gazlington

Road trip day 2 Stone Free

•May 23, 2014 • Leave a Comment

Track for the day, Stone Free by Hendrix.

Goodbye to Dubai. Varied day of stuff. Customised omelette to start the day, then off to the Burj Al Arab. Even though we couldn’t get right in there, it was pretty impressive. Another statement from the UAE. Can’t believe Roger and Andre actually had a hit up on the pod. Interesting taxi driver from Sudan. His take on the North was just let them go. He had 5 kids and heads back to Sudan for 2 months every year.

Different taxi drivers different stories.

Don’t know what our next taxi driver was on. Whatever it was it wasn’t working for him as he took us to the Emirates Mall. A bit of snow skiing was happening at the Emirates Mall. Amazing considering it was about 36 degrees outside.

Back at our hotel it was time for a chill out before our desert safari. Prompt pick up and then we were out there.

Highlights-

dune bashing
visit to a camel farm, ………..racing Camels are worth around $30000
ride of a camel
holding of a Falcon, worth apparently $20000
nice tandoori chicken
traditional dancing display

on safari in Sharjar (?) spelling?

Posted in music and travel

Road trip day 1, 20/5

•May 22, 2014 • Leave a Comment

And it comes to pass that we are on the road. Plane trip of 14 hours wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. Using the in house system I watched the Paul Macca vid of his new album before hitting the CDs. Everything is mixed in with Macca now. It all just loops around as he tours, records, accepts awards, gets married again, etc. Love to chat with him. Anyway. One album I was listening to on board (Emirates) was In the Court Of the Crimson King by Frippy and his mates. As I listened to Greg Lake singing 21st Century Schizoid Man, the words rang out….”nothing he’s got he really needs” …..hey thats me, yeah man! Robert Fripp was chanelling me.

…..then I moved to Hendrix “Can You hear Me” and Cream “Strange Brew”……..etc, etc.

Dubai. Originally for 3 days, but Sue had to go to hospital on our original departure day. All good. Love the scale and quirkiness of Dubai, and the actual concept of building it in the first place. Almost like someone has drawn their own utopian perspective of a city on paper and then gone about building it. You can actually see the logic of everything laid out from the top of the world (see Burj comments below). Staying at the Marina end of the coast. Everything we need in a mall next door. Taxi the way to get around. In actual fact we were up for about 36 hours on our first day(s) as we lost time flying and didn’t sleep, arriving in Dubai at 5 in the morning. Slept great last night.

Highlight for me yesterday was the Burj Khalifa. What a feat of engineering. And the service, at the Burj and in Dubai, sensational. A bit of a hit temperature wise. 34 at 6 in the morning? A lot of imported labour from Africa and India. Some really nice people in our Motel. Dubai Mall was intriguing, its just big, big and big. Ice skating? An industrial sized fish aquarium? Bloomingdales? Tiffany???? Whoah!

Posted in music and travel, musicology
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Some new trio based jazz guitar tracks (apologies to jim hall, james muller and pat metheny)

•May 17, 2014 • Leave a Comment

A bit of a fascination with the 5/4 time signature in jazz.

https://soundcloud.com/gazlington/jimmy-james

https://soundcloud.com/gazlington/g-man-jazz-too

Posted in guitar, music composition

musician journeys

•May 12, 2014 • Leave a Comment

10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3……………

What in the hell are musician journeys?

Posted in music and travel

Zoe Keating Sooper Looper

•January 20, 2014 • Leave a Comment

I recently revisited the work of Zoe Keating, a cellist who has embraced the concept of looping taking it way out to another level using technology.

Zoe is a native Canadian who is a skilled classical cellist and an adept composer/ looper/ innovator/ business person.

The challenge with looping seems to be, making it all seamless and non contrived. Is the final piece coherent? Is it believable? Is it melodic? Does the structure work?

Zoe mike’s her cello then runs it through a MacBook Pro loaded with Ableton Live and Sooperlooper. This cutdown little rig is then played effectively using midi pedals. No FX are used. The sounds and textures derive from Zoe’s playing. Classic.

As well as her music Zoe runs a neat internet based business model that gives her self sufficiency and control with her music, all at arm’s length from the music industry per se.

Below is a clip of Zoe playing Escape Artist. Also below is a 2 part interview with Zoe.

Would love to see a guitar player step into this realm.

