web log of david dhonau

Cardboard Soup For Tea.

2009-04-13T02:06:00.002+01:00

It's not often I tend to blog (in general this working out to be something of a 'Quarterly'. And still less) about gigs I have attended. Maybe it's partly due to various of my own performances being given short shrift by the occasional wannabe music journo with a broadband connection. Partly, no doubt to Zappa's 'dancing about architecture' maxim. But anyhow, I have returned, this Easter night, from a gig of revelatory proportions. Support bands Resurrection Men (aptly named for such a gig) and Tenebrous Liar did an able job, the former's three guitar riffing being particularly pleasing at times. But it was the Carrot which stole the show with their... well, frankly indescribable mix of. Stuff which I shall now attempt vainly to describe.

Songs about all the fat skinny people and tall short people seem apt played by this group of Harborough lads. They are a loose tight hotchpotch of consistent contradictions. Stewart Brackley's inimitable yawling croaky vocal is so off kilter, one can forget he's also providing half of a thunderous rhythm section. His banter with Ollie Betts (sax, bass recorder, keys) is a stream of vaudevillian privates jokes into which a rapt audience is effortlessly inducted . This translates musically into some wonderfully supple call and response work between keys and vocals (most notable in the 'one about Thatcher': NOT ACTUAL TITLE.) Beneath, or maybe alongside, the prog outs and free noise lie songs strong enough to be taken apart, dusted off and rewelded with a jazz sensibility and ounces of rock balls. The result: a sound which is earnestly experimental but never inaccessible. With beats that stomp (even without percussion lothario Euan Rodger: swanning AWOL in Paree.) fuzzy guitar riffing and warbling warped woodwind. A band which gels so remarkably onstage that the comprehensive reinvention they appear to have have undergone in shy of a month since I last saw them seems just like a natural progression .

Perhaps the greatest contradiction being that despite all the madness it all seems to make perfect sense. Maybe it's the dream logic of the schizophrenic mind. Or the fact that an unpretentious band of variously bearded, decent, drinking chaps can get away with creating such lunacy. But I went away feeling that if, somehow, in an absurd comedy mixup, these guys could headline Wembley in lieu of, say, Coldplay, on, say, September 18th / 19th, an ailing music industry might be just be saved. Or at least entertainingly euthanised.

Creating a Stench.

2009-04-08T03:26:00.002+01:00

Last week I attended an event by the name of Stench, an evening of electronic music and visual art in Leicester's soon to be moved art house cinema: The Phoenix. I was performing with the below mentioned Quadelctronic folk, who took over the upstairs cafe for two half hour sets. this necessitated a slightly shorter playing time for the improvisations, which to my mind helped rather than hindered the enterprise.

A condensed video document of the night can be viewed here:

The whole thing went pretty well, and there was encouraging talk of a more regular incarnation (this was the third Stench in three years). I must confess I was equally amused and irked by what I thought was an audience member's phone ringing just as John Richards' laptop orchestra were finishing their set. It took a couple of minutes to realise that it was A-ha playing from the i-pod in my pocket. Now 'Take On Me' is a fine piece of pop in any context. But when blaring uninvited from miniscule (but surprisingly loud) headphones, somewhat rude. So, if I ruined anyone's listening experience I apologise. I shall attempt to cue up something less jarringly inappropriate for nest time...

A quarter of a year later/

2009-04-06T23:15:00.003+01:00

I write again. It's been a funny few weeks. Busy with music of various sorts. A gig in Leeds with aurelie, supporting one of the oddest groups I have ever come across. The frontman was a one armed Northern gentleman resplendent in tweeds, backed by a guitarist, tuba, violinist and pianist. A lady fried bacon into a microphone onstage. Then a frenetic section in which Barney (the sartorially elegant leader) operated an ancient manual typewriter accompanied by the young oriental woman on an equally archaic looking sewing machine. From here things only got weirder, with a group of audience members summoned onstage to read from randomly selected pages of various books, the most striking being a text on the derivation of the word Scatological. At one point Barney took a break from conducting the racket to relieve himself (thankfully in the correct area) and deelgated his role to another audience member whilst so doing. the set closed with a rousing number which involved the violinist sanding down a table as the resulting dust was hoovered up by an industrial strength vacuum cleaner. It made my own experiments feel extremely conservative.

