Sound Art Experiment number 11

Music can be a powerful force when used correctly.

Full of the joys of summer and the sounds of diplo I made my mixtape comeback with the latest instalment of Tayalarz, and the news of Dr Dre finally delivering on his long-awaited promise of a new album that fans have been waiting more than a decade for had prompted me to make a start on a 'Compton' influenced mix.

And even tho that creation may be in the extremely early stages and may eventually be lost to gestation, with the computer fired up and the hours growing small I chose to revisit a few neglected folders on the harddrive.

Lo and behold did Saturday morning creep up on me and shake me from my bed with a new desire.  

In this age of stealth albums nobody was expecting the penultimate SoundArt to grace the world with its presence.  Very few people were even wanting it.  But regardless.

The SoundArt project was a simple idea.

Instead of giving my brother my music and asking him to produce artwork influenced by the sounds he heard we would flip the script, he would provide artwork and I would be influenced.  12 images and 12 tracks produced over 12 months to create a full length experimental album within a year.

Track 1 debuted in December 2008....

(ahem)

SoundArt11 is a curious creature.  Staring at the stars and asking the ultimate questions as the artwork seriously suggests that we are not alone.

Other tracks have been much more of a sound collage, this perhaps could have been but now sounds more of a sound presentation... Taking it's musical cue and liberally borrowing Doorly's dubstep remix of Calvin Harris' 'Not Alone' as theories jacked from YouTube play out over it.

Previous instalments have heaved with creativity, either pulling things apart or putting them together, SoundArt11 was always intended to play out that way too, but the whole ethos of this expression of art was to let it find it's own way...

Only this morning was the majority of this track spun on its head to give it a more complete feel, choosing to play with a larger chunk of the original remix than originally intended and then swinging by the buena vista social club to provide a backdrop to a healthy discussion on the intelligence of our species that had been longing for a dancing partner for a long time.  The last piece of the puzzle fell from the sky, hailing from a planet that no longer exists.  I rented Man Of Steel two years ago in order to reuse a message that seems to resonate throughout this track, and also through the entire project.

the return of.

Something like sunshine was seeking to stream through the slithers left undefended by the black out blind in the spare room as I awoke from slumber in the spare room, driven to the second-hand ikea sofa-bed again by my fiancé's nocturnal wheezings and mumblings as a cold got the better of her and my desire to sleep undisturbed had got the better of me.

Yesterday was something special.  It really was going to take something to top that.

Oh, how about some international airplay?

The second-hand ikea sofa-bed was unwilling to relinquish me just yet, so I instead reach for my ageing gizmo and fire up the emails... A missive from half the world away causes seismic smiles to ripple through my body and across my face.  Those guys that had been good enough to seemingly pick my remix of The Enemy from thin air a number of years ago had pulled it out of the bag yet again.

Fraserhead and The Herbalist, fantastically named audio adventurers and known Anglo-philes had responded to a fleeting email I had dropped their way (their way being over 11 thousand miles away in Queensland, New Zealand) and said yes.

Yes. They would play my latest track. My miserable slice of realism. My dark downturned beat and it's message of ever promising negativity. In the land of sunshine and mystical sea monsters.

In some strange parallel universe that exists at least one sunrise away is a sunny Saturday afternoon that is soundtracked by 80s legend John Carpenter, pioneering proto-dubstepper Burial and myself, with my near-undanceable budget-tronica...

Stranger things have happened, but they don't always happen to me.

reviewed.

and so.  Just like the hunter becomes the hunted, the reviewer has become the reviewed.

Safely on silent in my pocket, my sinister phone was making noise on a friday afternoon.  Even with the quivering capabilities of a stone, it sent good vibrations into the world, alert after alert, favourite after favourite, retweet after retweet.

I reflected upon this briefly,  Shot Of Hornets: nice review, cheers!

strange, I don't remember reviewing those guys...

with meagre downtime I backtracked to that original tweet

January reviews.  featuring Me.

on Misfit City?  I was confused and concerned, I'd not written for this blog?  Had they half-inched a recent review and reproduced it without permission?

