25-Jul-07: Thinking Metal

The Thinking Metal site went live last week and it's now fully tied in to the rest of the Infection Music site. It just links to the existing pages but, over the next couple of weeks, I'll add to it and give it an identity and scope of its own.

It's hard to imagine that it's 13 years since the inception of Thinking Metal. I remember the moment quite clearly - a Wednesday morning, sat at my desk, surrounded on all sides by bored individuals just going through the motions until the weekend drinking spree could begin again.

However, I wasn't bored. Not at all. I was sitting in front of a brand new Silicon Graphics R4000 Elan Workstation. No idea what that is? Okay, think of the machines that made the CGI Dinosaurs in Jurrasic Park. A big, fast graphics workstation. At the time, they were cutting edge. By today's standards, they look kinda lame. Anyway, my workstation, which had the rather anonymous name of node_050, was linked to a local network of around 70 other workstations and then, worldwide, to the whole Caterpillar network. It was possible, from my humble desk in Peterlee, to jump from one machine to another and then another and then another, and eventually circumnavigate the planet from the comfort of a single telnet session. Remember, this is before the web really took off so it was quite a thrill in those days though I doubt that Caterpillar IT Security would have been quite so thrilled at these exploits. Hey, this was a brave new world and all of us nerds had just been given a brand new sandpit to explore. What did they honestly expect us to do?

But I digress.

The name Thinking Metal comes from a line in a Gary Numan song entitled "God Only Knows" and it goes something like:

"I've seen surrounded, for hours..."

"by the sound of thinking metal..."

...and this tune had been stuck in my brain for a couple of hours with that lyric repeating over and over. 'Thinking Metal'. The idea of being surrounded by intelligent machines was quite appealing. I often viewed my work collegues in a similar way. Each seemed to be following their own rather vague and somewhat nebulous program towards... what? Material wealth? A family life? I don't know. I don't think I even stopped to ask. That sounds cruel and arrogant and, actually, it is. That's the kind of person I was in those days. Cruel and arrogant, driven by an ego running at full steam and completely out of control.

'Thinking Metal...Thinking Metal', the words ran over and over in my head until finally they just locked home and Thinking Metal was born. It struck me that Thinking Metal might perhaps work as a genre title for a more thoughtful form of heavy metal guitar music but in the end, I adopted the name simply because I liked it rather than because the name was of any intentional significance.

Thinking Metal produced 2 discs, 3 concerts and a transatlantic law suite in its short life. The discs were The Infection of Time and Connexion, both released under my adopted name of T-Bass UK and the law suite was with the management of the original Tranquility Bass, who were a little upset at my appropriation of their band name. Ahem. The lawsuite came to nothing once we agreed to change the band name to T-Bass UK but whatever happened to Mike Kandell of Tranquility Bass? I don't think he's even recording anymore.

I killed Thinking Metal after our disasterous concert at the Alfa Concert in 1999. Everything I'd tried to do had come undone. My ego had trampled over everything and everyone in its path. I was utterly and completely convinced that I was right and everyone else was wrong. I still lie awake at nights and wonder just how much those stupid decisions cost us, cost me, and not just in financial terms either. What was the damage done in terms of my relationship with the band members and in establishing the band itself as a musical entity. I have some idea and it isn't a pretty picture.

But now Thinking Metal is back and the world is a better place, for me at least. It's my baby again and it's time to see if I can make a better job of bringing it up this time around.

 19-Jul-07: Library discs II

The library compilation project continues. I found a DAT tape last night with around 50 minutes of ambient noodling/sequences and I have absolutely no recollection of recording them whatsoever. A few sections sounded good, very good, but most of it was, frankly, a load of rubbish and that's being kind.

I also found a long-lost guitar track I put together a couple of years ago. No real guitar - just samples - but it sounded fairly convincing, apart from the drums, which sound like your standard Roland rock drum kit. That's because they are your standard Roland rock drum kit. I really need to get the drum sounds updated before the next project begins.