Undaunted, a few weeks previously I was offered an opportunity to perform alongside Japanese noise merchant Damo Suzuki (ex Can vocalist). I naturally obliged, despite feeling extremely under the weather with a chest infection. Dosed up, as I was, on antibiotics and altogether bleary the undeniable gravity of the situation only hit me later - perhaps a good thing. I played bass guitar while members of Black Carrot (including aurelie drummer Euan Rodger) and Mister Lee ably provided the rest of the instrumentation. The set lasted 50 minutes a portion of which C/can be seen here:

Continuing the reverse chronology, I have in recent months become something of a regular at monthly night of experimental improvised music: Quadelectronic. My weapon of choice is usually the 'cello run though various effects. The lion's share of attendees are performers, who are divided into randomly chosen ensembles (usually trios or quartets), and then perform, for a maximum of ten minutes. Participants come from a range of backgrounds. All out progressive noise makers play alongside more 'traditional' vocalists / instrumentalists often with startling results. I find myself somewhere inbetween: producing textures with radio or rudimentary sampling on dictaphone, as well as using 'cello to create drones or percussive elements. The night is extensively documented (thanks to the diligence of Quad regular Jim Tetlow) and performances can be viewed here:

the latter being a rare solo performance.

I had better sign off as this becomes characteristically lengthy.

Last, but by no means least, dear friends and musicians Ola and Sergei have been blessed with a baby girl Amelie. Who is lovely. To the parents many congrats. To the nipper: The World welcomes you...

Donout.

Behold The Salt

2008-12-24T00:53:00.002Z

is the name of a song I just listened to. What else is new since I wrote? Well, I completed a commission, composing music for a spoken word / poetry stage show. The writers were a group of young men, who have experienced mental health issues. They were also paid for the work they did and mentored by an excellent group of writers, some of whom have had similar experiences. The show was here in Leicester at the Y Theatre and went down a storm. It was quite a journey for all involved. Will post a linky dink when the documentation is webbed.

November was a strange month. My mother's 60th birthday, my graduation, a gig in London, a funeral and a friend's wedding (also in London) all fell within the space of a week. Rites of Passage R- Us and then some. I came close to forcibly Christening a child, just for the sake of completeness, but didn't have the courage.

The weather nips, I hibernate much of the time twixt gigs, huddled beneath a duvet or around my heater. I write beats by night and try to read. I am not a good reader. for some reason it takes a lot of effort. I zipped through a book on Evolution and Theology in a couple of day. Ubik has been hanging around - need to get on top of that as it's a library one. I have also started reading the diary of a Jewish woman called Etty Hillesum who died in Auschwitz in 1943 aged 29. But the Holocaust is just the dark background against which her very personal voyage of spiritual discovery shines. A remarkable woman by all accounts.

I think it takes a certain type of person to be a good diarist. I'm pretty certain I am not such an one. Perhaps as a new years resolution I may try to write more often, and shorter blog entries. Yes. Resolve David! Discipline is needed.

My uncle is over from Ireland. Which is very pleasant, but has precipitated a kind of cold war between his small elderly dog Doolittle and our small youthful cat Lulu. Maybe war is too strong a word. Lulu fled for the security of underneath my mum's bed at the mere sound of Dooly's collar tinkling through the front door. The little feline has since emerged tentatively on seems relatively comfortable. They even met briefly today. there was no barking. Dooly's cat chasing days are long over. The difficult bit is assuring Lulu that this is the case. Pet diplomacy is, I think an undervalued art.

Red Run

2008-09-18T19:57:00.010+01:00

My homage to Muybridge. Big up Eadweard. The Age of NuRave salutes you.

End of MA, start of Autumn.

2008-09-18T19:57:00.006+01:00

My Masters' course came to the usual academic anticlimactic ending. You pour all your sweat and stress into a few sheets of A4 and then, it just sort of fizzles out. This, said the Creative Technologies MA was a good experience, broadening my artistic and technical horizons, introducing me to new ways of working and thinking. Over the past year I have made some very nice friends too.

