RPM Challenge 15 – Day 8

So, the first week is over and I’ve no more finished tracks to share than I had after the first post. However, I do have a pile of stuff on the go and a bulging folder of rough MP3s sat on my hard drive waiting for me to have a listen back. 11 tracks in all as of tonight, although a few of them still need some major work and a bit of judicious editing as well. Here are a couple of the better-sounding ones:

7NM1 (Rough Version)

Jury (Rough Version)

There will be more later on in the week, as tracks get finished. I usually start a great number of tracks in the first week or 10 days and then the ones that show most promise tend to get completed and the others drop by the wayside. Some get finished off later on – but not that many overall. This year, I’ve already started more tracks than I did in the whole of last year’s RPM – I know this as I keep a written record of the whole thing every year, otherwise I’d quickly lose track of what’s going on. At the end this year I may scan some of the pages in and share then, just to illuminate the process slightly…

Getting 2 albums-worth of finished tracks is going to be a challenge however, as I said in the last post. The obvious thing would be an album of more beat-driven stuff and a separate Ambient one – an idea which I’m trying to resist as it’s a little too obvious, even if the tracks come out about 50/50 each way. Still, I’ve got just under 3 weeks yet, so plenty of time to nail it – even if, I discovered yesterday, I’m not going to be about much (if at all) on any of the 3 remaining Saturdays – which means I shall be pulling some late nights and very early mornings in the next week or so.

RPM Challenge 15 – Day 3

Not a great deal to report so far, but it’s still early days yet. I’ve got 12 tracks so far in various stages of completion and – a novelty for so early in the month – one finished track to share.

Switch Space

Of the others, there’s nothing so far that I’d even want to share as demo versions right now. Maybe by the weekend there’ll be something, although there are a few promising ones emerging already.

By my reckoning, for two albums-worth of tracks I’ll be looking at somewhere in the region of 80 to 90 minutes of music as most of my albums normally (by design) come out somewhere about 45 minutes. This is far more than I’ve ever managed in a month before so getting it all done is actually going to be quite a challenge to fit in around everything else I have to do right now. Still, if it means I have to stretch myself a bit then it’s all good. Every year I end up with some stuff that surprises me – even if it’s not always for the better – and I can tell already that this year is going to be no exception.

Here’s my motto for the month:

Catacombs Volume 3

As promised in the last post, Catacombs Volume 3 is now up on Bandcamp – the download page, with full track previews, is HERE – the usual pay-as-much-or-as little-as-you-want applies…

Tracklisting:

1 – Brewing By Arclights – 2:29
2 – The Astrologer In Full – 4:44
3 – A Locked-Room Mystery – 2:29
4 – Storks Fly Into The Night – 7:18
5 – Sleeper Cell Radio – 1:29
6 – Balsa Wood Hills – 3:01
7 – Undecided – 2:01
8 – Travels In One Direction Only (Full-Length Version) – 7:01
9 – Fragile – 4:14
10 – They Had Ventured Into The Forest – 5:03
11 – Leave The Flag – 2:30
12 – Between Two Points – 3:18
13 – Quagga – 3:21
14 – And Then… Nothing Happened – 3:05

The vast majority of these were recorded between 2011 and last year, with Travels… being the extended version of a track that was on the Digital Vomit ambient compilation back in 2010. Sleeper Cell Radio, Balsa Wood Hills and Leave The Flag were all off-cuts from previous RPM projects – which is a roundabout way of saying that this year’s challenge starts on February 1st and I will be posting the usual round of demos and updates on here as the month progresses. This year, just to stretch myself a little bit more, I’m going to attempt to record two albums instead of one. I’ve no idea how this is going to pan out right now – or even if it’s feasible. It may just be that the second ends up being a remix version of the first or just one long track. I do my best not to plan these albums too much in advance as it never turns out the way you expect it to. So it’ll be just as much of a surprise to me as everybody else.

I also couldn’t end this post without mentioning the death last week of Edgar Froese. Now, I’ve mentioned before that I don’t usually remark on the passing of every musician I’ve been influenced by as this blog would most likely consist of nothing else but obituaries, however, Tangerine Dream were one of my favourite bands and have been a massive influence on me ever since I bought a second-hand copy of Rubycon in our local junkshop for £1 when I was 14. So RIP Edgar – and thanks for everything…

Ecfundo Postremus Is Here

The final (well almost) Digital Vomit compilation, serving up 34 tracks of goodness, has landed at Bandcamp:

The link is Here so go and grab it now – you’ll be very glad you did. There’s tracks there from both Thee Crumb and A Plot of Knives.