Posted in music composition, music production

John Scofield’s Uberjam Band

•October 27, 2013 • Leave a Comment

I really like the new John Scofield project Uberjam. Apparently the Uberjam Band recorded ten years ago. Now they have regrouped. I’ve always liked John’s angular playing and phrasing, and his sounds are always spot on. John has an incredible musical pedigree having studied at Berkley and worked with Miles Davis on projects like Bitches Brew. Check the youtube link below to get a sense of how John and his co-conspirator Avi Bortnick get their sounds. Really insightful and pleasurably geekish. I’ve also put a link to the band in action. Great playing and free flowing grooves.

http://youtu.be/hzy9EP3oGvw

Posted in guitar

St Liar

•October 27, 2013 • Leave a Comment

This is a track set up around a poem by Kimberly Keck. Effectively the piece involves loops, layers and guitars. Spoken word is by Suzanne Kinsella. The track was engineered by Justin Humphries. Mixing and mastering was also done by Justin. Overall this project was an interesting challenge and one well worth revisiting again and signing off on.

https://soundcloud.com/gazlington/st-liar

Posted in guitar, music composition, music production

Allan Holdsworth, guitarist

•June 26, 2012 • Leave a Comment

I had the opportunity to listen to some of Allan Holdsworth’s playing again recently. I’m not really sure whether anyone is playing anything like him these days. Originally from the UK, Allan has crafted a unique style (check the full on soloing on Devil Takes the Hindmost from Metal Fatigue).

Where you start with it all? For me it was the Tony Williams Lifetime Believe It album. The defining track? Red Alert. Allan sounded quite bluesey and chromatic all at the same time. Apparently he was playing an SG, thru god knows what. As well as Allan’s solo capabilities he also worked hard to evolve textural chordal concepts and sounds. Very distinctive. Very cinematic. And another thing, Allan’s tracks sometimes took on a song structure, with vocals (eg, Metal Fatigue and Panic Station). Check out the Metal Fatigue project, an alliance that happened around the same time that Eddie Van Halen (a major fan) was attempting to get Allan a record deal before he made true on his threat to drop the guitar thing completely and start repairing amps or something. You can hear Allan’s influence on Eddie’s playing on the Fair Warning album, particularly the track Hear About It Later. Eddie did remark at one point that upon hearing Allan play he would often go, huh? Bill Brufrod said at one point that part of the key to Allan’s style was his obsession with Nicolas Slonimsky’s Thesaurus of scales. A disappointment for me was part 2 of the Tony Williams project, where Tony seemed to try and steer a raw fusion band into funk.

Allan is very self effacing in regard to his talents.

I would have been happy to retire after having played the solo in Red Alert.

Some samples below-

Posted in guitar

Bassist and writer: Meshell Ndegeocello…Faithful

•March 12, 2012 • 2 Comments

As a greatly admired bassist, writer and groove maker, Meshell Ndegeocello has put it all together many times on many tracks, for both her own projects as well as other people. This particular track from her 1999 album has to be close to the the top of the list for my money.

Apart from the bass and the vocals, what I really appreciate on this track initially is the sparse piano, subtle percussion and acoustic guitar. At around 3 mins 12 sec, the whole thing switches to a bigger sound. The drums, courtesy of Abe Laboriel Jnr (son of LA Super bassist Abe Laboriel) are phenomenal, moving from brushes to sticks, and the electric guitar (Doyle Bramhall II or David Torn?) is really restrained but incredibly loud and effective. I particularly like the the chromatic piano chord building behind the groove as the piece goes through it’s paces. I also like the ambient background echoed sounds moving in and out of the mix. Very sophisticated track. Well worth a listen. A pity that the CD cover provides no performance credits.

Posted in music composition, music production

Robert Fripp: Writer of twisted but musical riffs

•February 21, 2012 • Leave a Comment

A band that has endured in the guise of many incarnations is King Crimsom. Right from the get go with their first album “In the Court of the Crimson King” (with Greg Lake on vocals) Robert Fripp and his musical alchemists have been the epitomy of Prog.

For me the real treat with this band lies in the tight ensemble playing and Fripp’s song construction, riff writing and twisted guitar parts.

An album in point is “Larks Tongues in Aspic”. With the unpredictable Billy Bruford on drums, John Wetton on bass, David Cross on violin, Jamie Muir on percussion and Frippy on guitar……….put your crash helmut on! Rumour has it that Fripp couldn’t find a bass player that suited him and grabbed Wetton and taught him how to play bass. Wouldn’t surprise me.

Two Larks Tongues tracks that stand out, include Lark’s Tongues in Aspic Part 2 and Easy Money.

Easy Money has a sleazy texture about it, particularly with regard to the lyrics, the nature of the groove itself and guitar sounds employed. This particular take on money is quite different to the Beatles cover of Money by Cordy Bradford, and Pink Floyd’s treatment of the same topic.

Check out Easy Money below. Just for good measure I’ve linked in Lark’s Tongues in Aspic Part 2. Sorry the squealing larks have been deleted in the version of Aspic Part 2.

Not even scratching the King Crimson surface.

Now why doesn’t a band like Mastodon have a crack at Lark’s Tongues in Aspic Part 2, downtunings and all? Would sound unbelieveable.