I am Ashley Elsdon

someone who's doing some things

Category: Music

Music is a huge part of my life so it’s almost certain that this category will have a lot of stuff in it.

Waiting Room Volume 1

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An album from Blancmange for the quarantine from Coronavirus

A new album from one of my favourite bands, “Blancmanage”. Waiting Room (Volume 1).

Apparently this is a collection of songs that didn’t fit anywhere else. I can understand how that happens. It makes sense to me. I bought it, mainly to support Blancmange in these strange and troubled times. I didn’t expect much, but, on the whole, these are pretty good tracks.

They certainly have a feel of not really fitting together, and, if this makes any sense at all, that sort of binds them together. In a ‘not really binding together’ way. Which I will admit makes no sense either.

I’ll listen to them again soon(-ish), and I may even write something more about this collection of songs. Who knows.

More about Blancmange

Blancmange: Nil by Mouth IV and V

I have been listening to Blancmange since the 1980s. In recent years, I have found their (his) music much more introspective at times, and especially this series of instrumental albums ‘Nil By Mouth’. In this latest iteration, albums four and five arrive as a double album, and both live up to the previous quality. I…

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SynthPond is in fact still around

Posted by on in Mobile Applications, Music

I still think that this is a really innovative app for iOS (before it was called iOS of course), and I wish it had been kept up to date, but sadly that was not to be.

I was taking a look at it again on my old iPhone 3G, and decided to look it up. I found that whilst the app wasn’t maintained for iOS it is available as a Max patch, and also for Pd as well. Which is really cool.

I thought you might be interested. You can find both patches here.

A very small Tangerine Dream exhibition

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A few pictures from the Tangerine Dream exhibition at the Barbican Library

I was glad to get along to this. I can’t say that I’m a huge fan. In fact, it was really only 2018 when a friend asked me if I wanted to come along and see them live. I went. I was really impressed. It was an amazing night.

Since then I’ve listened to bits and pieces, including, very recently, the entire “In Search of Hades” box set. Which was quite a big thing to listen to. So I thought it would be worth checking this out.

To say that this was a small exhibition would be something of an understatement. It was to be honest, tiny. It is tucked away in the Barbican library music section. Now there’s nothing wrong with that, but I do think that a band of this stature really deserves better. Perhaps something thoughtfully curated. Something that provides a deeper understanding to the music, the ideas behind it, the process itself?

Personally I’d like that. This, at the Barbican, was fine as a taster, but essentially it wasn’t enough. I understand why it was small, but I do think that someone like the Barbican could have done more to make this something to celebrate and show what an enormous contribution this band has made to electronic music specifically, but also to music making and musicians in general.

A Wotja a day

Posted by on in Music, SoundsLeave a comment

I make a lot of music, very little of which I share anywhere these days. For the most part I make music for my own enjoyment, which is much more productive I feel. Anyway, I digress. The point of this is that at the start of the year I decided that I would try to make a small track each day with an app that I really like and enjoy. It’s called Wotja.

Wotja is a generative music system for iOS, although it’s been around a lot longer than that. I’ve actually been a fan of it since around 2007, which kind of puts things in perspective. Of course it’s changed a lot since I first started using it.

Anyway, once again I digress a little. The point of this is that I started on the 1st of January, and so far I’ve kept it up the whole time. So here’s the first. I’ll post the others, probably in small batches, periodically. Hopefully I’ll manage to keep it up all year too.

A cassette magazine from a long time ago

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SFX Cassette

When this first came out I can remember buying it. It was such an exciting idea. A magazine that you could listen to! It was a revelation. I didn’t buy many of them. It wasn’t cheap, or at least I didn’t really have the money back then. But I’m pretty sure I bought a few of them.

Sadly, as they were on tape, I eventually recorded over them, and they’ve been lost along the way. So one day I had a look for them on eBay, and of course, there were quite a few available. After a while I’ve got hold of one of the ones I wanted.

So far I haven’t played this, I’m half expecting it to jam up the mechanism, and perhaps I won’t actually even try. We’ll see.

No more littleBits

Posted by on in Making things, MusicLeave a comment

Last year I decided that I wasn’t doing anything interesting with my collection of littleBits components and modules, so I finally gave them up and sold them. I hope that they’ve all gone to good homes.

They were fun, and very useful at times. I did enjoy them, but I think I had got to a point where I’d stopped doing anything creative with them.

No more littleBits

Last year I decided that I wasn’t doing anything interesting with my collection of littleBits components and modules, so I finally gave them up and sold them. I hope that they’ve all gone to good homes. They were fun, and very useful at times. I did enjoy them, but I think I had got to…

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Sad to find out that bitLab is closed

The littleBits bitLab that is. I’d always wondered how sustainable it would be, but apparently there’s already an answer to that question. So it’s a shame. I think that there were some very nice projects in there but obviously not enough money to make it work. It’s a shame. It was a great idea.

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Starting to build an automated twitter synth with littleBits

For a long time I’ve been thinking about the idea of being able to create a synth in hardware which reacted to the virtual world, more specifically, to being tweeted at. To that that end I got myself a littleBits CloudBit, which works quite well, albeit it isn’t able to provide as much data as…

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Record Store Day 2019

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Record Store Day 2019

I do realise that this was quite a long time ago now, back in April in fact. But it is an event that I like to celebrate and, when I can, be a part of. This year I was again. However, in terms of how many things I got from my list, I wasn’t very successful at all. In fact, it was a bit of a bust to be honest.

Whilst that was a shame, I did manage to get a few bits and pieces, and I was pleased with that. I plan to go again in 2020, but I won’t be sure until I can see what’s on the list, and that won’t be for a few months yet.

Back in 2018 I decided that the simplest way to do Record Store day was to stay in a hotel around the corner, and I think that might be my best bet in 2020 if there’s enough on the list to actually tempt me.