In other news, I’ve had a change of heart regarding the RPM Challenge, so it looks like I’ll be lining up for the ninth year in a row – although I’m trying to think of a way to stretch myself a bit more this year. I’ll see what I come up with between now and the start of February. And as for the retrospective of the former ones I’ve been promising – well, I’ve decided to let that idea go. I’m not ready for a retrospective of anything just yet. That can wait for twenty years or so maybe…

Despite the imminent demise of Digital Vomit, let me assure you that Startled Okapi! is alive and, well, sort of twitching. A bit. The next thing that will be emerging is the third volume of Catacombs, most likely within a week or two. Certainly before the end of the month.

Here are the obligatory new tracks to round things off:

Beak Of Bronze

Run Aground

New album now available

I’ve just slipped this one out right at the end of November (no, it’s not a Bl*ck Fr*day tie-in before you ask) – it’s now up on Bandcamp as the usual name-your-price download.

The album’s called At The Mountains Of Kong (Startled Okapi! Recordings No. 12) – the bandcamp link is HERE

Tracklisting:

1: Dragon’s Blood
2: Ground Saucer Watch
3: Commercial Break
4: Dromedary
5: Ailodierap
6: A Man Of Paper
7: Stray Dog
8: Mind Like An Eraser
9: Corpus Hermeticum
10: You’ve Got Pitchforks, We’ve Got Antlers
11: The Scroll
12: A City Of Pillars
13: Meet Me On The Thirteenth Floor
14: 224 Oceana

All the tracks can be listened to in full on Bandcamp and I have posted a few of them (four in fact) in earlier posts. Virtually all of these have been sitting about in one form or another since last year – the album was actually put together in January. The Mountains of Kong, in case you were wondering, are – or were if you prefer – a fictitious mountain range long thought to exist (by various European explorers mainly) in the north of what is now modern-day Nigeria. In fact, they were marked as such on some maps right until the end of the 19th century.

In other news, The final (or almost final) Digital Vomit compilation is virtually ready for release – so I’ll be posting more on that when it emerges. I’m starting the process of moving all my DV (and Hallo-Excentrico!) releases across to Bandcamp in the next few months, so keep an eye out for all of them there as they appear. The RPM review series I’ve been promising for a while has been postponed for a bit – until February at least I think. I listened back to the two most recent ones the other night and realized that I had nothing constructive to say about them really, as I need a bit of distance from them before I can comment. So it’ll be happening soon, maybe…

Here’s a couple of new tracks to round this bumper post out:

A Very Small Machine

View From A Low-Flying Aircraft#1

Nonjah Tunes 3

I’ve got a track on this year’s Nonjah Tunes compilation, which came out a week or two back, and which I haven’t had a chance to mention until now. Here’s the write-up and the tracklist:

The third in a series of Dubnihilistic Compilations, the first to be released on Dystopian Dub Discotheque.

Like the previous two volumes which were originally released on Digital Vomit records, all contribution were gathered via an open call and encouraging not only to create interesting music following a loose definition of Dub or Dubnihilism, but even to allow tracks that may go somewhere beyond the fringes of dub to be included, as long as it is in a meaningful way dub-inspired and fits the compilation to create a challenging but entertaining listening experience and contributes to the evolution of Dubnihilism and Fringe-dub.

1.Autonomaton – Atmosphere
2.Thee Crumb – The Torchbearer (1209 Mix)
3.Remote Origin – November
4.Plan x Sonny Blake – Atme
5.Keith Hic – In the centre of the Lucid
6.Tantrumist – Vacationbreak
7.Hardoff – iDubWrong
8. Verbalizer – The House of the Rising Sun Recorded in Russian Taxi on the Phone
9. his Namelessness Is Legion – Babylon via Röcken, Naumburg and Tyburn
10. µ – Collage #3 Think God out of Existence
11.Scrambled Ego – Repetitve Reign Injury
12.Shanks Pony – Chilling with Nixon (how high was he?)
13.DevilMonkey feat Benjamin James Wylie – World Destruction (Timezone cover)
14.Autonomaton – Opera Dub

The whole thing is on Bandcamp – right HERE

Recent Lack Of Activity…

…on here has mainly been due to me having very limited internet access right now – I hope to have this rectified in the next couple of weeks. But you can never tell with things like this – the connection where I currently live has never been great and has a habit of dropping out unexpectedly, and sometimes for long periods. However, once it’s working a bit better I’ll get back to some kind of regular posting schedule.

Because of this, I’ve slipped behind with my RPM reviews – I’d planned to start doing them once the relevent albums were up on Bandcamp but this hasn’t been possible as yet. I also have a new album ready to go too so that’ll be online as and when.

