14.42
The Lounge, Hotel Acceptable, Milton Keynes.
A day of small, ongoing irritations, mismatches & misconnections; also a day of moving forward positively, despite all best attempts to undermine it.
The builders are in at World HQ & beginning to demolish the small kitchen-extension, to replace it with a larger kitchen extension. They are also double-dating HQ & our home, where the garages have been demolished to make way for an extension to our own kitchen.
What does an ambient musician do for a day job? Ask Dave…
Dave is on the left, Kevin on the right. Dave is the only building-worker reported to have played David Sylvian on a building site’s Noise Pollution Unit.
Here in the lounge, listening to the last 10 minutes of Soundscapes at Lichtenvoorde (the Arrrow Festival) with G3 in 2004. As is the case at most festivals, there is no soundcheck. As with most of the G3 Soundscapes in Europe, the performance took place against a background (and foreground) of loud shouts, cat-calls & performance-suggestions that, taken together, conveyed an overall lack of support for the music form underway, and/or its performer. Listening to this, purely as music, I would have no sense of the audience antipathy that I recall (very easily & very well).
15.36 Now listening to G3, Manchester (2004) & RF solo Troy, NY (2005).
11.34 The Director of Slow Music…
Bill Rieflin is also the drummer in Minus Five, about to begin a UK tour supporting Robyn Hitchcock on Friday, and then to the US via Paris; Bill is also the drummer with REM & tells interesting tales of playing at Live 8. The Director is visiting Milton Keynes with the artist Francesca Sundsten, his wife, for Bill’s first ever English pantomime, and probably Frankie’s second (her first was as a very young person).
Bill & Frankie are now training back to London and rehearsals tomorrow, and I am about-to-be snuggling with The Minx.
"Remember to play."
