Stevie Starr - review + a new free song

There is a very warm and enthusiastic new review of Stevie Starr's album 'We Hope In All Things New' posted recently on the Vodafone music blog. For those of you who don't know, I contributed some drums and various other bits and pieces to this album, so it's always nice to see good reviews coming in!

Also, Stevie has recently put together another song 'Auckland Town' which is available on his website for free download. 

We hope in all things new

Here's the brand spanking new music video from Stevie Starr. The song is 'We hope in all things new' and is the second single from the album of the same name. Take a look.

If you liked that, you can download the single from www.thesteviestarr.com for free.

Better yet - come to Bodega on Thursday night and take in the whole show. Stevie will be performing a set with the band (sadly, minus the string quartet this time who will be with us in wave-form only), with images from BudapestTV, and support from Janina and Christchurch band 'Drift'. $10 on the door.

Ecstatic Looper

Here's a screenshot of one of the Reaktor instruments I have built from scratch for the Stevie Starr gig. It's a phrase looper that allows you to set the sampling length in beats, once you have specified a tempo and a subdivision. At a sample-rate of 44.1kHz the maximum phrase/sample length is about 46 seconds, which is plenty long for most things. This looper can also sync the play and/or record functions to the Reaktor clock, thereby allowing the synchronisation of the looper with any other loops or sequences that are running off the same clock.

This one was built for the song 'We Shall Get In' and is the tool I use to capture and loop the opening glockenspiel phrase. I then use another, almost identical looper to capture a second glock phrase which I reverse and play against the first loop as the piece develops.

I'm currently also working on a more powerful version of this tool which has the option to manipulate playback speed in realtime as well as an overdub record function and some more intuitive ways to set the loop length for improvised live looping.

Stevie Starr album release gig

I should have mentioned this ages ago, but I have an album release gig coming up next week (Thursday 18 June) at Mighty Mighty with Stevie Starr. I have been involved in the making of this album, off and on, over several years and it is great to finally release it. There's a media release with some very encouraging reviews here.

I'm pretty excited about this gig. The music is wonderful, and gives me the opportunity to step a bit outside of the 'drummer' role and get to be 'electronic gadgets guy'. (I will be playing drums, glockenspiel, Kaoss Pad and laptop.) I've built a number of samplers and other instruments from the ground up in Reaktor (something I've become quite passionate about lately) and I can't wait to give them their first public outing!

It will also be the first time I've ever performed with a string quartet. :-)

If this has piqued your curiosity, here's Stevie Starr's official website where you can listen to or download the first single 'The Rising Tide of Conformity'. And here's the MySpace page where you can hear some of the more adventurous pieces.

There will also be some really interesting visuals, courtesy of a long-time friend and collaborator of mine - Chris Darnell.

Cover charge is only $5 so you'd be crazy to miss it. :-)

Update on Wednesday, June 17, 2009 at 2:38AM by rimshot

Just got in from our final band rehearsal before the gig. I'm tired but happy. Really looking forward to putting this music in front of people. The band is sounding great - well rehearsed but with an edge of uncertainty that keeps everyone on their toes, and allows for a certain kind of positive nervous tension on the night.

I have a few tweaks yet to make on my Reaktor ensembles - mostly just setting up starting snapshots to make transitions between songs a bit smoother.

Sorry - I was wrong about the cover charge being $5. It's actually $10. Still a bargain considering the kind of show we have in store... :-)

Still busy but getting there.

Well, things are still busy. Since my last post I have had gigs with That 80's Band and The Cattlestops, and I've done some drum sessions for Paul Schreuder. I've done a few days work for UCA, tweaking some cd covers for them and developing a new brand template for digipaks. I've also been chipping away at a long-standing album project that I need to complete for a friend, and building some customised Reaktor instruments for an upcoming Stevie Starr album release gig. So - still busy, but I'm happy to say that in the midst of all of that I've also been developing some ideas for some original music I want to make, and establishing dialog with potential collaborators.

Actually, it's even busier than all that because I am also in the midst of buying and selling a house! Now that I'm the father of a teenaged boy, our family home is feeling quite small, and the garden too big. We have spotted a larger, more low-maintenance house we really like and made an offer on it, and so now we are frantically preparing our current house to go on the market. It's a huge amount of work involving plenty of early mornings & late nights, 9 cubic metres of garden waste (so far), and lots of scraping, sanding and painting. We have had significant contributions of help from our extended family which has been amazing! We've also had several tradesmen through, and hopefully the last one will finish tomorrow. It's satisfying getting nearly 10 years of maintenance finally done, but to be honest I can't wait until it is over and we are moved in to the new house.

As if all of that wasn't enough, I also drove to Napier on Friday for a wedding – Iain Riddle, the guitar player from Pearl married Carrol. It was quite possibly the nicest wedding I've ever been to. The ceremony was warm and full of wisdom, and after the dinner I got to do a bunch of playing – first with Pearl, then a short blues set with Iain and John O'Connor. Great fun!