Gordon's Progress

I'm very familiar with Jon Zorn's work. I just bought FilmworksXVIII. Glorious record that. Even though John doesn't actually play on it.

BTW the Egon showed up Gordon. Can't seem to get it to work right now, though. I think a wire got pinched in transit. Grrr.

Hope your egon gets better soon. Naked City. Interesting. There's just so much good music out there. :-)

Getting back to the residents - nice little selection of early tracks (mostly) to stream here (http://www.progarchives.com/Progressive_rock_discography_BAND.asp?band_id=1770). Picnic Boy features Lene Lovich (Brits my age might remember "my lucky number's one, ah ooh, ah ooh!" fondly.) Play the first track on the list last, it's rather long.

OK, Gordon's Progress...

Rather slow. Kids home + rather annoying virus. Waiting to record The Medusa Braid.

Couple of thoughts re: next piece. I want to do something that's light on effects, and explore my idea of mercurial hieroglyphics a bit further. Read "Outside Over There" by Maurice Sendak to my daughter again the other night. I love the rhythms of the writing - "The ice-thing only dripped and stared, and Ida mad knew Goblins had been there." Also rather enjoyed listening to Maureen Lipman as The Wire in the Doctor Who episode before last. Voice ranging from cut-glass Received Pronunciation to an insistent, rising, whining, glass shattering "Feeeeeed meeeeeee." When opportunity comes I'm going to try and let these thoughts inform my experiments.

One last thing. During a brief time at the weirding module (theremin) my hand brushed against the frankenstein's clog (echohead delay box) - a big lump of metal. Instant jump in pitch. Actually perhaps not quite instant, I swear I heard the pitch rise very rapidly but it might have been an auditory illusion. Sounded a bit like my old Stylophone (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dubreq_Stylophone).

So watch out for another electromechanical effect. A bunch of conductive household objects arranged atop the theremin for touching. The Stylomin. Or the Therephone.

Just listened to a Stylophone online. Doesn't sound a bit like that.

So Therephone it is.

Therephone development continuing slowly. It is now the [i]cucumberphon[/i], which should give a clue as to what particular household object I chanced upon.

Busy with thereminUK and get-together stuff.

Reason for this posting - The Plummeting Man got airplay on a podcast. Not all of it, but most, in two halves, and no name-check, but that's OK. Slightly disappointed that no mention of theremins to accompany it, but a couple of neat things.

1. No-one talked over it. :-)

2. The podcast was "Pod Climber" - all things mountain-climby and, get this, played immediately after mentioning that a particular climber "took a fifty foot flyer, head-first " ... "but he's fine, super-psyched" Name - Ethan Pringle. Can't help but wonder if he's related to Peter P. Whether or not - hey, I hit the mark - that was the mood I was going for and I guess our podcaster agreed!

Woo!

 

happy 300th gordon!!!

Thank you. How kind.

It's Father's Day today, and my kids woke me bright and early to give me a totally brilliant present. (Hint - check the new avatar!) I haven't dared ask how much - one-off custom jobs tend to be hideously expensive - but I love it anyway. They're so supportive of my little endeavours.

I've been in an unsettling holding pattern all weekend. A "just before the party" feeling. As if J_D and I have been busy all morning blowing up balloons and putting cheese and pineapple cubes on sticks and now we're just watching the clock and hoping people will actually show up.

I think it gets to me because my sister actually did have a birthday party where no-one came. I was too young to remember it, but she still gets a weird look when she is reminded of it. Ugh. I always make a point of being unfashionably early to parties as a consequence.

Yet I keep setting myself up for it. Weird, huh? I had the same experience with the Theremin World Happy Birthday thing, but everyone came, and by all reports had a smashing time, so perhaps I should be more confident about this project. I think it's just that I want so badly for it to work.

Enough of the introspection. I'm off to spend a while on the theremin and lose myself in the sound.

Hi, Gordon.

Congratulations on surpassing 300 postings. Always enjoy your posts.

The UK Theremin website looks great. It will be a good way to keep in touch with the UK Theremin scene.

Nice hat :)

Thanks. Wouldn't it be great if there were websites like that for every country.

Anyway, bit of news on the podcast front. At last someone played The Plummeting Man from start to end without talking over it, and Beat Frequency got a name check, several in fact, and, best of all, they mentioned the theremin. What exactly they said about it though is a mystery. Perhaps they said "...and this is the sort of rubbish that passes for music these days, so let's sit back and have a good laugh..."

If anyone reading this happens to speak Finnish, you might care to listen to the 14.06.06 edition of PodPäivä ("http://www.clickcaster.com/item/view/podpaiva-14_06_06"), the first ever Finnish daily podcast - Ensimmäinen suomalainen päivittäispodcast! I'd appreciate a translation.

(And if you don't speak Finnish, it's still enjoyable. Dare I say "Swedish Chef (http://muppet.wikia.com/wiki/The_Swedish_Chef)" without getting shot down by Finns everywhere?)

Rupert Murdoch. Small nub-like projections on the forehead. Oddly numerical birthmark. Hint of cloven feet.

I know, I know. But, in the interests of promoting Theremin UK (http://theremin.org.uk), Beat Frequency is now a mySpace band.

I've gathered together all my best bits and posted them at http://myspace.com/beatfrequencyuk.

Maybe you've followed Gordon's Progress from the start, heard the music, seen the videos, the photos, read the poems, but you still haven't read "Aunties and Willy-warmers".

Oh, and while you're there...

"Beat Frequency has 0 friends." That's so sad. Help me out, be my chum.

:-)