syncing deeper...

why is it that writing articles to a 350 word quota must be so difficult?

i'm currently sat knocking out my review of last nights Rock For Change Battle of the Bands and at first check my incomplete article is already 450 words, so stay tuned for the directors cut of that piece over here soon (probaly way before publication) and with any luck i should have my articles back in print from this week.

the whole of enfield waits with baited breath for copies of the Advertiser to drop through their letter boxes tomorrow........

and so i was also debating what to write for my follow up post after getting a little wayward with that slightly lengthy post on synchromysticism

i thought perhaps maybe another sklightly lengthy post on synchromysticism....

but to be honest there are plenty of other people that do it better than i do, and that have got the time and the inclination to study the intricacies of symbology and syncs...

my girlfriend is convinced that i'm likely to go mad obsessing over these inexplicable coincidences....

(shit, how did i not get that michael j FOX was the star on teenWOLF, how did i miss that one?)

... but i just like reading other peoples theories and finding something other than constantly refreshing facebook to occupy my time. sadly my brain doesn't have the capacity to constantly link greek gods to the rise of the autobots and have a rich understanding of erm... pentagrams (honestly, i don't know) and the jupiter finger.

i am constantly intrigued by what other people believe and have a hunger for knowledge (since my mind is mostly full of useless info) and i am also interested in how religion plays a part in people's lives and artistic legacies.

i am well aware that i have been annoying my girlfriend with too much talk of foxes and how everything is connected......

but it is!!! (isn't it?)

yes, there are other people that do it better, but after pointing out (the most striking) syncs i have seen i see yet more....

so lets keep this brief (pah)

•  i read that Maid Marion is a sync with Mary Magdalene and the word Mum (MuM)
•  countdown has been constantly referring back to Mary Marvel
•  i decided to have another listen to the music of Marvin the Martian

oh, but not just that i've also read about the dark star, Sirius. which other blogs have linked to The Dark Knight (Why so Sirius?), low and behold, the comics i am reading have seen Jason Todd (a former Robin that died at the hands of The Joker) teamed up with Donna Troy, who once held a position as a Darkstar

it's nigh impossible to keep these things simple when trying to point out the multiple ways these thing cross over, like, harking back to my last post, since not only has CHRISTian Bale played patrick BATMANe, he is also the new John Connor (JC again) in Terminator: Salvation, of course Arnie is THE terminator and the terminator can be linked to duality (just take a look at the posters, reminiscent of Two-Face?)) and we also saw Arnie as Mr Freeze battling against Fantastic Mr Clooney in the Batsuit in Batman and Robin.


ok, that's enough from me, i can't realy do it justice with my limited knowledge but the whole concept of synchromysticism is intrigueing and if this is of any interest i beg you to follow it a little bit further.



and after all that, i'm not particularly sure if i can see all the ways the world is connected, or if i'm just such a big geek that i can't help but spot how almost anything will link back to Batman.

talk with your hips

blogs!! it is all going on!

Akira The Don is dropping cartoon strips every day of the week, Faded Glamour is counting down the top british albums of the decade. ok, ianbyfordart has been a little sparse recently but even he noticed that Marvin The Martian dropped a new download before i did??!

and if you check back here in the next couple of days i'll be posting the full and unedited Milfield review that appeared in today's Enfield Advertiser.

so while i'm busy digging out a ton of old pop CDs for a DJ set coming up (i own too many CDs, i'm so thankfull of mp3s, for a start they take up a lot less room!!) why don't you track down these recent offerings that were posted respectively on devil in the distance and ian byford art

Marvin The Martian - Loose Change

Hunchbakk - SoundArt7 (incomplete)



credit where it's due:
photo by Ian Byford

dawn has broken...

... actually it broke last week, but these things take time y'know!!

