The Second Celebration of Dave Eyre at the 100 Club Sees Us Return

Its been a long time since we played a gig as X-Amount, but in celebration of Dave Eyre, we will do it again at the 100 Club, Oxford Street, London on Sunday March 31st. It will be an all-day event, with amazing musical acts, raising money for the Greenwich and Bexley Community Hospice.  We will be on mid-afternoon, so please come early.

Tickets are available here: 100 Club Dave Eyre tickets

Acid Mothers Temple

Carpet play live in Salisbury on May the 14th

X-Amount Ikarie XB-1 live Lewisham Arthouse June 13th.

Hello.. we will be performing a live soundtrack to the 1963 Czech sci-fi film Ikarie XB-1 at the Lewisham Arthouse on Friday June 13th. Rabbit (Dave Aylward, Tom Scott with Nick Doyne-Ditmas) will play, Charles Hayward with Mirei Yazawa will also perform a new project. Come and join us.. it looks like a great night.

Here is the info from the Facebook event page:

WARNING: A virulent strand is prevalent in South East London noise.

Since the dinosaur cull 40 years ago, a curious cross pollination between future aesthetics and DIY strategies and attitudes, between the vanguard and the street has flourished in the SE postcodes, a highly motivated gathering of outsider sounds, exploiting the meta-logics of punk, free jazz, electronica, sound art and breakbeat, melding them to suit the idiosyncratic and perverse intentions of the autonomous and feral musicians.

Tonight’s performance deliberately offers a range of approaches, gala style, a sort of tourism like in the days of the Cotton Club, Harlem.

RABBIT are Tom Scott (woodwinds, samplers) and David Aylward (drums, percussion), who also plays in jazz punk outfit Blurt and Re-Discovered Urban Rituals. Originally a trio, they have played together since the early 80’s, a sort of contemporary urban folk music. Tonight they are joined by Nick Doyne-Ditmas, double bass and brass, another long term player, originally with Pinski Zoo he now plays with Crackle and collaborates with Charles Hayward in a range of projects including Monkey Puzzle Trio.

X-AMOUNT are the duo of Andrew Panayi and Simon Birch; for tonight’s performance they will play a live soundtrack to the 1963 Czechoslovak science fiction film Ikarie XB-1. Here’s a link to some of their work with visuals http://xamountofxamount.blogspot.co.uk/p/video.html

MIREI YAZAWA + CHARLES HAYWARD is a new project exploring the meeting place between movement, gesture, dance, music and sound, employing a predominantly quiet and restrained palette implying more than is manifested. The pair first met at the 'Squaring the Circle' event in January at Lewisham Arthouse. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjRmOLoHBsc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3sky3xz9Vs

https://www.facebook.com/events/260969504092535/

Tracks from the GPC Re-Union gig (free downloads)

On the 15th of December 2013 members of the Greenwich Performance Collective re-united for an all-day gig at The Amersham Arms in New Cross, South London. Most of these bands had not played together since the early 1980s. It turned out to be a very special day.

All complete sets can be downloaded for free by following the links here:

Malvinas Riot

Dispossessed

Precious Slightly Damaged (Vags)

Bulbous Skunk Cabbages

Your Heterosexual Violence

Unknown Colours

Greenwich Performance Collective Re-Union 15th December

Performance for the Misty Moon Film Festival this weekend

This weekend we will be giving a very special live performance for The Misty Moon Film Festival at The Ladywell Tavern in South London.

We will produce an improvised soundtrack to an edit of the 1963 Czech sci-fi film "Ikarie XB1".

It's an obscure black & white masterpiece of a film that is said to have partly inspired Kubrick's 2001 - A Space Odyssey.

Here is an excerpt from the original film:




Hopefully we will do something that suits this amazing movie..

The performance will last for an hour and will be part of an interesting evening of film and art, the opening night of the Misty Moon Film Festival. You will also be able to view the current Halloween Exhibition in The Misty Moon Gallery (which includes some photography by myself).