We now have at least one other muso who wants to join the library project. This is good.

We're nearly sold out of the first batch of Future Forever discs. This is good.

 16-Jul-07: Library discs

I sat down on Saturday afternoon with a blank sheet of paper and a collection of my CD's. I also switched on the VAIO so I had access to all of the temporary files I've recorded in the year or so since this machine turned up in the studio. I then started to work out which tracks fell into one of three categories - keyboard, space/ambient and modern/dance. 20 minutes later and I'd compiled two lists, each with around 20 titles on it. These tracks will form the basis of our library disc project.

Why a library disc? Well, a long time ago, when I suddenly found myself without a job, I sat down and made a list of all of those jobs that I'd like to do but somehow never got around to them. The library disc project was one of them. I sent a couple of discs off to DeWolfe on the recommendation of a couple of friends involved with the company but heard nothing more. I also sent discs off to a couple of librarian sites we came into contact with as part of the E-Commerce Awards but they rejected everything they heard too. Finally, we submitted a disc to http://www.dorec/com but they seem to have disappeared without trace.

So, it would be fair to say that our library disc project was not a massive success. Quite simply, I put the project to one side and forgot all about it.

However, a few weeks ago, I started to think about resurrecting the plan and the cataloguing process was the first piece of the puzzle. Once that was complete, I felt sufficiently confident to buy the domain name http://www.Thinking Metal.co.uk, which will be the banner for the whole adventure. The next step is to produce some pilot web pages so that we can establish the look and feel of the company and then we'll start sending out samples of our work on CD.

I've made this sound easy but I know that it will be anything but. Frankly, it will be bloody hard work but I think it will succeed.

 12-Jul-07: Shock

Last Wednesday, Jules came home from work and we do what any normal couple does at the end of the working day - we talk about the events of the day, address any problems which need a quick fix and then slide out of our work clothes and into something more comfortable. The day had been fairly uneventful so we were just casually winding down and wondering what to cook for dinner when we heard something unusual going on in the kitchen. Probably just Reo raiding the kitchen worktops I figured. It happens all the time.

I went downstairs and turned the corner into the kitchen and... was met by the sight of Charlie, our male Dalmatian playing hide the sausage with one of our bitches, Dodie.

Now, Charlie has been seen to, to use a polite euphemism. In other words, he's been castrated. Absolutely the last thing on the planet I want is any more Dalmatian puppies on the loose. The house has barely recovered from the last lot 4 years ago.

Worse still, Charlie and Dodie were now tied together and both of them were very, very uncomfortable.

Although this is normal in dogs, it often catches the inexperienced by surprise. What happens is this... the male dog mounts the female, doggie style, does his bit and then attempts to slide out. The bitch usually has other ideas and, to improve the chances of conception, clamps her vaginal muscles around the male's penis to prevent the dog leaving the scene of the crime. When this happens, the dogs are said to be tied together and they remain tied until the bitch relaxes her vaginal muscles allowing the male to exit. This can take a while, usually around 5 to 10 minutes, sometimes as long as 20 minutes though, in the worst possible case, they can get locked together and an emergency trip to the vet is then required to pull them apart.

In most cases, the dogs stand back-to-back and wait for the bitch to relax. Inexperienced or highly strung bitches can find this distressing and so they make a lot of noise, usually painful cries or wimpering. Inexperienced or highly strung owners can also find this disturbing, especially if the bitch appears to be in pain. Mostly, the dogs don't have a clue about what's going on and Charlie is pretty clueless at the best of times so nobody was enjoying this much, least of all yours truly.

Guys, think about this. The dog's penis is trapped and he has no control over it. The bitch's vaginal muscles are so arranged that the dog can't lose his erection and any guy who has suffered from the hour-long boner syndrome will know what this feels like. (This is, incidentally, why I hated German at school because, for some reason, it always happened during German lessons. This is all the more wonderous when you consider that our German teacher, Ms. Croft, was ahem, aesthetically-challenged - is a polite way of saying that she looked like she'd lost a battle with a sandblasting machine. Poor gal, she was so poorly paid that she couldn't afford a little shampoo either.