Dawn Of The Don!!

what an amazing night!!

although walking into a venue when everyone outside smoking looks decidedly un-zombie like while you're caked in make up leaves you feeling slightly uneasy about making so much effort

thankfully, once we were inside we weren't the only ones and soon, being a zombie drinking £3 pints of fosters in such dark and inviting surroundings seemed quite natural

and tonight seemed like such a special occasion, the anticipatory dressing up and the fact that it had been a stupidly long time since i had seen Akira The Don or Marvin The Martian live, all thrown into the mix with the filming of Akira's new music video...



first up was Marv the Martian, joined by Pixel (looking nothing like the Pixel of the old days!) and by his DJ/producer Jack Nimble for a short set of brand new material, no looking backwards for these guys tonight!!



what started as a slow burning performance soon saw Marv and Pix hit their stride with a performance full of swagger, showing huge promise for the new mixtape (my particular favourite, Tin Can) and setting the tone for the rest of the evening



But tonight was all about The Don, taking to the stage in a pink fluffy hooded dressing gown bearing his adopted moniker and leading his newly formed full live band into a cut from his forthcoming album, before hurtling into more recognisable material from recent mixtapes for a buoyant crowd.

a rather, ahem, relaxed approach to touring has seem Akira missing from the live circuit for some time, but you wouldn't know that the tracks played weren't tried and tested on the strength of the performance given tonight, and the whole shebang seems to suggest that things can only get better...



Mixtapes were plundered of their gems, a brass section trumpeted along, unheard material was given all due respect and fans that have been around a while (i count myself among them) were thrilled to bits by a throwback mega-mix of hits that encompassed the debut album and earlier

there was never gonna be much chance of me knocking this gig, but Akira is an incredibly charismatic performer that could never prove to be unlikeable, with his boundless energy and ca-ca-eating grin he could win over the sternest sceptic



and i mustn't forget the reason that so many re-animated music fans had gathered in Holloway tonight, the filming of I Am Not Dead (Yeah!), geddit, with it's obvious zombie theme and the encouragement to lurch forward and moan a deathly moan along with the choruses refrain and hope for our five minutes of fame as an undead extra covered in fake blood, honestly, what more could you want from a friday night out?

can't wait to see the finished video, i'll post it up as soon as it hits the interwebnets!



next up? a free solstice gig in the Natural History Museum!!

special mention must also be made of my brother, who had a particularly prosperous evening considering i only managed to convince him to come earlier the same day:

Upon introducing him to Akira, he turned to him and said 'so you're the famous Ian Byford, of Ian Byford Art!'. He was also picked to be a rather prominent zombie by the person filming the music video. And the photo's he took of the performances are now all over Akira's website and flickr set and on Marvin's blog.

the crack of dawn

friday night was Dawn Of The Don, twas a good night, i already have other things lined up to report on so expect a more in depth look back later this week, but since there is already some pictorial evidence of the event, i'd hit you off with some of my photos (the best are yet to come tho!)

Dawn Of The Don!!

i'm currently consumed by contemplation of what a zombie would wear tonight, and also plagued by thoughts of how best to acheive a deathly pallor and how much blood is too much blood?

the reason behind these questions? cos tonight i shall be taking part in the filming of a zombie themed music video and also seeing Akira The Don live for what must be the first time in over a year at least, possibly more!! its a good enough reason for me anyway!


click on the flyer for a better look, or check out the details here

it's all going down at The Gaff in Holloway from 7 tonight, and making the evening irresistable is a brand new full live band set from Akira The Don, brand new sets from Marvin The Martian and Pixel and DJ sets from evil geniuses such as Joey2Tits and Stephen Hague, oh, and people dressed as zombies!!

Hunchbakk’s Selection Box

OK, so you’ve been gorging yourself on chocolate over Christmas and you swore you’d start a diet and resist temptation, but you shouldn’t resist this…

Available at the crazy, knock down price of absolutely nothing at all…

Even better than that, it contains ZERO calories…

I present to you…

The Hunchbakk Selection Box





It’s not quite like your normal selection box, because it doesn’t actually contain any chocolate at all, but it is a bumper selection of Hunchbakk tracks and remixes to download…

I’m afraid the ‘christmas single’, www.xmas.com, is past it’s sell-by-date now so the collection has been rounded off with a couple of additions that weren’t available pre-christmas, just as a little extra treat.


So stick with me for artwork, download links and brief descriptions

First up

HUNCHBAKK PROMO EP



The first material to see the light of day, originally given away on CD also containing an exclusive mix to promote the Bubblegum Stomp club night I was involved in way back in 2005, it was later re-packaged, with a cover provided my little brother, to send out to radio and just to promote my own music.

A PUNISMENT TO FIT EP



A second collection of four tracks, one of which was the mutant re-jigged final track of the Promo EP taking on a new identity and direction as Felix 2.0 (which has even made it to air on New Zealand radio). This EP closed a chapter of my music making, acting as a companion piece to the first EP and allowing me to move on to more advanced methods and music creation software.