Please come and join us this Saturday the 26th of October from 7pm at The Ladywell Tavern, 80 Ladywell Road, South London. SE13 7HS. Entrance is free and because of the refurb that is in progress at the Tavern, it will be a cash only bar.

The nearest station is Ladywell, and this is probably the best way to travel there as parts of Ladywell Road are closed for major roadworks - please take this into account when travelling.

Hope to see you there!

UPDATE: We must thank the kind people at Second Run DVD for granting us permission to do this performance. Here is a link to their site where you can buy a newly restored version of Ikarie XB1:

IKARIE XB1 DVD

Old Blokes Playing Techno

X-Amount at The Ivy House (photo by Mike Franks)

Line-up for tomorrow's all-day gig at The Ivy House, Nunhead, London

Noon – Doors 

SHASHE G: (singer songwriter & percussionist) 1.00-1.20

STEVE GREEKSHIRE singer/ songwriter) 1.30-1.50

RAZZ (singer/songwriter) 2.00- 2.20

VOODOO CiTi (combo)2.30- 3.00

LIZ BENTLEY (poet singer/songwriter)3.10-3.30

THE FAMILY OF CATS (band / singers)3.40- 4.50

MARK FAHEY (singer / songwriter)5.00--5.20

X-AMOUNT (electro duo) 5.30 – 6.00

THE BALLOONS(band)6.10- 6.40

THE ASTRONAUTS (duo)6.50 – 7.20

DRAIN COVER 330 (band)7.30 – 8.00

THE OLYMPIC CLAMPDOWN(band)8.10 – 8.40

PATRICK LYONS (spoken word) 8.45 – 9.00

JOWE HEAD (combo)9.10-9.40

MINGUS’ ELASTIC BAND(band)9.50-10.50

Our next gig at The Ivy House, London.

X-Amount at Salisbury Live 2013

Some pics of our gig at The Music Box in Salisbury for Salisbury Live 2013:

More here: X-Amount Salisbury Live 2013

Salisbury Live this Saturday May 25th

If you happen to be able to get to Salisbury (Wiltshire, UK) this weekend, why not come and see us play live?

We are performing at The Music Box as part of the "Salisbury Live" events, where the pubs and clubs throughout the town put on live music for free.

We are on first out of three acts playing at The Music Box that night.

Don't let that put you off though, we have put a lot of effort into this show. There will be a video accompanying our set that has been especially made, and some of the audio overdubs will be made from interviews conducted with some of the people of Salisbury last week.

It should be a good night.. and its free.

Hope to see you there

Simon & Andi.

Mixlr Broadcast on Mixcloud

X-Amount Live on Mixlr: 7th April 2013 by X-Amt on Mixcloud

Many thanks to those of you that tuned in to our broadcast on Mixlr last night. It was great fun, we enjoyed the chat, we will have do that again. It was pointed out to us that this is a great medium for live performance, and we agree. Obviously, it's not like doing it in front of a crowd in a room with a big P.A., but your audience is potentially global, and you can listen in on a big loud sound system with your mates or on headphones. No expensive bar bills, or dodgy sound men (we only have ourselves to blame)..

We are already plotting the next one.

Anyhow, for those who missed it and for those who want to listen again, here it is on Mixcloud..

X-Amount Live on Mixlr this Sunday 7th April

THIS SUNDAY 7th APRIL at 8pm!(GMT)

A bit of an experiment or trial run.. We will broadcast an expanded version of the set we played live at a recent gig in Tottenham, London on Mixlr. The benefit gig at T-Chances was supporting opposition to the new welfare benefit cuts, and so does this. George Osborne replaces Dave Skull on vocals. It features some new, unheard tracks as well as re-worked versions of tracks from the archives. It's a bit special - don't miss it.

While listening to the gig, you can talk to us, ask questions (or heckle), or talk to other listeners. Follow this link, or download the Mixlr App for iPhone.

Gig in Tottenham

New releases on Jehm Records & a live gig in London

Exciting news! - our recent track "PVC" has been chosen for a compilation being released by Jehm Records. They will also be releasing an exclusive 4-track EP of new tracks we have done, two of which feature May Mujagic on vocals. We will give you more info as we get it..

