Gigs all over the place and recording at Pete's

Hey all, it's been a manic few weeks down here in the sunny South West with a lot of music going on. As is customary in the life of a self employed musician things can come and go in waves and this was one hell of a wave.

Jag Harps at Thekla

It began at the end of May doing an issue launch for Vice magazine aboard the Thekla up in Bristol. The Jag Harps were a studio based band first and foremost but our debut live performance outside in the real world went without a hitch and kicked the rest of the night off preparing for Breton's big performance.

Freshly on the road again

Then the funk machine Freshly Squeezed had lined up 11 gigs during the following week. We were on the road a whole load playing everywhere from Salcombe and Plymouth right up to Glastonbury and Birmighham. We were kept busy with student unions, clubs and a wedding too. Not bad for a week's work!

Real World Studios

Lastly the Jag Harps managed to swing some time in Real World Studios at the weekend. Set in awesome surroundings outside Bath, RW is Peter Gabriel's brainchild and we were lucky enough to get to play in it. The sheer amount of gear to gawp at meant we started a little later than planned, but have laid downs some live studio recordings and shot some video too. I'm waiting to hear back from Graham and the engineer to see what we came up with.  If it sounds as ace as it felt then we're in for a treat.

Oh, and I'll be taking on group teaching clarinet in primary schools at the beginning of the new term which will be good experience.If all goes well I'll be looking to do a lot more of that in the future.

That's all for now!

Dan.

Quantum Ironing

When you're running massively behind for a gig and you're all together in the band bus, the conversation tends to start falling apart quicker than the schedule for the festival you've just messed up.

Today's mental wanderings have tuned to ways to speed up 3 tonnes of vehicle and we've decided that grabbing the fabric of space time and pulling us along might just about do it. This of course means we'd be leaving huge crumples in time behind us making 2011 much longer, leaving 2012 with a few less weeks and generally messing history up for all of us.

Thusly to repair the damage we'd need to construct a quantum Corby trouser press to flatten things out again. What do you think? Quantum ironing sounds plausible to me. Then again I'm sleep deprived. It's probably best to leave this where it is.

Recording For Seahawks

Over the past two days I've been laying down some sweet horn sounds for the Seahawks once again. We've lived amongst a nest of cables and vintage gear putting together some crazy sounds.

Bringing flute and the whole hog of saxes in on this bad boy has been great and working with hot musos laying down Rhodes, sitar, guitar and percussion is most entertaining. Can't wait to hear the final mix.

There's talk of taking this very studio based group out on the road with their agent promising gigs up North. The fun's going to be translating it into a live ensemble.

Album to follow!

Cheers,

D

Hey hey,

New year is well under way and things are a-changing down in Cornish land. The DH base of operations has moved and I'm now set up with a new studio space that won't suffer as much from the changeable weather conditions in this lovely part of the world. The new site design is ready to upload, just need a spare hour to transfer the files across!

I'm about to head out and record some new demo tracks for the Mala Jazz Duo and will return with some lovely new material to get things going as well as then being able to finalise everything else. Maybe upload some  cool pictures too.

Anyway, just for fun, check out these two groups. I'm all about seeing bands use studio sounding technology in a live environment and these guys are a perfect example.

Caravan palace are a group of French electro-swingers, getting the balance of old school samples and dirty synths. Awesome stuff. Check this video out here.








There would be a picture here, but Blogger deemed it too much of an effort, so pictureless I shall venture forth to Hidden Orchestra. UK based and awesome, these guys have loads of different session players in on top of their MPC/double drummers setup and make some great sample sounding tunes. Listen to Wandering here.

Enjoy,

D.

Releases!

Finally some tunage out and about! I've been waiting to see these come to fruition for a while now, but here they are...

First is a slim EP released by the Jag Harps written by Graham Rutherford. Simon 'Peacekid' Dobson and myself provided some brass on this and it sounds lovely. There's talk of touring it and adding some more tunes so here's hoping! It's called Theta Waves, check it out and buy it here.

Next up is a full album by the Seahawks called Invisible Sunrise. Its's spacey as hell and clearly making some people very happy as it's apparently hit number 29 in Rough Cut Records album charts. I'm credited with wielding the 'space horn' on there due to the crazy effects we were working with, but it's sounding great! You can listen and buy it on iTunes here.





Also played on an album in production for a folk singer called Mr Paddy. Nice sounding stuff that I'll hopfully be able to demo soon.

Lastly, few more of my own up on www.soudcloud.com.dan-hillman and I've got some vocal talent coming in soon to lay their skills down!

Hope you like,

Take care,

Dan.

Videos ahoy!

Yo readers of the lost ark, here be some videos I done made of me done making music a few days ago. Your life will never be the same after watching me parp around on a baritone sax or show you my lovely samples that I tooted and thusly plonked.

I've been looking to merge my love of electronic tinkering and saxy good times for a while and came up with recording a harmonised line and mashing it about a bit to come up with new ideas. Checkum out here:

Also here's me recording the baritone sax solo in my new offering to the world. It's nice and jazzy and I thought it was a pretty good first take so I kept it and uploaded it. Videoing recording sessions is a great way for me to keep a record of what I've been up to, demo my skills and show you that there still remains a live element to my music even through the veil of electromagic. Go forth and watch:

I hope that was worth a few minutes of your life, come back next time!

D.

Taking tablets and doing art...

I bought myself a present last week for being such a good boy. It's an A6 rectangle of lovely that is the Bamboo Pen & Touch tablet. I can honestly say that it's the most awesome replacement for a mouse the world has ever seen. Not only is it completely battery free, but the tablet canvas can relate to the proportions of the screen letting you pinpoint accurately where you want to draw/click/whatever and of course if that doesn't do it for you, you can always switch to the multitouch interface instead. Mmmmm gestures....

Anyway, to get to the point I've been drawing. In an attempt to keep misery at bay for the remaining two weeks of my good lady's 3 months in India I had a go at sketching a side profile and giving it some digital wizardry. This one was heavily inspired by Diego Fernandez who has far greater skills than I. Still, the Red Baroness seems to like it and that's the main thing. I'll hopefully keep getting better as I get more comfortable with using the tablet, more to come!

Peace,

D.