PVC

Tuesday 30 August 2011

X-Amount Mixtape 01: Degraded on MixCloud



Here is the first X-Amount mixtape. Its got mostly tracks from the new album, but a few exclusives too.. Let us know what you think..

The album should be available next week..

Saturday 27 August 2011

Jump Starter



Our first video. This new track "Jump Starter" is from the new album "Degraded".


Friday 26 August 2011

2 new tracks: "Brian" & "Gaspipe"

Brian by X-Amt


Here are two new tracks. These will not be appearing on the new album. We have entered them into the "Bleep-Filtered" competition, so they are (for now at least) unavailable for download.


Gaspipe by X-Amt

If we were to win, one of them would end up on a Bleep compilation, if we lose, we will release them ourselves.


You may be wondering where the new album is (as it was promised for the 20th of August.. well it is finished and will appear on my SoundCloud page any day now. We are just awaiting approval for some lyrics to appear on one track.


Of course we will let you know as soon as its all done.


In the mean while there are these two to listen to. "Brian" was completed only in the last few days after another session last week. It features a (mostly inaudible) conversation recorded in a canteen about self-combustion as well as the voice of Brian from the Dispossessed.


"Gaspipe" is a dubby instrumental that features the sound of a gas cooker and a rather fabulous recording of rainwater passing through a drainpipe.


We hope you enjoy them.

Thursday 18 August 2011

Stealth Gigs


Andi and I have talked a lot about doing live shows. At first we thought we would just use the laptops and improvise just like we do when we create a new track, except in front of an audience. This could work, and might be ok, but we thought that it would be really boring to watch. All you would see is the tops of two old gits' heads behind laptop screens.

Also, both of us like to play instruments live. For Andi, its the drums and for me it can be guitar, keyboards or the mixing desk. Andi has a Roland V-Drum kit, so it will be easy for him to trigger our samples and recordings from the kit as well as playing drum sounds.

For me its not as straight forward. It is possible for me to trigger sounds from the keyboard or even the guitar, but I think I shall remain behind the laptop as I can combine my live mixing with improvisation using our loops as well as warping what Andi does on the kit.

We have asked our old mucker Tack (from Head To Head) to play the bass parts live. This combination should work well. We are hoping to get into the rehearsal studio soon.

We want to add a visual element to what we do as well. Our initial ideas (when we were discussing what to do as a duo) were to perform somewhere where the audience could not see us at all. Then we would have an empty stage lit only by  fluorescent lights with broken starter motors, so that they would come on intermittently at random. A bit like a David Lynch scene, but done with a Deptford (as opposed to a Hollywood) budget. This would suit our music well.

We then thought.. where could we get some broken lights from? I then suggested we film some in an alley or something and project the image at the gig instead. Better. Which of course introduces the idea of video into our live show.

Both Andi and I have had plenty of experience with video and live performance. I remember Andi performing live with a band in front of films by Andrew Kötting at Ravensbourne College back in the 1980's. He did a lot of good work with Kötting. I was making films myself at the time, and went on to do installations at Club Dog in London and Rhythmicon in Salisbury. I also made a video for Perennial Divide (later Meat Beat Manifesto) and worked with George Barber. Andi has been making some great time-lapse sequences and other mad things for years now. So an audio/visual performance makes complete sense.


Kaleidotree from Simon Birch on Vimeo.

Using the laptops for live improvisation with music easily links with live video. We have been looking into ways of having the live effects processing being linked to live effects on the video feeds. So for example, when I move an audio effect it can simultaneously move a video effect. In theory anyhow..

At the moment most of our focus is on getting the "Degraded" album out, but following that we will be straight into getting this live thing built and working and booking some gigs. If anyone will have us that is.




Fwd: Canteen from Andrew Panayi on Vimeo.

Its difficult to think of the right venue. We had this idea of doing "stealth gigs". This would be where we are not strictly booked in, but appear in-between bands at a gig, not actually onstage, not announced, but with the visuals projected and sounds played out. We could also invade parties. Then we thought we could play uninvited through various tannoy systems: shopping centres, trains, boats, airports, offices and radio stations.

We would be playing the sounds we have recorded right back at the places we got them from.

Audio rioting!

Thursday 4 August 2011

Morodo: sneak peak from the new album

X-Amount - Morodo by X-Amt

Here is a the first track from our new album "Degraded", due to be out and about around August 20th if all goes to plan. We still have a little tweaking to do, but its basically there.


"Morodo" is named after the Giorgio Moroder inspired keyboard loop driving this piece. It also features Andi's 8 year old daughter singing. The acoustic guitar harmonics and repeating simple sub bass-line  combine with noises recorded inside a piano to create an uplifting yet ghostly atmosphere. Background sounds are morphed from field recordings of building sites, Asda and a canteen. Its free to download.


The album is called "Degraded" and will have about 12 tracks on it. Here is the artwork:




Followers of the blog (is there anyone out there?) will notice that we have used one of Andi's "Nice Block" photos, that he took whilst out on site. The blurry effect was caused because it was raining and Andi shot it through the window of his van.