But I digress.

It gets worse for the dog. If the bitch turns completely back-to-back then the dog's crank is a full 180 degrees from its normal position and this, in no uncertain terms, causes the poor dog some considerable distress.

Imagine this. You're stuck inside a bitch who won't let you go. The bitch is screaming the house down. You have a boner you can't get rid of and now it's being forcefully dragged around the wrong way. To really makes matter worse, your clandestine liason now has an audience, a somewhat disapproving audience too. I felt sorry for Charlie. I really did.

I grabbed Charlie by his collar, Jules grabbed Dodie and we held them in place until Dodie let go. One should also note that, at the same time, I had a saucepan of white sauce on the cooker. Hence, I had to hold Charlie in one hand and attempt to stir the sauce with the other, quite an acrobatic feat if there ever was one. And don't forget, all the while this is going on, there's the thought in our minds that "What if we can't get these two apart? Can we get them to the vet in the back of the car?".

Eventually, Dodie released poor old Charlie's Charlie and they parted. Dodie disappeared into the garden to talk about the whole episode with her sister, Pooh, who, as far as we know, has not enjoyed the pleasure of Charlie's company in the Biblical sense. Jules and I just heaved a sigh of relief and tried to cook what was left of the dinner. The white sauce was spoiled and the potatoes had caught on. Bugger.

What about the great Lethario himself? He just went back to his bed with a very, very painful dick and a very, very guilty look on his face, as if to say "It's not my fault. I was only doing what nature instructed...".

Whoever said "It's a dog's life..."?

 10-Jul-07: Number One

Scott Raymond of WVKR, a North American Radio Station, mailed me his list of Top 20 EM records for June 2007 and I was pretty thrilled to see that Ion's Future Forever had snagged the number one position. Future Forever has now received more airplay than any of my other discs and yet, paradoxically, it also has the lowest sales of any of my discs. That's odd and makes me wonder what is going on in the world of electronic music.

I also received two requests to release "Tea rooms" or "Species 1" as it is now known. I'm still not convinced that this is a good idea, mainly because I feel that the ideas therein have not been properly developed. I think it hangs together fairly well and that I achieved my goals but Jules just doesn't get the long ambient passages and this is flashing up alarm bells. It's a sign that I may have strayed too far off the beaten track or just disappeared up my arse. Mmmm....

Saturday was an adventure. Neither of us wanted to watch the Live Earth event mostly because I think it's sick and truly hypocritical for a bunch of pop stars to lecture Joe Public on climate change when they spend 90% of their coke-fuelled lives jetting between their many houses and mansions on every fucking continent. Scientists, environmentalists, even stoned-up hippies, have been warning the governments and the general population of the planet for the past 40 years that, as a species, we're consuming too much of the earth's resources at a rate we can't sustain to feed a population we can't sustain. And yet, only now, when it's possibly too late to do anything, do we start to heed the warnings. The real word is ludicrous.

Anyway, I digress.

On Saturday, we spent the evening in Durham. It was a pleasure to simply wander along deserted river banks as the sun slowly disappeared behind the cathedral. We finished off the evening with a visit to one of England's most haunted pubs, The Shakespeare and, after that, home. We spent a grand total of £3.60. So much for binge-drinking, eh?

Yesterday, I took ZEIT down to an equity company in Newcastle. We want to grow the business, to get more sequencers out into the field and we also want to develop new instruments. Convertible equity is one way of doing it i.e. a lender gives you a certain amount of cash as a loan, which you then convert into shares in your company. Sounds simple, doesn't it? But is this really the way to go? Do I really want a third party company pawing over my books and having a look through my intellectual property? Would you? Is this what I have to do to grow my business? It seems so.