THE ENEMY – THIS SONG (HUNCHBAKK’S YOUTH OF TODAY REMIX)




The track that kicked off my flirtations with not being such an unknown, created for a remix competition but not chosen as one of the final winners, I felt passionately enough about the track that I would share it with the wider world to co-incide with the official single release. I passed it along to a couple of people and sent afew copies to radio, and the results were more than I ever expected, culminating with a play from Eddy TM on Xfm’s The Remix and also, bizarrely picked up by a radio show in New Zealand and played out on a Saturday afternoon (the play of Felix 2.0, mentioned above, came after).

KOMAKINO – KID FEAR (HUNCHBAKK’S AWAKE NOW REMIX)




Possibly the runt of the litter, this was my first stab at remixing while I was getting to grips with new software (the remix of The Enemy came later, but was still finished before this one) and actually took me so long to complete that the band had split up before I was even done. Despite getting in touch with the remnants of the band in their new guise, I’ve never received any feedback on what they actually thought of it.

RADIOHEAD – NUDE (HUNCHBAKK’S TOWERBLOCK DUB REMIX)



How do you get people to listen to your music? Remix Radiohead. The gauntlet was thrown down in another remix competition was participants offerings uploaded to a site in which was essentially an overblown (and over subscribed) popularity contest. I never really had any intention of entering and I don’t think I even started tinkering with it until the deadline had already passed, but again, this time with a ‘less is more’ approach, I’d found myself with a remix I didn’t want to keep to myself.

And a good job too. Cos once I’d passed it onto Saam, who had been kind enough to feature my Enemy remix on his blog, it kinda got everywhere, picked up by a number of other blogs and downloaded by a troubling number of people, and it still crops up in those audio tracker things that I have never cared to understand as being listened to, and appreciated, by people all over the world.

MARVIN – THAT ONE TIME (HUNCHBAKK 2 SKOOL BOOTLEG MIX)




Marvin is an artist I’ve gotta lotta love for and I was proud when he featured my remix of The Enemy on his blog. He liked it so much that he sent me the accapella of his forthcoming single for me to play around with, and he released the track as a little internet exclusive.

THE FREEWHEELIN’ TROUBADOUR – THE NIGHT THAT I DIE (HUNCHBAKK REMIX)



Another one that strikes me as a rather mis-understood creature, it seems to have been ignored by it’s original owner, and even my girlfriend didn’t seem to like it an awful lot. A little disappointing when you have put a lot of time and heart into a new creation but you can’t please everyone all of the time. I’m hoping a few other people might have a different opinion of it.

AKIRA THE DON FEAT. LITTLES – NO MATTER WHAT (HUNCHBAKK REMIX)



More remix comp fare. The entire month of November was spent toiling over this as it slowly but surely took shape. This was my chance to be included on an Akira The Don mixtape, I’m a fan of the man himself, I’m a fan of his music and of his mixtapes. Sadly it wasn’t to be, it didn’t quite make the final cut, instead trumped by the magnificent pydos in spydos.

AKIRA THE DON FEAT. MARY TURNER – MUSIC OF THE SPHERES (HUNCHBAKK’S DIRTY ELBOWS MIX)



I struck gold with this one tho, ‘No matter what’ troubled me for a month, this lil miraculous gem was conceived in a couple of hours, purely by chance. I’d had a crack at a number of other Akira The Don remixes but this one just fell together perfectly and secured a place on the ATD remixtape.

HUNCHBAKK / IAN BYFORD ART – SOUND / ART TRACK 1



The first track to come to fruition as part of a new collaborative venture. Ian Byford is an artistand he is my little brother and he quite often provides artwork for my tracks and remixes, at my suggestion we flipped the script and he created a new piece of art that I then produced the music for.



Since you managed to pick up this selection box at such a massively discounted price, it shouldn’t be much of a surprise that it is near the end of it’s shelf life, all the tracks listed above will be taken offline after their expiry date: 31 January 2009. So indulge while you’ve still got a chance, as unlike the wispa bar, it’s doubtful the remixes of Komakino and The Freewheelin’ troubadour will ever make a comeback.


*all artwork designed by Ian Byford. Except: ‘Punishment..’ EP, This Song and That One Time designed by Hunchbakk. May contain nuts.