Sonic Weekend 4

Sonic Weekend 4 was excellent!

There was a bit of a downside - the bunks were underneath the recording room and were fitted with plastic mattress protectors and unfitted sheets. I could have slept better. But who cares! A great time was had and some fine tracks were laid down in a great big recording area - we had room to spread out. :-)

In addition to the usual White Label crew - always good to catch up with them - there were some of my friends from elsewhere - Tim - an old school chum, Chris and Fabio from Without Touch 2.0, and a good representation of theremins - Chris and Fabio with etherwave pros, Arthur with a Kees (mine!) and me with my etherwave. Also good to meet Heidi Kilpeläinen again - I met her at White Noise Festival the weekend before, and took the opportunity to borrow a good mike and record her saying the words for Point Of Collapse (and when Caché Vidja posted the Panic Box piece from the Festival on youTube I extracted the audio, cleaned it up and added the words to it. With that, Gently Drowning and Dance Of The Flower Pot Men I'm half-way to my next album.) And I made some new friends - Arthur's sister Astrid, Chris's wife Anja, and Vicki. There were some blokes too.

I didn't get to play with everyone I wanted to, but I'm already booked for Sonic Weekend 5, so no problem. I did get to play with Tim, who has wicked keyboard skills, and that was fun. Contrary to previous indications, we had a "four seasons" theme this time around, and Tim and I were drawn out of the hat to be on the Summer team. I suggested the closing chapter of Amerika - The Natural Theater of Oklahoma where Karl walks though sun-drenched fieldsthough the gateway surrounded by angels and demons on pedestals blaring their horns atonally (that was my bit!) and into a vast funfair. Although the funfair music was perhaps more vicarage fête than carny. But I think overall we got a good hot summer feel to the piece without being sugary or sentimental. [edit] I found a copy of the chapter here. I remembered most of it wrong, apart from the horns. Well, it was 27 years since I read it. [/edit]

The other piece I was instrumental in was a great big chunk of Noise that started out being a quartet but mysteriously turned into a seven piece, driven by Sam kicking a big wooden box at 20bpm!

The culinary highlights were (1) cooking up an almost endless vegetable curry with Tim and selling it at £2 a bowl. It paid for itself and provided the basis for the next meal! and (2) The local café, which was just excellent. I had a sweet chilli beef baguette from the lunch time menu on the Saturday, and on the Sunday evening Fabio, Chris, Anja and I went for an evening meal. The best steak I have ever had.