Let the Right One in

Taking a little side step from Music to comment on a recent movie that I had the pleasure of watching courtesy of Jason Calacanis and the team at Mahalo - a kick ass human powered search engine - algorithms don't have feet! "Let the Right One in" is a Swedish horror movie, it has a vampire in it - which helps - but it's more about themes like: isolation, youth, men with beards and being very fucking cold - you can almost feel the chill coming through the screen.   There is one brief reference to Brezhnev which helps date the movie - but I'm guessing it was the General Secretary's pre-Abba days - bleak would be a fair description of the world portrayed in the movie.

Check out the trailer below:

I dug it - but you really don't want to be watching this movie in a hurry - it is paced as slow as a slow thing - the clip above probably contains 80% of the entire action in the movie - and the movie's 2 hours long. If you dig the whole Bergman thing and enjoy intelligent movie making - then check it out - if you're looking for mindless escapism then this is probably not for you.

New music in crazy-ass times

I always feel better about things when I make time to play in the morning - it is of course good practice but it also helps clear my head for the day. There's a lot of things going on - I completed Spidey's music and she now has her own page on music2work2, I intend on writing a a longer blog post for that in the near future. I've been working on a new piece called "Maja" and the story of how it came about is quite remarkable combining: domestic violence, serendipity and outrageous fortune - sounds cool huh? Anyway - here's this morning's theme - it is a little development of the Maja theme and segues nicely into a G minor version of Scary Movie Music - an old theme that I have yet to deliver - maybe that'll come soon? [display_podcast]

Spidey's Lunchbox

So its Friday night – its been a crazy week, W is asleep and I know that I need to play – so – before I pull out the wireless card – (don’t ask me why but the wireless card interferes with my nice sound card) I throw out a tweet asking for a number. Spidey replies with 107. I’m stoked – it’s a prime number. I plug it into my metronome and start recording a 107 beats per minute click to freestyle on top of. I do this before I take the card out as I want to write a tweet and say thank you to Spidey and I was still dropping an email to Richard.

Spidey’s interesting: Australian, mum, 3 kids, married, funny. She likes shopping, Vegas, LA, Irish boys, shoes and booze, I think her husband’s a musician – what’s not to like? Anyway, I send my tweet, pull out the wireless card, disable any unnecessary processes (scary amount!) and turn to the Triton.

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I love Australia – I traveled there between school and University 20 years ago. Fly into Melbourne – drive to Surfers – up the coast to Cairns, dive on The Great Barrier Reef (my reason for going) , stay on Magnetic Island, work the milk factories in the suburbs and play piano in the Brisbane Hotel – it was a magical time a magical place and the people were some of the nicest I have met on the planet.

Now – removing the rose tinted spectacles – I’m sure everything is different – but one thing always seems to remain with Aussies – their attitude. It’s different, it’s unique – its not “I can” – it’s more “I know I can” – and sure – in some of them – that can manifest as arrogance – but to the people I have met – it manifests as a confidence. What you get as a result is a take no bullshit – give loads of bullshit approach – which is always fun.

Here’s the piece that was in my head when I was thinking about her. I lost a 10 minute development of it to a bad click track – bummer.

Parts 1, 2 and 3 later on this weekend.