2009, Four Weeks In...

It's been an odd week here at the osymyso ranch. I had to go through the regulation self-doubt and confusion about my place in the world of music. It's something I do all to often and involves a great deal of misery and pain. Needless to say that after a few days of such nonsense I always come out the other side with exactly the same conclusion as the last time it happened. And so here I am again working on what must be the 800th attempt to get an album of daft music together. I just need to keep reminding myself to stick to my guns and do precisely what I want to do. My album will no doubt end up as a free download so I see no need to do anything other than a purely self-indulgent mess of sample collage and botched melodies. It's gonna be a fun.

On Thursday I started collaborating on some tunes with a brilliant songwriter who's name will be revealed once I know for sure it's going to work out. Working with other people on music is pretty much unknown territory for me so I've no idea how it will pan out yet. I'm very optimistic about it though. Early signs are that it will be a very curious batch of tunes that will emerge from this. 

Ok, I should start putting up some downloads on this blog. The first one is a mix that I did last summer for The Quietus it's an 8 minute long mash-up with 50 tunes in that was used in a competition. The mix was never actually available as a download and I didn't get round to putting it up on my site so for the 3 of you out there who fancy having a 320kbps copy of it you're more than welcome to grap a copy right this minute.

The Third Week of 2009.

I was hoping to have something to upload for this post but I haven't. I had this very strong desire to churn out some messy music but ended up sifting through old vinyl that I had converted into WAV files and reducing them to little loops. So now I have an expanding archive of melodic loops from all styles of music from the past 60 years or so and I'll be doing something very wrong with them very soon. I've got a massive collection still to be processed and enough material to keep me going for years but before I can have fun with it all I have to do the boring donkey work. I feel I have to put that extra bit of effort in these days in an attempt to keep one ahead of all the other millions of people on the web who are potentially doing similar things. So when it comes to source material I have to dig that little bit deeper and look for ever more unusual combinations and patterns. 

As for the mix that I had almost finished this time last week, I did finish it and send it off. Initial reactions were very positive and I thought I'd cracked it. However some changes have been requested so I'll have to find some time in the coming weeks to pick it apart and make some space for even more tunes. At the moment I haven't a clue how I'll get it to work with the extra stuff they want in there but I'm sure I can work it out somehow. I like a good challenge. Having said that I don't want to hear it for a couple of weeks, I've heard it way too many times recently.

So, next week I really will have something on here for you to download, even if it's something old. I'll also be thinking about how to make this blog a little more exciting, feel free to make helpful suggestions.

The second week of 2009.

OK, so what happened in the world of osymyso during the 2nd week of 2009? Well, pretty similar to the first week as it happens. I've been slowly chipping away at this mix which is now officially the hardest hour of audio editing I've ever embarked upon. It's my own fault, I tried to create something that had music from such a broad range of styles and tempo's and ended up with the audio equivalent of a Bedlam Cube. I've spent many many hours trying to get incompatible tracks to work together and ended up ditching numerous failed attempts. However, I did manage to finish the mix a few hours ago and will spend tomorrow tidying it up,adding some bells and whistles and getting all the levels right.

One other thing was brought to my attention this week, Intro-Inspection is listed in the Pitchfork 500 book. I'm not entirely sure what that means but it's sounds like a good thing I suppose. It is subtitled 'The Greatest Songs From Punk to the Present' which surely means Intro-Inspection is now recognised as an osymyso song and not just 101 intro's from other people's songs randomly mixed together.

New Year

I thought it would be a good idea to blog once a week this year, see what happens. Hopefully 2009 will be much more fun-packed than 2008 was and this blog will require weekly updates. If not I'll have a rummage around for some old tunes or something, I'm just going to make it up as I go along, in the true spirit of blogging.

In the first week of 2009 I have been working on a mix for a well known label. Not a remix of a tune but a long DJ mix of the back catalogue. I started work on this last November and it's been a start stop affair as other work has come up. I'm determined to bag this mix whilst everything is quiet, well I'll have to because they want it next week. I'll blog more about it once it's been approved or rejected. 

I've also been plotting my next move. I really want to get some new osymyso tunes out there, both my own compositions and some mash-up type nonsense. I was way too quiet in 2008. It's time for some action.

For now I have nothing more to add. Next week I'll try and find something more interesting to blog about. No promises though.