Enter the Dragon

Things are picking up pace in the studio, the EP is almost complete…had a major hard drive crash which killed me for about a month trying to restore everything from backups and reinstall all the software and endless plug-ins I use.  As much as I’m ok for backing things up I still lost ‘some’ work but it wasn’t the end of the world I first feared.  If ever there was an experience to shock you into backing up properly it is being absolutely convinced you’ve lost an album and EP’s worth of work and your entire sample library.  One tip I will give…if like me you use a lot of quirky esoteric plug-ins home brewed by indie programmers, back them the hell up.  Because you can almost guarantee it will be one of those quirky things that makes that drumloop sound ‘just right’…and that plug-in will be the one you can’t get any more because the programmer has taken the download offline.  Also…back your licenses up and print off those emails and keep them somewhere safe.  Some indie VST producers have been great and helped me out by sending the licenses and everything else again.  I know being THAT organised might be an anathema to most musicians, myself included, but hell…you really don’t want to go through a month of what I have just gone through when you have a deadline for your new release looming.

So new music released soon.  Tracklisting nearly finalised.  Mixes getting final tweeks.  Then we are onto the video shooting, storyboarding, robot building, tour booking, interviews, radio shows, you name it.  The circus starts again.

Very pleased with how things are sounding.  Feels like a progression, an evolution.  I think your early stuff is always an homage to your heroes and influences but increasingly I’m breaking away and doing my own thing.  More Modulate, less anything else.  Still the love of 90s dance music but brought up to date, still the raw chunky edge with a big helping of electro, still the awesome bass and huge beats, but more Modulate.  Grown up.  Better.  It’s still got the industrial edge but it’s heading more into the dance scene and I honestly think it can hold it’s head up out there.  I suppose a natural move for me personally.  As much as I’ve always been into the dance scene, being a trance DJ before getting into darker territories, I think there is exciting music being made over there.  The industrial scene for me has grown very stale with a few notable exceptions.

My skills keep improving, writing improves, production, mixing techniques, skills, even the equipment and software gets better as computers keep Moore’s Law alive and keep packing extra horsepower under the hood.

I said the new stuff would be released when it is good.  Well.  It’s good. 

The Sartorialist

I love this blog for so many reasons.  Great photography for starters.  Such a simple concept, travel the world taking photos of people you see displaying a sense of sartorial elegance.  And within that brief you find such a wonderful array of styles and characters, all somehow expressing themselves through the clothes they wear.  Simple and brilliantly executed.

http://www.thesartorialist.com

Amon Tobin – ISAM

Cool video behind the scenes look at the production of the Amon Tobin – ISAM tour.   Heavy on the projection mapping, it takes the concept Étienne de Crécy pioneered a few years ago and takes it to the next level. Then Skrillex raised the bar again…but that’s a whole other post.

Dewanatron

Strange people make strange noises. 

Bleeps, bloops, strange unusual noises.

Colorpx

More of a brain dump/reminder for me.  But working on some pixel art recently I discovered just how hard it is to get something like Photoshop to behave when working with pixels trying to produce some old skool pixel art.  “No I don’t want to anti alias that…why?!  What are you doing?  No stop.  Grrrr”.  It was a frustrating experience.   Oh how I long for something like Deluxe Paint again.  So following on from the PixelsXL site I found this…a lovely old skool pixel art editor.

http://colorpx.com/

PixelsXL

If you are a fan of 8 bit pixel art…and I most definitely am…then you will ♥ these pixel tiles from PixelsXL.

5cm x 5cm magnetic polymer squares in a variety of bright colours that affix to the wall via a Ferric paint basecoat. Like the best things in life, simple and brilliant.

I NEED some!

http://pixelsxl.com/en

TrendsNow

Great little magazine I stumbled upon…full of the achingly cool, the bleeding edge of style and design and the downright fun.  The original is in French although Google Translate does a good job of rendering it in English.

TrendsNow

 

[edit] ^^^^  Really?  Then I’ll think twice about saying how good your blog is and advertising it in future!  W**nkers.

