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| 15 March 2005: Chris Cutler asked me if I'd do the remastering of Slapp Happy's Acnalbasac Noom, so I did. We used the original 1/4 master tapes (baked and transferred by SAE Mastering) and the result is nearer to the sound of the master tapes than was the vinyl, and especially much better than the existing CD. The master tapes of the four "bonus tracks" (Everybody's Slimmin', Blue Eyed William, Karen, and Messages) no longer exist, so I had to use the versions from the existing ReR CD, and was able to take away some of the brittleness and over-compensation of high frequencies due to those old generation digital transfers. Next will be a few days mixing of the LMC's "Feedback Tour" recorded last summer by EM Thomas, and then my old pal Mike Johnson arrives for a couple days visit, so I'll just be hanging around with him and eating pizza etc. Then in April I'll finish up Songs for Adults (see October entry below.) And now, my latest solo album The Shunned Country (english - français) is available from ReR USA, and in Europe from ReR, and/or your favorite "vendor". |
| February 27 2005: My latest solo album The Shunned Country (english - français) is now available from ReR USA, and in Europe from ReR, and/or your favorite "vendor". |
| February 14 2005: For the past several weeks I have been mixing a new album by The Rude Staircase. It is their first, and I think it's bloody great. Very dense songs with guitars, drums, bass, saxophone, trombone, trumpet, tuba, violin, piano, cello, xylophone, synthesizer, Theremin, etc etc etc...lots of singing...some vaguely "Americana" vibe...and doesn't sound like any other band I am aware of. I expect I'll be working on this exclusively for another two weeks or so. |
| December 23 mini-update: Here are a couple excerpts from my new album "The Shunned Country", which will be available in mid February. In english or en français. (la page, pas la musique!) |
| December 2004: Vialka was here for a week to record a new album. After recording they went off for a few gigs in Spain while I worked on the mix for another week or so. They were happy with it and plan to release it as soon as January 2005. I've put the "Songs for Adults" (see October entry below) mixing on a back burner for a while until I can really concentrate on it for a good solid two or three weeks. Probably early next year. Miriodor was happy with the mix I did of their Nearfest show and it will be released by Cuneiform sometime next year, watch the Cuneiform website for news about that.A couple members of The Rude Staircase will be coming here in January 2005, we'll be mixing their new album. This has been the busiest year yet. I've done lots more stuff than I was able to keep up with on this news page. Now, I am quite ready to spend a week or two "doing nothing": drawing and painting, going through my 35 years worth of home cassette recordings looking for things worth archiving, re-organising my various websites, things like that. |
The Songs for Adults crew. Click for larger view and identification of persons. 
Me during the recording of the drumtrack for "The Persecuting Engine", a song on my new album "The Shunned Country". Click for bigger pic.
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| October 2004: Finished my new solo album, entitled The Shunned Country. 52 pieces of music, mostly under a minute and many of 20 - 30 seconds. Adds up to 40:15 of rather highly concentrated stuff. I am very happy about it. Release date Spring 2005 by ReR. I will put up some mp3s when the release date is near. That was quite a project, I think I put more work into this one and had more fun doing it than any of my solo albums thus far...though I always have a fun time doing them...And now I have the idea for the next album and have already started on it...more news about that later. Finished recording a full albums worth of material entitled "Songs for Adults" with James Grigsby (guitar and organ), David Kerman (drums), Jerry Wheeler (lead vocal and trombone), and me on bass, harmony vocals, and a couple short solos on guitar and synth. The songs were written by James and arranged by the group here at my studio. We recorded the basic tracks live and did quite a few overdubs all in a 5-day session. We had a GREAT time doing it. I'll get to mixing it later this year and probably will be released on ReRUSA early next year or sometime. Currently I am mixing a live album by Miriodor, recorded at Nearfest in 2002. That's coming along nicely and will be released by Cuneiform sometime next year, watch the Cuneiform website for news about that. |
| Sept 2004: Mostly I've been working on my new solo album "The Shunned Country". Now up to 33 minutes...the end is in sight...it's "interesting" when it takes two or three new songs to add one more minute to your album. So "interesting" that I think my next album will consist of fewer, longer songs. In October I'll be recording a set of songs with David Kerman, James Grigsby and Jerry Wheeler. Written by James and entitled "Songs for Adults", Dave will be drumming, James on guitar and keyboard, Jerry on brass instruments and lead vocals, me on bass and harmony vocals. We will record the basic tracks live here in the big room, add some overdubs and mix. |
| Early August 2004: I've been working on my new solo album which will be entitled "The Shunned Country". So far 42 songs, adding up to 28 minutes... Dutch trio Coolhaven arrives tomorrow, we'll spend a week or so mixing their new album. So besides that and the possible as-yet-unforseen session, I'll be working on my new one for the rest of the summer/autumn. |
| July 2004: Susanne Lewis was here for the last half of June and we recorded 17 songs for our new Hail album. I'm mixing it now, should be finished by mid July. Expected release late 2004/early 2005; I'll put some clips on the site once the time draws near. At the right is an actual photo of me adding a last-minute tamborine track to one of the songs, with a small wolf on my left shoulder just like all the great tamborinists of the world have always done. |
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| June 2004: Susanne Lewis is here and we are recording a new Hail album. We have two songs finished as of tonight, one per day so far...we are happy with the process and the result so far! Just the two of us again this time: I play drums and bass, Susanne plays guitar and keyboards and sings. As of this moment I have no idea who if anyone will release it, I'll keep you posted. Once we finish the Hail album in early July I'll get back to work on my next solo album. This one, another "horror" album, is taking a long time. Coming up with 50 or 60 songs of under a minute is really...well I can't think of an adjective...but I am enjoying the process "immensely", and I have 37 songs done so far which equals 25 minutes. (Yes there are a couple epic-length tunes of 50 seconds to one minute in there as well, and one song of nearly 4 minutes, but the majority will be very short.) Upcoming recording sessions this summer include Will Menter and maybe Blast (info about them at ReR and Cuneiform)I probably forgot something else too. |
| May 2004: I'm mixing the live Thinking Plague album. Back on June 18, 2000, Thinking Plague's performance at Nearfest was recorded on 16 tracks. Now, it's tough getting stuck trying to make a good "album quality" mix with tracks which were mic'ed and eq'd etc for a gig and not specifically for a recording...but still, it's sounding damn good. In addition, I'm not "fixing" anything: no reverb except the real ambience of the hall, no overdubs, no pitch-correction, no slipping a track to be more in time, none of that "cheating" stuff. My goal is to get a good balance and make sure it's all as clear as can be under the less than ideal recording circumstances of a festival gig. SO...Anyone who attended and enjoyed the concert, and/or any fans of this particular chapter of the group's career should love this album! I don't know when it is expected to be released but I think later this year. Back in April, aside from lots of things I must have forgotten, I sang on a little tune which will be on the album currently in progress by Dave Willey, Hugh Hopper, Deborah Perry, Mike Johnson, and maybe includes some other people I can't remember...and mixed by Mark Fuller. I don't know anything else about this project so that's all I can tantalize you with for now. |
