Longcat Hadron Collider version 2 chapter 2

Longcat Hadron Collider 2.2 - Yr3wk44 from longcat on Vimeo.

it took me so long to get this together, well, actually, just over a week, recorded last tuesday and brought to you here on this thursday...

it doesn't sound too bad does it...

but it's way late for last week's improvisation...

so today, i did an improvisation with lovely D, the drummer from the last LHC i did, also the man i bought the moog off... but it'll go out next week, this week's improvisation will be the 1st half of the LHC (2.1), so that in the future, i'll be improvising with at least a week to go before it's going out to the world, giving me time to deal with it all...

such a mad time of it i've had...

the other lovely D, omnichord player on both LHC's, helped me mix the one you see above here... both mixing and teaching me about mixing it was...

i recorded D's drums today and i'm quite confident i can mix them myself this time... using the drums we mixed together as a template...

so much time has passed and so much has happened... what to tell?

on the day after we did this improvisation i cycled down to the studio to meet a piano tuner, (who was great), but my bike decided to take that opportunity to completely lose all of it's brakes... leaving me midtown, no brakes...

so i gradually drifted down to the river, leaving it by waterloo bridge (the ladies bridge) - returning for it the next day with P who i'd been teaching, cycling with her along the river, slow enough to be able to stop with my feet... her playing tunes on her phone - including "rock me amadeus" by falco...

left overnight for a brake service in pretty much the only bike shop i trust these days and picked up the next day, good as new...

a consignment of tea arrived, a joint venture between me & spski... dilmah all the way...

floopy & T's cat cleo passed away on tuesday which has hit my beautiful dinah quite hard, cleo being the cat they had when she was a girl... and now that floopy & T are away she would normally be going round to feed cleo... sad times...

cleo is the cat who inspired my song "hunka munka poo bum"

the wire & strangers

so finally it ends, dinah away for the night at floopy's feeding their cat and giving her some love... so i choose to watch the last two episodes of season 5 of the wire...

knowing that it's the last series and there is no more...

it was may when i started watching it, virgin central gave me the 1st episode and i did what i do to get the rest of the 1st season...

then the 2nd season, then the 3rd, the 4th...

and now i'm genuinely sad that it's left my life... such great characters and such a ring of truth to it... truth in a TV way, like i know anything about baltimore police, but it rang true...

anyway, i still want to do the longcat hadron collider next wednesday, i have a few possible believers... i hung out with yimkin today and i look forward to doing more music with the man,

but a story... this concerns my trip into the world on monday, searching for video to my hammond organ thing... i see a man sat on a bench by a bit of grassland... near the reservoirs... and he speaks to me - or rather him being there speaks to me, and late on monday night i realise he could represent another verse in the stranger song...

i don't believe i've mentioned the subject before but it's about a stranger, well several strangers... and somehow after seeing this man (who i also video'd, asking his permission to use it afterwards) another verse and a bit started to work out for me in a way that i love, as though the truth of the situation i'm writing about, or maybe my position within it is becoming clear because of a mad creative journey i went on to do with a different piece of music...

anyway, on tuesday i realised i had to go back to that place near the reservoirs, listening to the instrumental, to write the lyrics... so off i pop, it takes me just over 15 minutes to cycle there, i stay there for awhile writing, it gently starts to work...

i decide to check out closer to the reservoir and the river lee and i get a puncture, and me with no stuff (pump, tire levers, puncture repair kit) so i have to flag down passing cyclists, of which there are many, it being round about rush hour by now and the river lee being quite the bicycle highway...

i get about 5 no's before i get a yes, a nice australian man who works in industrial design, and not only does he have all the necessary stuff but he sets about fixing the puncture for me as well...

so now i have another stranger... another verse if i want it, or maybe a middle 8...

like many things in life, you start looking for something and suddenly you've got too many of them...

longcat hadron collider

as well as my weekly improvisation this weekend, i also recorded another hammond organ improvisation, 15 minutes and i'm kind of addicted to it...

it has something of the interplanetary to it... i think...

so today i went out on my bike with it in my ears and took all kinds of bits of video and pictures (some panoramic) which it's my intention to string together with the music into a film...

in other news, the large hadron collider is due to turn on next wednesday and to mark the occasion i'm considering doing an improvisation with more than the average players and calling it the longcat hadron collider... it'll be yr3wk13..

more on that as it takes shape...

x