Join the collective consciousness cloud

Would you do me the kindness of coming to help me think? I want to prioritise aspects of my existence so what better way to do so than to start a debate in a cyber-future-hive-mind-thought-cloud?

thinkBubble is the bemusing invention of Marcus Alexander and I'm keen to see it being used for something interesting.

Just click and drag to pan around, use the mouse wheel to zoom in and out, and double-click to create a new bubble. That's really all there is to it.



Click here and join the musing.

Puppies in the window

Just found this Japan clip. Loads of cute puppies and kittens in little glass boxes in the window of a pet shop. See me react..

What I been up ta

Busy week for music last week.

My press release is nearly ready - I am sorting one out for Broken Into Tumbolia's net release (see the releases section of my website for more information) - finally got a professional writer to describe what I do, and it's getting sent to, as far as I can tell, everyone; press, radio, etc..., etc... You can see the first draft on my michaelforrest myspace profile. Looks like we're going with a kind of 'scientifically experimental musical pioneer with a penchant for heavy basslines' as my USP.

I spent a lot of energy on L1NA last week too. You can see our new L1NA myspace profile here. It's L1na with two ones. 'l11na'. I don't mind it. Plus I think I did a decent job on the page design - looks much better than the michaelforrest one :-S. Maybe that's because I'm doing stuff a with reduced perfectionist tendencies when I work on that project.

Predictably enough, L1NA has run into some complications, so I'm likely to be doing more solo stuff for a while. That's okay though - I want to finish an 'up' album with Bumpy Bosbo, Dreaming of Polygamy, Anger Belly and suchlike on it. I reckon I need about four more tracks to get that ready. Just got Reason 4 because I want to keep the Ableton+Reason combo going for the rest of the tracks on this album (rather than Logic) to retain consistency.

I did a bit of visual programming last week too. I'm gonna go for a kinda literalist 'forest' thing to go with my name -trees are cool, animations of trees growing are cool, I like fractals - I try to make my music fractal so it all kinda works. Having the Falling Leaves video set in a forest wasn't a conscious decision, but it works for me - this feels like a rich vein. So I will tap it. With my syringe. Where syringe is a metaphor for 'programming skillz'. Which is another way of writing 'programming skills'. But I digress. Which is another way of saying 'but I'm gonna shut the f*ck up now'.

Kevin James on Hardball MF REMIX

I was working on some music and watching this video - they went together so I thought I'd throw up a video :-)

From http://scotchandpolitics.com/2008/5/16/comedy-friday-kevin-james-on-hardball

"Chris Matthews shreds right wing talker Kevin James on Hardball who can't tell him what Neville Chamberlain did wrong even though he's trying to use Chamberlain as a right wing talking point."

(I am found on http://mf.grimaceworks.com )

Make a promise.mp3

So – here’s the new L1NA (hm.. working title still..) song. This track started with a sound I heard in a dream while I was staying in the mountains of Japan. I woke up and picked up the laptop I’d belligerently brought with me on the holiday trip, and miraculously managed to reproduce the sound I’d heard in my dream.

We decided this would be a nice L1na track so I put constructed an approximate backing track. Halina insisted on recording her ‘dodgy lyrics’ on the highest quality equipment I could lend her. She emailed the words back to me and I set them back into the track, and a few tinkerings later, this is the result.

I hope you will enjoy it. This one could make you happy.

You can see Halina’s running commentary on our collaborations at lina.grimacworks.com

sing_the_truth.mp3.mp3

click for the artwork big

The first time Halina came to do some music with me, this was the image I had in mind – I wanted to make a song where I’m pointing a gun at a frightened girl’s head and forcing her to sing. Couldn’t say why…

You may have heard Halina’s version of the track over at lina.grimaceworks.com — well this is my version (using the same vocal parts from the original – recorded by Halina ‘late and night with the neighbours banging down’ ). I wasn’t gonna finish it but she borrowed my laptop and found a work in progress and apparently it’s the kids’ favourite so I had to keep hearing about it….

Here ya goes anyhoe.

(um… the title of this post is funny but due to the extremely convoluted background process by which mp3s get onto my website I am a bit scared to change it in case something breaks…… oh dear.)