conspiracy theory

stray television

during a spot of very late spring cleaning, an old TV was found that had been sat around doing nothing but gathering dust

it had served its purpose, then after it's years guarantee was over it promptly started going wrong

(i do not have exact dates to substantiate this claim, but we all know that is how it goes)

and out into the front garden it went


today i called the council to arrange for it to be collected and go where all old consumables live out the rest of their days, the soonest pick up available was next tuesday

and i thought perhaps i should get afew shots of the TV sat there looking abandoned in the front garden to add to my growing collection of stray sofas and other household goods

but the TV obviously had other plans, realising it was no longer wanted it didn't choose to hang around


when i left the house it had already gone

learning

i hope i never stop learning

i have an insatiable passion for knowing things, even knowing things about things that i don't like or care little for

i'd like to say that knowledge is power, except i doubt the things i know put me in a powerful position


one thing that has always frustrated me is my inability to actually play musical instruments but last week somebody managed to teach me three chords on a piano and on an entirely separate occasion last week a friend told me how she believed that rhythm could be learnt, before giving me afew hints on how to learn to drum


and it wasn't all one way last week


i also taught my girlfriend how to introduce herself in japanese

taking a dump

even tho this toilet has now been forced to fend for itself on the streets, its a relief to know that it is still accompanied by some reading material

game on

i'm not sure i entirely get the idea of a DJ Hero game, a controller in the shape of a deck seems bizarre and i wasn't realy sure what DJing and gaming could possibly share, i spose it is to DJing what Guitar Hero is to actualy playing a guitar (which is nothing at all)...

i can hardly claim to be snobbish about DJing as anyone that has witnessed a Bubblegum Stomp DJ can testify to our complete lack and disregard of actual mixing

but this trailer has got me curious, and i'm not the type to give over valuable blogging space to advertising a product but Daft Punk's involvement in the game is enough to make me wanna share this with you



and if i had the money and the free time i'd love load myself up with a PS3 and afew games and lock myself away playing Batman: Arkham Asylum, DJ Hero and invite afew friends round for a mammoth session of Beatles: Rock Band

instead i'll just have to settle for being too poor and too busy to do so

make it funky for me

it's been a while since i hit you off with something new, and i mean something realy new, something completely new unconnected from the SoundArt project, yep, the last time you got new new music was back in may

yep, you are getting something so new that at the time of writing only one person other than myself has actualy heard the track...


and now for something completely different



I've been trying hard in my music production to push myself and stretch myself to keep trying new things, i've been experimenting to find something new for myself and in particular have been trying to distance myself from composing tracks from pre-made loops

but this brand new track is exactly that, produced as an experiment to see what it was possible to produce from a single sample pack and to use as an example of how music can be built in this way

a sample pack labelled 'funky house' filled me with dread, the finished article doesn't seem completely like the funky house i've heard (where are all the bongos?) but it's an interesting little aside that i started on saturday night and had finished by monday night

help yourself to Hunchbakk's dirty little teaching tool

i present...


(saturday)


Free file hosting from File Den

99p stores

alas my cunning plan of ordering some strange USB audio device from Hong Kong didn't solve my increasingly frustrating microphone problem

ok, the ebay listing says something about it making my computer surround sound, but why does it have a microphone input on it if i can't record from it - the singstar mics when plugged into my computer's USB worked fine, i just didn't realy wanna go destroying them by trying to plug all manner of instruments through them before giving them back to my friend

but i guess when it only cost me 99p ($1 to buy it, $0.55 to ship) for the silly little thing i can't grumble about it too much, i could of course take my computer somewhere proper and have it looked at proper but i'm far too stubborn and don't realy wanna incur the cost when i'm sure its probably only something i am overlooking

the frustration continues....

The merits of blogging (food for thought)

i'm the type of person that enjoys getting to the cinema in time to see the trailers, and seeing a recent trailer for 'Julie & Julia' sparked my interest when one character announces to another that their blog has been bought for a miniseries...

and it surmises that the film is based upon the story of a blog-turned-book, all about a bored secretary that attempts to cook her through Julia Child's recipe book and documents it online

all of which got me wondering about my own blog, tho i doubt that the HunchBlog is realy something that could translate to the big screen, or the small screen, or anything other than a computer screen... would you skyplus a weekly thirty minute episode of a guy that wanders the streets looking for homeless sofas, writes poetry, struggles to produce some minimal electronic music stuffs and quite fancies Roxanne Pallett?

