Method/Madness

All the music I make comes from technical challenges. To use a muted strummed electric guitar, to make a track where the rhymical backbone is played on congas, to make a dub reggae track, to become familliar with this vocoder, to find out how to make that synth chord sound etc.

Sometimes I chose one or more tracks by other musicians, and the challenge is to use them as springboards - to produce something 'in the vein of' and 'inspired by' their finished product. The 'inspiration' track at the moment is Pink Floyd's Shine On You Crazy Diamond.

Here's an arbitrary challenge. There's two fims on tonight that I might watch - Tomorrow Never Dies and I Know What You Did Last Summer. Incorporate samples from one or both of these into the 'diamond' track.

I don't know what I'm going to do with this track. Maybe take two weeks over it, and submit it for next week's SongFight. Maybe make it a K Twins song - though I don't think it's within our 'vision'.

Ah well. Anything to avoid doing the actual work that I have to do.
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I spent 5 hours today with JS and his sickly computer. It now works a bit faster than before, but it's tricky to install antivirus software from a CD when the virus disables the CD drive.

However, we had breakfast at his favourite greasy spoon - best fry-up I've had in years - and took a stroll around the art gallery/museum/communuity centre/theatre where he works. With luck I'll be on the list of guest speakers at art forums in a month or so.

That computer is probably my final official work as selfemployed computer technician. The scheme finishes today, and I have absolutely no wish to continue on my own. I'm a bit sick of watching windows reinstall every few days.

The university are selling off their old 450MHz Pentiums for £30 each, and I've earmarked two to pick up on Monday. One is on behalf of JS. If I'm feeling especially greedy, I may pick up a monitor too.
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Dave Allen died today. I saw his comedy in the early 80s, and I remember people being genuinely outraged by it. Making fun of the catholic church, spoofing film cliches, and picking apart the claims of advertisers. At the time, I found it quite refreshing - I must have been all of 10 years old.

In the 90s, it all seemed quaint and harmless. Now it's probably shocking again.