When the heck is the Presets album released in the UK?

Apocalypso was released on the 12th of April in Oz (yeah, a Saturday: weird), but of the release date in the UK? Who knows? There is not one jot of information on the so-called ‘internet’, which is by turn frustrating, bizarre and cruel.

Sort it out Alien Overlords – and make this album available to me now!

Looptron’s Birthday Party

Last Friday it was the birthday of a certain Mr Looptron. Look here he is doing V signs at me, whilst simultaneously giving the impression of being a man-lobster:

It was a kind of open mic night, and I had prepared a little riff thing of Tris’ (above right) into a wild and crazy loop thing. So Tris, Neil & I played it for the massed crowds, having never rehearsed it. Sort of like a ‘jam’. It went quite well, not that I think the audience noticed. And luckily no one recorded it either on audio or photo…

Then Neil did a song with Charlie:

And then Neil did a little acoustic style set with his slightly dormant band Moeker:

It was good. And then various combinations of Neil, Charlie, Des, John, and others did musical things. It was all good!

You can even see Neil playing a Moldy Peaches song with Sally on his blog here.

All in all, a good night! You should have been there (you were? It was good weren’t it?)

Lazy TV composers!

Far be in from me to rant about stuff, but can I just make a little plea to the world’s TV and film composers to please stop using ‘Bowed Oil Can’ from the 1998 Spectrasonics Distorted Reality sample CD?

I know it’s a lovely sound and everything, but really, there are other sounds that can conjure up the desolate wastes of the artic, the Sahara desert, outer space, a criminal with intent, etc, etc.

Most of the time they don’t even bother changing the pitch, the lazy sods!

This is the sound right here.

I hear it on a weekly basis…I don’t keep notes or anything, but it’s on anything from CSI to David Attenborough, horror films to nature programmes, even documentaries about quantum mechanics, you name it, it’s been used!

I might have to do a track where I use just this sound and mangle it in everyway possible as a pointless exercise in proving something to a largely indifferent world of TV composers. Don’t think that’ll stop me though!

Once you’ve heard it you’ll hear the damn thing everywhere.

edit: another nice and therefore, overused, sound is the waterphone – another staple of horror films.

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Log

– A Disappearing Number, Nithan Sawhaney. (Brilliant production, marred only by use of Bowed Oil Can)
– CSI. too many to mention in this ‘murdertainment’ series.

Lazy TV composers: Bowed Oil Can

Far be it from me to rant about stuff, but can I just make a little plea to the world’s TV and film composers to please stop using ‘Bowed Oil Can’ from the 1998 Spectrasonics Distorted Reality sample CD?

I know it’s a lovely sound and everything, but really, there are other sounds that can conjure up the desolate wastes of the artic, the Sahara desert, outer space, a criminal with intent, etc, etc.

Most of the time they don’t even bother changing the pitch, the lazy sods!

This is the sound right here.

I hear it on a weekly basis…I don’t keep notes or anything, but it’s on anything from CSI to David Attenborough, horror films to nature programmes, even documentaries about quantum mechanics, you name it, it’s been used!

I might have to do a track where I use just this sound and mangle it in everyway possible as a pointless exercise in proving something to a largely indifferent world of TV composers. Don’t think that’ll stop me though!

Once you’ve heard it you’ll hear the damn thing everywhere.

edit: another nice and therefore, overused, sound is the waterphone – another staple of horror films.

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The power of SEX

So, I work hard trying to keep the Cassette Electrik wordpress blog up to date with fascinating band and music related posts. Yesterday I thought it would be fun to headline a blog “Sex, Drugs & 303’s“.

And this is what I find in my stats today:

I’m delighted that Google reckons that my blog is the #1 place to look for sex on the internet! Quite an achievement!I’d better be jolly careful in future not use any other dodgy words such as porn, dildo or badgers.

Oh. Damn.