 03-Jul-07: Irritation

Something has been irritating me of late, a nasty little itch that proved difficult to locate, never mind scratch. After much careful thought and consideration, I figured out that it was the demo disc I put together last week, "From the Tea-rooms of Mars..."

Why? Well, I think it was the title - yet another enigmatic reference with a science fiction theme. In truth, the title, theme and content had little or nothing to do with the references, which were obscure and almost certainly irrelevant. Personally, they began to feel like someone indulging in a spot of intellectual masterbation, someone possible in danger of disappearing up his own arse. Again.

Frankly, I've been bored with the whole science fiction thing since I put together the lecture Science Friction for Newcastle Astronomical Society last year. Since those entries are no longer on-line, I'll explain here that I used the lecture to highlight the impact of bad science fiction on the public's perception of science and scientists and much of the science fiction we see in the cinema or on TV is staggeringly bad from the point of view of the physicist. So why, I ask, did I give the disc a science fiction theme?

I really don't know.

In short, I looked at the cover artwork and realised it was yet another CGI rendering of yet another fantasy location, which had nothing whatsoever to do with the music. Whilst I was attempting to create a couple of atmospheric pieces that would fit into the space music genre, the titles and graphics just looked and felt hollow, empty and meaningless.

Instead, I decided to trust my instinct. I found a couple of alternate images from the net which were a better match for what I had in mind and, after only a few minutes, came up with some new artwork and a new title. Here it is...

The disc is called Species 1 , because it is (hopefully) the first in an on-going series of demos. I'm happy with this. I know it works because the itch has gone and I have learned to always trust my itches. This one has been scratched.

Again, Species 1 is just a work in progress. Some of these tracks will appear on future releases and some won't. I've talked about them here to show that, contrary to popular belief, I'm still working on new material and still experimenting and evolving the sound.

 02-Jul-07: Sex and the City. Not.

Of course, not long after I left the house on Saturday night, the heaven's opened. I was about midway between the venue and home and so I had a simple choice. I could either continue on towards the gig and stand, soaked to the skin, listening to a band or return to a nice warm house and some dry clothing. Being an idiot and intent on suffering for one's art, I opted for the gig, which just proves what a complete knob I am.

My second gig in a week. Not bad, eh?

Alas, this will be my last soujourn to this particular venue, for reasons which will become apparent as this missive expands.

The band were awful. I won't give the name of the venue or the name of the band because I don't want to upset anybody. My opinion isn't important and, frankly, I want to avoid another load of well-deserved bile flooding my In-Box again, as was the case following one of my previous gig reviews.

First and foremost, the band on stage were not the band advertised. The band I had gone to see had cancelled, apparently, which was annoying but is just part of the joys of going to gigs these days. Secondly, instead of doing something new and innovative, their replacements stuck to the same tired collection of rock standards as most naff covers bands. This band had no soul, no passion, no energy. Mostly, they just stood there looking frightened. First gig nerves? I don't know. I don't care. They were okay for a Saturday night pub band but that's about it. I stuck it out, mostly because it was still raining outside and there was no beer at home.

When you compare and contrast this gig with My Latest Gadget the previous week, it's easy to see why I was disappointed. My Latest Gadget were stunning, even for a covers band. Not only was their playing precise and their sound exceptional, their energy was infectious and their (female) lead singer made me wish that I was 10 years younger and 20 pounds lighter.

What made the experience truly less than enjoyable was the arrival of a Beer Queer in our midst.

When I was 13, I developed a crush on a girl in my class called Janet Peddar. Man, I had the hots for her. In my teenage mind, she was the perfect woman for me - attractive, clever and witty whereas I was spotty, thick, inarticulate and (most importantly) broke - not much has changed in 32 years, has it? - but that didn't deter me. Janet was the girl of my dreams and I followed her around school like a lost little puppy dog... until l drove the poor girl nuts. Eventually, she asked me to go away and when I declined, she kicked me squarely in the love spuds, which was richly deserved because I had become the most repulsive thing on the planet - a sex pest.

