Things have been fairly quiet around here over the last while, but not without good reason.

I’ve been extremely busy with Pixelapes work, which is great but not so good for music production reasons. I’ve also moved house, started work on mixing and mastering a new Love Rhino album, and managed to sneak in a wee holiday to Amsterdam.

This is just to let everyone know I’m still alive and kicking in every sense barring the musical one.

If you’re interested, you can see photos from Amsterdam in my web album.

When is there going to be more music? Well, I have to finish this album mixing and mastering, work out some music and sound effects for a new short film, and then…

The good news is that I have created my best ever studio layout, coupled with the birthday goodness of a Genelec sub-woofer, the improvement in sound in my studio is massive. I’ve already noticed the help with the first few Love Rhino tracks I’ve mixed and I’m looking forward to applying that to my own stuff.

Something exciting to look forward to?

The most exciting upcoming news is that Autechre are going to be releasing a new album on March 3rd. It’s called Quaristice and has 20 tracks of who knows what. I can’t wait and have already pre-ordered my copy.

You can pre-order it from Warp Records here, or Amazon here, or well, loads of places.

It might interest you as well to read the following interview with Rob Brown over on Pitchfork:

I think we’re just in our own little world trying to have our new ideas in slightly newer contexts. I think that’s the same plan that we’ve always had since day one, slipping into the cracks in a society of music that doesn’t quite deliver the things that we need personally from it.

I’ve just uploaded photos from the recent Passages night at the Shed in Foley Street.

The night went extremely well with a lot of positive feedback. Enagh’s artwork was fantastic, and the photos only give you a small idea of how everything looked. Apparently her performance to my music was recorded, so with any luck we’ll actually have a video to show of that at some point.

Many thanks to everyone who came along and everyone involved. Paul and Emma were great, and Kavi’s visuals were excellent as always.

Also, thanks to Eli McBett for providing the space and best of luck to her trying to keep the place.

Where’s the Live Set?

I believe the sets were recorded successfully on the night, but I’ve been very happy with the piece that I’ve been working on for this gig and I think I’m going to spend more time on it and release it as an Alphabet Set Net EP. This is a format that I’ve been enjoying the last while and they’ve had about 9 releases as Net EP’s. In the case of the Alphabet Set every release is a single 30 minute mp3 file, which is usually a combination of tracks by the artist all mixed into each other.

So, if you can bear with me then keep an eye out for a pending Net EP announcement.

This is a strictly invite only gig, and I’ve procrastinated too long and they’ve closed the invitation list. Still, I’ll let you know what’s going on and hopefully I’ll get a nice recording of what promises to be quite an improvised set.

When: 24th November 2007
Doors 10pm o’clock

Where: Foley Street, Dublin 1

Price: Donation € 8,00 if possible

The Alphabet Set Collective presents:

A night of collaborative art, sound, movement and visual experimentation.

Bluefood with Emma Martin

As a classically trained dancer Emma Martin has over the past few months been attempting to tap into the memories and impressions that classical movement has imprinted on and in her physical being. With Paul’s soundscape performed live, Emma will use this to scratch the surfaces of instinctual movement to explore and experience the patterns of movement
memory.

Emma Martin and Paul Rowan have worked together previously on a Theatre Dance performance of ‘Play3sum’, by Jeff Gormley, in association with the Soulgunwarriors which was presented with great success at the Electric Picnic 2007. This is Emmas second time to collaborate with Bluefood.

Enagh Farrell with Ebauche

Especially for Passages, multi-disciplinary artist Enagh Farrell is teaming up for the first time with Alphabet Set’s Ebauche, who slowly builds layers of textured noise giving way to ambience while Farrell performs, slowly altering the audiences view, revealing and unravelling to create something unexpected. The collaboration is at once dark, yet strangely beautiful.

Kavi

Kavi will artistically build a visual environment with the musicians, fine artist and dancer involved. The conception lies in projecting real time feed as well pre-filmed material, that have been prepared with Emma and Enagh. real-time feed will build up existing mood of performance while being mixed with other video samples which will resolve much deeper
story of people involved. The video footage is very interpersonal and specially created for this particular performance.

Projections will be streamed on multiple screens and manipulated live with a midi controller.
Continue Reading »