Far from it.

Sat at the peak of the page was an earth-shatteringly glorious justification of why I create art.  Digitally documenting my place in the world in words that astounded me.  Such kind and uplifting words.

'anxious water-tank electronica'

'perpetually uncomfortable budget-tronica'

'near-undanceable'

I feel I shall be using these as straplines for my music for a long time to come... superseding Akira The Don's beautifyingly bestowed 'Super-Ugly Beat-Stuffs' as my go-to quote of choice....  

Yet could this also be a career peaking?!  I brace myself for the Hunchbakk-lash to begin.

Stop, collaborate and listen

I make music

Or made music.

Or tried to make music at least.

Working mostly from loop and sample based software I tend to be drawn to the same sort of sound for my own output, time and time again, and having completed work on the debut album, feeling like I have encapsulated a point on my life, I would now like to move on and live more life.  differently.

I've tried action-packed team-ups before, primarily handling a few remixes of other artists, either through mutual respect or competitions, but when I considered the release of Anubis Horror, I also wanted to deliver some 'singles packages' to release alongside it.

Having moved in creative circles, I have crossed paths with plenty of talented people, many from Enfield itself, and so I reached out to a small bundle of people that I thought might be interested in either remixing an existing track of mine or creating something brand new from accapella spoken word poetry.  They were told that they had free reign to do whatever they liked, it didn't mind how much or how little remained of the original version, I was only looking forward to hearing a brand new interpretation of something I had a hand in creating, hearing something that had come from more than just me.

The end result.... just one remix came back, fully formed for inclusion on the Teenaging single, and I had to draft myself in to remix my own work, cutting, pasting, twisting and distorting my own poetry... and unsurprisingly they sound just like something I would produce.

But now here we go again, bored of searching the same job roles and vacancies on Gumtree I instead started looking for an opportunity to write songs with others

the opportunities were slim, but I made contact... and one chance came back wonderful and gleaming.

Since then we have conversed over email, shared a brief man-date in the centre of londinium to get to know each other and cross-reference ideas, and this week I have made a proper start on fleshing out some rough tracks that have been sent over to me.

It is still early yet, and who knows what may happen next, inspiration and ideals are elusive beasts, but I've got a good feeling about what is coming next.

The return of cyber Monday, heralding the return of cynical christmas download

Waking up yet again to the 'news' that today is Cyber Monday reminded me...

I still have my christmas single that I like to trot out each year in the hope of spreading a little christmas joy to all the girls and boys that are writing out their lists for Santa


Bah Humbug

'tis a lie, as much of a lie as the newspapers and media force feeding you this Cyber Monday baloney...

when they 'report' on this being the busiest shopping day online pre-xmas, all they are really doing is fanning the flames for Internet based vendors who somehow managed to convince journalists and the like that reminding people to 'get there arse in gear and get onto amazon pronto to spend some of your hard earned' is actually a valid news item... it is not, it is simply another cog in the wheel of commerce

and when I say that my christmas single is hear to spread joy, what I really mean is that you should really check out my cynical bleatings about the shallow commerciality of this joyous time of year, whilst an unrelenting electronic beat grumbles and pulses with all the christmas spirit of landing arse first in a bushel of holly...

wow, glad I got that out my system...

and relax, I'm not that grumpy about the whole thing really, but I will call a spade a spade, and I will offer you this festive gift once again as an alternative to the usual standards from Noddy Holder and Mary Carey...

