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Well what a turn up.

After being a huge fan of Frost* since hearing the very first teaser of Black Light Machine before Milliontown was even released, who would have thought I would be playing on the same bill as one of the guys I used to stand in awe of when he was on the stage as a big part of EIMA era Frost* ? And with three stunning solo albums under his sleeve, I could be talking of none other than Sir Declan of Burkeshire!

Yes indeed, on the 26th Feb 2017, Red Bazar, Dec and Tiger Moth Tales will be playing at the Boston Music Rooms in that there Laaaaaaaandon!
All organised by that cheeky rapscallion Jon Twang Patrick.

Full details at
http://teamrock.com/news/2016-10-06/tiger-moth-tales-announce-full-electric-london-show

Hi Frost*ingtons!
Just a quick heads up to say that Red Bazar have been asked to play Danfest6 in Leicester this year. It goes without saying we are massively honoured to be asked and totally up for it! We are second act on Friday December 2nd, after Midnight Sun and before the headliners Credo. Full details are on Facebook, so we hope you can join us!

Also, more lovely gig news to be added shortly :-)

Where does the time go? A whole year since last time? Never! 
Anyway hope you have a fab day and I shall do a little jig in 7/8 in your honour sir!

Finally - news on the Red Bazar front! After months of recording & mixing and hearing the wonderful tonsorial talents of the rather amazing Pete Jones (of Tiger Moth Tales) powering out of the studio monitors, we can now announce that White Knight Records have taken us under their wing (Thanks Rob & Will) So incredibly proud of this - I genuinely think we have produced something rather special and it is certainly the best thing I've ever been involved in! I've just heard the master audio which sounds awesome and all the artwork is at the printers! Pre sales start March 1st with provisional release date slated for March 15th. Also thanks to the marvellous Sir Peter of  Waite (AKA Pedro) for his insightful observations and advice - cheers matey!

You might recognise the cheeky chappie in the Korg iM1 video below :-)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9LmHSAYd-M

If your credit card is maxed please ignore the following hotlink! 

https://www.spectrasonics.net/products/omnisphere/index.php

Hi fellow Frost*lets!

Red Bazar (wot I joined last year) are gradually but surely putting together a new set of choons which will become our next album.

We made a conscious decision earlier this year to introduce more vocals into our hitherto 99.9% instrumental fare, and a fortunate series of events has just made this possible. The lovely Tigermoth has done us chaps at Bazar Towers a rather massive favour by collaborating on a track entitled "Calling Her On'. His lyrics came about from a germ of an idea I had about the thoughts of an astronauts wife left behind on Earth while hubby went gallovanting off across the universe. A bit like Space Oddity in reverse. Thankfully Pete aka Tigermoth rescued the day with some great lyrics and a fantastic vocal performance. He really did us proud, and hopefully we will collaborate again in the future, time permitting (something tells me he is going to be a very busy little Moth when his album Cocoon is released in September!)

And we've just entered the track into a competition by Prog Magazine run for unsigned bands, so fingers crossed. We will probably do more overdubs for the album and re-record bits and bobs, but here's a taster of where we are currently at - just click the play button under the big red whirly thing!
Hope you like:

http://www.redbazar.webeden.co.uk/#/music/4572816533

Korgs new take on selling the MS20 is apparently build your own!

http://www.korg.com/uk/products/dj/ms_20kit

which is fitting, seeing as one MS20 I used to own spent a lot of it's time in bits in the 80's! 

I'm very pleased to report that after putting some keyboards on new material for Red Bazar, an instrumental prog band from Nottingham, they have asked me to join their ranks for some live work. The bass player also plays with Coral Spin so you may have seen him around and about, the guitarist and drummer are great musicians too. God only knows why they wanted me....

You can listen to some samples from their previous albums at http://www.redbazar.webeden.co.uk/

We're very lucky to have landed the support slot for Alan Reed Band at the (CRS) Wesley Centre, Maltby 30th November, so I've got my work cut out learning the keys in time.