Izaskun Gonzalez

http://compulsivebehaviour.net/

I must admit I know very little about this photographer, I stumbled upon their page earlier, but absolutely fantastic work. Wonderful characterisations, quirky, original and provocative. They ask as many questions as give answers, a strange portal into a glamorous, seedy, erotic world. Occasional swathes of neon lit secondary colours like the morning sun blinding you after a lost night in Soho. It’s rare to come across something so original in the world of photography but these really do have a uniqueness to them I find utterly compelling.

Work

As 2011 comes to a close, we’ve just played our final show of the year, it’s time to take a brief look back over the last 12 months.

On a personal level it has been an extremely difficult year which undoubtedly has had a major impact on my creative work…it has still been a very productive year if not quite the year I expected stood at the threshold. As difficult as things have been the experiences all shape you, mould you, make you who you are.

The EP and album are still being made. Partly that’s a bad thing for anyone wanting the new music, but partly that is a good thing because I think things have shifted up to a new level, in terms of my ability, in terms of what I am able to do as a musician, as an artist and from a technical viewpoint. I couldn’t have made the album I am making 18 months ago. Maybe not even 12 months ago. And the potential is there. As a perfectionist. As somebody who wants to push himself to do better I think it deserved the time. Kairos.

After ushering in the New Year with an amazing show in London, honestly the first time I’ve had to turn my on stage monitors up because I could not hear myself over people screaming, I outlined the Robots EP and started working on that and the evolution of Modulate as a band, it’s brand and imagery. The shift from what we were and what we were becoming. Moving to stand more by ourselves. Less caring about fitting in to any perceived scene and more and more moving into other areas that excited us.

The first real test of the new material was the Resistanz festival in Sheffield. A stellar lineup alongside a lot of artists who were personal favourites and who had inspired me, plus a very appreciative ‘home’ audience with a lot of friends. It’s always a little nerve racking to test new material ice cold before an audience, perhaps I was so far in the zone, lost in the lights, smoke and sound that I didn’t fully appreciate the show until I saw the footage back afterwards but it really was something special.

Then a lot of work pulling the rest of the tour together for Europe over the summer before heading off to Canada for the Kinetik festival in May. It’s been a while since we played to a North American audience and their passion and enthusiasm never ceases to amaze me. I wasn’t sure if they would still be hungry to see us or how they would react to the new material but they were rabid. I think we were the only band of the festival with a slam pit.

View from the stage @ Festival Kinetik, May 2011

Sadly a couple of shows ended up being cancelled in Europe but these things happen sometimes. After much stress the UK tour in July went fantastically well. Our first genuine headline tour in the sense of concerts that were not part of club nights. We would live or die by our audience and draw alone. It started slow in Southampton, but fresh territory with a small scene, we expected it. London has always been a good hunting ground for us, Birmingham was fresh turf for us and they surprised us all with their enthusiasm, a hometown show in Manchester headlining the Academy 3 was a real coming of age moment for the band. An upward trajectory all the way to Glasgow, ending on a huge high. We love playing there, no hang ups, no pretensions, solid passionate people who enjoy themselves, live to party and bring it every time.

September saw us head to Ireland for a great show supporting Covenant. Particularly enjoyable because I played a double shift, standing in on keyboards for Covenant as well as Modulate. Like Glasgow, I always feel at home in Dublin. Similar in brick as in people and all up for a good time. Over to Utrecht, DJ sets in Antwerp and Birmingham, then off to Athens to play with Covenant again at the turn of October. It’s always a pleasure to travel…one of the great joys of being a musician is to see the world, spend a little time in new places and do some sight seeing, take in the local culture. Thankfully this epic roller coaster has provided me with plenty of opportunity to travel more than I could have ever imagined.

The purple patch seemed to kick in creatively afterwards, October saw serious progress in the studio. New tracks taking shape, old ones being changed, torn to pieces and reassembled improved. Skills improving. Ideas. The creative impulse ebbing and flowing. It was definitely flowing.

To end the year for the live band, a few days in Lisbon, Portugal. Halloween is usually guaranteed to be a riotous night and this lived up to it’s billing. Horrible technical problems during the set with the mixing desk and PA but we ploughed on and made as best a triumph as we could out of the situation.

So now? Nearing completion on the EP, planning for 2012. Things on the horizon. Exciting times ahead.

United Visual Artists

Cool work from these guys, everything from visual installation pieces to stage and light design for from of the biggest artists on the world stage to innovative catwalk shows for the fashion industry.

http://www.uva.co.uk/