More sun worship

OK, could be the weather or it could be the fact I had little scheduled work but last week was awesome. Hardly dare tell Pat what a brill time I had alone - wouldn't want it permanently though! Nice having her back jabbering away at me.

Got more time on the Arturia Minibrute as Tim left his. It's an odd beast, wondering if the decay is linear cos it really isn't suitable for the kind of blippy sequence stuff I like to do. Seems to have some fairly small sweet spots for certain types of sounds with the bi-polar depth knobs actually a bit naff. One full range modulation far better and personally I never use inverse polarity on envelope mod anyway, never found it as useful as just modifying the envelope as you play. The filter only seems to work properly if you keep its modulation sources to the absolute minimum. The 200% keytracking is one knob with more scaling than necessary so I've found keeping that to nil seems best. Still, can't deny some interesting sounds - sounds that occasionally hint MS20 in its scratchy, gnarliness. Yeah, longer keyboard and I might have been interested myself. Lots of good interfacing, well made, well laid-out and a great size. Stupid velocity routing only done in software though! Nice to see a new analogue that actually is new and sounds different, good on them!

I should probably drink less beer next week.

Bloody police helicopter is out early this morning. They have a never-ending supply of fuel for that thing supplied by the tax payer.

May do some music today if Tim fancies it. Happy to bask in the sun though. My prep for Gareth's party has been, er, nil. So it really will be made up and messy. Hey ho. Will see if Pasc also playing, maybe we can share travel costs.

Later - rescued a dog lost on the moors (what a hero), now listening to Tomorrow's Harvest. Enjoying it too, although I could enjoy most things in this sunshine. Still it's sounding very good indeed with all those little ingredients I enjoy so much. Sounds like something a little further down the road from a point that started with Cluster and which, IMHO, goes through Headshock, FSOL and maybe Black Dog. I really think we should send a Headshock CD to Warp. Would put it on the "to do" list if I had one.

Nelson Mandela. How old can he be before people stop panicking each time he's ready to conk out? Seems really strange how anxious the media are getting over a very frail, very old man. Almost feels like a manufactured drama.

Here's a picture I took yesterday or the day before.