Tag: YouTube

From start to Finnish: The Woolhouse International Rescue service.

Those of you who follow my particular brand of online nonsense will already be aware that I am a huge Twin Peaksfan. You may also remember that this obsession with David Lynch’s extraordinary TV odyssey, led to me being involved in the comedic fellowship of The Woolhouse Boys, a Facebook group set up to celebrate an obscure side-character and his garish knitwear.

{If you are now scratching your head and thinking I’ve lost it completely, GO HEREto find out more}

As I have previously indicated, this merry band of like-minded, friendly geeks and nerds are only too happy to lend a helping hand to other members in times of need, which is one of the reasons I love The Woolhouse so much.

Well at the weekend, I was able to offer a little woolly thinking to a couple of fellow Lynch-obsessives from snowy Finland, who have been making Twin Peaks-inspired short films for some time.

Merja and Tarja sent me a link to their latest project and I suggested a small tweak to the music, saying I’d be happy to help if they needed it.

Long story, short; I offered to mix the soundtrack for them and, since they were happy with the result, I thought it only fair that I shared it with you here.

There are already several other short films on their YouTube channel, so if you like atmospheric, enigmatic audio visual treats, why not pop over and subscribe, especially if you’re a Twin Peaks fan.

Here is the short clip to which I added a small pinch of sonic polishing, so please enjoy DARK DREAM.

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One Man And His Zombie Dog, part two.

Just because I have the day off, here’s another clip featuring Audrey’s Stikbot figures.

An everyday story of a man doing death-defying acrobatics with his dog, which then kills him and turns him into a zombie.

Obviously.

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K’lee and Dale’s Cosmic Photo Challenge.

Hello everyone, I hope you’re enjoying a pleasant bank holiday Monday (if you get one, that is) or are at least having a successful start to the working week.

I set the theme for K’lee and Dale’s Cosmic Photo Challenge this week and I decided to go for the obvious topical prompt, with a monochromatic twist; Easter in black and white.

For today’s challenge, Audrey wanted to get involved, only fair when you realise it was her Easter gifts that are the stars of the post.

So here are a couple of shots from yesterday’s celebrations, with Audrey providing the peculiar facial poses (I think the second one is a rabbit impression, to match the chocolate truffle carrots she had for breakfast)…

…along with these two little clips (yes I know, they’re in colour, sorry) we made using the STIKBOT figures and app which Audrey got for Easter.

May I present The Chick Dance…

…and One Man And His Zombie Dog.

I’m sure K’lee will have something wonderful for you HERE.

But now it’s time to see your Easter treats.

*****

To get involved with the challenge, post a photo to your blog on Monday, add a pingback to this post (or to K’lee’s) and don’t forget to tag your post #CosPhoChal.

Alternatively, add a link to your blog in the comments of either mine or K’lee’s post and we’ll come and check out your entry.

Any and all effects, editing, Photoshop, Instagram, morphing, collages or whatever other post production techniques you fancy are permitted, (in fact, they’re actively encouraged!) so get creative and turn your photos into artworks for the Cosmic Photo Challenge.

#CosPhoChal

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Stream of Consciousness Sunday: Words, sounds and pictures.

It’s time to delve into the world of Linda G Hill and her SoCS feature, for today’s attempt to crowbar a random word or phrase into whatever post I had planned anyway find inspiration in the weekly prompt, which this week is;

“ When you’re ready to sit down and write your post, look to the publication (book, newspaper, permission slip from your kid’s teacher, whatever you find) closest to you, and base your post on the sixth, seventh, and eighth word from the beginning of the page. “

Well, I found, this on the living room table beside me…

…one of those free catalogues of useless gadgets, gizmos and questionable “fashion” items that comes stapled inside the TV guide.

A crapalogue, if you will.

Giving me this as my prompt;

ORDER WITH CONFIDENCE – We Guarantee You Will Be Happy!

Ok, then.

You will be delighted to hear that I’ve been experimenting with my audio visual toys again this weekend; namely, my edjing mixing app and a selection of video imaging and editing gadgets.