I realise instrumental prog may not be everyones cup of tea, but hope some of you can come and see us.
After all, not only do you get to see me make a godawful cock-up of the keyboards, you also get to see the mighty Alan Reed Band. What's not to like!

It's not very often a maiden album from a new artist comes along that impresses me as much as Milliontown did, but I have to say that Dimensionaut from Sound of Contact is such an album!

The band features names you may know such Simon Collins (Phils son - and sounding like the genetics have definitely worked their magic on his vocal chords), Dave Kerzner (who some may know as Squids from the It Bites forum), and for the live shows, Porcupine Tree's very own John Wesley.

I had hoped to see them supporting Spocks Beard last Friday, but the motorway traffic, early start and miserly 30 minute slot of Sound of Contact's set put paid to that, but I did get to chat to Simon and also buy the album which is available early at gigs, and about a months time for general release.
If you can imagine an album that Genesis could maybe be doing now, but with less twiddly bits, with a bit of Porcupine Tree thrown in, you've got the general idea.

An album teaser is up on their website at http://www.soundofcontact.com.

Bloody brilliant!

P.S. Spocks Beard were very good by the way, the new singer and drummer added a lot to the band and more than made up for Nick D'vergilio's departure.

Mmmmm
Looks vaguely like a crossbreed of a Fantom X and a Jupe 80. Could be a cheap way of getting all 12 SRX expansions possibly....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AowGClPD ... e=youtu.be

[that]

I must be well into my midlife crisis by now...

I'm helping to plan a reunion of my very first band which existed for 3 or so years, started when we were taking our A levels. We went under the snappy monika of 'Sosostris' (a character from the T.S. Elliot poem The Wasteland).
And yes, we were that pretentious

You can see what we looked like at http://www.theprofessors.net/sosostris.html - I'm the pillock hiding in the middle of the back row of the first picture. I encourage you to have a good old laugh at our expense - we were very very green behind the ears. The audio clips sound so sphincter-clenchingly, cheesy and naff now, it sets my teeth on edge to hear my embarrassing keys and the general tuning and timing problems  -  especially since we've all improved a lot both in musical terms and quality of our gear since then. Honest.

But that's OK. We were so young and naive

Anyway, I've always said that I'd never look back musically, what was in the past belongs there and all that....but the guitarist (who's now a Professor and lives in the States) is back in Blighty for a month or so, a chance meeting through Facebook with the drummer who I haven't seen for 30 years, AND the fact we're all chundering up to the mystical age of 50, has prompted us to arrange one-off reunion at the end of June. Everyone came round to my house last week and we had a quick run-through of the old songs which went surprisingly well to say we hadn't played them for well over a quarter of a century. The songs sounded actually quite good now that we have decent equipment and we've leaned how to tune the instruments....
And the best thing was we all really got on well. They always were a great bunch of geezers and it's good to see that time hasn't changed us for the worse, apart from our hair and waistlines.

So I've booked our old school theatre for a day (for the extra nostalgia factor), begged and borrowed gear for our bass player (who sold his gear when the band split up) and we are going to make some noise for friends and family. And consume a large quantity of alchohol.

Whether we have any friends or family left by the end of the day will be a fair reflection on how things go I guess.....

I'm in a bit of a quandary at the mo. I've got the opportunity to buy a Fantom X6 at a very good price, but in order to afford it I'll have to sell my lovely Korg Trinity. I don't have the space or the requirement for both, but I'll be sad to lose the Trin, seeing as it has the PBS-Tri sample expansion and the fab Z1-based VA card built in.
I also feel (although it's not a particularly important factor) that well preserved examples of Trinitys may hold their value better than Fantoms in years to come, so the Korg may be nicer to keep as a museum piece as the build quality is superb.

That said, I realise the Korg's getting on a bit, and the Fantom is a more modern bit of gear, plus it has the dynamic pads which will replace my Korg Pad Kontrol.
I have a sneaking suspicion that many may feel there no comparison to be made between the two given the age gap but just wondered if anyone on the forum had both and could give me an informed opinion?

