BURNING LODGE

As well as the live lodge collaborations at Bermondsey with Bros. T&B, the summer holiday has given me a few opportunities to record some solo stuff. I used a stripped down studio featuring the acoustic guitar, joemeek MQ3 and AKG to record vocal and guitar and cubase (inc VST instruments).

A message from the wreckage: Here I used the ‘ipod shuffle’ method - whereby  I   accept the next song the ipod picks as inspiration for my track. In this case it was ‘Girl singing from the wreckage’ by Black Box Recorder. I found this approach brought new ideas for arrangements as much as anything. On this track I like the guitar and organ interplay.

Stinkin feet song: Well, you’ll never guess - I found a website of American broadcast sermons. When I heard this one I just had to sample it. My refrain goes ‘keep your stinkin’ faith out of my drinkin’ water’. I like the organ but the guitar needed a good tune up!

Don’t call me Jolyon: Features a sample Emily & I found while googling our names - “Can you remember as well that when I’m in character or in front of the band, do not call me Jolyon!” I then applied a succession of different treatments across the track as it progresses. Ring mod, filters, phasing, a range of resonances and feedback. Take care it gets loud!

Black Hole Sun: an Ipod shuffle method - this time it picked ‘I am the black gold of the sun’ by Minnie Ripperton. As you all know Minnie and I share a similar vocal range so it was easy enough. On this I like the electric piano bit and the choppy phased guitar.

A cold wind blows across the cotton field - Ipod shuffle picked a Jonny Cash song (I can’t remember which) from his ‘american recordings’ albums. The synth pushes this ong into my electrofolk ‘Atar.e.m.’ genre. The lyrics continue my theme of ‘lover lost at sea’ folk songs.

Derbyshire children’s hospital - this is an extended and improved version which will appear in one of Steve’s X-box games. I’ve added a (vst-)moog line and a heartbeat sample. There’s also a track of heavy VST-copicat echo running quietly in the background.

Light and glare - An outing for the VST moog. Apart from a bit of slide guitar and my vox this is all moog.

Money to burn - I pod shuffle chose ‘Jupiter and teardrop’ by Grant Lee Buffalo.

Not much of a man - I pod shuffle gave me ‘Trams in Amsterdam’ by the great Ian McNabb. I sampled the lovely cyclical arpeggio, added my own bit of guitar and vocals and some moog-drums. You’d be better advised to just go and listen to the original. If you did dip into a bit of the ‘Gentleman adventurer’ you’d hear a lot of BSM influences. http://www.ianmcnabb.com/

Sense - I took BB’s song of a similar name and moog’d it up a bit.

Brother sewing machine

Brothers Typewriter, Buffalo asnd Sewing Machine took up residence in Rogue Studio 2 (great venue!). We took 2 guitars, a bass, electronic drum kit, and a range of synths (inc Evolver, Prophet, Nova) and of course harmonica and melodica. We recorded 20 odd tracks (some ran into each other - yes one conurbation of songs is 35mins long!).

We swapped and changed - often mid song but certainly I felt some of the most energetic songs featured BSM - bass, BT - drums, BB - guitar.

We’ll all post our thoughts and feelings in due course. Listen and try to enjoy if you can.

BSM

Fairly typical session apart from the last one where I’ve tried my hand at a bit of Country - turned out nice I think. Anything going on next month?

Love, Ray xxx

Wrote a couple of songs with Sister Biccies last week - not really ICS style, but thought I’d stick them up on the songs page anyway. Gear: Guitar, Voice Recorder, Tracktion (with brief scratching of head at Logic)

Brother Oak

www.beck.com/recordclub/

Check this out. It seems to me that Beck and some mates (devendra bernhart, Nigel Godrich, Jeff Tweedy etc) do an ICS-ish remake of a favourite album. I particularly liked “That’s no way to say goodbye” and “Never tear us apart”

Good news today. Found out that one of my Lodge songs, ‘Le Destin’ was a finalist in the UK Songwriting Contest. Doesn’t make a lot of difference to anything I guess,  but it’s nice to get some affirmation for something you like doing. So a big THANK YOU to all you Brothers and Sisters. If it wasn’t for Burning Lodge, I wouldn’t have written half the stuff I’ve written so far.

