syphus

This is hardly news-worthy by anybody’s standards, but here’s me saying I’m taking an indefinite breather from doing live Syphus performances. Yes, I know it’s not like I’m kicking out the keytar jams 24/7 anyway, but my whole routine has sleepwalked into stagnation a bit, and I can’t find the time or head-space to evolve it. And besides, I’m something of a traditionalist and I don’t desperately want to contrive an evolution of my live chip-style outlet when it probably doesn’t need one. Why force it?

It started in my bedroom, on grey Sunday afternoons with ProTracker, then years later it coincidentally happened to become popular in the ‘real’ world and I had a great deal of fun playing it live; improvising; reinterpreting it for fresh audiences. So I guess now it’s going back into the Sunday-afternoon/bedroom domain, where it belongs and where I get the most enjoyment out of it.

I’ll still be making occasional Amiga tunes and working on demoscene productions, but I plan to focus on getting back to composing fully-sequenced music, expanding on the bits and pieces of games music writing I’ve been doing lately and generally driving myself forward rather than treading water. Maybe I’ll even get the swathes of unreleased tunes released, and unfinished tunes finished.

This isn’t some sort of tearful goodbye, and I’m not conceited enough to think that anybody should give a toss, but I do want to say that I’ve:

• met some cool people
• played some cool gigs with some cool people
• seen a few more crevices of the world than I might otherwise have done
• had my grumpy sourpuss old mind opened up to some things beyond the scope of the demoscene
• opened some other minds up to things within the scope of the demoscene
• had my Blip Festival visuals done by The C-Men
• got shitfaced with Firebrand Boy
• got lost in Manhattan with Trash80
• been attacked by a London gang, along with Minusbaby, Starscream and Nullsleep
• watched Nullsleep literally headbutt his way out of the situation
• driven a tour bus at 90mph whilst technically and medically asleep
• been part of some triumphant organisational successes (and some triumphant organisational failures)
• watched a hooker give a copper a blowjob in a Newport carpark whilst our audience were being arrested and loaded into a paddywagon across the road
• taught USK all conventional English swearwords, plus a few custom ones of my own devising

and much, much more. So, y’know, things could have been a lot worse ;)

So: busy summer! Well not enormously busy, but now that I’m working a full-time job and keeping involved with a diverse bunch of stuff, everything is a bit more crammed in.

Last week was a rush-hour flavoured 8-hour slog to London in the car for Bleep +LDN – the much-publicised allstar do put on by gwEm and me which presented to the UK public the likes of Nullsleep, Minusbaby, Starscream, Failotron and Die Moderne Welt (US, US, US, HU and DE), as well as domestic impressarios Jellica, Tin Foil Hat Brigade, Kezziebeat and the incomparable Steve.

Organisationally, things went a little bit to shit and that’ll sadly be a lot of people’s memory of what went down. In actual fact, gwEm and I managed to save it from going TOTALLY to shit (thanks to a gargantuan error on the part of the venue which, to give them their due, they admitted and compensated us for) and generally provide most of what we promised on the flyer.

The relief of getting finished and out of the venue without things kicking off was palpable until we (Minusbaby, Nullsleep, Damon^Starscream, Ali, Mia and I) got set upon by a fucking street gang. Well, shit happens; we eventually got ourselves out of the situation with not too much blood shed and the others lived to play another day. The next day, as it happens, in Liverpool.

Right now, I’m packing my bags for a flying visit to Sweden for LCP (Little Computer People) – “for all the c64/amiga/atari/spectrum/console/whatever-lovin’ sideborder musicians, stamp fakers, coders, forth lamers, screen dumpers (yes), bbs hangarounds and full screen graphicians”.

It’s gonna be a fucking nice party and I’ll have a chance to catch up with my Up Rough groupmates, musician friends like Nullsleep, zabutom, Random and Goto80, and people I’ve never met but wanna – Crazy Q, maktone, etc. I’ve got three tunes ready for the competitions, some of which are in Up Rough prods, and I know Nullsleep and Random have some exciting stuff on the way.

Then next week, I’m playing in Newcastle with The Turing Test – my mate Guy from work. That’s Wednesday 22nd at The End Bar in Newcastle. Dunno how much it costs, but probably not much. I guess it’s 8pm onwards… Guy’s also a great 3D modeller; I wanna find an excuse to use his skills in a demo as it’s hard to find someone who’s either good or who can be arsed these days.

1st of August is 8bitball II in Blackpool, featuring all sorts of cool acts. It’s a daytime job in Stanley Park, which I’m told contains an oldschool bandstand. Should be a laugh.

Then I’m gonna try to be a bit quiet – quiet enough to concentrate on writing some new music – until I hook up for one night with this year’s Chiptune Alliance Tour as they storm through Newcastle on their way to conquering the world again. I’m too old/tired/busy/bereft of annual leave to join them full-on, but it’ll be nice to make some noise under the CTA banner one more time.

Oh, lest I forget, Sundown ‘09 is on in September in Budleigh Salterton (near Exeter, south coast of the UK). Not much to say, except that it’ll be brilliant as usual. All welcome.

And now to pack for Sweden.

The Chip Tune Marching Band, which I helped organise in Newcastle and Helsinki, has gone to New York for Bent Fest without me (while I’ve been living it up at Breakpoint :). Jamie Allen (lecturer in the department I work for) and Kazuhiro Jo put this idea together and are doing the workshop wherever they can.

Yes, I hear you cry, there are no actual ‘chiptunes’ involved, per se. The phrase is attention-grabbing, though, and reflects the fact that people are making crazy chip-style noises with squarewave generators, and it’s all terribly good fun.

Having said that, if you look closely at the video on the Make article, you’ll notice a surprisingly high ratio of chip-musicians to regular people: Cerebral Scars, Goto80 and, of course, myself :D

http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2009/04/handmade_music_bent_edition_-_tonig.html?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890