Pulse Festival

Pulse festival was great.
Heard some great bands and had a brilliant time.
I played a 50 minute set on the Courtyard Stage on the Saturday. Looking forward to next year already.


Set up : Macbook Pro , Komplete Audio 6 N.I sound card, Akai APC40



Thanks Pulse see you next year.

music that doesn’t drop.

Quite often when people hear my music they’ll tell me it doesn’t drop. It doesn’t quite ‘go there’.  I definitely agree with this.  However, I used to want my music to drop, and after working for the past 6 months on my new material, and indeed developing a new sound, I’ve reached a musical understanding with myself, that the intention of it is to just teeter on the edge of going there, and not actually commit to becoming a dance track.  It seems that my talent lies in composing tunes that flirt with the idea, but don’t take you there.  Whether this is just a fancy disguise for being lazy, I am yet to find out.

I’ve had people draw different conclusions and make vastly different comparisons of my work, which I love.  Its fantastic that people can all hear the same piece of music, but all have a different way of listening to it, and therefor have a different experience to the person sat next to them.  So I thought i’d put a few songs/artists on here that people have mentioned being similar to me, so you can have a listen and completely agree or disagree, or remain indifferent to!

Arguably, those tracks do have very dance based elements.  The music I like to reference and enjoy listening to is a mixture of full on dance tracks, and ambient/electronic soundscape pieces, which I think is how I arrive at the product I now have.

Its all quite exciting from here on in really.  Although its taken what feels like a big chunk of my life to get this project finished, its finally there. I am so relieved I can draw a line under it, and move on to noisier and tastier ventures!

‘A Very New Everything’ [2013] will be released through Bit-Phalanx, watch this space for more info.

London show, HK119 / One Little Indian Records / Bit Phalanx.

What a night! my first gig in London, also my first gig with Bit Phalanx. Amazing music and lovely peeps thanks!

New Release, coming soon.

I have just sent off my first track to be mastered today, whilst i’m adding the finishing touches to one of the other tracks.

The new EP is more exciting, current, and fresh (for me) than my last one ever was.  Kayla Painter (2012), seemed like an experiment to me, to see if I could finish some songs, run a launch night, and get my stuff on Spotify.  This project feels very different, it feels like I am releasing something because I have a group of songs that really want to be heard and remixed and enjoyed! Since my last release I have been gradually building a home studio, and I’m now the lucky owner of some grand equipment.

My new home studio set up consists of
KRK Rokit 6 active monitors
iMac
LG monitor
Shure SM58
NI Komplete Audio 6 (soundcard)
DT100 beyerdynamic
EWQL orchestra
Logic Pro 9
Ableton Live 8
NI Komplete 7 (instruments & effects)

It has certainly been an interesting 8 month project, and I’m really excited to push it forward to your ears.  I’d say theres plenty of influence from my favourite musicians, but even more so, Burial, Nicolas Jaar, Steve Reich and Will Wiesenfeld.

A Very New Everything (2013) – Kayla Painter – release date tbc.
sneak peak

Bit Phalanx Podcast Vol. #07

Back in August I played a gig with Drawn Recordings, the night was blast.  Since the show I have been chatting with some lovely chaps who run Bit-Phalanx a electronic music netlabel.
Here’s their latest podcast where you can listen to some rather tasty electronica, and they were kind enough to play my new song Ga Ga too.

Promo Video

Live at Thekla 19/04/2012 and The Croft 23/03/2012

Rock The Boat Thekla – 19th April 2012

On Thursday I played a gig at Thekla supporting the wonderful Uh Huh Her on their European tour. I arrived at Thekla to Uh Huh Her sound checking. I have to admit I found it strange being in Thekla in the day time, and when it was empty. When i set up i was surprised how everything just fell in to place and worked perfectly, having a fixed projector and a permanent screen helped a lot. I didn’t really feel ready for the gig as I had to rush down straight after my day job and my head wasn’t really in the mode I needed it to be, and seeing people queuing up outside the door at 6.30pm (to see Uh Huh Her) didn’t calm my nerves. Getting on with the set, I began whilst the crowd were already positioned right the front of the stage to see the much anticipated performance of the headliners.  After i’d got to about six minutes into the set I started to really get into it, and I suddenly heard someone behind me playing live drums along to my track.  I was a little too confused as to who it might be, because I only know one drummer who can drum like that and she’s rarely in the country.  Without wanting to take my eyes off what i was doing I just continued playing and really started getting into the live drums mixed with my wonky beats. The chap stood up after we’d jammed out for a while and picked up the microphone, – turns out it was Josh the drummer for Uh Huh Her.  He gave a big hello and shout out to the audience for me which really was more than I could have hoped for from the band.  The rest of the set flowed along and I managed to make a better stab at my Lana Del Rey cover this time, and also snuck in a little cheeky Celine Dion (My Heart Will Go On) with respect to the recent anniversary of the Titanic’s voyage.  This seemed even more suitable as we were playing this gig on a boat.