Hunchbakk - www.xmas.com

welcome to my life.

welcome to my past.

or perhaps a former present.

whatever way you choose to view it, Anubis Horror, to me, is a memoir. it is a certain time, transposed and reproduced via music.

and music should be all about interpretation, which has left a question mark over how far I should go in explaining my own motives and my own decisions when creating this music.

it has been a long, strange journey, and one thing that I am certain of is that the Hunchbakk saga is not up to date, in an alternative reality, the Hunchbakk album would have been completed a number of years ago, I'd have found the time to work on the music and wrap it up quicker.

as such, when sourcing the spoken word material I restricted myself to trawling through poems from a very specific time frame, Open Myself Up and Teenaging had already been written and recorded, so I simply flicked through the pages until I found these among my original scrawlings and worked my way forward, taking notes of the passing years, as noted on occasion by my past self with great foresight

thankfully, by february 'project resurrection' had excavated a total of ten tracks, each in differing stages of completion, leaving my plans for a twelve track album not so far out of reach, it was then matching these up with my words, what to leave as instrumental, what needs adding, what needs changing and what needs completing.

now, if my memory serves me, then there are no lyrics/poetry on my album that were written any later than 2008 or possibly 2009, and of all the music, every single track on the album apart from one had its genesis in the same back bedroom that I wrote all my poetry in.

the time spent crafting it and moulding it to its final shape has felt like a certain form of regression for me, casting my mind back to my old self, my old bedroom, in my old home, I think the lyrics and the music reflects who I was, and now I'm wondering who it was that I left behind, and who I have become.

living in the past hasn't been easy, and the release felt like an absolution of sorts, a chance to start being me again, right now.


perhaps I shall break down the album further in a handful more posts, but for now, allow yourself to wallow in the past that I couldn't put to rest until recently.br>

debut album, Anubis Horror out now

of course it isn't unreasonable to launch your album from a country other than the one you live in...

a nice glitzy press conference at perhaps a swanky hotel of some sort

and in this day and age of live streaming and digital media coverage, it could be trending on twitter as soon as the first flash bulb pops


except this isn't the way the Hunchbakk album is launched


Anubis Horror, the debut album from Hunchbakk, released on the 29th June 2013



i picked the date specifically, the 29th being the last day that i am 29, my last day in my twenties, alongside the book that I have written, completing and releasing an album before my 30th birthday on the 30th of June seemed a rather achievable goal to aim for after declaring that it would finally see the light of day this year.

except nobody was informed of the release until late on the 30th June, when I sat down in Byte Burger in Alexanderplatz, Berlin, with my girlfriend and finally found myself gifted with wi-fi.

the album had already been online for over 24 hours, and as my sinister phone connected i had to fend off a barrage of facebook birthday greetings before I could finally announce to a small portion of the world that my first opus was among them.

as we were setting off on our journeys last thursday, album set and ready to launch, I did not conceive such an issue occurring, although we had not booked into a hotel with free wi-fi as we had on our jaunt to Iceland, I imagined that I would be checking my emails every time we sat down to eat, I did not imagine that it would be a struggle to use my credit card every time we sat down to eat, with numerous bars, restaurants and train ticket machines only accepting cash, let alone leeching off a bountiful supply of complimentary cyberspace.

by contrast, Rekjavic was overflowing with gratis googling and my credit card tailor made for well-travelled transactions was welcomed almost anywhere, whilst the majority of Berlin was depleting our dwindling fund of paper money at almost every turn as the city seemed to be stuck somewhere in the Eighties (although the lack of dividing wall and my advancing years seemed to argue otherwise).

and so concludes my masterclass in how not to market an album successfully, remember to leave your worries and your mobile network at the airport and abandon all contact with social networks, heck, even old fashioned means of communication may not be possible if you haven't got enough Euros for a postcard and stamp.

but now back in the UK, I can finally publish this post and possibly hop on the campaign trail.

(did i mention that i have an album out?)

This is progress

there has barely been time to shout from the rooftops about my debut single

my lack of promotion is frankly embarassing to be honest


and yet all of this, as far as i'm concerned, signals progress


hopefuly my life is progressing, since i am now swamped with completing the album within the time scale that i had given myself, completing my book (which has fallen out of the timescale i had given myself, but shall be arriving, no matter how late it may be), writing reviews and trying to figure out where my life may take me next

where I am being taken next is Berlin, where I shall be celebrating 3 decades on this planet (although celebrating may be a touch too strong, perhaps toasting it is more appropriate), and where life takes me after shall hopefully be a new adventure, one that I have postponed or too long