In one piece of news, I have a track lined up to be played at THIS – so if you’re hanging about in a forest somewhere in Galloway next weekend (27/28 September) and you have a radio with you, then you may well get to hear it. It’s previously unreleased, as specified (actually an off-cut from Theda Bara) and, as of now, I’ve no plans to release the track for some time. Possibly it’ll end up on Catacombs 4 – which is currently slated for sometime late 2016… Anyway, all the info is at the link above. There’s quite an extensive and impressive line-up – a bit of a shame that I live right at the other end of the country really.

Here’s some new stuff:

In The Labyrinth

Blur Of Inactivity

July Update

Well, there are one or two things going on at least. First and foremost, Digital Vomit has decided to call it a day – the full statement on Facebook reads:

After almost a decade of existence against all odds, Digital Vomit Records has decided to call it a day. Over 100 releases, over 100 forum members, nearly 500 Facebook likes and almost 200 artists later, we’ve realized that the internet social structure that existed in 2005 does not exist in the same way today, thus making further releases almost impossible. 10 years feels like a perfect milestone for retiring our “label”. Who’d have thought that a project that was once called “fucking retarded” on the old Planet Mu forum would grow into what it did and last this long? A final release is in the works….stayed tuned, and thanks for making DV an awesome little experiment that actually changed a few lives along the way.

Which says just about all there is to say I think. I should mention that there are actually 2 final compilations that are now ongoing, both of which I hope to be contributing to.

This means that, for the foreseeable future at least, any future releases by me or any of my side-projects will be put out via Startled Okapi! (either via Bandcamp or physically) and, although there are no plans right now to shut the DV site down, I shall most likely move all my releases on there across to the Bandcamp page at some point in the future as well. I have quite a backlog of unreleased stuff now, so some of that will be turning up online soon. A third volume of Catacombs is also in the pipeline.

Here are a couple of new tracks:

The Abstract Men

Minotaur

Finally, I haven’t forgotten about my review of my RPM albums – I hope to start that in my next post…

Two more albums now up at Bandcamp

Ok, I knew I said it would only be a week or two – and it turned out to be a month – but they’re up there now. Both Tape Of The Locks and Interiors (Startled Okapi! Recordings No’s 10 and 11 respectively) are now available as name-your-price downloads – so grab them here in the usual range of formats.

There’s plenty of information elsewhere on here about both of these – just scroll down the page a bit for this year’s model or use the RPM category to go back further. I did notice, however, that I neglected to post a full tracklisting for Interiors, so here it is – in all its 37 track glory:

01 The Tomb Of Dido
02 Collector Of Bones
03 Into The Easy Way Out
04 Horizon To Horizon
05 Gone At First Light
06 Enough To Fill A Trunk
07 The Cloth Of The Sun And Moon
08 Winged Helmet
09 When You Come To A Fork In The Road, Take It
10 Tree Of Golden Apples
11 Breakfast Arrangements
12 Gods Of Two Species
13 By The Signpost
14 Random Access
15 Globe And Sceptre
16 From A Stairwell
17 The Smoking Mirror
18 Christian Science Reading Room
19 The Cat’s Purr
20 John Bernard Books
21 In Golden Green
22 Sword Of Mercy
23 Dust Blows Down The Mountain
24 Juxtaposition
25 One Hiding Place to Another
26 Harmonium Piece
27 A Revolver Hidden In A Secret Compartment
28 In Greenish Gold
29 The Astrologer
30 Sign Of The Black Dog
31 Towers Destined To Crumble
32 Only The Names Change
33 The Statue Of The Lion
34 Errors And Corrections
35 Priest Hole
36 Hobgoblins
37 At The Foot Of The Walls

It looks a lot I know, but as there’s nothing there over 1:52 long – and everything can be previewed at Bandcamp – don’t let that long list deter you.

As it seems likely at this point in time that I won’t be recording another RPM album (I’ve done 8 now and there isn’t a great deal of challenge left in it for me to be honest) in the next few months as mentioned a few posts down I’ll start picking my way back through the previous albums and picking out some high (and low) points along with some notes on how they were all made…

Bandcamp updates

As promised, Sometime In The Next Thousand Years and Theda Bara are now up at Bandcamp. The link is here. They are both available as name-your-price downloads. Don’t forget, if you want a physical copy – head over to the Startled Okapi! site where there are still a few of each left.

Next up will be the last 2 RPM Challenge albums – Tape Of The Locks and Interiors – sometime in the next week or two, all being well.

Here’s a couple of new tracks to round the post off:

Life On A Raft

402 Chloë