I have uploaded a video documenting the exhibition TIC TOC which comprised the bulk of my final Major Project. It consists of a four channel video installation, a piece played on a larger screen and a sound work played through a transistor radio. Central to the work is the notion of time.

Explored in different forms are looped and edited time, natural and man-made time divisions and time as an element in technology and music. Makeshift useless video 'clocks' comprised of edits, loops and (sometimes absurd), repeated actions were created. In one video a cello is repeatedly tapped in time with a metronome. In another a piece of paper falls from a tree once every second. The interplay between images and sound was central to the work, exploiting the natural ability of the mind to make connections between disparate audio / visual elements (as well as between the onscreen images and the real 'readymade' objects that were displayed beneath.

In Red Run a rotating disc shows a galloping horse and rider which seem to be animated by a red strobe light. Persistence of vision makes the horse seem to alternate between galloping forwards and backwards. This was shown upon a large screen.

Between the two video installations a radio plays an endless collage of '1, 2 ,3, 4's, count-ins from my itunes library, severed from their respective songs. The combination of this sound with the ticking of the four screens creates a darkly hypnotic effect.

I have no idea what to 'do' next. Various musical projects are draining more money than they bring in. But I'm happy, autumn is on the way and my warm coat awaits.

What about Higher, Further, Higher education? How much longer can hide I from the real world? How long is the proverbial piece of string?

machine intelligence and human idiocy.

2008-05-25T01:42:00.003+01:00

Time on this blog is "slowing down". This means, according to Ray Kurzweil, that the distance between salient events (read "blog posts"), is increasing. It happens to us as we grow older. In the womb things move pretty fast. new cells, new organs etc. As child things slow down a bit, but still change quick- getting a lot bigger, learning how to use a knife and fork (though not for milk), learning language and other stuff. Then adolescence. Ahem. Teens phn. Twenties zhmmmm. And now...

Discussing the phrase "To Butle" at length with people who do. ie. Butlers. And getting excited about Terry Wogan implying, albeit strongly, that he won't be doing Eurovision anymore. It's getting pretty slow. Apparently something similar happened at the beginning of the Universe. The time slowdown thing. Not the (drunken?) Eurovision debacle. (Not even the Woagester was around back then).

Time spend on trains is weird. There were only two ways the journey from Birmingham to Derby was going to end.

a. me throwing overpriced water over that man's face and saying something unrepeatable (and certainly unbutlerish).

b. remaining silent and chewing my own face off.

seriously. ask me and I'll tell you. I mean, who, in the real world asks a pretty girl on a train to "tell me three things about yourself"? calls himself a "life coach" (not to mention "scientist"), and harps on about happiness not coming from expensive cars or a nice house but from (hand on chest) here. Please (writer munches on cheek tissue). And that stuff about everyone dressing so generically (himself sporting River Island offscourings) and how she looks so unique. One would have supposed that when she tactfully says she's traveling to meet her boyfriend it would have been game over. But no, he keeps digging. Let one or other of us die ( I thought). Or both. Just to be safe ( I also thought). Actually, what the heck, nuke the whole train and we'll call it quits.

Please forgive the cynical tone of this blog. It does generally take a lot to get me this riled. But hey.

It's kind of comforting to think soon we may well all be downloaded onto the futuristic equivalent of a PC. (the digital sort. Not the Plod). In fact it might be genetic computer. Or even a quantum computer, which could theoretically solve in a billionth of a second a problem so massively intractable it would a digital computer the size of the physical universe (made up of as many tiny computers as there are neutrons, electrons and protons, each computing trillions of calcualtions per second) about thirty billion years. The only snag is someone has to be there to observe the answer, or it won't have happened. Playing a quantum computer at chess would be interesting as it would only decide whether to be white or black after the game had finished. Hey, if I could play like that, maybe even I'd win. But then, my consciousness would be in this computer anyway so. Gah. Don't quite understand what I'm... Or as David Moser said,

Quantum particles are the dreams that stuff is made of

Night night.

New 8

2008-01-14T18:46:00.000Z

It strikes me I haven't written here for ages. I've not exactly been inactive, but probably not been doing as much as I should. Christmas= OK. Cooked birds and the Now Legendary Avuncular curry. Saw the New Year in with a kind of Hootennay and played Old Lang Syne (waves) on Stylophone.