I don't feel that I am gaining enough from my current employment, it is simply a means to an end, and a paltry end at that, so it is time to try and figure out who I am and what I want to do and where I want to be

where I want to be is invariably somewhere I can create, hopefully music focused, but we'll see

as this month draws to a close I'm hoping to draw a line under who I've been and instead focus on who I am

it's here: Teenaging, the debut single

finally, it's here...

the debut single, a four track package, is now available as a pay-what-you-like download via bandcamp

it has been a long time coming. the release of Teenaging, originally recorded in 2008, heralds the arrival of the full length debut album, Anubis Horror. a trip down memory lane and an industrial take on hip-hop elements, Teenaging follows the path travelled by many as their formative years at school gives way to an errant sense of identity and the prevailing person that we will ultimately become as life shapes us all. the title track of the single is also backed by a chopped up and tortured rendition of the poem 'The Dishonest Truth', the Kaoss pad created and long unavailable 'Base Element' that originally debuted in 2009, and a remix of Teenaging tackled by Tesla aka Matthew Sewell, guitarist and knob-twiddler with North-London djent-metallers UNX, whose debut EP was released earlier this year.



it's been an interesting journey that isn't over yet, but for this release i can't give enough thanks to my brother, Ian Byford, for providing inspired artwork, and to Matthew Sewell, who turned in an amazing remix that really changed the sounds that i have had swimming around my head for so long

so please, download, share and enjoy, and keep an eye out for the forthcoming full length album

I

it's coming....

here come the remix

I certainly can't speak for anybody else, but it isn't very often that I find a remix of one of my own tracks has appeared in my inbox overnight.

actually, it has never once happened to me before, and it was with trepidation that I actually opened the attached file.

y'see, part of my big plan is a number of singles released from my forthcoming album.

and part of my big plan is to include a number of the bloody talented artists and individuals that I have encountered along the way in my little musical foray.


to date, my music has been my own, I have kept the album under wraps, kept it hidden, only herd by a chosen few, and certainly, working on the music has been a thoroughly solitary experience, just me, sat at my computer trying to make something that I am gonna be proud of

but music doesn't have to be for the individual, it can be experienced together, as groups, and as a collaborative process, my years of flitting around on the local music scene has led me to cross paths with many people, and it was to some of these people that I have reached out to when looking for some fresh ideas on my own creations that will soon be seeing the light of day.

I hope that this is just the start of a long and fruitful series of Brave and Bold style team-ups, and fingers crossed that first remix, in its complete state will be making up part of the debut single.. which should be surfacing on the horizon in the coming weeks.....

all about the timing

Some things are all about the timing

and in this constantly connected, constantly evolving and ever changing world that we are living in this is thoroughly important in the game of 'self-promotion'

so, of course my timing is completely off...


urgh, self-promotion, what an ugly little term, essentially jumping up and down and going 'oooooh, look at me!', this is pretty much the opposite of how I choose to live my life, nothing wrong with a little bit of shameless plugging here and there... but I'd rather kinda just get on with it and hope that the universe shares a little bit of good will with me, hardly a go get'em attitude, I know, but this is simply how I am

thankfully, the modern world makes it far easier to be less show-offish and still get noticed, social media, blogs and unparalleled connectivity make short work of being in touch with people and getting your voice heard.

so of course my timing is completely off...


currently, in a whirlwind of stolen moments and furious activity, I am arranging self-publishing my debut novel, (hey, wasn't that coming out in April?), releasing my debut single (on course to be derailed, but with you very soon-ish), followed by the release of my debut album (in June, definitely in June), so I guess my online banter should make reference to the fact that all these things are happening!

of course my timing is completely off...

it has been nearly a year since I started a new job, a new job that pays ridiculously badly and leaves me with next to no free time throughout the day, compared to my job of 11 years prior to that, which paid poorly but gave me enough free time to try and be who I wanted to be, I felt that was a fair compromise to be honest.

email checking, social networking, actual networking, blogging, researching, all of these were possible if work was quiet, not the case anymore, my time is limited and little indulgences like these are long gone, my social networking presence has certainly taken a hit and prior to this, my last blog post was over a month ago!

of course, my timing is completely off!!!

and of course, the book I grabbed from the library, a book about one man choosing to flee his life of paying exorbitant London rents and instead living out of hotel rooms around the world in a social experiment in keeping costs down isn't just a book about the former mentioned, it is all this plus preparing for the release of his debut book...

as a 'published author' he is often on the blag and making ends meet via freelance work as he builds on his reputation, as the publishing date nears he relays the importance of his online standing and traffic to his frequently updated blog.

(grumble) ok, so my timing is completely off....

I can see the similarities and I can see the differences, both of us gearing up for the release of our first novel, him flying around the world (hey, to Vegas and Rekjavic and erm, the Soho Revue Bar, places I have also been!) and updating his blog and forging his reputation and living off the advance he has been paid, and me, who is selfpublishing, expecting to make no money, and haven't blogged in a while.


and I can see what I have to do, but so much of it comes down to having the time, I no longer have this disposable commodity to do so freely with as I wish, the time that I should perhaps be spending trying to maintain my online presence and keeping the world updated of my progress is instead spent trying to make progress, or trying to make dinner and make the house look tidy and all the other household chores, and then squeeze in a little bit of progress if I can find the time


I guess it's all about timing

Anubis approaching

I can't help but feel excited as little pieces of everything (in my creative world, at least) seem to be falling into place.

The resurrection project that began last year has fulfilled its purpose, and then some..

I was genuinely surprised by quite how far along with my music I had come, even if in terms of quantity rather than quality, although that isn't too shabby either, and a full length album didn't seem such a distant stretch of imagination and ambition.

And now I am very proud to admit that the debut Hunchbakk album is at a completely incomplete demo stage.

12 tracks running consecutively that are now just in need of a bit of a spit and polish before they can be unleashed on the world.

As is keeping with tradition, I wanted my girlfriend to be the first person with a copy of the album to listen to... and since the demise of her previous car stereo, we have been rocking a tape deck, resulting in some rather throwback listening experiences and meaning that I had to record my album demo onto cassette for her

She hasn't always been the biggest fan of my style of music, so I was surprised, and I think she was surprised when she actually said that she likes it, probably down to the not quite so heavy presence of the 'soft suicidal' genre of music that I had previously pioneered and she had the good grace of naming.

And while I keep busy with bringing the finished product up to a standard I am more or less completely happy with, I am keeping with tradition in sending my brother mp3s of the full album, so that he is able to toil away on accompanying artwork for the final release.

This is all bloody exciting for me, it may not be the grandest of releases, but it will certainly be a milestone in my creative processes and make what is essentially a hobby feel a little bit more real.

The invisible age

I can feel it now, creeping up behind me, the cool, chilling breath that tickles the back of my neck. it is following me around and getting closer withe every passing day.

30.

and I can't escape it any longer, it is an age I never considered facing, and yet, in the past few months, the reality of my advancing years is becoming unavoidable.


it feels like a finishing line, that now I am hurtling towards it, only so that I can cross it.

But before I get there, I want to make sure the milestone birthday greets me as a wizened man that has achieved things in his life.

My debut novel only really needs the cover artwork finalising and laying out, and I fully intend to have it published next month.

My debut album is also gaining momentum and I think an end may possibly be in sight for it, ideally with a single released in May ahead of an album release in June, which would be great timing since I mark my third decade on the planet on the thirtieth day of the sixth month of the year of our lord, two thousand and thirteen.


days off recently have been spent recording vocals and intertwining them with the music that has been sat waiting for an accompaniment, waiting for completion. and I just hope that I can pull everything together in time to make it all right, to set myself a deadline and meet it, with a hearty, manly handshake.


and in my 'real' life, things are ok there I guess, everything feels rather wrapped up and in place, with my serious relationship and our home and our plans for the future, the past year's redundancy and current entry level job on a minimum wage are not exactly ideals, hardly part of anybodies 30 year plan, but that is what life has given me, and I still have a roof over my head and a girlfriend that loves me and a family around me to support me and various friends and acquaintances in my life that help to make my life complete so I can't complain really.

