There's an interview with me on an American music zine up at Foxy Digitalis.
If term two was a buildup to the Liquid Architecture gig in Brisbane, term three is a buildup to Dunedin Fringe festival. I've signed up to put on a show entitled 'the Ballad of William Knife' which will be some kind of musical theatre piece set in the 19th century. I'll aim to have some musical compositions with actual melodic themes etc, and have a mixture of folk songs and original material. Suraya's doing a segment in it.
I've got to somehow jumpstart my songwriting ability which has laid dormant since the chaos of the end of 2002 and after. I'm through the dark patch and ready for something new. 'After Maths & Sciences' was great as a new solo project coming after the 14-piece Ascension Band, especially as I couldn't have predicted it a year or two before, but there's no point repeating it. If that one was my first truly 21st century album (as opposed to coming out of 90s influences) it seems like the next logical step is to take another tangent again.
Most of my albums - 'The Marion Flow', 'Mantis Shaped and Worrying', 'Loose Autumn Moans', and 'After Maths & Sciences' had their titles a year or more before they were recorded or I even had much idea what they'd sound like. So I know the next one's called 'the Ballad of William Knife' but that's about it so far...
One week into the third term and I'm getting the old feelings of unfocussed low-level nervousness back. I used to feel like this quite regularly living in Wellington. This time it just seems to be a natural reaction after getting back from overseas into Nelson, which goes quiet over the winter. A distinct lack of partying it up Friday and Saturday. I did get to rewatch Richard Linklater's 'Waking Life' for the first time since it came out - stood up well and most of the monologues in it made pretty good sense second time around. I'm looking forward to his adaptation of 'A Scanner Darkly'.
I went skiing for the first time in three years at Rainbow Skifield on Saturday - gorgeous looking mountains and view down onto Lake Rotoiti. Worth it just for the scenery and the weather was perfect with no wind or clouds. I can't afford to go again without a part-time job though, so there's another challenge.
I also feel I haven't made enough progress on guitar over the last term. I made some breakthroughs in the first term discovering harmony but since then I've been repeating myself a bit much. I get saddled with fairly boring riff-based rhythm parts in the band as I'm too sloppy for lead guitar at this point. I'm fine with music theory and listening to all kinds of new stuff but as an instrumentalist I get left behind. I doubt I'll have the luxury of being able to work on music like this fulltime in future, so I need to spend more time practising!
And we got a new flatmate, hopefully a change for the good.
Next year travel plans beginning to take shape...
Posted by fiffdimension at July 24, 2006 12:38 PM | TrackBack