The Little Explorer, Kenneth Ishak & Hooray! Say The Roses

Went to see ‘The Little Explorer‘ supported by Kenneth Ishak and ‘Hooray! Say The Roses‘ last night. A very enjoyable gig indeed, mainly worthy of note due to it being the first time TLE have played the vic (My home towns most revered toilet venue) in over three years. This was all due to some bust up with Andy (the previous owner of the Vic) but now he’s gone they are cool playing there.

Anyway, back story aside I’ll try and explain why I really enjoyed this gig.

First up were ‘Hooray! Say The Roses’, a band involving two lovely gents from Leeds – Steve Roe and Matt J. I recorded Matt’s old punk band Hit For Six a few years back when I was running a little (and rather shitty) studio in a rented industrial unit in shady Nottingham. When I saw him last night the first thing he did was apologise for his drummer being sick in the corridor when we’d been recording. That was like 3yrs ago at least, made me larf.
HSTR were really good to watch, in the way that it’s always nice to get a break from standard ‘rock’ bands. Seeing strings, banjos and weirdy old keyboards is always a pleasure for a muso like me. The songs were good too of course my only criticism being that some of the parts went on a bit too long for my liking (I like pop music so that’s just my preference I guess) but there was still plenty to keep my pop brain happy. Like TUNES! An alien concept to many bands.

Next up was Kenneth Ishak who I must admit I was rude and listened to from the bar. Sounded good, but to be honest I just find it difficult to get a feel for a solo performer when they play live. You can’t concentrate on the lyrics (or hear them a lot of times) and the songs inevitably blend into one sometimes. Hence I’ll not provide a more in depth review of him as I don’t really feel qualified. What I will do is to provide this LINK to where you can hear some of his stuff for yourself.

Lastly were The Little Explorer who were brilliant. It was a very nostalgic gig in a way because I just couldn’t remember the last time I saw them play The Vic. Lots of old faces came out of the woodwork and it was nice to feel like there was still some sense of ’scene’ and support in Derby. A few years ago there was a great period where lots of us would hang out, meet for coffees play gigs together and form new little bands between ourselves. It was a great time and I met some amazing people (TLE included), it’s dwindled a bit what with people moving or going to uni, etc but last night felt really good again. Anyways, back to the music.
Lots of newer songs, not so many of the first album which was good to see. New single Chair Legs sounded great and is well worth a few pounds from HERE. I loved the old classics but I think it would have been too much to see the same band play the same set as the last time they played the same venue three years ago. I’m all for the comfort of nostalgia but that’s going too far.
The new stuff sounds great, their sound has changed a bit but not so the new and old don’t sit well together. It felt good to see them moving into new areas and (wanky as it sounds) ‘maturing’ as a band. I hate the term ‘maturing’ when referencing bands but I think it applies here rather than implying they’ve started wearing cardigans and writing trad rock. Besides, they’ve always worn cardigans the big emo bastards.

After the gig I went out to Scream and danced like a fool. It wasn’t too busy but there were lots of nice people about. Afterwards, myself, Miikhul and Danyul went to the takeaway and got filth to take home.
Went home
Ate Filth
Fell asleep

Good night.

Apples, Pears and Music

Something perhaps worth sharing…

Okay, this one’s for anyone thinking of taking the plunge and moving over to the new Apple Intel machines for music making.

If you have no idea what I’m on about then sorry.

When I had the opportunity to sell my Powerbook G4 and upgrade to the new intel model, I decided to take it. I was aware that I would have to wait for the software to all be coded to the new processors and was beginning to understand exactly how long a wait we were talking about.

Although the main sequencer packages are starting to release universal binary versions (usually at a price), the main problem I had was plugins. Virtually none of the plugins I use are universal binary yet, some don’t even have any plans to release new versions at all!
Others like Native Instrucunts Instruments seem to think that charging €30 or so PER PLUGIN is reasonable!

Essentially I was beginning to think that I was going to lose all my beloved older plugs like the excellent Mtron or freeware ones such as Buzzer2. I was lost in a world of misspent money, wishing I’d never forsaken my trusty old G4.

Until…

I came across an article detailing how some users had found the Intel version of the Safari web browser to be behaving badly with certain online content. It was basically stating that because some of the java plugins and so on had not been updated to universal binaries, Safari wasn’t able to display some content and would crash. It suggested a tip that if you selected an application and hit ⌘-i then there’s a checkbox allowing the app to run the PowerPC version under Rosetta emulation.

I tried installing an old PowerPC audio plugin on my Macbook Pro and booted up Ableton Live as normal. As I suspected, Live did not load the plugin, nor was it available after a rescan of my plugins folder. I then told Live to run under Rosetta and hey presto! The Plugin was there in all its glory.

Of course running a program under Rosetta emulation does affect its performance quite a bit, but to be honest with the speed boost of my Macbook over my old G4 it’s pretty much just like having my old laptop back. Albeit living in my nice shiny Macbook Pro!