But for now, the countdown ticks away the second, minutes, days and hours relentlessly.

a self-fulfilling prophecy

reflecting back on today's earlier blog, i decided to dig deep, digging way back through my blog posts before realising that my comments as regard to a potential completion date for my debut album were actually posted up on my myspace blog...   waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyy back in those heady days of 2008

and what exactly did i say?

'So far in the last twelve months I have yielded two and a bit tracks that I consider to be a more personal direction for my music, as well as almost a whole remix for a band that insisted there was no deadline to be met and have since split up.' 

'Considering this schedule of output, my vague plan of producing an 11 track album should reach completion around 2012/13 as long as there are no hold ups.'

of course, this was intended as a rather flippant remark, and although i have never claimed to be prolific, i had actually hoped that this would all have been done and dusted sooner rather than later.

as it stands now tho, my vague plan of producing an 11 track album should reach completion some time in 2013 as long as there are no hold ups.

view the original myspace blog here

Nearer than ever before

It would take me too long to find, but i do recall in an old (old) blog post, after purchasing Acid and taking my time to knock up a very small number of tracks, that i calculated the average time taken on them so far, factored in how many tracks i was considering having on an album, and then estimated an approximate arrival time for the finished product.

I am curious to see quite how far wrong i was with that guestimation, but having faced dry spells and computer crashes and changes of alter egos over the years, as well as just plain ol' getting on with stuff that isn't making music, i do declare that this year may very possibly (and hopefully) be the year that a debut Hunchbakk album is completed.

this is still also reliant on being able to salvage the original tracks from previous incarnatons of my computer, a task that i have dubbed 'project resurrection', as i pick through the recovered files saved to dvds and try and piece together what was once created, but foolishly not even saved for posterity in mp3 form

And so far this goes good, revealing that i was actually further along the process than i suspected myself of being, and facing the realisation that providing they all resurrect ok, that i have something like ten tracks so far in the pipeline that should be shaping up nicely for a well rounded, full length release.


expect the next update sometime around..... 2016 maybe?

new years resolution....

i don't like making new years resolutions

they seem to be futile attempts to change things that tend to be quite short lived, such as gym memberships and stopping biting your fingernails

i like to think that i spend the majority of my life being the best me that i can possibly be.... but this year i want to make a change i've made a resolution to work on more music

i feel that i've been getting far too behind on quite where i wanted to be with making music, not that i expect to be topping charts and headlining stadiums, but simply being creative on a regular basis has eluded me, so it's time that i get my groove back.


so after getting in from work i fired up my computer, loaded up a handful of tracks that have been in limbo and was pleasantly surprised to find that afew tracks were further along the gestation period than i realised, and within a short space of time i managed to throw a few extra sounds together and saved a number of works in progresses as mp3s, christened them as demos that will make up part of my debut album, vowing to return to them soon to flesh them out a little more

to date, i have not publicly shared any of these album tracks, yet with a new brace of 'demos' nestling on my harddrive after what turned out to be a satisfying evening, i felt it was only right to prove my worth with a little 'show and tell', and since i've done the telling, i guess i should probably do some showing...

so here it is... a short demo of what is provisionally titled 'computer music'

 

honest opinions

'I gave a listen to your christmas song'

..........