Cheersmedears  

May your day be full of sponge based candle-holders!

So then, got a chance to see Rammstein in March. I've been on Youchoob and their stage show looks awesome apart from the band looking a bit, well.... Gimpy.
Not sure about music either, but tempted to go for the spectacle of it all.
Any Rammstein aficionados here?

Guys and gals - whats the general consensus of the Travelodgery? I'm about to book our room, and Kingston Central is about double the price of the Chessington Tolworth one, but it'd be worth it if it afforded an increased chance of a meet up with Frosties* pre/post gig - especially if the curry house is nearby. Also it's staggering distance from The Peel looks better, which may be an important factor  

I seem to remember Pedders saying that parking is a bit hit and miss with the Central Travelodge though??

So who's staying where? Sorry if this has already been posted elsewhere in the forum - I've had a look around but couldn't dig up the info!

[Many of you may have heard this one before, but it's new to me and so very true in my experience.....]

Many of you may have heard this one before, but it's new to me and so very true in my experience.....

A woman in a hot air balloon realized she was lost.

She reduced altitude and spotted a man below. She descended a bit more
and shouted: 'Excuse me, can you help me? I promised a friend I would
meet him an hour ago but I don't know where I am..'

The man below replied, 'You're in a hot air balloon hovering
approximately 30 feet above the ground. You're between 40 and 41 degrees
north latitude and between 59 and 60 degrees west longitude.'

'You must be an Engineer,' said the balloonist.

'I am,' replied the man, 'how did you know?'

'Well,' answered the balloonist, 'everything you have told me is
probably technically correct, but I've no idea what to make of your
information and the fact is, I'm still lost. Frankly, you've not been
much help at all. If anything, you've delayed my trip by your talk.'

The man below responded, 'You must be in Management.'

'I am,' replied the balloonist, 'but how did you know?'

'Well,' said the man, 'you don't know where you are or where you're
going. You have risen to where you are, due to a large quantity of hot
air. You made a promise, which you've no idea how to keep, and you
expect people beneath you to solve your problems. The fact is you are in
exactly the same position you were in before we met, but now, somehow,
it's my f**king fault.

This tickled me silly - almost as good as the Waynes World version.....

http://youtu.be/DX9_erQJn0M

This is a shameless plug for a guitarist mate of mine, I've worked with him in the past, and he's just released a collection of guitar instrumentals called Timeline which some of you might like. You can tell he's got a lot of love for Vai and Satriani, but he's a bloody talented bloke and deserves a bit of success I reckon. Hope you like....

The album is available on itunes at:
http://itunes.apple.com/gb/album/timeline/id445540299

I'm very excited to report my new Macbook Pro has arrived! It replaces my ailing Powerbook 1.6ghz 17" which was fab in it's day but it gave up the ghost recently due to an argument with my dogs, which it properly lost.

Although it was still perfectly useably with graphics programs in my day job (even handling big Photoshop files) it seriously ran out of steam when I used Logic. It got to the point where I couldn't advance any of my musical projects without the machine throwing up errors or freezing. So it basically put my songwriting aspirations on hold, as I had invested a lot of time getting various projects (and a long lost Other Me remix)  to where they were, and I basically lost enthusiasm with the whole thing.

That's why I'm so chuffed I'm typing this on a new quad core 2.2 ghz Macbook Pro! There's an application called Geekbench which analyses how fast your mac is and presents it as a score. My old mac posted 817. My new one managed 10,060!.
In Logic that converts to such a big difference in CPU usage it's a revelation. Projects that didn't play more that a few seconds due to CPU overload now hardly merit a flicker on the CPU meter so I think this machine will last me a few years.

Only snag is that a lot of my plugins need upgrading and most of those are paid upgrades. I'll have to upgrade Atmosphere & Stylus, which were two of my most used instruments, and Nostalgia which uses a non-supported version of Kontakt I think. I think others such as EZ Drummer and the Korg Legacy Wavestation and M1 will be free updates but I've yet to look into it.

But I'm still grinning like a fool