Actually, the biggest, saddest news was the death of Carl Matthews. We hadn't corresponded for a while but by chance I did play some of his music to Colin and Tony on the Thursday before we left for Cambridge. Tony identified the composer at once, which is testament to Carl's unique and special style. I still don't have suitable words, other than to say it's the third friend whose death was revealed to me by Facebook's channels.
The usual snaps. Was good to see Colin and Tony, talk Cirklon and listen to Tony's single voice synth (a gorgeous SEM-alike). Tony's step sequencer was cool too - if I hadn't got bored with Eurorack I'd surely want one. Also got to play a Deckard's Dream and really liked it. It's helped a lot by its effects and by an additional Big Sky reverb though.
Ate a LOT, drank quite a bit, glad to be home and detoxing. Well the gladness was dampened by news of Carl's death - which prompted me to dig out as much music of his as possible. Carl did some very cool overdubs on my Red Book album and I added some noises to his Ixion's Wheel. I finally managed to rip most of the latter and it's still great.
Tony took my Perfourmer and Tim's 100m to fix. Hope to get the Perfourmer back before Pete comes later this month but if not will adapt. Currently listening through a lot of Ideation stuff and realising how good it is and how almost nobody knows we exist. Self-promotion not my strong point. Good material unreleased includes 2 (possibly 3) gigs and a lot of long jams recorded at Pete's that time, plus some of the long-form stuff from our last get-together here.
My work in the garden is accumulating, perhaps because I haven't done any of it. The sparrows are having such a ball in all the foliage I can't bring myself to start cutting things back yet, but the end of this month is my deadline for doing something.
I'd like to do some more long-form piano pieces, just need to get in the right frame of mind. The long one I did when Pat was away is really quite nice and even the more conventional Glass-style piece I played over the Synthi noise isn't far off being something in its cut-down 8-9 min form. Time, where does it go?
Teatime postponed because a staffie has leapt into the horses' field and savaged a couple of the poor beasts. Unusually, the lady owner stuck around and has offered to pay. Also unusually, Pat's horse was not involved. Instead of eating I spent an hour or so watching the (large) family of mice running up the large thistle near the bird feeder, helping themselves to the spilled seeds. The little onanists!
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