The latest instalment in Benbecula's Music series, Music Volume Four, is now out, featuring a track of mine entitled 'The Everywhere Air'. The compilation also features some fantastic tracks by Christ. and Prhizzm, and is quite frankly a steal at a fiver. Head over to Benbecula to buy a copy.
Benbecula are currently selling much of their stock at a heavily discounted price - just £1.99 for selected releases, throughout March. Why not pick up some bargains and plug the holes in your Benbecula back-catalogue?
Apart from residual stock floating about in the odd retailer's inventory, Lemodie has now completely sold out. If you can track down a copy, and have yet to secure one, then act quickly! I'd like to thank everyone who bought a physical copy, reaffirming my faith in music lovers and quelling my fears about the humble CD format. Obviously, if you'd happily make do with an mp3 edition, then there is still plenty of mp3 stock available. ;) On the other hand, if you're at a complete loss and unable to track down any more physical copies, then sit tight and cross your fingers for a repress.
Benbecula are running a poll for the favourite label release of 2006. Naturally I might have a suggestion as to which you might vote for ;) but please wander over, have a look over the nominees, cast a vote and leave a comment. You might discover previously missed Benbecula gems in the process.
Yes, it finally happened - you can now officially put Mobile Foes on your phone, and allow everyone at the bus stop to bask in your well-informed musical tastes. Five variations of Mobile Foes are on offer, in addition to four Ochre-penned retro tones, for those who mourn the days of monochromatic phone displays and gloriously tinny phone sound chips.
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.
Veteran Lithuanian netlabel/zine Sutemos have released the third volume of their celebrated Intelligent Toys series, featuring a new Ochre track entitled Reunion. You can pick individual tracks to download on the release page, or download the whole release as a zip here.
The new Ochre CD, Lemodie, is out now on CD and mp3, and ought to be available from all the usual retailers, with mp3 previews and sales handled by the excellent Bleep service, among others.
Recommended online retailers:
Amazon.co.uk
Play.com
Norman Records
Sister Ray
Smallfish
Juno
Benbecula
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Download sites: