www.betika.co.uk
Some photos of Chris, Carolyn and I (also The Kid and The Shed) doing some acoustic songs at Solid Air this Monday can be found here. They were taken by a chap called Paul Savine, who clearly has something of an eye for this kind of thing, and is a very nice fellow to boot. The gig was a bit of a strange one, we arrived to find that almost all of the acts had pulled out due to illness and various other reasons, and we had to extend the short set we'd rehearsed - beyond songs we knew, past songs we sort of knew and right the way into a song we haven't played in public ever before ("The Castle"). There were a few ad-hoc re-arrangements of some songs, including me and Chris taking turns attempting to play basslines of Chris' guitar on a couple of songs with mixed results, it was all very seat-of-the-pants, and not a little ropey in places, but very good fun at the same time.
More acoustic Betika this week at Le Bateau on Sunday, just me and Caz this time, but in the company of Indigo, Frankie, Farther and The Shed (again). See you there maybe?
Friday, November 25, 2005
Sunday, November 20, 2005
I've scored!
www.betika.co.uk
A film, that is! I've been writing and recording some music this week for a short currently being made by my friend Glenn Sadler. It's the sequel to "The Aldwych Hall Horror", a spoof paranormal / detective caper from two years ago, which I also did some music for. For "The Aldwych Hall Horror", I made some very creepy noises by playing an autoharp with a metal slide, which were used more as abstract sound-effects than music - this time round I've been a little more conservative and written an actual theme tune! I wrote it on a cheesy '80s Yamaha keyboard that I got a few weeks ago from a second hand shop, and it initially had a John Carpenter (Halloween / Assault on precinct 13) kind of feel to it, but it came up in conversation with Carolyn that Brad (her very close friend and accomplished bass-player from Brenda//) has a double bass and a cello, so I arranged it for those instruments, along with oboe and flute which Carolyn played. And what a difference it's made! My crappy little synth piece now sounds almost like the work of someone who knows what they're doing. I'll put an mp3 of it up here after the film has been premiered, I don't want to give too much away yet. Eventually, when I've done enough of these I'll put together a CD of film music, I'm still a way off though, only having only done two-and-a-half to date (not counting those rare occasions when I've whored myself out to The Man and done stuff for cash). The other film I did, "Watermelon", directed by Tim Clague has being doing the rounds of various film festivals this summer, I believe it made it's way as far as Cannes. I expect Tim will put it on his website in the fullness of time, I'll put a link to it up as soon as he does.
On a related note, the SK5's animated film "Utility Soul Shambles" got a screening in a cinema in Newcastle last week, which is quite exciting, the first time it's been viewed on such a large screen as far as I'm aware. I haven't heard back yet how it was recieved.
A couple of weeks till the next full Betika shows (9th / 10th Dec), but tomorrow will find Chris, Carolyn and I at The Green room, doing a set consisting entirely of songs that Caz sings, and next Sunday we'll be down at Le Bateau doing something similar, but with me doing a bit of singing too. I'm also going to be doing some singing the following weekend with Toupe, who have asked me to contribute backing vocals (as part of a group of singers) to a performance they're doing in a theatre which is being filmed for a DVD which will be their next release. I don't think I'm an obvious choice for even a backing singer, seeing as how I'm not really very good at singing in any of the commonly accepted ways, but Grant insisted that he really does want me to do it, and so I will. I'll tell you all about it afterwards.
time for me to get some zeds now,
nighty night
D
A film, that is! I've been writing and recording some music this week for a short currently being made by my friend Glenn Sadler. It's the sequel to "The Aldwych Hall Horror", a spoof paranormal / detective caper from two years ago, which I also did some music for. For "The Aldwych Hall Horror", I made some very creepy noises by playing an autoharp with a metal slide, which were used more as abstract sound-effects than music - this time round I've been a little more conservative and written an actual theme tune! I wrote it on a cheesy '80s Yamaha keyboard that I got a few weeks ago from a second hand shop, and it initially had a John Carpenter (Halloween / Assault on precinct 13) kind of feel to it, but it came up in conversation with Carolyn that Brad (her very close friend and accomplished bass-player from Brenda//) has a double bass and a cello, so I arranged it for those instruments, along with oboe and flute which Carolyn played. And what a difference it's made! My crappy little synth piece now sounds almost like the work of someone who knows what they're doing. I'll put an mp3 of it up here after the film has been premiered, I don't want to give too much away yet. Eventually, when I've done enough of these I'll put together a CD of film music, I'm still a way off though, only having only done two-and-a-half to date (not counting those rare occasions when I've whored myself out to The Man and done stuff for cash). The other film I did, "Watermelon", directed by Tim Clague has being doing the rounds of various film festivals this summer, I believe it made it's way as far as Cannes. I expect Tim will put it on his website in the fullness of time, I'll put a link to it up as soon as he does.
On a related note, the SK5's animated film "Utility Soul Shambles" got a screening in a cinema in Newcastle last week, which is quite exciting, the first time it's been viewed on such a large screen as far as I'm aware. I haven't heard back yet how it was recieved.
A couple of weeks till the next full Betika shows (9th / 10th Dec), but tomorrow will find Chris, Carolyn and I at The Green room, doing a set consisting entirely of songs that Caz sings, and next Sunday we'll be down at Le Bateau doing something similar, but with me doing a bit of singing too. I'm also going to be doing some singing the following weekend with Toupe, who have asked me to contribute backing vocals (as part of a group of singers) to a performance they're doing in a theatre which is being filmed for a DVD which will be their next release. I don't think I'm an obvious choice for even a backing singer, seeing as how I'm not really very good at singing in any of the commonly accepted ways, but Grant insisted that he really does want me to do it, and so I will. I'll tell you all about it afterwards.
time for me to get some zeds now,
nighty night
D
Monday, November 14, 2005
Stealing from my friends
www.betika.co.uk
This week we've been recording "Love let me not hunger" and working further on the batch of new songs we're going to be unveilling for our Winter 05-06 collection. One of them is brand new, so much so that the ink is still not dry in my notebook. It's called "TwentyFive" and I started writing it while sifting through the latest batch of recordings made by The SK5 (the improvisation group consisting of myself, Mooro from SeeMonsters, Chris from True Swamp Neglect and Lee from Dutch Husband). The modus operandi of The SK5 is to get together once every couple of months, plug in our Casio SK5 sampling keyboards and guitar effects pedals, and then noodle away for a couple of hours, recording absolutely everything as we go. Chris Swamp then edits these often epic jams down into more easily palatable chunks, until we've got enough good bits to make a record, and then we start all over again. We also record all our gigs, but somehow the minidisc always goes wrong when we play well, but works perfectly when we're not at our best. Anyway....I was listening back to some stuff we recorded a couple of weeks ago, and one particular tune jumped out at me, and I started making up words to it, and then I developed it a bit more and lo and behold, half an hour later I had a song! I told Rich, Lee and Chris about ripping off their work, and they didn't seem too bothered- I will of course give them writing credits so they get a share in the royalties when it becomes a massive international hit in six months time.
Elsewhere, Chris Betika, Carolyn and I have been helping out in the latest incarnation of Sancho. Somehow, I've ended up playing drums and singing a bit, and also simultaneously with that playing bass or keyboards in a couple of songs. And my trademark horrible trumpet, of course. Carolyn has wound up playing bass as well as her usual vocal and woodwind things. Chris has sensibly opted to stick with the guitar. Other personnel are Rizlo (laptop and bass) Kerrie (keyboards, voice and glock), Kieron (viola) and Sancho Paul himself (guitar, voice, bass, keyboards, typewriter etc). This Sancho will be released into the wild on (I think) 15th December.
Next full-band Betika gig is now not until Friday 9th December (with Toupe and True Swamp Neglect), the 26th Nov show with Flipron having sadly been cancelled. There will however be a chance to catch Carolyn and I doing some acoustic stuff at Le Bateau on Sunday 27th - check out the website for details and future gigs.
This week we've been recording "Love let me not hunger" and working further on the batch of new songs we're going to be unveilling for our Winter 05-06 collection. One of them is brand new, so much so that the ink is still not dry in my notebook. It's called "TwentyFive" and I started writing it while sifting through the latest batch of recordings made by The SK5 (the improvisation group consisting of myself, Mooro from SeeMonsters, Chris from True Swamp Neglect and Lee from Dutch Husband). The modus operandi of The SK5 is to get together once every couple of months, plug in our Casio SK5 sampling keyboards and guitar effects pedals, and then noodle away for a couple of hours, recording absolutely everything as we go. Chris Swamp then edits these often epic jams down into more easily palatable chunks, until we've got enough good bits to make a record, and then we start all over again. We also record all our gigs, but somehow the minidisc always goes wrong when we play well, but works perfectly when we're not at our best. Anyway....I was listening back to some stuff we recorded a couple of weeks ago, and one particular tune jumped out at me, and I started making up words to it, and then I developed it a bit more and lo and behold, half an hour later I had a song! I told Rich, Lee and Chris about ripping off their work, and they didn't seem too bothered- I will of course give them writing credits so they get a share in the royalties when it becomes a massive international hit in six months time.
Elsewhere, Chris Betika, Carolyn and I have been helping out in the latest incarnation of Sancho. Somehow, I've ended up playing drums and singing a bit, and also simultaneously with that playing bass or keyboards in a couple of songs. And my trademark horrible trumpet, of course. Carolyn has wound up playing bass as well as her usual vocal and woodwind things. Chris has sensibly opted to stick with the guitar. Other personnel are Rizlo (laptop and bass) Kerrie (keyboards, voice and glock), Kieron (viola) and Sancho Paul himself (guitar, voice, bass, keyboards, typewriter etc). This Sancho will be released into the wild on (I think) 15th December.
Next full-band Betika gig is now not until Friday 9th December (with Toupe and True Swamp Neglect), the 26th Nov show with Flipron having sadly been cancelled. There will however be a chance to catch Carolyn and I doing some acoustic stuff at Le Bateau on Sunday 27th - check out the website for details and future gigs.
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