Lucy Love...

It's been a while since I last wrote some words here.

I'm in the last...two weeks of my Recording Arts degree, and nearing the end of my dissertation, which has been a chance to write about something which is a huge influence on all my work.

DRONE: What is its significance within the work of contemporary Recording Artists and Counter Culture

That's the title (although I feel it may change soon, once I have finished writing) The research project is about how drones have been used in music (Everything from Classical Indian composition, to bands like Neu! Velvet Underground, Spacemen 3, Sonic Boom, stuff from the Basic Channel label, Dub and minimalism etc etc) It also covers its connection to spirituality. So the use of drone for meditation, and the use of psychedelic drugs to reach ego-loss, enlightenment. Spending time reading about Dr Tim Leary, Aldous Huxley, and shamanistic psychedelic rituals has been great. The finished dissertation is in for the 16th. I think I'll be alright. I'm going to be in the studio over next week doing my own recordings of Steve Reich's Pendulum music. Pendulum music is a piece of chance music. By placing a series of microphones connected to amplifiers, then letting them all go at once so they swing in front of them-every time the microphone swings across the speaker, a squeal of feedback happens. Eventually each microphone starts to go out of phase with each other, and then stops swinging leaving continues feedback. I will also be doing a bunch of recordings with my harmonium and Electronic Tanpura.

Next week I also have plans to do a bit of stereo mixing to the masters of Lucifer Sun's recent recordings. We've been down in our rehearsal space the past couple of weeks, and did a bit of recording. Stereo room recording - Two MD421's that I bought recently. They seem to be dated from around the 1960s, and they sound far better than Sennheisers recent manufactured ones. Set up in an AB technique, capturing the room sound. You can hear the results on our myspace

For rough demo's they are sounding alright, although I will work on some more refined placement. I'd love to get my hands on a Stereo Pair of Coles 4038s and run them through some Telefunken pre's.