Ochre

I’d been planning to re-release these tracks properly for a while now, to give them the conclusive send-off they deserve. Thanks to the help of some friends, plus some professional mastering, I can happily announce that Early Learning is now available for a name-your-price download on Bandcamp! (iTunes etc. will follow over the forthcoming weeks.)

Although all the tracks have been previously released online in one form or another in the past, to collate and properly sequence them, give them a polish and adorn with some great nkurence-penned artwork, has breathed new life into them.

Early Learning constitutes most of my pre-’Midsummer’ output from between 2001 and 2003, and in some cases required revisiting the Cubase VST 5 song files, to be remixed and re-rendered for a cohesive release (i.e. tracks 1, 3 & 9). Being a download-only album, it seemed like a good opportunity to encode the FLACs in 24-bit, exceeding the 16-bit sound quality typical of a CD-borne album. (Which reminds me, I can also upgrade the FLAC editions of ‘Like Dust’, Lemodie and ‘Midsummer’ with 24-bit FLACs too. Shall arrange this when I get the chance.)

I’ve also taken full advantage of Bandcamp’s bonus-bundling capabilities, uploading a couple of extra tracks (a remastered ‘Bipolar Bears’, plus my Zelda remix), in addition to Chris Larkee’s video for ‘Esign’. The Esign video has been updated with the remastered audio, and rendered to a 720p H.264/MPEG-4 video file.

Enjoy!

Please remember to hit those like/tweet buttons on Bandcamp and help spread the word. Much appreciated, thanks.

I’ve finally finished updating my production portfolio, following a few fevered QuickTime encoding sessions, showcasing most of the higher-profile work I’ve completed this year (plus some of my favourite projects from the past few years).

Initially I was a little reticent to combine my recording and production work under the ‘Ochre’ umbrella, but seeing as though the production side of things now (thankfully) makes up a sizeable portion of my working life (along with my mastering work), it seems to make sense now for my site to reflect this. It’s also a good means of keeping my portfolio neatly catalogued, online and in one place, as I had almost forgotten about some the work I’d undertaken in the past (I’d been busier than I thought!).

Additionally, I’ve created a small library of available production tracks, which will hopefully serve both as a demonstration of my compositional versatility, as well as a catalogue of pieces that are available for licensing.

I’m very keen to expand my portfolio, particularly with some game audio work, so if you’re an aspiring game developer in need of some music or sound effects for your game, please get in touch. Although I’ve licensed my music for use in games in the past, I’m really itching to get stuck in with some game audio production, interactive music and sound design, so I’ve been poring over various audio APIs, raising my proficiency with FMOD and Wwise.

Finally, I’ll be dropping some news about some Ochre related releases over the forthcoming weeks, so stay tuned. Thanks!

I figured it was about time I revamped my line up of shirts in an effort to simplify what’s on offer and cut down on choice paralysis. The options have been whittled down to logos in black and white (leaving you to select your shirt colour), plus a small selection of hand-picked colourways. Garments are limited to mens’ tees, manufactured by those wacky soft pornographers, American Apparel (though I might try some other garments soon). The stores are also a little prettier and more easily navigable these days too, following some thorough settings-delving and customising. No longer do you have to click on an individual garment to change colour.

Although I’ve still got both shops on the go, the US-centric .com and the Eurocentric .net, there’s nothing to stop you ordering from either. Spreadshirt seem to operate on a 1$=£1 basis, which while initially baffling, might not be far from the truth when you factor in customs and VAT if ordering from the US store to the UK, for example.

I’ll also be ending the current sale on physical products soon. No set date, but probably some point this week, so if you’ve been thinking about grabbing a Lemodie CD or Midsummer vinyl, act (moderately) quickly.

Lastly, you’ve probably noticed the new ‘Production’ label in the menu. As well as being kept comfortably busy with the mastering, I’ve also been doing more bespoke production work for various media clients, which I’ve been thoroughly enjoying. The frenetic work pace, prescriptive briefs and urgent deadlines contrast nicely with my (perhaps overly) leisurely Ochre output of late. I’ll add these projects to the site once I receive the completed video files etc., and will no doubt post an update.

The above video documents the production of a very unique set of musical artefacts, created initially as part of my PhD submission. The inaugural set of these ‘Auratic Artefacts’ comprises three transparent, single-sided vinyl dubplates, with a double-sided, laser-etched wooden veneer, bonded to the non-audio side of each dubplate. Further variations include sleek, laser-etched aluminium plates, contrasting nicely with the warm, almost rustic character of the wooden veneers. As you can see, each set comes with a hand-sprayed, custom sleeve, too!

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Last year San Diego-based games developer Psyonix got in touch about licensing a couple of tracks in a tech demo/game called Whizzle, showcasing the Unreal Development Kit. Being a demo, it’s just a single level (for now, at least), but I’m glad it came to fruition nonetheless. Here’s a short vid of Whizzle in action:

If you’re interested in learning more about the UDK and fancy dipping your toes into the world of game development, then this video of Dave at Psyonix gives you a quick intro to the platform. The UDK is free to download too, so given a little free time there’s nothing stopping you from crafting your own titles.

Ochre – Lunar Suburbia on a HDD Speaker from Ochre on Vimeo.

The track is ‘Lunar Suburbia,’ taken from the next Ochre album, ‘Like Dust of the Balance,’ playing through an old hard disk soldered up to the headphone outputs of my sound card.

Yep, it sounds terrible. But looking at the little drive head vibrate and bob in time with the music perhaps redeems it a little.

If you fancy making your own hard disk speaker, there are a few articles dotted around the net documenting the process, step-by-step, such as the one at the ever-handy Instructables.

The ever-productive Knellotron (Chris Larkee) created a video for my vintage track Esign a while back, and so I thought I’d give it another mention now that I’m here on the new site. Chris created the whole thing from start to finish using nothing but open-source software, and you can read more about the video’s history on Chris’ blog here. I’m pleased to learn that Chris’ work hasn’t gone unnoticed, and he’s managed to bag a well-deserved ‘Best Animation Artwork’ award at the 2005 Blender Conference, as well as securing screenings at various film festivals. Good job mate!

I’ve embedded a YouTube-hosted vid below, but if you want a warp-free high quality version with AV timing intact (grr, YouTube!), you can grab a .mov of it from Knellotron.com, or an mp4 and DVD quality mpeg from archive.org.

The audio track itself was created using Ross Bencina’s Audiomulch program, while it was still in its freeware beta stage.

Recently, I’ve been working on editing and remixing the audio for one of the VJ collaborations to be featured on Need For Speed: Carbon, EA’s latest installment of the popular gaming franchise. Six visual artists were commissioned to create short animations inspired by the game, and were supplied with suitable raw materials (videos, images, models etc) to use, should they wish. A friend of mine and long-time Ochre collaborator Patrick Ehrlund was selected to create one of the animations, electing to create a 3D animation from scratch rather than remix the supplied media, with me editing and remixing the existing project audio to fit the animation more closely. It’s a shame YouTube totally throws the tight audio-visual timing out the window, but here’s what we came up with:

All six animations will be included on the collectors edition of Need For Speed: Carbon, and are also doing the rounds on TV ad breaks (at least here in the UK). Keep an eye out for the ad and press the red button on your Sky remote to check them all out.