Also.. we will be playing live in Tottenham, London on Friday March 15th. It will be at a place called T-Chances and we will have Dave Skull (from the Dispossessed) guesting on vocals. Elwell (Brain Of Morbius) will also be playing with his band. It looks like it will be a great night.. again we will pass on more info as we get it.

Salisbury Gig: Details

X-Amount - Live At The Winchester Gate, Salisbury: 26-10-12 by X-Amt on Mixcloud

We were asked to do a support gig in Salisbury and we said yes. We had not played live in front of an audience since the mid 1990’s, although we had done two live performances on  internet radio, so we knew it could be done.

photo by Fran Stout

We have talked plenty about getting a live version of X-Amount together. The original plan was to have Andi play electronic drums, me on laptop, a live bass guitar and possibly a live guitar, and we are hoping to get this format together at some point, but for this gig we opted to do the same thing that we did on the radio, but with some added visual material. In other words, Andi and I both manipulating synchronised audio material using laptops running Ableton Live.

The first step was to get a set-list of tracks together, and having completed four 40 minute sets for Simple’s show on NakedBeatz, we had plenty of material. We decided that for the Salisbury crowd we were playing to (who would be largely unfamiliar with what we do) that we would play a set that was good to dance to and not as extreme in terms of noise - the set would play throughout the venue and we wanted to avoid alienating everybody if possible. This venue had not seen music quite as experimental for some time.

So, songs selected, I began to put the set together. This was slightly easier than starting from scratch, although having prepared the previous work, I am getting quicker at doing this, and do not make as many time-consuming mistakes. There was only one real hurdle, in that two of the previous sets had been prepared using one method and layout and the other set was different, so I had to come up with a way to combine both.

Andi's instrument tracks

What I am talking about here is like working out a line-up for a virtual band that would be playing the tracks. This band would then be divided into two, and put onto each of the two laptops. There was some compromise necessary, but basically I wanted each of us to have drum and percussive elements to control, as these would be good for us to create dub sounds from. From there I allocated the tracks mainly according to what we had created in the initial laptop jams that generated the tracks in the first place. Me mostly on synths and Andi mostly working with samples.

Simon's instrument tracks

I created stripped back versions of the tracks that would hopefully give is enough sonic space to layer new effects, or re-creations of the original tracks’ effects on top, or even create new versions on the spot. It was like a kind of skeletal framework to build upon. At the moment, I have been keeping things fairly safe, because we have had a tendency to over-work things, ending up with a maelstrom of noise that is a bit of a bludgeoning to our audience. Although this might be a good idea in some circumstances, we felt the need to be kind this time. Also, until we have built up more confidence in live performance, knowing that what we do won’t completely fall apart when we perform, this skeleton is built in such a way that we can retain control, and do not lose sight of what we are trying to achieve. Hopefully  in the near future, this may become a little looser, opening up our live performance to a more improvised and free-form happening. This may well occur in future with the addition of the live musicians, but it would also be interesting to further open up these possibilities with live laptop performances.

Thats not to say that what we have been doing up to this point does not involve genuine live performance and improvisation, it does. Both Andi and I are reacting live to this ‘skeleton’ by manipulating a set of audio tracks in real time using various sonic tools in the same way that we do when we initially generate the improvised jams, the difference is that rather than being completely open-ended, we restrict ourselves to a time frame for each track and we also have an idea of the mood and musical direction of the track according to the finished mixed and edited versions that exist.

Korg NanoKontrol - labelled

The other consideration that needed to be made is to do with the physical tools that we would use in performance. We would be using our Korg NanoKontrol devices which have eight faders and eight knobs for MIDI control plus an array of buttons. These can control auxiliary sends to effects like echo and reverb, plus synthesizer-type parameters like frequency, resonance and oscillation settings which, used in the right way can allow some extreme and radical alterations of sounds live. We could also alter volume levels, switch things on and off, and mess with the audio waveforms themselves should we want to.