Ms. Peddar taught me an important lesson. Being trailed around by a sex pest is no fun. And chicks have to deal with sex pests all the time because some guys just don't get the message and won't go away. I'm sure that Jules feels the same way about me sometimes too.

So, here I am, stood in the pub, soaked from head to foot and wishing the rain would stop long enough for me to get home without catching pnemonia when I realise that I have attacted the attentions of a Beer Queer. To those who don't know what a beer queer is, simply put, it is a male of the species who is outwardly a normal hetrosexual. However, once he gets a skinfull of ale inside his gut, his sexual orientation switches from passive hetrosexual to aggresive homosexual.

Now, I'm not kidding myself here. I am no longer what you would consider a prize specimen. (Was I ever?) I am a scruff. A mess. I make Baldrick's Dad look like Tony Bennett. Jules maintains that I 'brush up nicely' when the occasion demands but that doesn't happen very often these days and I think she's being overly generous anyway.

And this guy keeps watching me. The penny dropped when I realised he was with three of the most unattractive females on the planet - the local term for such specimens is munter or, occasionally, munt. This term is derived from the word man and an anglo-saxon word for the female genitalia, which I will not print here because it's not a word I like to use. The thing with your average munt is that it is difficult, if not impossible to determine the sex of the said individual. And this lot were particularly good examples of your typical munter. Actually, they look like extras from a Clive Barker novel.

I need to take a leak... and the guy follows me to the toilet. He tries to make eye contact. He starts to talk to me - about the weather. Any ladies reading this missive might not know of the unspoken rules of the Gentleman's Toilet but, top of this list, is that one never makes eye contact with one's fellows whilst pointing percy at the porcelain. Unless, of course, one is a member of the Hetton and Houghton Rugby Club where it is very rare to find someone actually peeing in a urinal anyway. They prefer to pee in eachother's pockets, handbags, drinks or against the front wall of the local Police Station etc. To members of HHRC, a urinal is the place where you find a new cigarette butt and those little yellow discs make such an interesting auderve.

There are other unspoken rules of the Gent's Toilet. For instance, one must always lower one's voice by at least an octave so that one appears as manly as possible. One must also adopt the personality of < em>Andy Capp, by making one's Geordie accent as thick and impenetrable as possible, primarily as a means of bonding with one's fellows but also to confuse any outsiders unfamiliar with the accent. Also, one must inject as many profanities into one's conversation as possible, preferably so that the original intention and meaning of the sentence becomes vague and obscure. Finally, if one is not discussing football or the recent changes on the board at say, Sunderland AFC or Newcastle United FC, then one must ensure that one discusses the size of the barmaid's breasts or the likelyhood of copping off with the filly of your choice, or her fat mate, whichever is most likely.

One does not discuss the weather unless, of course, one is over 60 and/or your wife is standing next to you at the urinal, which given the number of total munters in this part of the world, is highly likely.

I left the toilet quickly but that didn't deter the beer queer. He followed me to the bar, where he ordered a couple of drinks and gave me a smile and knowing wink. Oh fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck off!!!!

I found somewhere else to stand in the pub, comfortably out of his way. But there he was smiling, fondly, in my direction. I found another place but, alas, there he was again. Oh bollocks! Now I know how Janet Peddar felt.

I downed what was left of my drink and waited until he was locked in discourse with one of the ugly sister's. Without much ado, I slid quietly through the back door, which come to think of it, was probably what he wanted to do to me. Awwwwwww......!!!!!!

I went home by another route and amused myself by wondering what the Universe was trying to tell me. I decided that it was attempting to let me know that going to shitty pubs to watch even shittier covers bands doing crap renditions of songs you've heard a gazillion times whilst being trailed by someone intent on committing an act for which both parties would burn in eternal hellfire was not a good way to spend one's Saturday night.

I will heed this warning when I venture forth again, later this week.