Squeak update:
Poor little Squeak had to go under the knife to find out what was wrong with her, a very costly and traumatic procedure. It turned out she had gallstones, a diseased liver and irritable bowel disease. However, whilst the prognosis wasn't too good she currently seems to be responding well to treatment and almost back to her old self. Unfortunately she's on medication so we have the stress of giving her her pills everyday
Astrogator Update
As it looked like Squeak was on the road to recovery I decided to go up to Steve H's house on Good Friday for an improv session. Not knowing what room their would be I took a very minimal amount of gear (Nord Modular, MAQ 16/3, Microwave Xt and P3). We had quite an enjoyable day, recording most of the stuff we played. I found the minimal gear set-up quite powerful and decided to use something similar for my Awakenings gig.
Recent gigs:
Judas Priest - total heavy metal overload at the Sheffield Hallam Arena on 28/3, with the Scorpions as support. I'm not a huge fan of either bands but this seeemed like too good an opportunity to miss and I wasn't disappointed with excellent sets from both bands. :D
Porcupine Tree - the warm-up gig for the tour for the new album 'Deadwing' in Nottingham on 31/3, at the Rescue Rooms, a nice small venue with about 500 capacity. The set included quite a bit of stuff from the new album and this sounded really good. I've since bought the album and like it a fair bit more than the last one, 'In Absentia'
Radio Massacre International - at the National Space Center, Leicester on 2/4. I was completely shattered by the time I got to the gig on Saturday evening as I'd driven down to Bedfordshire earlier in the day to look at a Sequential Circuits Pro One. Unfortunately the Pro One didn't appear to be in very good condition so I decided to pass on it.
The gig was worth the effort though with yet another stonking set from the RMI boys. Nice to see some analog synths in addition to the usual gear (SH3-A and Source for the gear spotters) although the drumkit was conspicuous by it's absence. There were two pieces in each set, a long 45 minuter and a shorter 20 minuter. Most of the sequencing was by Mr Goddard on P3. The first set started with coalescing icy noise fx with projections of the arctic and featured Mr Dinsdale on hand percussion and some strange flutey wind instruments. Gary started on SH3-A and joined in on guitar as the sequences built up adding some nice spacey guitar. The second set started with guitar and bass and just built into the most awesome set of sequencing, with chunky layered guitar, Source solos and fx and strange vocalisations from Steve. Duncan was using the P3's ability to edit sequences from a keyboard to produce some incredible, constantly evolving and shifting sequencer lines. All in all pretty cool.
Driving home from the gig my car started to play up and seemed to be using rather a lot of petrol, in fact I only just made it back into Nottingham, even though I had started the day with a full tank. So I booked it into the garage to find that one of the valves had gone at some point so it was only firing on 3 (out of 4) cylinders. More expensive repair bills.
Awakenings Preparations
For the last few weeks I've been working on my preparations for my Awakenings gig in Leeds on 22nd April. These include: deciding what equipment to use, racking up my MAQ 16/3 and the P3, designing new sound, learning to use the P3 and working on pre-prepared sequences.
Based on my experiences with Steve, my provisional rig for Awakenings is going to be the Nord Modular, MAQ 16/3, Microwave Xt and P3 as on Good Friday, with a couple of extra keyboards (AN1x and Prophet VS) and the Super Bass Station.
Just to make my life even more interesting, last week my girlfriend was diagnosed with diabetes , involving trips to hospital and yet more stress. She seems to be coping OK, but it was a big shock for both of us. Now all I have to worry about is the gig :¬)