Korg PadKontrol

At the point of setting this up I had an idea to open things up some more. During our first radio show, Andi had been flying in random shortwave samples live, which was great and this gave me an idea to use the Korg PadKontrol. With the PadKontrol you have a bank of 16 pressure-sensitive pads that can be assigned to MIDI notes, plus an X-Y controller that can be assigned to movement controls and two assignable knobs. I realised that I could link the PadKontrol to Live’s Drum Rack instrument, which is effectively a bank of samplers  arranged across 16 trigger pads.

Live's Drum Rack plus FX

So, I could arrange 16 of our samples across the PadKontrol’s pads with the X-Y controller affecting a filter and the knobs assigned to echo and reverb. After some playing with this and adjustments, we ended up with a very expressive live instrument. The X-Y controls were set to alter a bandpass filter’s frequency on the X axis and LFO speed across the Y. This meant that moving across the pad with a finger in one direction (left to right) would control the tone of the sound (in an extreme way - from sub-bass to high frequency hiss) and moving in the other (up and down) would introduce a heavy tremolo effect and shift it’s speed of movement. With the knobs you could ‘throw’ the sounds into reverb effects or have them echo.

Drum Rack sounds 1

We ended up with two banks of 16 samples for the performance. 16 shortwave samples (and some sampled tape hiss), and 16 reversed samples, so things like cymbal hits, synth tones, acoustic guitar sounds, piano chords, all going backwards, so that they would fade in. It added a new dimension to the gig, and will definitely remain as a permanent fixture.

Drum Rack sounds 2

So, now we had a firm idea of what we were going to do, the set list and instrument layout got refined. I contacted the gig’s promoters to find out how long we could play for, and was told 40 minutes, so we worked to that. We did add in an encore track, just in case we had a response that demanded it, but frankly I knew that was not going to happen!

Tracks that were selected were, on the whole our more melodic and danceable tracks, so we had seven of them: four from “Degraded”, two from “Six Months..” and a new one (“Hobo”), which I did a new mix of and put on SoundCloud for free download in celebration of our first live gig in front of an audience for about 20 years.

We also added some spoken word. I had recorded Felix Baumgartner’s space jump with this in mind, and that began the show, plus Andi and I collected some other bits and pieces from the likes of Ernst Jandl, John Giorno, Bob Cobbing, and finishing with a clip of Hal from “2001: A Space Odyssey”, some of these were treated, some not.

Post-gig screen shot of the entire set arrangement (click to see larger)

We then began to think about the visual aspect of things. We are well aware that watching two old gits bobbing about behind laptops would be pretty dull. For this reason Andi has wanted to perform where no-one can really see us, like in a DJ booth, or hidden in some way. This was not an option at this small venue, we would be onstage, so we decided to go with another idea we have been toying with; that of having interactive visual projections.

We have discussed this plenty too. We have planned to have video films woking with the performances. Because of the dull nature of blokes behind laptops and the fact that our listening audience will find it hard to decipher what we were actually doing (especially those who were unfamiliar with our work), we wanted to have some way of visual material projected somehow reacting to what we are doing, so it would enhance and give the audience visual feedback.

photo by Fran Stout

Ideas so far have been having video clips that launch simultaneously when an audio clip is launched, video effects being applied remotely as audio effects are applied, live cameras filming our activity behind the laptops from above and others. Because of a lack of preparation time and money, and a need to keep things simple, we decided on using the venue’s projector hooked up to a third laptop. The laptop would run a basic program that showed a live waveform display that responded to incoming audio.

I had also been working on some two-colour designs based on gritty urban photographs of London, and it seemed that they would work well alongside.

I worked out that over the forty minute show, if we projected a slide show of images with one image showing for 12 seconds at a time I would need to produce about 120 images to avoid repetition. I had thought of having the images synchronised to the tracks, but that would mean more complications, perhaps we will do this another time.

Note: The image used the MixCloud artwork at the top of the page is a good representation of what the visuals looked like.

We now had everything ready, so went into rehearsal. The initial practices were a bit fraught sounding and were way too busy, but after three goes at it we had things sounding tight and interesting, and the visuals worked too.