Now back to uni and not much has changed. Working on a web site that makes no sense. Slightly apprehensive about a module called Advanced Computational Intelligence. mustn't have those machines taking over, eh. Most of them are at my house.

Had a dream where Derren Brown was putting me through wierd legal proceedings- vivid, and slightly unpleasant- then I was carrying a double bass around and recording drums on a train.

Git an exam in wednesay which I may well fail. Still I console myself with the fact that I haven't done one for over a decade. Plus there only 351 days to go till 2009.

holodeck, hello 'duck

2007-12-10T16:59:00.000Z

my excuse for not bloggin' for ages is I've simply been feeling rotten. Headaches, bodyaches, explosive spotty nose, chest producing an endless panoply of green gunk blah blah. In other words- I've been better. The fact I seem to have passed it on to a fair number of people comes as scant comfort. It seems to have lasted ages- at least a week.

Christmas hol(ogram)s loom- with loads of school work to be done. A group presentation this week questioning why Lenticulars and holograms have only broken into "serious" artistic usage to a limited extent. To illustrate a point I shall be playing the brilliant Flashback on my recently purchased megadrive. Flashback is one of my favorite games ever on any console (Platform). It's like a mixture of Total Recall, Blade Runner and Running Man with a bit of Aliens thrown in. If that sounds too good to be true... it is. Too good. And it's true.

Made my first holograms proper last week. The subject matter was rather pedestrian- a few coins and a Yale key. Still it works quite well, and opens the door for more experimental stuff.

Since working in the realm of autostereoscopics a number of folks have asked me when we will be seeing those midair holographic intercoms popularised by starwars. My answer- I don't know. There are some fairly basic physical limitations with the nature of lightwhich prevent it. and the fact that powerful lasers have a tendency to fry stuff. Including eyeballs. There are a number of experiments being done- saw something interesting on youtube which involved mirrors spinning at immense speed. in fact by the magic of copying and pasting I can show you the very same video.

here.

there's still a fair bit of work to be done, but hopefully we'll be throwing virtual objects around a la minority report soon, in our lifetime anyhow... What about the wag who says- "they did it in star wars, why not now?" To him I say, that was a long time ago in a galaxy far far away...

drizzle and drivel

2007-11-20T16:41:00.001Z

It's not a Thursday. Not even a Wednesday. The weather's gloomy and wet. Still, at least it's not pleasant and sunny.

I'm behind with work. Need motivation in capsule form.

Did some retail therapy(?) to cheer myself up. Purhased a SegaMegadrive 2 (I now own three). And a Philips 7 in 1 electric grooming kit. Watch out anyone who knows me in real life. I'm gonna Create My Own Look. Yeah. that's what it says I can do on the box. Or I might just shave my head, buy a gun and nail dead pigeons to my floorboards.

On reflection it was not my most successful bout of retail therapy(?).

Another Thursday? Already?

2007-11-15T17:34:00.000Z

this seems to be fine time of week to grab a tea and a few moments of quiet introspection at akey board to commune with my dear readers. you.

it's been a good, rather busy week. aurelie gig at the City gallery, leicester last Friday. aurelie are a free flowing audio visual music art collective. we can be heard here.

http://www.myspace.com/aureliegroup

may put some pics up here, although most of mine are of intricately structured formations of hard boiled eggs and other culinary confections. Which reminds me I was meant to send some of them to the caterers. photos - not eggs. they would be rather stale by now. ha.

played another gig last night with the unaptly named Maximum Danger Project. I play cello and a bit of bass/ percussion with them. good off-kilter folksy instrumented pop songs. Bringing together such ramshackle sonic bedfellows as tambourine, flute, drums, violin, djembe, bass, clarinet and cello. and kazoos we put quite a storming show.

the intervening time twixt these gigs was mostly uneventful. in a good way. A mate from oxford came to stay the weekend. We visited a local museum which celebrated politically correct multi-cultural blandness beside 16th Century local type Daniel Lambert, a man notable, in actual fact for little else but being extraordinarily fat. those were the days- a fat bloke (mighty man!) was hailed as a prodigy of nature and taken to meet royalty. Today we would put him under the knife and make him star of a vilifying documentary.