My first sonic hybrid creation is an atmospheric and vaguely cinematic piece; electro-goth by way of Twin Peaks, (just for a change) using Dark Water by Hide and Sequence, from this excellent album of Peaks-inspired, retro-synth tunes, combined with the bass line from Sanctified by Nine Inch Nails, who appeared in the recent third season of David Lynch’s oddball masterpiece.

I used Poweramp to generate some fancy visuals and set up my temporary studio in the airing cupboard to shoot the accompanying video, managing to re-synchronize the soundtrack perfectly, (even if I do say so myself) which you can experience in all its glory, right here.

You will be equally thrilled to learn that I’ve had a go at combining another trio of Kraftwerk classics; mixing the German and Japanese versions of Pocket Calculator together, (or Taschenrechner and Dentaku, if you prefer) to make a frenetic bleep-a-thon I like to call;

***DENTAKULATOR***

Then I took a few samples of Music Non-Stop, from the 1986 album Electric Café, adding them to a version of Radioactivity to produce this bastard lovechild of a track, the epic electro megamix called;

***RADIOACTIVITY NON-STOP***

You will be able to listen to and/or download my remixes if you wish, using the links above. And you will be able to find many more of my mixes and strange compositions on The A/V Project page.

************

#SoCS

Pingback to Linda G Hill.

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Stream of Consciousness Sunday: Melodic Randomiser.

Ok, look, I’m going to level with you; the chance of me getting round to writing a proper SoCS post in the next couple of weeks is pretty slim, (i.e. non-existent) what with working overtime, Christmas shopping, school holidays and all the time consuming preparations that the festive season entails, so I will finish this story during the Christmas break, honest I will.

But until then, I’ll cheat with another of Linda G Hill‘s prompts, which this week is;

” “contrast.” Use the word “contrast,” or talk about contrasting things “

Ok then, I think I’ve got this…

Melodic Randomiser mp3

In contrast to previous attempts to inflict my latest sonic experiments on you, this time I’ve decided to cheat by bringing you another in my occasional series of Melodic Randomiser posts, whereby I shuffle through my mp3 collection and play you whatever comes out.

I asked Rhonda to pick a starting point for today’s random trio of contrasting tunes and she chose Sum 41 and We’re All To Blame…

…which shuffled rather nicely into Morning Dew by industrial oddballs Einstürzende Neubauten, whose name, if I remember rightly, means “collapsing concrete buildings”…

…finishing off with the laid back robo-funk of Gary Numan and a track from his Dance album, Boys Like Me.

************

#SoCS

Pingback to Linda G Hill.

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Mixing it up.

During my extended medical absence from work, (which comes to an end tomorrow) I downloaded an app called edjing, which is a full set of DJ decks with all the gadgets required to make high quality mixes from my extensive mp3 collection.

I began by playing around with small samples of tracks, just to get the hang of mixing (which I have never attempted until now, despite always wanting to have a go) then advanced to remixing entire songs.

It shouldn’t really be a surprise to discover that among the first victims recipients of my remixing skills were Kraftwerk, given my previously documented appreciation of their robotic rhythms; but it also turns out that their precision engineered style makes their material remarkably easy to combine in a mix.

Here is Antenna, from Radio Activity, spliced with a sample of Pocket Calculator percussion, from the career-defining Computer World album.

It’s called, rather predictably, Pocket Antenna.

For a more lively visual treat, here’s a remix of Numbers, with an added sample from Control by a band called Operators, accompanied by another of my psychedelic videos.

You’ll never guess what it’s called; Number Control.

I had even more fun, mixing a sample from It’s More Fun To Compute with the dynamic Dusseldorfers’ self-aware hit, The Robots, which you can listen to at the link below.

CLICK HERE »»» ***It’s More Fun To Robot***

Finally, for a bit of variety, I made an extended mix of the Grimes bonus track, Angel, adding some wispy visuals for extra atmosphere.

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Visible vibes.

Over the last week, I have once again been messing around with my music apps; Oscilab, the loop maker and sequencer on my phone, combined with a beta-test version of the Poweramp music player on my tablet, which includes a new “visualisation” feature.

