Ochre

If you haven’t seen/heard my remix of Jay Bharadia, you can listen to/download it from SoundCloud, as well as the other remixes from Lone, Airliner ‘67 and Implosion Quintet.

I’m actually on SoundCloud, and although currently mainly using it as a means of receiving mastering files, I’ll be uploading demos and sketches now and then, so if you’d like to ‘follow’ me to be notified of track uploads, please visit my page. SoundCloud is a very nifty service, totally optimised for listening and commenting to music—you can comment on particular sections of tracks using the natty timeline while listening. As far as I know there are also the obligatory widgets for posting/sharing tunes too.

The server can occasionally strain under the weight of users, as it’s getting rather popular, but it seems pretty responsive these days, ironing out its initial teething problems.

Meanwhile, back at Ochre HQ, the new album is back from mastering, coutesy of panicStudios. Sounding warm and punchy after being fed through some ridiculously expensive analogue gear, waiting patiently for a release schedule to slot into. I’ll be able to spill some more beans once I’ve got a definite plan to unveil.

Midsummer Nice Dream CDs and vinyl continue to shift nicely, but there are still a few copies left if you fancy one. If you’d rather have a download version, it’s slowly making its way through the usual download stores like iTunes and Napster etc. At the moment it’s currently selling for a ridiculously cheap $1.69 at Amie Street (for 320kbps mp3, no less), though given the dynamic pricing used there it’ll probably creep up slowly as people grab it. Also on Bandcamp for a flat $6, in just about every digital format available ever.

I think that’s the current news round-up sorted.

Okay, with all that renovation kerfuffle out of the way, I’m happy to get the mastering underway once again; I’ll be chasing up those of you who’ve been in touch during the downtime, and have organised a schedule to catch up with this.

Meanwhile, I’m currently working on a remix for The Collectors (featuring Benet Walsh, co-writer of a few tunes of mine that made their way onto the Death of an Aura EP, with more to follow). It’ll be a digital-only release at some point in the first quarter of 2009, I think.

Also, watch this space for a new vinyl EP release, being manufactured as we speak. It’s been too long since I’ve had something out on vinyl, so I’m pretty giddy about getting my mits on it. I don’t even have a turntable at the moment… okay so I just want to lick the vinyl—what’s wrong with that?

Ed Chamberlain’s Mixxy EP1 has now been released on Baselogic Records, featuring my remix of ‘Styge’ (still up for streaming on MySpace). The EP is available to buy on 12″ from Warpmart and Juno, with more stores to follow. If you can’t find it at your local store, please ask them to order it in.

I’ve recently polished off a remix of Ed Chamberlain’s track ‘Styge’, available at some point in the hopefully not-too-distant future on Baselogic Records. You can hear the remix in its entirety in exquisite 22kHz 96kbps nigh-fidelity on MySpace. I’m fairly certain when it drops it’ll be 12″ only.

Also, I’ve finished uploading decent streaming mp3s of A Midsummer Nice Dream to Virb, so you can preview the album there before buying it, should you feel so inclined, from Toytronic (because as far as I can tell, it’s one of the few places left where you can still find it on CD and 12″). After all, you can’t buy what you haven’t heard, can you?

This remix medley of mine, based on various themes taken from Nintendo’s Legend of Zelda game franchise, seems to pop up now and then on the radar of various blogs, so I thought it might be useful to offer a few notes about the circumstances under which it was written. Although I’m a huge fan of the franchise, with many happy memories playing Zelda: A Link to the Past on my SNES, the remix didn’t come about purely as a celebration of the game and its music; it was written for a 2003 competition (I think it was 2003 anyway — my memory’s pretty hazy) hosted by UK games mag Computer and Video Games, and sponsored by Nintendo and Turnkey (a chain of UK music stores). The possibility of winning a Gamecube bundled with Zelda: Wind Waker, plus an Access Virus Indigo 2 VA synth, was too good to pass up. So over the course of one weekend I set about writing a little remix medley homage to the music of Hyrule.

As luck would have it, after completely forgetting about the competition, I got a phone call a few months later, from one of the competition organisers notifying me of my win, and a couple of days later I received the Gamecube and Access Virus, feeling like an excited kid on Christmas morning. Somewhat regretfully, I then sold the Virus a month or so after, as at the time I was wholly convinced VSTi synths were all I’d ever need (oops), and that the proceeds of the synth would be better spent purchasing another UAD-1 DSP card, as they were a just couple of hundred quid short of a grand at the time. Ah well, at least I still have the Gamecube (mostly used for Mario Kart!).