'It's bloody depressing, I couldn't listen to the whole thing, I had to turn it off!'

so said a former work colleagues husband as we all met up for a pre-Xmas drink together, and despite it not being the most positive review of it, I was more concerned with the very first part of his statement, 'I gave a listen to your christmas song'.

regardless of what he actually thought of it, I'm bloody glad that someone took a little time out of their day to give it a listen, even a truncated listen.

what higher compliment is there than provoking a reaction? I'm well aware that not everyone will find my music accessible, and I hope for those that do, that the experience is all the more rewarding, to embrace music that others have shunned for the sake of it not being the 'traditional' take on music.

when reviewing music for glasswerk, I would much rather feel compelled to hate a track, and form a vehement opinion against it, rather than having it pass me by, if I can't love music I would much rather acknowledge it's existence as opposed to not caring enough to notice it.

and truthfully, despite proclaiming that my festive effort may lead you to slit your wrists (hopefully not, although my girlfriend did once label me with the unique genre of 'soft suicidal'), he did sit back and say, 'well, at least I've listened to it....'


and for that I thank you!

Hunchbakk - www.xmas.com

happy cyber monday!!

you heard the news, right?

that it was 'cyber monday' today? the name given to what is reportedly the busiest online shopping day of the year...

of course, the cynical part of me believes that this is part of a plot to harness the media to do the dirty work of online retailers and boost sales amongst all those that had so far been dithering over what they shall be ordering over the net, just a little push to remind them to part with their cash on an all important day like today... and of course we believe the hype and swallow the news down with a sip of mulled wine

and how strangely apt that this morning, as my journey to work began, too uninspired to choose what to listen to for myself, I set my generic MP3 player to shuffle and lo and behold, the second track spewed out by the machine's random mind was my very own jingle bell laden Christmas track, www.xmas.com

I had only been considering the track earlier as I heard the 'news', feeling that the opening line was extremely appropriate in the circumstances...


so, if you have blown the budget today and saddled yourself with some wonderfully festive debt to be faced in the new year, then rejoice, as my song costs absolutely nothing... and will remain free every December for as long as it seems viable to do so..

basically, until hmv or amazon decide to license the song for an advertising campaign and the prospect of repeat royalties every year finally flows my way

But until then, join in if you know the words...

'www. amazon and hmv, that's what christmas means to me'


Hunchbakk - www.xmas.com

Sound Art Experiment number 10

bloody hell!

well, according to my soundcloud profile, it has been 7 whole months since i graced you good people with any new music, and over a year has passed since the last SoundArt was completed.

considering that the SoundArt project was supposed to be completed within just one year, twelve tracks, one a month since december 2008, this is extremely bad form on my part...

regardless, it is here now, and it almost wasn't here now since i had considered mucking around with it a little longer, but enough is enough, it is ready (to some degree) and therefore i saw fit to debut it over at the byford family blog along with our other creative outputs




when i was given the artwork to create a track for, i originally intended to compose it in the ipad that i had not yet purchased yet had been planning to as soon as the latest model launched, i think it may eventually been march when they finally chose to launch the new model, and then a handful more weeks until i got hold of it, and then a few months where i pretty much messed aroud with it and read comics off it and only glanced at the music apps once in a while to make a little bit of noise and then return to facebook or twitter

the plan was that the ipad would be my idea station, a one stop shop where i could plot out and compose my music and elevate myself to the level of Labrynth and Calvin Harris, heck, things ain't over yet, but so far... so quiet

and yes, the SoundArt that i thought would be composed entirely on an ipad turned out to be an entirely different first for me, it certainly was entirely mixed on an ipad, but only the violin sound that opens the track is courtesy of garageband, the rest is entirely me, albeit recorded into garageband and then manipulated

it is infact the first track that i have ever composed on guitar (yes, i realise it is probably out of tune), played by myself, with lyrics written by myself, and consequently sung by myself (not very well, hence the massive amount of effects layered upon it) and although i originally believed 'Teenaging' to be my first ever song, and although i sung on my cover of the xx's 'VCR' i think i may actually have to retroactivelly adjust my own history to consider SoundArt10 my first ever song, heck, it features me playin three chords on a guitar, so it's gotta be.... right

good!

the first thought when i saw the art provided by my brother was to write something poetic on needing a sidekick, and from there the idea developed to be influenced by that famous little bit of writing about God and the footsteps in the sand, and then went on to be something slightly less religious, yet remaining completely true to my original inspirations depending on how you choose to hear it

and here it is, to hear, whether there is someone by your side or not.....