By the end the crowd were dancing and cheering and I really felt well recieved despite being a fairly different genre to the headline act.  As I usually stand and bob around facing the front I never get a chance to see the visuals in their full glory but luckily I have some great footage and photographs from the night too so I can sit back and watch it from the audience’s view.

Big thanks to Camila, Leisha, Josh and Jamie.  It was wonderful to meet you all , you really made my night a lot of fun and I really hope we cross paths again perhaps on your side of the pond….
Also cheers to Mike, Harriet and Patrick.. thanks for having me was a real pleasure to play on Thekla and I’d love to come back anytime you’ll have me.

 

Goodnight, over and out.

Tomorrows the day when i release my first bit of music officially. My first ‘record’ which will be released tomorrow into the public for your audio experiences, criticism, enjoyism, or if your on facebook likeism.

The last six months have been an interesting journey for me. This is something i’ve never done, released my own record. Its been an experience where I can honestly say I have learnt a lot and slept a little.

Now that tomorrow has finally arrived Im actually a bit apprehensive about letting go of this project and sending it out into the big bad world, where people probably wont be as kind to the songs as I have been. This is actually going to be as challenging as the rest of the processes, letting go of this project and finally allowing it to be ‘finished’. Im excited to say the least, but dont expect i’ll be sleeping at all tonight.

Come down tomorrow and see me with all my nervous excitement at The Croft in Bristol. Im sharing the stage with two wonderful bands, Nova Robotics and That Hidden Promise.  The Croft will open its doors at 7.30, and the EP Launch Party will be in the front room. The Party will mark the release of my Debut EP which will be available on Itunes, Spotify and Amazon. I have also arranged to get a limited number of hard copies pressed which I will be selling after my set too.

A huge thanks to James Nathaniel Southall who has been the visual designer for this project.  He has worked alongside me through moments of uncertainty, visual illusions, getting square eyes, migraines, and other general screen based issues to get the perfect EP cover, branding, web banners, visuals, and so on and so forth. If you like the look of his slick work there’s a link to his website here.

Finally with no more adue i’d like to present my EP cover.

Design/Illustration by http://jamesnathan.wordpress.com/

and the back

Illustration / Design by http://jamesnathan.wordpress.com/

good night. over and out.

Next Gig – 16.02.2012

My next show will be in Newport’s venue Meze Lounge.

This is going to be an evening of experimental delights.  The night is going to be hosted by Newport University’s Creative Sound and Music students.  Being a graduate from this course myself I’ll get to see how the current students are pushing the boundaries of formulaic music, exploring sound, performance techniques, composition approaches, or any other variable you can think up.

I have played a Salon night before, last time I played it was held in Cardiff Arts Institute

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Cardiff Arts Institute – February 2011 – Photography Nic Finch

The set up I will be using at Meze Lounge, Newport 16.02.2012

I was very kindly donated the APC40, and have enjoyed getting to know it.
The APC40 is a control surface designed to work with Ableton Live, the program I use to create my live sets.  Its very easy to map keys on the device to effect variables with just a few clicks.  This bit of kit enables some really exciting experimentation with effects, looping and chopping up clips.  Something which I love about Ableton is the ability to switch between aspects of one track and another with everything sounding smooth and professional.  This is down to Ableton Live being a piece of software that snaps everything to a tempo you set it to.  Of course you can alter this as well, if you wanted to have the tempo jumping all over the place you could.  The beauty of things staying in time is the freedom you get to mash up your own tracks, which when doing live gives you a chance to be really creative and compose a new song out of your existing songs.  This is a very rewarding process for me, and it means the audience get a unique version every time you play live.  I have probably only just scratched the surface of possibilities with these two things.  But I am always exploring and accidentally stumbling upon new things you can do.