This website, recording angst and the doldrums

I’ve set up this website. I figured it makes sense to have a singular place where I can write about my creative efforts in all the different areas I’m working. If nothing else it will help me know whats going on, let alone anyone else. I’m still working through exactly how I’m going to have the site set up, but I am very impressed with the software I’m using (WordPress, with Hemingway-Ex, plug-ins like Slickr and third parties like Flickr) it is extremely flexible, completely Open Source and hopefully will deliver!

I’ve started by transferring my Journal from September 2006 to the present on to the website, so I will now be writing here rather than through Blogger.com so that is why there are posts going back to September on here.

Incidentally – is Flickr called that as if people are looking at a real photo album and going “Ahhhhh” after each page is turned (hence the “flick” bit)?

Emotionally I’m quite tense at the moment. Since beginning University last September I’ve been gearing myself up for this summer, in which I intend to record my debut album. I’ve been wanting to do this for a good long time now, and I’ve had an agreement with Creaked Records for over a year that I will make an album with them. Having got underway (at least a little bit) I’m finding it quite stressful, which is the opposite of what I want – I started making and recording music because I loved doing it – if I can’t enjoy it whats the point. So I need to figure out a way of having great fun again.

Actually, writing about it now, it hasn’t been bad at all. Maybe I’m just taking everything too seriously.

The overall effect of the angst though, is me feeling like I’m now in the creative doldrums. Maybe I should get a pack of Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies, that might help.

Inkling for Recording

I’ve got a deadline, of September, to complete a professional-sounding recording of an album’s worth of my musical material. I had the same deadline last summer, but missed it, so I can’t really not do it and come away feeling un-aggrieved. So I’m gonna do it. So far this year I’ve hardly spent any time with my music, mainly focusing on more University-aimed work. But I have the Inkling. And I’m sure its gonna be good, so I’m looking forward to it.

Nice Swiss Writing. Note from Leo, the guy who runs the record label who are going to put out my album. He’s a lovely guy, and I think his handwriting is cool. Also I like the style of putting “Best, Leo” at the end of an email or letter.

I’m going to try and get a Variax guitar, which is a clever “modelling” guitar, hopefully giving me an expensive sound for not very much money. We’ll see…

Listened to Hot Chip’s second album, The Warning, for the first time properly. Its cool. Not quite as much character in parts, as with the first album, but it makes up for it with ingenuity in other ways. Really cool!

Hi-Fi. Play Station 2 based karaoke. Really good fun. This photo probably needs some audio accompaniment.