My flat's been turned over by some 'youths', and they took my music laptop (amongst one or two other small inconsequential possessions). So the bulk of the music I made over the last few months has been lost. I'm playing a gig in Liverpool on the 24th March, so the lack of laptop is a bit of a spanner in the works. It'll be okay though. But BOLLOCKS.

I've just broken 100 listeners on Last.fm - voila: Michael Forrest@Last.fm.

New Year's Resolution for 2006

Two Releases

I want to put out two records this year. Last year's resolution was to play 3 gigs. I achieved that (by the skin of my teeth) - I was shooting low - keeping it realistic. Two releases was the suggestion of the sound engineer / producer that I worked with on Broken into Tumbolia. I have reflected on this and decided to do it.

Priorities

It's addictive, this 'rat race'. The work thing. Doing a day job. I generally enjoy it (even the amoral project I am working on at present for Philip Morris). I keep getting distracted with thoughts of promotions and bonuses and pay rises. It's easy to get used to an improving standard of living and to continue to want more and more. But I really can't complain - I've got a sweet flat in Camden Town, with plenty of space for all my stuff, all set out how I want it. I have all the recording equipment I could possibly want (well, nearly all - I'm holding off buying a clarinet, bass guitar, glockenspiel, yet another controller keyboard, another mic... it's never enough is it...), I have more time than I used to (being closer to work and no telly) - there's really nothing to angst over.

So what I'm saying is that I need to shift the focus back to music instead of letting the day-job extras seep into my spare time (I'm migrating the office blog from Movable Type to Expression Engine out of the kindness of my heart).

Max

I tuned into Radio 1 on Sunday night (DAB is great! No more cross-referencing frequencies or waiting for a song to finish before you can find out where you are - radio is catching up with the late nineties at last!) and who's name should I hear but the name of Max Cole, in a rundown of the year's 'best tracks as voted for by you the public' on the Gilles Peterson WOOOOORLDDD WIIIIIIDE show. He got to #14 with "Mo' High". Max and my paths deviated about 4-5 years ago after being in bands together for about 5 years. He's the first of my former bandmates to have achieved anything remotely noteworthy (in a mass-audience sense, and in my eyes / to-my-knowledge). Finally, a precedent. I need to find a DJ to bother...

Mouse On Mars

I gave a copy of my album to Mouse On Mars in December, on a mp3-player/memory-stick. Andi Toma, to be precise. It was loud in there and he thought I wanted him to copy it to a laptop there and then, and was about to do so before I cleared up the confusion. There was a warm handshake, and I felt good about the experience. But there's been no email contact at all. I can only assume that he lost it. Bad Andi. Bad Mouse On Mars. In your bed. :(

What did I want? Well, a dialogue / industry helping hand would have been GREEEATT, but even a couple of nice words about one of the tracks would have been nice - and not only for my self esteem - I need to put some quotes on my banner ads!

Cinestatic

Sorry the 'features' column has been looking so thin - Extropia 2 was over a month ago now, and I still haven't replaced the link... I need to introduce differentmaps, but I was going to do him together with another enquirer who I was expecting to join, who hasn't got back to me, so it's just been stagnating. I wish I could promise an immediate replacement. It would be good if other cinestatic contributors could email me when they have something to highlight on the homepage (a significant comic or album release from Pete? A couple of new tracks from Beatmasta? A new... map... from different maps?? Help me out here guys!).

Humminy homminy hummony. I need to be pushing music. That's the main thing. I'm thinking:

Regular night in Camden - either the Jazz Café (unlikely?) or the Dublin Castle (also unlikely? I dunno) - if I could be playing every 4th Monday, I could be trying plenty new stuff out and building a meatspace fanbase. It has to be Camden because it has to be NEAR MY HOUSE.

More (pissing christing fucking) demo UNSOLICITED DEMO CDs to send out. Well, I'm getting much better at ringing people up, so next time I get a promising email from a small record label expressing interest I'll RING THEM STRAIGHT AWAY and MAKE THEM PUT SOMETHING OUT FOR ME. Pissing fucking demo CDs. I hate doing them SO MUCH. I hate making MUSIC FOR DEMO CDs.

Still, my new beard seems to be going down well. It's my character-arc node. Like when Willow turned evil, her hair went black. When Michael went special, he suddenly had a beard.

"Smunk". What was I thinking? (Nah - I still can't dislike the name!)

How bonkers is this! I received short email this morning in broken English to say thanks for the album, and pointing to this review on www.elechina.net. Here's a machine-translation into English.

Ben's Barfly Brigade Chart...

Hey - you can help me out by downloading my tracks (from here) and then installing the audioscrobbler plugin from last.fm. That way, whenever you listen to my music on your computer you strengthen connections on the last.fm radio and it will be streamed to more people for them to discover.
My last.fm page is here. My user page is here.

New track. You can probably guess where I got the name from....

If you want to [mp3 - 9.73Mb]

Dave recommended this book to me: "If you want to write" by Brenda Ueland. It reads a bit like a Californian self-help book in some ways, but says copyright 1938 on the inside cover, so maybe it's an influencer rather than an influenced.

"Now some people when they sit down to write and nothing special comes, no good ideas, are so frightened that they drink a lot of strong coffee to hurry them up, or smoke packages of cigarettes, or take drugs or get drunk. They do not know that good ideas come slowly, and that the more clear, tranquil and understimulated you are, the slower the ideas come but the better they are."

Now there's a perfect description of my creative process, when I was working part-time at Newham. I'd get up every morning and fret and drink a cafetiere of coffee, swear and shout at myself for being so slow and lazy - it hurt. It made me hate music. I was saying to myself, just as Ueland describes,

"'I have nothing to say and am of no importance and have no gift'; or 'the public doesn't want good stuff'"

"Both extremes, both lies".

I'm only a few pages in, but it already feels like a very important book.

Now, there is an emphasis on solitude so far - a recommendation that the artist should spend a lot of time alone. This just so happens to coincide with a decision I'm currently trying to make, about where I will move next: I need more space and I want a certain kind of space that is not necessarily compatible with living with others.

I'd like to start a discussion of the pros and cons of living alone - who has done it? Who knows what it's like? Would it be a crazy thing to do?