| March 2004: Nearly finished the mixing of Swiss group Whats Wrong With Us new album. See their website for some photos made during the session in February. Finished remastering Henry Cow/Slapp Happy's Desperate Straights. Like the remastering of the Art Bears albums I did last year, this is a vast improvement over the existing CD and truer to the master tapes than the vinyl was. I was not able to do much for the album's last track "Caucasian Lullaby", which has a lot of hiss and hum. Due to all those extremely long and low-level sustaining piano strings fading to "silence", (or rather slowly disappearing into the background noise) even removing a few dB's worth of background noise ended up eventually coloring the tails of those low-level sustaining chords too much. So in my opinion it was better to leave the noise rather than cause subtle changes in those sustaining chords which after all are one of the signatures of the piece. |
| February 2004: Just finished a two week session recording an interesting Swiss group called Whats Wrong With Us. Soon I will be getting the masters of Henry Cow/Slapp Happy's "Desperate Straights" - another old favorite of mine - which I will remaster for the "definitive" CD re-release. Also soon I expect to get the tracks of Thinking Plague live at Nearfest (or is it Progfest? Progday? Nearday?) which I will be mixing this Spring, for release later this year I presume. And now, looking into the future....... Susanne Lewis and I have scheduled time in June to work on a new Hail album. In July, my old friend Mark Fuller arrives and we plan to record something. Later in the summer/early autumn: I will spend finishing my new solo album, I love those hot quiet late summer evenings in the garden coming up with song ideas watching the dusk on the hills, the afternoon's heat radiating from the garden walls, the sage, lavender, rosemary and cistus and jasmine and thyme emmitting their perfumes. So I suppose release date for this one would be Spring 2005. |
| December 2003: My friend Mark Fuller ordered me to update this page because it was two months behind, and lo, not only was he correct, but lo once again, I have done so. Mostly working on my new as yet untitled solo album. Expected release date September 2004. The new Science Group album Spoors was released in November, as well as Effigies in Cork by Vril. The December issue of Exposé magazine includes an interview with me, so if you always wanted to know what my favorite color is, what kind of shoelaces I prefer, why I put that giant effigy of a rat on the roof, whose mummified head is spiked on the hood of my kayak which I converted into a small plane, and much much more, now is your chance! |
| October 2003: Finished the remastering of the Homosexuals, and now just completing the remastering of all the Art Bears albums. There is no doubt these will be the "definitive" versions of the Art Bears on CD, the sound quality is excellent and detailed. The analog master mix tapes were transferred fastidiously to 24 bit digital format using one of the current top quality A/D converters. Those who love these albums will be happy to know I have NOT compressed, treble-boosted, de-hissed, bass-enhanced, or any of those other things that generally alter the character of the sound too much. All the work I have done is extremly subtle, to bring out detail and dynamics and atmosphere...because I am one of those people who loved this stuff when it first came out and don't want to change the character of the original. In a few weeks the new Science Group album, entitled Spoors, will be released on ReR (See July 2003 entry for the lineup.) At
the same time also from ReR there will be an instrumental album by me, Lukas Simonis and Chris Cutler (see July 02 below). This is in a more "pop-ish" vein but with enough of a
twist. We never did come up with song titles, or a band name, so we asked the fabulous Frank Key to take over that department. He not only
named the band Vril, and entitled the album Effigies in Cork, but he also titled all the songs, wrote "extensive liner notes", and did the cover and booklet art. We are happy. FYI: The
word vril was coined by Victorian author Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton to describe an all-purpose "mysterious life force" used
by his characters. Lytton is not only known for his "turgid Victorian prose", but also for being the originator of the opening line "It was a dark and stormy night". |