I started getting quite excited by the possibilities of that inscrutable piece of sophtware titled Flash. But only by its potentialto produce content that annoys, disorientates and confuses. I contend that this function is as valid as any other. But whether our lecturer will see this approach as markworthy remains to be seen.

At uni today was a course telling us how to use powerful lasers without destroying our eyes. Which was useful. And fairly bearable as well. There was even a humorously dated eighties video with a woman extolling the joys of lasing. With a 'z' I can do it admirably. With an 's'...I'm not so experienced, but I'm sure I can learn.

There awaits this week a bit of the not so glamorous side to making music- shifting gear around, a part of the process I would happily abdicate to burly, tattooed roadies (and that's just the womenfolk!). But a lot of the good stuff too. Some more accortumn, a weekend of actionforcing and a london gig with aurelie. So wish me luck. Even better wish me a warming roast dinner. Which is what hopefully awaits me at home.

And my bloody valentine are gigging again... but that deserves a blog of its own.

When I was ten foot tall

2007-11-08T23:02:00.001Z

gotta love them facebook randoms. As I recall I was shrieking California Dreaming (on the Isle of White.ly)

an alright Thursday

2007-11-08T22:28:00.000Z

it was too. even though I overslept and missed a foray into Flash at the ioct (Institute of Creative Technologies-where I study). Something I keep putting off. the notion of producing my own interactive content for my course lurks around like an unloved digital uncle. I just hope that if I ignore him he might just go away, though I am informed on good authority that this doesn't work in practice.*

got caught in some hefty massive rain. Got the news that my big winter coat would cost £45 to fix (the lining, oh the lining), and bit of school kid mockery thrown in. Played some Atari at uni. It's a cool course. We get to do stuff like that. identified the problem with my beloved Sega Megadrive- the main controller input has gone wrong, meaning hardly any of the buttons on the Joypad work. resulting in less Joy delivered to the player. Still it makes most of the games more challenging. Mooched around town a bit. Managed to conserve some money by not buying any cds. The cds I didn't buy included the new Sigur Ros album, the first Rage Against the Machine album and the Best of Run DMC. I wonder whether the satisfaction of my newfound self control outweighs the pleasure of listening to such great cds.

Stew.

Recorded some session cello for a band called Her Name Is Calla. Quite a good track- with the layered strings it was reminiscent of Silver Mt. Zion Tra LA LA whatever they're called now.

Yesterday was alright too. Perhaps even more so than today. But in a different way. highlights were making some new Lenticular prints and seeing a band called Asobi Seksu. They were pretty storming live. A nice mix of dreamy vocals from the Japanese front woman, and some enormous MBV meets Sonic Youth guitar coaxings backed with pounding drums and hooky basslines.

On the way home I found myself, inadvertently, at a comedy night, in the venue I was certain should have been hosting an open mic jam. never has holding a bass guitar made me feel so out of place. "Are you here for the comedy?" I was patronised. And withdrew my patronage.

*this is in no way a slight on any of my existing literal, non conceptual uncles. they are great. and they are both geologists.

first thoughts in words.

2007-11-02T22:40:00.001Z

well, I finally got a blog. And resisted subtitling it "The only interesting thing on the internet". Rather, I will let the discerning reader judge for itself.

Well tonight I had three minute enchiladas. two of them. with chicken. (message pops up on screen to let me know that a draft of this post has automatically been saved. phew.) and then apple crumble for afters.

Had a bath with salt from the Dead Sea and, dissappointingly, failed to float.

Well, what next in this rollercoaster of a life you may ask...

I am going to mix down some separate tracks of a song called Oxidation Is Loss Reduction Is Gain by a band called actionforce, which I play in. It's going to be the b-side of our first single. The separate tracks are for a live version of the song. The band is in something of a transitional stage. But I enjoy it. I will try to post the video I produced for this song.... here.

Andante by Accortumn

2007-11-02T22:23:00.000Z

model me

2007-11-02T20:11:00.001Z

P1010839
Originally uploaded by ManiSaSo

Andrew Ridge shoot for Vogue Asia.

self

2007-11-02T19:36:00.001Z

self
Originally uploaded by Conrad Seymour

mystery egghead me