Little Magic Box

Sometime last year, Geoff Thorn (guitar player and teacher extraordinaire) showed me a new toy. He described it as the preamp circuit from an echoplex (one of those mythical hardware things I had heard about but never seen or used). He was unable to explain exactly what it did but summarized with a vague, "it just makes everything better." This seems to be a common theme with this device, everybody that I know that has one raves about it (and in most cases, end up never switching it off).

Not wanting to feel left out, I recently got one of my own. It's difficult for a geek like myself to admit but I have no clue what this thing does. But it is good. And since getting it, I have recorded no guitar part without it engaged.

Started On A Path, Got Lost, Found A New Place

Sometime last year, the owner of a certain netlabel (who I'll happily name if he gives permission) asked me if I would have material ready for a near future release. After I got over the, "Holy shit! I'd be honoured!" I asked a few questions, pushed back a bit, asked some more questions.

Since I've been making interesting noises for a few years now, the feeling was that I would simply draw from my "catalogue" and put together a collection for release. Of course, this involves actually listening again to all that stuff and with an ear to the proposed new context. It also means,or just offers up the opportunity, to revisit/cleanup mixes. So far so reasonable. Until you actually start doing it...

It didn't take long for me to hate it. To quote my new favourite show, Californication, "the self loathing is strong."

So I decided the best course of action was to make entirely new material. And around that time, I developed a renewed interest/appreciation for more drone-y material. Of course, in my mind, that better fit this net-label's sound anyway so why not make some drone tracks and see what happens.

Things started pretty well and I posted early rough mixes on Soundcloud. This apparently simple act had an unexpected ripple. I was contacted by a rather prolific drone/ambient/post-rock artist, 6LA8. They are a duo from Karachi, Pakistan. Now getting comments from far afield is nothing new in these halcyon Internet days but in this case it was a little weird to be asked if I was still in Mississauga (where I live) because one of them was in Waterloo (which is only one hour away by car). Weird or not, I jumped at the opportunity to meet and play with a like minded artist...

And thus, I had my first internet musical blind date.

Two guys from very different places with laptops and guitars got together, improvised for hours, recording everything onto a pocket digital recorder... ending up with Minimal Wanderings

We are both deeply indebted to Al Gore for inventing the Internet and making this magic possible.

To be continued...