| September 2003: Late in August I recorded 8 songs for my next album. That may sound like a respectable number of songs for a solo performer to record in a short period of time, but consider that most of them are 15-20 seconds duration...my current plan is to do 30 or 40 extremely short songs, plus a few "normal" length tunes, including some banjo songs, all with a sort of rural horror theme. Currently I am working on remastering lots of tracks by The Homosexuals for a new ReR CD release. I hadn't heard this group until now and I think it's great stuff! (done in the early 80's). Also at the moment Chris Cutler is here and we will be compiling the tracks for an Art Bears "remix" album. This is a lot of tracks remixed/edited/reconstructed by dozens of different people including me, Jon Rose, Fred Frith, Tom Dimuzio, Anne Gosfield, Biota, Jocelyn Robert, and lots of others. If you know and enjoy the Art Bears you may find this fun and interesting to listen to. This month I will also be remastering the original two-track mixes of the three Art Bears albums for "the definitive" CD release. If you like these albums you may have noticed the CD versions don't sound so good... In late August Dick (El Demasiado) Verdult was here and we recorded some tunes for his next album. Here is a nice photo he took of me while I was recording a guitar part on one of the songs. (Click to enlarge)  Later in September I will be recording a percussion duo led by Alexander Babel. In October I plan to get back to working on my new album, letting those dusty, fragrant, delicious, haunting October vibes seep in. |
| July 2003: Recorded the drums and bass for the Towering Inferno project. The drummers were David Kerman and Chris Cutler and I played bass. This inspired Dave and I to think about doing a new album together soon, we had forgotten what a solid rhythm section we make and just how well we work together... Mixed a project by Dominique Lentin (couldn't find a specific website to link here, but if you google him you'll find tons of stuff) and Adrea Martignoni. Finished mixing the new Science Group album. (Info about our first album here.) I am very happy about the way this one turned out! The lineup: Stevan Tickmayer: Compositions, keyboards, sampling and virtual instruments. Chris Cutler: Drums Mike Johnson: Guitars Bob Drake: Bass, a bit of guitar, an even smaller bit of Solina organ, and drums on one song. |
| June 2003: I'm mixing the new Science Group album. The violinist, Pedja Milosavljevic, had to cancel his session because he's perpetually too busy for the forseeable future...c'est la vie. So I played a few of the parts originally intended for violin on guitar and Stevan will play some on synth or organ or something. I'll be finished with the mix and mastering in a few weeks and hopefully it will be released later this year. I think Stevan's Cold Peace Counterpoints, on which I played some guitar, bass, and drums, will also be released later this year finally at the same time as the new Science Group...I'll keep you posted. Towering Inferno arrive here in mid-June for a recording session which will consist of David Kerman and Chris Cutler playing drums and percussion, something for the upcoming new TI album. |
| April 2003: Recorded a few more bass parts for David Kerman's upcoming album. Again I just played whatever I wanted, without having heard any of the rest of the music, and then emailed them my tracks with no idea of if or how they are going to use, or what the rest of the music is like. I did 2 mixes for the upcoming Art Bears special re-release, more news about that soon. Mostly this spring and summer I plan to play my banjo a lot and come up with some songs for a new album which I'll start recording later this year. I am also starting to imagine doing some live performances next year, with a duo or trio. I imagine electric and acoustic guitars, banjo, maybe a little strange percussion and ???, vocals through a little guitar amp, something like that. No definite ideas yet about who the other members might be yet. I'll be mixing the new Science Group album this summer too. (see November entry below) |
| Feb 2003: My latest album 13 Songs and a Thing is released. Finished the Drake/Cutler/Simonis instrumental album (see July entry below for more details) which will be released late this year on ReR. Now I'm coming up with some musical ideas for my next solo album which will be based around my lovely new banjo. |
| November 02: A group formerly of NYC, most of whose members now reside in Holland, World of Tomorrow stopped by for a quick 2 day recording session whilst on their European tour. Otherwise this month I'm spending most of my time working on the Drake/Cutler/Simonis instrumental album (see July entry below.) Fred Frith, who was scheduled to play on the new Science Group album, has had to cancel his involvement due to other engagements. Mike Johnson of Thinking Plague has agreed to do it in January 2003. |
| October 02: It's been a very busy year. This month I didn't do anything newsworthy to speak of unless maybe I forgot, so here is a photo of Hank instead. |
