April 20, 2013
Unplugged
Perhaps slightly out of a sense of duty to Robin, and despite the last-minute bailing of my intended companion, I wandered westerly last week to catch High Llama Sean O'Hagan's odd little quasi-acoustic turn at hipster book nook The Idler Academy. The venue was, let's say, cosy, and the small but keen audience a ragbag fugitive band of ageing musos, misfits, oddballs and blood relations. I seemed like pretty much the only person present who wasn't obsessively familiar with every detail of Sean's oeuvre -- other than a few small children, and I don't think we can rule them out for sure.
I knew almost none of the material, and I'm not sure it was all equally suited to solo acoustic guitar -- the results were a bit lacking in tonal variety -- but on the whole it was an enjoyable set. As I was practically face to face with the singer, I didn't feel able to take notes along the way, but here's what he played to the best of my recollection:
[X]
The Goat Looked On
Berry Adams
Sailing Bells
Calloway
Cookie Bay
Woven and Rolled
The Ring of Gold
Sparkle Up
[Y]
Nomads
Rotary Hop
Memory failures aside, there were a couple of songs I couldn't identify (and Google was no help at all): [X] was probably the one I liked best of the whole set, and included a line along the lines "From the Moon to Mars is just a slip, But we hardly ever make the trip"; while [Y] was about getting lost on a run in Australia and had lyrics about having a bush stick to hold and being able to see the transformers half a mile away in Kayleigh (or something). Answers on a postcard, please.
In the end it wasn't a strictly acoustic performance -- he had a microphone and a small amp for the guitar, but it was pretty low key. Anyway, I was randomly reminded of what I still think is a pretty funny gag -- not mine, obviously -- from an old 'Wuthering Hillocks' game on MCiOS (or somesuch site):
Jean-Michel Jarre Unplugged
Presumably this popped into my head because I've lately become enamoured of synthesis software, especially various analogue synth emulators on the iPad. There are, it turns out, rather a lot of these, some inevitably feeble but others actually pretty astonishing. The whole iPad music "scene" (I have no idea if such a thing really exists in any meaningful sense, but let's take the word as shorthand) seems to be the locus of some remarkable creativity -- in software development, at least, if not necessarily the music people are making with it, though no doubt some of that is fine too.
My particular favourites at the moment are NLog Synth Pro (which as a bonus is also available for Mac OS, where it can be used as an instrument directly within Logic) and the mighty Magellan, which really is a thing of beauty. The fact that for just a few quid (plus, obviously, the cost of the iPad, but you have one of those already, right?) you can pretty much replicate with a device the size of a pamphlet what not too long ago would have taken a roomful of hefty temperamental boxes and three miles of patch cable, is testament to the all-conquering power of the Virtual Age. (And if a few diehards grumble about inauthenticity and lack of "warmth", well they're welcome to sell their children into slavery to cover the cost of an elite analogue studio to retreat into.)
All of which is by way of noting that, appearances notwithstanding, the making of music, or at least noises, has continued in the background in the many moons since I last posted some here. It's even gradually coagulating into what we might think of -- in the loosest possible sense -- as an "album". (Yes, yes, I know. As Bugs would say, it is to laugh.) I may or may not upload the whole lot at some point, but in the meantime this is the most recent track, and probably only the third or fourth most ill-advised so far...
Posted by matt at April 20, 2013 10:17 AM
Posted by: robin at April 23, 2013 12:59 PM