no, i didn't think so

and it made me ponder the reason behind my blog, i certainly didn't start it to seek fame or attention, the main point was so that i could open up what i had already started on my myspace blog, if i'd got something to say then i didn't think it should be tucked afew clicks away on my Hunchbakk myspace profile where people may never bother to look

myspace is great for music, but having the five latest blog posts appearing on your page means that you have to make every single blog count, or fear that people may never read the older entries if you maintain to keep it updated

i was already familiar with a couple of other blogspots and their layouts, so i thought why not put it all out on here, keep it fresh and interesting and updated and a hell of a lot easier if you wanted to peruse previous posts

instead of dedicating it solely to my music (it wouldn't be updated very often if it was) i decided to use the blog as my own kind of filter, so that i could pass on the details of anything that had informed or entertained me, and that i thought may be of interest to the people that i know and to the people that i don't know that may just happen to find their way here

since then i have continued to post up music as and when i make it, brought you other people's music that i have taken a particular interest in and given you all manner of other random bits and bobs that i have appropriated from my internet trawls

and i have also put a little bit more of myself into my blog, by posting my aforementioned poetry and photography and also giving you little glimpses into the life i lead, as i know that there is a little bit of voyeur in all of us



and anyone thinking of writing their own blogs and putting themselves on display for all the other voyeurs/vultures out there should consider the extent Julie Powell goes to for her next novel, Cleaving, in which she not only takes up a job as a butcher's apprentice so she can follow up her first hit book, but also details the sordid affairs of her and her husband who had both seemed so happy when she was a bored secretary that didn't have a book deal or prying eyes looking into her private life

a spark

yesterday was an eye opener, a mini-revalation and a reminder of the potential available to me.

i wish i had more time and more dedication to grasp hold of that spark and harness it and make a blaze that can be seen from space on google maps or something!

it was great to actually talk to someone with an idea of where i'm coming from and where i would like to go, instead of flicking through pages of jargon to actualy see something unfold infront of me was an inspiration and a kick up the arse

i'm currently making music using Acid and have been trying to break free from being solely bound to layering up pre-made samples (something evident on the most recent SoundArt tracks), it has served me well and been a means to an end but i have recently tried stretching myself to explore and experiment further and talking to somebody else about software and virtual instuments has refreshed my memory and allowed me to take a look into afew of the areas i had previously been overlooking

this may not exactly be the dawn of a bright new future but it is something else for me to get stuck into as i try to expand the aural world of Hunchbakk...

out with the old, in with the new

and so life moves on

it doesn't seem so long ago that everyone was singing 'champagne supernova' in the school corridors and now that i think about it so much has been and gone since those days and i barely noticed the time pass by

and it feels stranger and stranger that i am only just noticing that i am getting older, and all of a sudden gig goers seem to be an awful lot younger

I haven't given up on youth yet... it's just that others are more youthful than me now




earlier this year i saw Flamboyant Bella play a 14+ gig at Islington Academy, where kids jumped around to the bands and inbetween sat around discussing who had started wearing bras and who looked old enough to get away with buying alcohol (no lie!!)

and all of this is a very roundabout way of introducing the newest Flamboyant Bella video, for new single 'Get A Reaction', a song that loads of kids are already aware of and you should be too

is it realy over?

it feels almost as if i have been an Oasis fan forever, britpop was a unique time for me when any band with guitars and floppy fringes instantly became my new favourite band for the week but throughout it all i was a die-hard Oasis fan

Oasis at Wembley Stadium in 2000 was my first ever gig and it couldn't have been more perfect, it was a momentous night that i'll never forget, it felt as if my teenage years had been building up to that one glorious night (over romanticising it?)

and over the years there have been numerous arguments and bickering between the Gallaghers and in their hey-day they were constantly rumoured to be on the verge of splitting, it worried me just the once, and then everytime since i've just ignored the overblown rumours of Oasis coming to an end, Noel and Liam have never realy gotten on but Oasis seemed to unify them, even if only for the sake of the live shows

But the latest spat seems to have realy broken them if all the reports are to be believed, perhaps i'm still in denial over the whole thing, i don't particularly believe that this is the end, as far as i'm concerned there will always be an Oasis, but i guess time will tell



one Oasis fan that you may not have been aware of has been hit particularly hard by the news that things could realy be over this time,

i know he isn't a good man (far from it) but perhaps you could have a little sympathy for....

Hitler





and if Oasis is over i'm sure it won't be too long to wait for a Noel solo album, probably featuring Andy Bell, Gem Archer and appearance by Paul Weller (you can count on it realy), Noel may have no place for Liam in his life but i doubt Noel would shy away from his life in music entirely

lonely chair

discarded along with a pile of other rubbish, this lonely chair gazes out at the world beyond the school gates

hold ups

if all was well with the world and everything went to plan i would be posting up the latest installment of the Sound/Art project, i should in fact be posting up SoundArt9 but things are kinda held up and the best intentions of completing a brand new track every month have been scuppered though a number of factors, mainly an irrational computer that cannot be reasoned with

as it stands i am still working on SoundArt7 which would have been closer to complete if my mic input hadn't been failing

i have taken steps to try and get round this problem and have also been doing a little groundwork for the track, collecting a little bit of audio so that i can crack on as soon as physically possible to do so

and it should prove to be another interesting track as i am trying to flex my musical muscles by stretching myself and working with new ideas and techniques...

keep checkin' bakk for the end result as soon as it is finished