This transforms any audio signal played through it into a complex and synchronised series of patterns which are unique to each sound, allowing you to “see” the music.

Like, far out, man.

Unfortunately there is no way to save the resulting psychedelic visual display, unless you get creative and improvise a little, of course.

So I built myself a studio in the airing cupboard; a black box with my tablet lying in the bottom of it and a sheet of glass on top with my phone on top of that.

Then, with my phone camera turned on, all I needed to do was line up my tablet in the video viewfinder, press play on the tablet and record on the camera, then close the door and wait for my latest musical creation to finish playing.

Once I have video of the unique patterns produced by my new tune, all that remains is for me to edit the video to the exact length of the audio track, (cutting out me turning on the tablet and removing any blank screen from the end) remove the sound from the raw video, dub the music back over the edited footage and; Voila! another masterpiece.

I’m not one for leaving an idea alone, once I’ve convinced myself of its brilliance, so I ended up making four new electronic soundscapes in the last few days, all with their own trippy visual accompaniment.

I’m posting one of the most melodic and chilled-out numbers here, which I’ve called The Glimmering, but you can also find it, along with all the rest of this week’s audio output (plus one earlier attempt) on my new page, Sound and vision: The Oscilab project, via that link or the drop-down menu at the top of the page.

I hope you enjoy the soothing tones of this adventure in electronic psychedelia and when you’ve sampled its peculiar delights, why not visit the new page for yourselves and check out the rest of my collection.

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K’lee and Dale’s Cosmic Photo Challenge.

Good morning and welcome to another week, starting with your Monday dose of K’lee and Dale’s Cosmic Photo Challenge, today with a theme chosen by K’lee.

Now, his prompt was pretty enigmatic; A Clockwork’d Orange, meaning I had to stretch to find something apposite to post, but I think I found a little gem from the archives to meet the brief.

First of all, going with the most obvious inspiration, some photos that feature the colour orange…

…followed by the “Clockwork’d” part of the deal, hmm…

How about this little clip I made a few years ago, called Satsuma Rescue?

Ok, it’s not clockwork, exactly, but it’s stop motion and that has a similar feel, doesn’t it?

Anyway, see what you think.

(You may need to watch it twice, but keep your eye on the little fella, he’s going to give the final stranded piece of fruit a helping hand back into the bowl)

After you’ve looked at K’lee’s post, which is HERE when he’s ready, show us how you interpreted his mysterious prompt with your own offerings.

*****

To get involved with the challenge, post a photo to your blog on Monday, add a pingback to this post (or to K’lee’s) and don’t forget to tag your post #CosPhoChal.
Alternatively, add a link to your blog in the comments of either mine or K’lee’s post and we’ll come and check out your entry.

Any and all effects, editing, Photoshop, Instagram, morphing, collages or whatever other post production techniques you fancy are permitted, (in fact, they’re actively encouraged!) so get creative and turn your photos into artworks for the Cosmic Photo Challenge.

#CosPhoChal

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Melodic Randomiser goes virtual.

I had to sell my vinyl collection some time ago, I’ve finally surrendered to the inevitable and disposed of thirty years worth of cassettes and I have already showcased a fair number of my CD collection in the original Melodic Randomiser posts, so it’s time for another medium to take over.

As I have thousands of songs stored on the memory cards and internal drives of several mobile devices, it seemed the obvious next step to start making some blind playlists from these and see what I came up with.

So I hereby inaugurate the first in an occasional series of posts; Melodic Randomiser mp3, in which I shall scroll through the songs on my music player with my eyes closed, jab my finger on the screen to pick the first song and use that as a starting point, from where I shall shuffle twice more to pick the others.

This is what applying that technique gave me today, I hope you find something to tickle your musical tastebuds.

First up, James Yuill, a modern folk troubadour with a chilled electronica twist. Here is The Rush, from his These Spirits album…

…which we follow with some classic David Bowie and Time, from the era-defining Aladdin Sane…

…and to complete this initial installment, we have one of the greatest English pop acts of recent(ish) times; The Smiths and the original single version of William It Was Really Nothing, taken from 1984’s utterly faultless Hatful Of Hollow album.

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