Ray x

Managed to produce a mini-session this weekend (about 4 hours - 5 tracks) and will upload it shortly - just as soon as I’ve decided how to tag them. Is it a late BL-34 session or an early BL-35?  It is still May so perhaps I can squeeze it into BL-34, although technically it was produced after the 3rd Saturday of May so maybe that makes it BL-35.

All of which might seem rather pedantic and anal - except to point out that if this session is not counted as BL-34 then that will mean for the first time since the conception of the Burning Lodge, that a whole month has passed and not one of us was able to produce any music - which would be a terrible shame.

So anyway, any thoughts on the matter greatly appreciated.

As far as the session itself is concerned, I will let the music speak for itself. I’m enjoying playing the new Fender Strat a great deal, so that features a lot, as does Absynth 4.

Enjoy,

Brother Buffalo

Hey there fellow Burning Lodgers

I think I am gonna have to take a month out of ICS - my first gap in 12 months - as I just have too much else going down, what with graduating this weekend (Masters degree) and getting married next month. Come to think of it I probably won’t have time for an ICS session next month either.  All of which is a shame cos this last week in politics would be a great stimulus for an ICS ‘concept album in a day’ a la Brother Typewriter’s Economic-Collapse-themed session back in Autumn 2008.

I hope one of you out there gets to do a session this month - otherwise it will have been our first break in service since the inception of the Burning Lodge (I think).

Hope to catch up with you all soon

Brother Buffalo

Hi folks,

Did a session yesterday. The concept this month was that I wanted to get back to those classic 70s vinyl records where you had one long track on each side - a bit like Tangerine Dream’s “Richochet” or Fripp and Eno’s “No Pussyfooting”. So, therefore, rather than trying to do 20 songs, all efforts were directed towards making 2 tracks, each of which would be about the length of a side of vinyl - say 18 minutes or so.

I also, for the most part, used instrumentation similar to that which would have been available in the vinyl era (or recreations thereof). I was originally going to use backing tapes of processed environmental recordings, but a visit to Mersea Island on the Essex coast yielded half an hour of the sound of a microphone being buffeted by wind - and nothing more - so I was forced to use environmental recordings I’d downloaded from the internet instead.

70s vinyl records were often quite meticulous about listing what equipment had been used on what track, so for the record, here it is:

Side 1 (in order of appearance):

Native Instruments ‘Deep Transformations’ (as processor); GMedia MTron Pro; Native Instruments B4; slide guitar through Native Instruments Guitar Rig; Dave Smith Evolver; Korg MS10; Yamaha AN1X; Gibson Les Paul; Elettronix delay looper.

Side 2:

Dave Smith Evolver: SEQ303 MIDI sequencer program; Elettronic delay looper.

I was going to process the stereo masters through the lo-fi “vinyl crackle” setting on the Zoom 1201 effects processor for added authenticity but then thought, “nah, that’s just sad.”

Thanks also to Xtranormal for robot voices.

Love ya,

Bro Typewriter x

This month it’s an all-instrumental new-acquisition-focused session from me.  6 keyboard tracks, produced using the newly installed Absynth 4 software that I won in Brother Typewriter’s Christmas raffle and 1 guitar-based track, in which I make use of the Fender Stratocaster I recently purchased.

Total time spent on this session - about 2 and a half hours.

I’m really liking the sounds I got out of Absynth - some good atmospheric soundtrack-type stuff in my opinion - hope you all enjoy. And really liking the feel of the new Strat too - just jammed out about 8 minutes of solo and have edited it down to a less tediously long piece.

Looking forward to hearing some stuff from anyone else who’s managed a session this month. Listening session at mine tomorrow night, although I think it’s going to be just myself and the Typewriter with a physical presence.

Brother Buffalo