their upcoming playlists. This is terrific news because it means that Ion will now be able to reach a very large audience indeed.

Echoes is a daily two-hour music soundscape, distributed by Public Radio International and broadcast on over 150 US radio stations from Maine to California. Host John Diliberto, a writer for Billboard, Pulse and other magazines, brings together a wide array of styles, from acoustic to electronic, jazz to space music, the avant-garde to rock. Echoes is a sound that is cross-cultural and trans-millennial, merging cultures and forms, technology and tradition, the ancient past and the possible future.

 11-Sep-07 Ion / Future Forever

We are delighted to announce that Future Forever by Ion will be available on the Magnatune download service. Magnatune have to be one of the best companies we've ever dealt with - consistently friendly, open and honest. They're like a breath of fresh air in the music business. Other record companies please take note: this is how it should be done.

We're also quietly optomistic that Magnatune will also take on The Fabulous Neutrinos and The Secret Life of Angels, which would be nice. :)

20-Aug-07 File downloads/Illegal discs

I was ego-googling again this morning and my search turned up a couple of MP3 download sites who appear to be selling copies of, amongst others, The Secret Life of Angels. Well, whilst it's flattering to find one's music worthy of being bootlegged, I think it's fair to point out that you'd be a bit of a tit if you fell for their little scam.

The worst offender says he's based in Moscow and, to download my album, all you have to do is enter your credit card details into their, ahem, secure server. Once you've been suckered into that small piece of insanity, they will then send you a link to my album. That's nice of them.

Meanwhile, I have a sneaking suspicion that they'll also sell your card details to as many illegal operations as there are in the Moscow phone directory and, as any good Russian will tell you, there are an aweful lot of them.

So, if you do want to steal my albums, please do so. I'll even tell you where to steal them from:

http://www.mp3fiesta.com/letter/s/

All part of the service. :)

13-Aug-07 File downloads

Over the weekend, we discovered that a naughty person had decided to share one of the links to the Ion album with a bunch of his friends and, as a result, around 40 copies of the disc were stolen from the server.

Now, we don't earn a huge bunch of money from these album sales and contrary to popular belief, I don't drive around in a gold-plated Rolls-Royce or a Ferrari. In fact, me and my Homies cruise our patch in a rusty old M-registration Volkswagen Golf so, as you can imagine, there isn't much money in this busines. We do it because we like music and we like other people to enjoy what we do.

When you download the album, you're really paying for the storage space on the server and the network bandwidth required to move the files from my computer to yours. We cover the costs, but only just. Our situation isn't helped when one of our dealers sells our CD's at a price which is lower than our download service. Yes, that's right. He's actually selling the discs at a loss. Go figure.

Now, if you don't want to pay for this service and are quite happy to steal my music from me, fair enough. That's on your conscience, not mine.

But next time, be a bit more careful, will you? At least make sure that my data logger doesn't record your IP address, your country, your city and your e-mail address. Chump.

12-Aug-07 Web page facelift

The major facelift to the web pages is nearly complete. The only section remaining is the on-line shop, which will have to wait until next week though it will be a brave man who attempts to sort that lot out. 7,000 lines of Javascript and no comments. I am such a happy bunny.

02-Aug-07 Myspace update

We are currently updating the Thinking Metal MySpace page, which we have quietly ignored since it was started some time last year when this project was first mooted. Watch this space.

30-Jul-07 Thinking Metal update

Thinking Metal itself is finally up and running again. Most of the links on the site now work properly. Those that don't will be fixed in the next couple of days. We're still on the same server as Infection Music but that should change in the near future.

It's been 8 years since the label was discontinued. Now we're back and looking forward to a big, bright future under our own flag.

Why the split from Infection Music? Essentially, we haven't really split away from Infection Music. They're our parent company and we share the same personnel but, with ThinkingMetal the emphasis will be on creating new music and releasing it to a wider audience. With Infection Music, the priority was always going to be on designing and developing new instruments and the musical side of the business tended to take second place, often a poor second place, behind the instruments. The new structure should help remedy that because the operations are now independant.

The initial focus of the revived label will be to start developing a live set for both Skin Mechanix and T-Bass. We're not really sure if we want to push Ion into the live scene just yet, certainly not until we have a larger body of work down on tape. Once the live sets are in place, we can then start to think about the next batch of releases and, in particular, getting some new material recorded. Both Skin Mechanix and T-Bass are overdue for new albums. The last T-Bass album came out 6 years ago, so this one has priority though we acknowledge that this depends very much on the availability of the artists. Thankfully, SkinMechanix has a huge body of new material available. Clearly, we need to start looking through the archives to see what can be dusted off and polished up.

Why the emphasis on live work? Well, simply because there's so much free music available from sites like MySpace.com and virb.com that it's actually getting difficult to give away our music these days. Live gigs has always been the best way to get a band into the public domain and we honestly believe that it always will be the case. Plus, we feel that once we get these bands used to playing live again then the new material will start to flow naturally.

20-Jul-07 Thinking Metal Web site launched

The Thinking Metal is finally up and running. Early days yet and some of the links don't work properly but we're getting there.

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