I don’t usually do album reviews here, but I’m going to make an exception. Enter Calico, by new net label Clear Notice Recordings is a great compilation of unsigned electronica artists. That maybe nothing new in itself, but the label’s inception has been interesting and I’ve watched it unfold online for the last few months.
Clear Notice came about almost entirely through Twitter. Kieron James, the man behind Clear Notice, organized the whole release online. Not only are the artists discovered through Twitter, but the album mastering and artwork were done by Twitter contacts and, just for added value, Keiron organized a video for each song on the album (through Twitter again!). Check this stunning example for Tricil’s track “The Emancipation” by Burning Head.
The music itself is all important of course and it is a great album. There are some exceptional tunes here. David McSherry’s “U?+”, alka’s “sOMn ambulance”, tricil’s “The Emancipation”, rktic’s “nordic walking” and Tapage’s “Wounds” were all highlights for me and could easily be mistaken for songs by artists such as Chemical Brothers, Plaid, Orbital or Aphex Twin.
So if you want to support music and artists at grass roots, grab a copy of Enter Calico. It’s £7.99 from Bandcamp and should be available on iTunes within a few days. I recommend.
I’ve been spending some time recently creating Max For Live controllers for all my hardware. The beauty of this is you can program a dedicated editor, with patch browsing, in whatever configuration suits you and have all parameters available for automation within Live. It means you can forget about what midi controller number does what on your synth and concentrate on making music. Read more…
I’ve been a big fan of Ableton Live ever since switching from another host a couple of years ago. Learning a new DAW host can be a challenge, and take some serious time. Here’s 5 things that will help any user speed up workflow. Read more…
I put up a bunch of session recordings I made with my modular. I’ve put them on Soundcloud for anyone to plunder. Feel free to download, chop them up and use them in your music. Creative Commons license applies. Read more…
My first little Max4Live project. A monophonic midi step sequencer.
On the surface it’s reasonably standard. It’s a grid based sequencer – notes, gate, tie, velocity and two control changes. What’s unique about it is that you can set different loop points for each of those elements, which allows for anything from simple 303-style basslines to endlessly evolving, rotating, mutating melody lines. Read more…
Posted
on December 21st, 2009. Category: gear 8 comments
The Innerclock Sync-Lock is a small box that provides a solution. Getting rock solid midi clock & din sync from your DAW.
The problem is that PCs and MACs have notoriously shakey midi timing. If you’ve never noticed this, you probably don’t need a Sync Lock, but if you’ve ever been frustrated by the midi clock coming out of your DAW then read on. Read more…
This is jammed live entirely in Ableton Live’s Session view using an APC40 and an MPK49 for midi control. It was a bit of an experiment in the art of ‘dub techno’. I’m not a big label fan but I was particularly inspired by Deepchord Presents Echospace – The Coldest Season, a wonderful chill-out album. Read more…
Posted
on November 26th, 2009. Category: gear 0 comments
Ever since I packed up my Atari ST and bought a PC, I’ve had this nagging feeling that the midi on my PC/Mac/DAW has been sloppy. I packed up that Atari over 10 years ago, and I’ve owned many PCs and Macs since then, not to mention many different midi interfaces and external synthesizers, drum machines, samplers and sequencers. They ALL exhibited the same custard-like timing. Read more…
Months ago, my good friend Oli from Groove Criminals sent me this rather charming circuit bent Realistic Reverb unit. I completely forgot to post it here, and it serves as a good tester for embedding youtube clips into the blog, which I’m amazed I haven’t done before. Read more…
I haven’t had a great deal of time to play yet, but initial thoughts are that it oozes analogue character. The oscillators have an insane range (something like 15 octaves). The filters are clean, but very nice sounding. The envelopes could be a little longer, and I can’t for the life of me work out how you reset LFOs, but hell – I’m on a learning curve and it’s all good. Read more…
Clear Notice came about almost entirely through Twitter. Kieron James, the man behind Clear Notice, organized the whole release online. Not only are the artists discovered through Twitter, but the album mastering and artwork were done by Twitter contacts and, just for added value, Keiron organized a video for each song on the album (through Twitter again!). Check this stunning example for Tricil’s track “The Emancipation” by Burning Head. 
