June
18th,
2014 What
larks! My laptop computer (not the studio one, thankfully)
decided to bid the world adieu last Sunday. It
didn't even leave a note. Tried putting the drive
in a caddy to recover all the vital info thereon, but
no - it's well and truly croaked. So here I am,
with a reconditioned machine (I couldn't find any new
ones with Windows 7) putting back dribs and drabs of
info I'd fortunately saved to USB sticks...
April
28th,
2014 Today's
the big day! N'monix has gone out into the
wide world... I hope it's wearing clean underpants.
April
23rd,
2014 Just
five more days until N'monix is released... so here's
that final teaser - a video for the track
'Shadowland', featuring Steve's beautiful and emotive
guitar work. watch
the video...
April
21st,
2014 Back
from an Easter break - to Copenhagen! I'd never
been there before, and was really taken by the place.
The Danes certainly live up to their reputation
of being the happiest nation in Europe - everywhere
we went we were greeted with smiling, friendly, happy
people. Needless to say we took a train ride
over the famous Øresund
Bridge to Malmo, as you do... A highlight of the trip
was a Friday night visit to the famous Tivoli Gardens.
Friday night is rock night at Tivoli, and the
featured band that night was Carpark North, hugely famous
in Denmark but largely unkown elsewhere. I'd describe
them as a mix of rock, alternative and electro
with just a touch of prog thrown in. Very memorable
tunes, some surprisingly proggy chord changes and a
very charismatic frontman.
Having
now twice watched the Copenhagen episode from Michael
Portillo's Great Continental Rail Journeys TV series,
in which he visits Tivoli and rides the old wooden rollercoaster
(built in 1914), I had to follow suit - and great fun
it was too.
April
14,
2014 Two
more behind-the-scenes video blogs went online this
weekend... The first is more of a homespun rockumentary
- a Grand Day Out to the Musical Instrument Museum in
Brussels, in search of one of the earliest electronic
keyboard instruments - the Ondes Martenot. watch
the video...
The
second video shows Kate Faber at work in the studio,
recording her angelic soprano vocal for 'Memory', the
second track on N'monix. watch
the video...
There's
one more music video to come before the album's release
on the 28th, so stay tuned...
March
31,
2014 When
Rob Townsend was over to do his soprano sax session,
we couldn't resist videoing the occasion. Full
marks to Rob for blasting away without reservations,
despite having cameras in his face! Lesser men
(me) would crumble... The video is online here...
N'monix
is now available for pre-order (for April 28th release) For
more details click
here...
February
6,
2014 NEWS I'm
happy to confirm that the release date for n'monix
is set for April 28th 2014. At my current rate of tea
and coffee consumption, I make that around 405 cups
of tea and 81 lattes away. That's a lot of caffeine
sloshing about... Alternatively, it's 12 episodes of
The Walking Dead, probably 6 full-on shopping
trips to Sainsbury's or Tesco's, and 4 haircuts.
I haven't worked out the number of toilet rolls
yet...
Good
news too is that the Northlands album project
by Tony Patterson and Brendan Eyre is nearing completion.
Amongst the featured guests are Steve
and John Hackett, Doug and Carrie Melbourne, Nigel Appleton,
Tim Esau, and some old keyboard player not a million
miles from here. The
album's website has just gone live - check it out at www.northlands-music.co.uk
)
