I wondered how I would be received when I looked out into audience, to hundreds of people dressed in bizarre and wonderful costumes at the St. Mary @ The Quay Church. It was also a long evening and I was the last live act just after local storyteller John Row had calmed everyone down. The audience had had their break from dancing, but it was time to call that to an end, and it worked the dance floor was packed out and everybody myself included had a really good time. I even wore a mask myself that I acquired from one of the burlesque dancers who performed earlier that evening. The DJ that followed was also very good and kept everyone up on the dance floor in to the night, which gave me an opportunity to mingle in my new disguise.

I had been fortunate as part of the Curiosity Collective to put on an installation through the Key Arts, and I am very glad to have been able to have repaid the favour by performing at their fundraiser to allow for other artists to use the space.

Big thanks to sound engineer Stuart, ICR & Key Arts for putting on a fantastic evening. Good fun was had by all.

Again another hectic day, not just one but two lectures on circuit bending and chip tune music at Norwich Access To Music. It’s always interesting to see peoples reactions to the concept of rewiring childrens’ toys and reprogramming video game machines to make new music. A few people in the classes were familar chip tune music and had tuned in to the Zane Lowe show last week which is good to hear. The room was kitted out with a lovely PA, so I decided to let some of the students play on some of the circuit bent toys I had with me.

Centre Manager Ian Johnson was kind enough to donate an old Merlin handheld electronic game from 1978 to my research and thanks to Andi Sapey Photography for coming down and taking some pics you can find more of his work here. Overall it was another brilliant day and another brilliant music centre. You can check out a full gallery of pictures from the day here.

Huw Stephens took over for Zane Lowe tonight and wanted to have a chat about chip tune music. Its always good to be asked about chip tune music, especially in front of several million listeners on BBC Radio 1.

I like talking about, I like people hearing it, and I like people getting involved in it, so I jumped at the chance.

I think it’s a good positive thing for it to be played on the radio especially alongside more mainstream music. So thank you Huw for helping spread the word about chip tune music. If you missed the show you can listen again here for the next 7 days, the chiptune section is in the last 15 minutes of the program.

I will also be performing at SWN Festival in Cardiff hosted by Huw which I am really excited about, I played there in 2007 with Imogen Heap at The Point and it was a fantastic gig, so I am looking for to seeing the Cardiff crowd again. Check out the website here for gig times, venues and tickets.

You really can’t judge a book by it’s cover, and you can’t judge a venue by is padlocked steel door above a billliard hall, and The Others gallery is a perfect example of this. I was a little apprehensive at first going up the stairs, but all fears were put to rest as I entered the wonderful microcosmos that is The Others, It was an amazing little venue that is slowly building up it’s reputation by holding regular nights as a mish mash of both art gallery and music performance space.

I was headlining the fourth “Avoiding The Void Since 1984” alongside two other brillaint acts Robot For Brains and SCRASE. I was quite honoured people had travelled from all over to come and see me so wandered about in the crowd chatting to people before my set. I was also the guest host for the evening which was good fun. During the evening I also got to chat with artist Uncle Paul whose work I have enjoyed since I saw his work on display in Reading a year or so ago. It was a fantastic night and a majority of people didn’t want to leave at the end.

It was quite an experience in itself, standing in the cue outside the KOKO in London, with the crowd waiting to get in to see Amanda Palmer on her UK tour. But with all due respect to Amanda Palmer I was there to see one woman and her cello. Zoe Keating is a cellist of extraordinary ability and qualities, and I almost talked to her at a party about a year ago but I chickened out.

As with meeting several other musicians in the past I was a little nervous, especially when you know and like their music.

It was great she had just finished sound check and she came out, and we got to chat about music and the various projects we were both working on, I told her of my envy when she got to perform at NASA and my recent trip to her home state of California.

Chit chat over with she popped back into the KOKO for the start of the show, I was lucky enough to be on the guest list so I got to stand at the side of the stage in the V.I.P. area. First up was Jason Webley who was fantastic, very very entertaining even if I didn’t  understand all of the words and not sure if I was meant to.

Next up Zoe, I had heard her music on cd and on several videos on the net, but really you do have to see her play live to believe it. I have always loved cellos, but this was more, layered, delayed and live sampled, not gimmicky, it showed a deeper understanding of the instrument and the performance was excellent.

For Amanda Palmers set I moved up into the balcony to watch so I could take in the whole view and it was very necessary as the show really did take up the whole stage. I think my favourite song was “I Google You”  which was co-written by Neil Gaiman and was very very funny.

Overall it was a very good night, I got the second to last train home and funnily will have to take that same train back to the city again tomorrow.

(Written October 10th, 2008 Declassified January 23rd, 2009)

Yet another good visit today at TNMOC, this time I got to meet alot more of the people involved in the museum and yet again I able to uncover more fascinating facts about machines and even more incredible noises that they make.

Again I spent time with the Elliot 803, but this time I was with John Sinclair who is extremely knowledgable about the machine and showed me a trick to send specific functions into the memory using a “double 5″ technique, overiding the normal mode and send fuctions straight in which trigger different notes, which was fantastic.

There was creed teleprinter and another switched on which make quite a racket which I just had to hear, and the humm of a PDP8 and a Power MAC 5500/275 made a high pitch squeaky noise, there was also a DEC DecMate III which gave off another humm altogether.

Lots of fascinating noises, I really must remember to take some cassette tapes and an AM Radio next time I go.

I was fortunate enough to be asked to perform at this years Concrete & Glass festival at Catch in London. The evening was hosted by The Stool Pigeon magazine who interviewed me back in December 2007. It was good fun, I also squeezed in a performance of a new track called “IED” which I really wanted to test on a large PA and it went down well. Imogen Heap and artist Justine Pearsall came by to check out the performance, after which we nipped of to fantastic Vietnamese restaurant for late dinner and chatted loads about the projects we are all working, which was lovely.

Sadly I only had thirty minutes with them, so I was only able to have a starter as I had to catch not “The First Train home” but the last train home. I will be back in London next week to perform at “Avoiding The Void Since 1984″ at “The Others Gallery” see you there.