 Click photo to enlarge. |
| August/September 02: Recorded 2 different Swiss groups, one was called Gekko and I don't know what the other was called oddly enough. Mixed a new album by Slovenian group Zoambo Zoet Workestrao. Recorded my bass tracks for the new Science Group album, then Chris Cutler was here to record his drum tracks. In January 2003 Fred Frith adds guitars. Pedja Milosavljevic will play violin. As before the music is by Stevan Tickmayer who plays keyboards, electronics and sampling. I'll be mixing that early in 2003. |
| July 02: First part of the month was spent recording an instrumental trio consisting of me on bass, Chris Cutler on drums and electrified junk, and Lukas Simonis on guitar. The idea was for Lukas to come up with a bunch of his catchy twangy guitar tunes, almost but not really like "surf" melodies, and we'd arrange them together and see what happened. We're pretty pleased with the result so far. We recorded the basic tracks live and later this summer Lukas and I will overdub the guitar melodies and I'll get to mixing it probably in autumn, for release early next year on ReR. Chris particularly enjoyed the experience because he said he hadn't played "normal music" (as in - not improvised) on a drum kit for a long time, and it was maybe the first time he utilised his electrified stuff real-time in this kind of musical setting. We had such a good time we might try doing some gigs with this group one of these days. Last part of July and early August will be spent mixing 2 different Swiss groups, more news later...Earth-grazing asteroids and wacky solar activity permitting. |
 Lukas and Chris. (click pic to enlarge)
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| June 02: Finshed my new solo album 13 Songs and a Thing. expected release date on ReR early next year. It's mostly me doing the usual things along with with the occasional guest including Olivier Tejedor from NeBeLNeST on Mellotron, Fred Hess on sax, and a bit of singing from Dick Verdult. I'll put some audio clips up when the release date draws nigh. |
| April/May 02: Mixed and mastered the new Blast album. It has some new directions for them but still unmistakeably Blast. Recorded a duo with Pierre from The Dead Brothers on accordeon and Denis _____? on marimba and drums. We'll get around to mixing that later this summer. Early in April finished the mix and mastered the new Sotos album. Release date and label to be announced. Mastered Dutch group Coolhaven's new CD. Noisy semi-humorous kind of electro-something. Made some bass sounds and riffs for David Kerman and Udi Koomran's new project...I don't know what it is yet, they just asked me to "send something" so I did... Finished the mix and mastering of The Dead Brothers new album "Day of the Dead". Unlike most bands they wanted a raw, dirty recording and even asked me to do a song using one mic. Others songs were mixed live to a stereo 2-track file rather than every instrument on its own track to be mixed later. This was a lot of fun and not something you get to do often in the studio these days. There were also a few "produced" numbers with overdubs and weird mixing so it's a got a lot of variety in the sound. |
| Feb/March 02: Sotos returned to record the next piece (42 minutes long) for their new album. We plan to get it mixed and mastered by the end of April and they hope to release it late this year. Then a few days of editing and mastering with Chris Cutler. He's selecting material for his theoretical solo drum album he wants to release someday. Finshed the Cumbias Lunaticas album project. Genuinely peculiar Spanish language pop/techno/S. American Cumbia/noise hybrid thing. The Dead Brothers arrive in mid-March to record a new album. Looks like fun! |
| January 02: Think of One was here to record a new album. Great band with really fine musicians. Here the band's producer Tom Pintens discusses matters with Hank the dog whilst I perform some sort of astounding engineering maneuvers. They took lots of great photos so I'll add a pagefull of them soon. |
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| First few days of January were spent with Sotos, finishing the recording and mix of the first piece for their new CD. Here at the right you see
Sotos members (L-R) Bruno Camiade, Yan Hazera, Nadia Leclerc and Nicolas Cazaux rehearsing their next composition entitled: "4 People Playing One Cello Simultaneously for 9 1/2 Hours". Below we see the entire group: Nadia, Yan, Nicolas, Bruno and Michael Hazera rehearsing another composition: "5 People Play One Violin for an Undisclosed Period of Time." (Photos and high-tech animation by BD.)
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| December 2001: Nothing remotely newsworthy to report except just continuing to work on my next album, so instead here is a pic of me meeting Yippee Coyote at Anthrocon. (Thanks to Dave Wilson for the photo.) |
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