The joy of parallels / Improvizone

Clearly the novelty of blogging wore off pretty quickly - almost a month since my last post. Oh well.

Two main things to report.

First - and this is the shocker - Expert Sleepers now does Windows versions. I've been using a remarkable bit of software called Parallels Desktop which lets me run Windows on my Mac, at the same time as Mac OS X. It works really well. I can't emphasise enough just how east it all is. Kudos to the Parallels guys.

I can't help but feel a little dirty though, having ugly ol' Windows running on my Mac.

The Windows versions will go to a couple friends for first line testing, then it's out into the big wide world for them, and it's into the nightmare world of supporting Windows users for me.

Second thing - on May 29th I'm playing at Improvizone. Live, improvised (but not 'improv' in the hard-to-listen-to, jazz sense of the word (though I should say I quite enjoy hard-to-listen-to jazz)) music in a rather nice bar in London. Come along! Say hi! Buy me a beer!

The drone of April 4th

A section of the drone session previously mentioned is now available via the podcast. This is the last 11 minutes of a 40-odd minute improvisation - once we finally came through all the gear hassle and got into some kind of zone.

For a fairly formless drone, it has a remarkably upbeat feel to it. I guess we hit on a major key :). I actually ended up overdubbing a bit of keyboard right at the end, just to keep that feel going - the improv as recorded tails off into slightly spooky noises which, though classic Darkroom, were slightly at odds with what the track could be, and now is (I feel). Let me know if you agree!

Free plug-ins updated

Users of my audio plug-ins might like to know that I've updated my free VST versions. More info over at the official forum.

Easter fun

I meant to write an update over Easter, but the weather here was fantastic and I barely touched a computer for four whole days.

So - remind me to in future include my recipe for super de luxe pizza.

We did a lot of gardening. I've started recording and planning said activity in a Google Calendar, and for larks I've made this public. So if you're interested to know what was planted, here's the link.

Darkroom featured on Ambientia podcast

Darkroom are featured in a big way (about 40 minutes of music!) on the current episode of the Ambientia podcast (http://feeds.feedburner.com/AmbientiaAFOS). Thanks Ned!

It's always fascinating to hear what other people have to say about your music. The joy of a podcast is that you also get to hear how other people pronounce your (nonsensical) track titles. :)

So I encourage you all to head on over to Ambientia and give it a listen. It's a real good value podcast - each episode clocking in at around an hour or two - with a host with real character. Mine's a Bombay Sapphire! Cheers!

Loopers Delight podcast

Just a quick note to mention that Loopers Delight now has a podcast, showcasing various artists involved in the looping scene. The link is:

http://www.eterogeneo.com/live_looping/live_looping.xml

a Darkroom drone

Last night Mike and I did some recording in his basement. The brief was "extreme ambience" - inspired by hearing Eno's "Thursday Afternoon" over at the Ambientia podcast. Our recent podcasts have been rather dark and/or complex, so I was interested to do some classic ambient stuff.

We had lots of new toys to play with - I had my Nord Lead 3 (a bargain from eBay) which I've had for a while but never really gotten to grips with. Mike had a new audio interface for the Mac (yay! I don't have to lug mine over there in future). We also had my new Crossfade Loop Synth Effect plugin to give a workout. So plenty of distractions there. :) Plus various gear problems arose - bad hum, electro-acoustic guitar with apparently dead battery etc.

Anyway, we overcame all that. The results were, as I recall, excellent. (Not listened back to it all yet.) We didn't achieve the ambient I was thinking of, but we did achieve some fantastic drones. Maybe drones is the wrong word - the music was droney, but interesting and ever changing. Expect to hear plenty of it in future podcast episodes!

Welcome!

Welcome to the expertsleepers blog.

I'm not really sure what this will become, but I thought I might give it a go. Bandwagons are there to jump on, after all.

It will probably focus on

• Music, especially my music. You can read about my band, Darkroom, at http://www.collective.co.uk/darkroom/ or http://www.myspace.com/darkroomtheband
• Software. I write stuff, which you can find at http://www.expertsleepers.co.uk/
• Anything else I think is cool.

So, er, come back soon.