We headed to Salisbury knowing that we could put on a good show. Everything seemed to go smoothly. All possible technical problems had been considered, so even though our sound check was late, and we had a lot of connections to be made, the only thing that gave us minor hassle was the venue’s projector (getting it to talk to the laptop and then blinding us while we performed), eventually it pretty much all went according to plan.

connections

I had brought down my own mixer too, this meant that any balancing of sound could be done at our end, as long as we had decent monitoring (which we did), what we were hearing onstage was exactly what the audience was getting. The mixer also provided audio outs for input to the visual projections and enabled us to record the audio of the set. I even added a microphone to capture audience sound.

set list

Listening back to the recording of the gig, we are very pleased with how it went. In the end Andi worked with the PadKontrol, adding samples and sounds with effects, and I worked with the NanoKontrol, dubbing it up and twisting synth and sample sounds. Predictably we drove most people out of the room, but the response we got was positive, with plenty of talk of gigs on bigger stages with bigger sound systems, so we hope it comes together. We are ready!

Many thanks to those that came to see the show, the venue and staff, and especially to those that chatted with us afterwards. You gave us some decent criticism too, which we are taking onboard.

Thanks also to Fran, who took the photos.

Hopefully we will see you all again soon.. in a loud dark space.

Simon and Andi.

photo by Fran Stout

A recording of last week's gig

X-Amount - Live At The Winchester Gate, Salisbury: 26-10-12 by X-Amt on Mixcloud

Here is a high-quality recording of our gig last week at The Winchester Gate in Salisbury. More detail to follow soon..

New track, free download - Hobo

You may have already spotted it.. we are playing a gig this Friday (26th October) in Salisbury. I was trying to work out the last time that we played in front of an audience as X-Amount.. the last time the full band played was in Camden in the 1990's. We did have a gig arranged at Glastonbury in about 1997, but it didn't happen because our MMT8s went on the blink. Before that we played as a duo in the Lewisham Labour Club for the South East London Musicians Collective. That must have been in the first half of the 90's, so it could be as long as 20 years ago! Unless any of you know any different..

Of course we have done recent live performances on Simple's radio show online, but this is our first gig on stage, in front of an audience for a very long time.

We are just about ready now. We have put together a vague visual accompaniment, using some colour manipulated photos (one of them is used for the artwork above) that I have put together and a computer program that reacts to sound. We will play about 8 tunes in a continuous mix that features our new "shortwave instrument" that is basically a sampler full of shortwave and backwards noises that get filtered and dubbed up using a Korg PadKontrol. We have added a load of voices too - Felix Baumgartner, Bob Cobbing, Charles Bukowski, and others.

It should be fun.

And to celebrate, we have a tune to give away for you.

"Hobo", is an edit of a laptop jam we did this year. It did feature in the last gig on Simple's Show, but this version has had a minor tweak. We may do a remix, or a new version at some point..there are plans coming together for the next audio onslaught.

Hopefully, we will see some of you in Salisbury on Friday.

Hope so. Hope you like the freebie

Simon & Andi xx

PS: Click here for The Facebook Event Link for Friday's gig

X-Amount play live in Salisbury

We will be supporting a band called 'Dreams Divide' in Salisbury on Friday October 26th. This is the first time we have played in front of a live audience for a very long time. Yes, we have done internet gigs, sometimes with a handful of people present, but this is the first time in a long time in front of a proper crowd (if we get one).

For us, this is quite exciting, it was nice to be asked to do it, but must admit we were disappointed with the posters - it looks like they are supplying X-Amount of David from Dreams Divide's manhood. We think the people of Salisbury will have trouble working out that there is a support act playing, Andi didn't even spot it first time he looked.. ah well, apparently posters don't account for much these days anyhow.

The set for this is coming together, it will be a mixture of some of our favourites plus some new ones. I have created a shortwave radio instrument especially for the show and there will be some interesting voices added and other weird additions..

Do come along if you are in or near Salisbury at the time. Here is a link to the Facebook Event page:

Dreams Divide & X-Amount live in Salisbury