a field under the stars, ten thousand people, very loud music and lazers.

I've recently aquired the ten years of Orbital at Glastonbury double CD and its reminded me how astonishingly amazingly incredible Orbital were! CD2 culminates with their rendition of Chimes at the end of their last ever set. Fuck me. How they did what they did is beyond me. What I do know is that they were absolutely instrumental in helping me 'understand' dance music and I had one of the most euphoric experiences of my life losing myself utterly in their waves and beats and lazers and positivity at Glastonbury!

It begs the question, though - where does live dance music on that scale stand today? The stalwarts of the scene, the people who absolutely knew what they were doing and were genre-defining craftsmen, are no more. Orbital are gone. Leftfield are gone. Underworld are more or less gone. The latest Chemical Brothers album is, apparently, their weakest to date.

I wonder who's left to fill their shoes?

arrrrriba!

Last night I went along to an open practice session of Barulho, a samba band I've often jiggled to as they've beaten their way through town. I know a couple of people in the band and have wanted to try my hands on a drum for a long time. Last time I tried to go I ended up stuck outside the venue in the pissing rain, unable to raise a soul, so I was determined to make it inside this time!

Well, I'm happy to say that make it I did, and I had a fantastic time. It was exhilerating being part of such a big, full sound and helping to create such infectious rhythms. It was also very interesting and refreshing for me as usually all the music I make is solo and entirely computerised. Having something physical to hit and playing with lots of other people, not to mention being directed by a band leader, was a stimulating change.

The drum I played was a repique, a snare-like instrument that hangs infront of you and you whack with sticks. Repique (or a word like it) means 'chatter' in Portuguese, and this is the character of the drum - lots of off-beat shuffles and flourishes. I think it was probably a tricky one to start with given the rhythmic games we had to play, but by the end of the 2 hours session I'd just about got the hang of it. I'd also worked up quite a sweat - it's knackering, but also hypnotic. I can see how, if you do it for long enough, you can enter a trance-like state!

Tonight I've been helping Georgie record her band - we're putting together an EP/album of their songs. I'm on engineer and producer duties which isn't very creative but gives me a chance to hone my studio skills and observe the creative process of a 'proper' band. Tonight was particularly interesting as they intensely focussed on working out a 3-part cello solo.

Before the band session, earlier this evening, I had a go on my own live setup. At the moment I'm trying to reverse engineer a tune I made a while back so I can play it live using my plethora of MIDI kit. This evening though, I wasn't feeling it at all. It felt mechanical and lifeless. I think my session with Barulho has made me crave a bit of hands on, organic musical creativity. And that desire was certainly emphasised during Georgie's band session, too.

So I think I'm going to change tac yet again with regard to my own music. I definitely want to continue sussing how to play live using electronic and acoustic sources. I've gathered a lot of good kit and learnt shit loads about MIDI automation and the looping of electronic / acoustic instruments on the fly. I've done the purely electronic thing, I've tried producing with a mind to playing live, and I've tried reverse engineering my existing tunes for live reproduciton. None bar the former have been quite right. Its time for me to make music from scratch in a more fluid, organic way, holding in mind everything I've learnt - production skills, studio skills and live skills - and seeing what comes out.

summer, summer, summer time. Like FUCK, shut it Jazzy Jeff.

Now I've got that positivity nonsense out the way I can return to the job at hand - moaning about fucking everything.

Not really. Infact I have nothing in mind for this post, I just feel like writing one, so who knows where it will go.

So, my broadband has been disconnected and I'll be sans internet for 7-10 days (bar the wireless I'm nicking of course. There's always a way...) This is because I forgot to update Virgin with my new bank details and instead of emailing, phoning or writing, they chose to cancel my account. Because they cancelled it rather than suspend it, I now have to wait for BT to re-enable the phone line for broadband. It seems Virgin maintained at least some of the moronic ineptitude that characterised NTL when they bought them, perhaps for nostalgic purposeses. Who knows.

My initial thoughts at realising I'm netless for a week+ were mainly of isolation. It's quite incredible how instalntly cut off I felt. In terms of my business its a minor disaster and really does represent a cutting off. But it's telling in terms of personal connectivity, too. I do a lot of my communicating through the net, whether it's via email or facebook or whatever. To be suddenly without seems a bit weird! The stupid thing is, though, that I'm not without (hence how I can write this) but the fact that I'm not on my normal desktop computer in my office on a fast broadband connection using my bookmarks and so on gives the illusion that something is askew...

My second thought was "wow, I'll get so much done in the next week!" This is a slightly odd thing to think, and must come from the knowledge that much of my working day is spent wasting time on the internet. Take that away and I'll actually have to do all those things I put off! Anyway, the last 2 days have lacked considerably in terms of productivity, so that puts pay to that. Today it even struck me that building websites is a ruddy stupid idea and I'm better off without them. U-oh...

I shall end this post in a manner befitting of my Englishness. What the hell is going on with the weather?! Summer my arse. We had spring, now we've got autumn until winter sets in. Brilliant. I've heard that its sunspots and/or the jet stream playing sily buggers.