Dredging

Well happy Friday to those of you for whom that matters. In the next installment of blathering garbage about my work I'll fill you in on Barbarian Meditations, an album recorded, mixed and mastered by Ryan Potter - the other member of The Scrapes for those who for some reason don't know that - in his old family home in Alderley, Brisbane. This one is my little attempt at paying tribute to the atmospheric aspects of Black Metal music (something that often creeps into my composing/improvising sort of...maybe it's just in my head...some people seemed to get it anyway and some people still pick up on it...and no I'm not interested in the fascist Black Metal stuff...they can piss right off) while also of course drawing heavily on the drooone of Tony Conrad and The Theatre of Eternal Music. It's just me, my fiddle, a loop pedal, distortion pedal, and big beast of an amp - probably Ryan's trusty Vase, because I only own a tiny little "casino" brand practice amp that I've used on almost all the other recordings on that there bandcamp that are amped that is - ample use of vibrato effects and feedback. I think also I was going for a violin version of the image on the cover of T-Rex "Electric Warrior" album with a dash of the proto-heaviness of Randy Holden's "Population II" album. One of these days this will get a proper physical and digital release because I like it. The cover art is a photo taken by my wife of the karst mountains that dominate the landscape of Yangshuo in China where I'd been recently traveling back in early 2012 before recording this one. The next few albums in the series are also from this period where I was well into Tony Conrad in a big way. Lots of drones, drones, drones. Here it be, Barbarian Meditations, your Friday medication:






PS. I SHALL BE VISITING EUROPE IN AUGUST for Summer Bummer Fest in Antwerp and more......more to come...