Category: muster
More Muster
James and I have started to do some more Muster stuff. We went to the lovely OneCat studio in Crystal Palace and Jon Clayton made some recordings of us. We usually only play together at gigs as we live in different cities, so playing together is complicated. It felt less pressured than playing to people, and in many ways more enjoyable. Although playing to other people provides a useful framing to what we do, and keeps me focussed, its not always my favourite place to be.
The recordings sound great, and there will likely be a release of some kind in the future.
We’ve also got a couple of shows coming up. First, James is organising one at the Hundred Years Gallery in Hackney. Nine players will be playing in various combinations, all people James works with. Not strictly a Muster show, but a related incident.
The second is Avant Garden organised by Adam Brett, the gig is at Brockwell Park Community Greenhouses in Brixton on 1st October. We get to play in a greenhouse!
Muster – Find a City to Live In
I’m really pleased to say that the album I recorded with guitarist James O’Sullivan as improv duo Muster is out today. Find a City to Live In is on Invisible City records for streaming, download, or as a limited run cassette.
To make this album we swapped solo recordings and made live responses to each other’s work. James listened to each track multiple times, then recorded a live response, I listened to the track once and made a live score to work from when I made a recording.
The resulting tracks were mixed in London and Brighton, and mastered by Mark Beazley. The beautiful cover art is by Alexandra Hobson.
Quarterly report
What with work, family life and the allotment I haven’t posted here for a while. But I’ve still been doing plenty of sound related things. James and I did another Muster gig at The Cowley Club in Brighton organised by Graham Newbury. It went well and we’re hoping to do some recording later this year.
Here’s James tuning up. As you can see there was a lot of interesting kit on display. Ali Robertson and Karen Constance played a lovely set.
I’ve also been talking to Annie Kerr about a duo and we’ve made some recordings of Annie playing the violin. She’s a great player and I’m excited about working with her.
Chris and I organised another Small Sounds and movements with Jamie Sturrock, Annie and Tim Yates as well as Nil. We love putting this event on at The Coach House (our spiritual home) and it’s nice to have the same people playing and see the increments in their practice – Annie was the only person who hadn’t appeared at the first one.
I’ve been working a lot on a new instrument using the excellent PiSound and an Arduino based midi controller. I’ll post more details when it’s finished.
Muster live at Club Integral
James and I did Muster at The Others in Stoke Newington a couple of weeks ago, we liked it enough to put it on Soundcloud. I also got to play in a trio with Annie Kerr and Kev Moore at the same event as Gus Garside was indisposed (by Storm Doris, he was stuck in Manchester).
Splitting that atom
After our unexpected duo at Convivium last November, James and I decided it was worth doing some more gigs and seeing how it goes. We played at a pretty ravey Splitting The Atom and went down well, despite struggling with the dynamics of playing a short turnaround gig at The Green Door store. Not a bad thing in itself, but possibly not for us right now. Agata was there recording the event and did this video
I was there from pretty much the beginning until about 8pm and saw some great things. Echopet and Warren Schoenbright really stood out, one kind of broody and the other pretty brutal. Had a quick chat with Echopet and hope we’ll able to get over and play in Portsmouth some time.
The next Muster gig is at the end of February for those great people at Club Integral, more soon.
