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I more or less finished my degree last year. All the major work is done. I had my grad show. I suppose I can go out there and be an an “artist” now.

However, technically I’m still two electives short of a BFA. I’ve decided to spread those two subjects out over the remainder of this year, in part to allow enough time to concentrate on work, and also to keep my toe in the water at COFA. I’ll still have borrowing privelges with the 4×5″ view camera (with which I produced my most recent work), even if I’m given the lowest possible priority.

For this semester I have enrolled in ‘Sound Construction 2‘, which is taught by Simon Hunt (possibly best-known for his work as Pauline Pantsdown in the mid 90’s). Since my teens I’d wanted to formally study sound and music, and in that sense it’s surprising that it’s taken me this long to do so. This particular class is part of the Master of Digital Media postgraduate degree, and is geared toward people with some experience in sound design.

The assessment is centred around a single free-form personal project, which suits me perfectly. My intention is to produce several ambient, musical works based on field recordings made at the industrial sites featured in my photographic work. To give an idea, some of my inspiration and references are: the music concrete work of Matthew Herbert (whose stunning Opera House performance I saw last month – the new album’s pretty great, too), the ambience of Stars of the Lid, and the tech/glitch aesthetic of Pan Sonic. I’ll post a more fleshed-out run down of my plans around the time my formal ‘proposal’ is due  in a week or so. More than anything I’m looking forward to working with recorded – as opposed to synthesized – sound, for the first time in a while.

Warp Records has just released the latest Squarepusher album through their award-winning mp3 store, Bleep. (click this link to go straight to the album) Warp have been releasing their artists’ music in this way for years, but this is the first mp3 release I’ve bought that felt like more than just a rip of a CD, for these reasons:

• It’s been released in this format well in advance of the CD/Vinyl releases (which are due on October 27th),
• The package contains a beautifully produced four-page PDF in traditional “album sleeve” style (complete with Squarepusher’s little story as to how he came to produce the album),
• Each of the (320kbit, DRM-free) mp3s contains its own unique variation on the cover art (as the album plays on my iPhone I can see the visual progression).

With a package like this, I feel as if I’m getting a well formed product,as opposed to an afterthought. The album stands out amongst the others on my mp3 player like a shiny, perfectly formed jewel. If other record companies would put this much care into their mp3 releases, I would spend a great deal more on music online.

Again, kudos to Bleep’s ordering system. It makes purchasing music just as easy as pirating it. I did actually download the album via a BitTorrent community before purchasing it through Bleep. The only advantage there was the sustained download rate of 1mb/sec, about 10x faster than Bleep’s apparent 100kb/sec limit. I’m not sure why they do that, and it can be frustrating when you’ve bought a few albums at once and have to wait an hour for them to download. The faster I get the product, the more satisfied I will be with my purchase. Perhaps it’s a legacy decision from when they launched the store in 2004. 4 years later, our pipes are fatter and bandwidth is cheaper than ever. Fix the speed issues, Bleep, and you’re likely to get more custom from me.

As for the cover art variations for each track, I can’t help but think how fitting this would be for Aphex Twin’s Selected Ambient Works Volume II which uses photographs in place of track names in the liner notes. I’ll have to get my copy scanned sometime. (Or perhaps Warp will do it and re-release it through Bleep, and I’ll buy the album again out of sheer laziness.)

Oh, yeah, and as for the actual music: Not bad. There’s a couple of stormers on there. It has the “live” instrumentation of his Hard Normal Daddy-era work with the production of Ultravisitor and Hello Everything. I’m sure it’ll grow on me.

I’ve been working on a tune on and off for a few months. It’s a remix/remake of ‘Cheetah Style’ by the inimitable Keith! Party. I used Reason 4, and particularly the new Thor synthesiser (in fact I think all the synths use the Thor). Since it’s about as finished as it’s going to get, I’ve decided to release it. Download the tune here (4mb), and please, let me know what you think.

I’ve been too busy to work on much music recently, apart from practising the guitar whenever I can. However, Meyrick and I have just started sending Reason files back and forth with the hopes of creating something amusing, if not worth listening to. I’ll keep you posted.

For those of you who’ve listened to Zappa’s Overnite Sensation and been mystified by his references to “Zircon Encrusted Tweezers”, wonder no more:

“…by placing a pair of zircon-encrusted tweezers in the hands of his dental-floss-farmer-to-be in `Montana’, Zappa is displaying an intimate awareness of the culture of the Wild West, now vanishing under a carpet of fast-food joints and auto dealers.”

Read the full explanation in this Usenet post by Dan Rabin.