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Saturday 22 October 2016

Black Mirror Nosedive Review






It was a Friday afternoon, my partner had the afternoon off, I was kicking back on the sofa and we stumbled across Charlie Brooker's Black Mirror episode, Nosedive, on Neflix.
I personally have an intertest in Charlie's anarchic style of video mash-up and writing, and hands down, it was better than having to sit through The Great British Bake Off! Having said that, I'm not a huge fan of Charlie's work, just someone who likes to watch good telly. Call me old fashioned, but there's good viewing and then there's just utter thoughtless shit on the box. And Charlie uses thought and lots of it, capturing the very real essence of social media rating systems. Showing us how we live in this not-so-fantasy world that was played out in this short but beautifully portrayed and powerful film.
For myself I would put me around the 1.4 rating, still struggling to get to that all important 4.5. I mean who's going to rate a 1.4?  Regardless of their skills or hard work through out the years.
As I watched I got a familiar sense of it's not what you know but who you know, and it's better being friends with the hip and cool "In Crowd" in the vain hope that they will pass you up the ladder and boost your ratings.
To be honest when I post a video, or piece of music, or a write an article, I'm the first one that likes it, hearts it, or thumbs it up.  I have to - I'm more or less the only fucker who's going to read it, watch it or listen to it.  Is that shameful or just trying to save face, or am I just proud of my work?  Like I said, I'm a 1.4. We do what we can, every little helps because nobody watches a YouTuber with a thousand subcribers or follows a Twitter account with a few hundred followers - are you fucking mental? They're obviously shit and are never worth a few minutes of your valuable lifeforce and you couldn't possibly been seen to be in direct involvement with them because this would harm your virtual street cred.
I guess the saddest thing here that rang true for me was the main character called Lacie who tried so hard to get her rating up by pretending to be someone she wasn't and to be in with that higher society of friends to further her dreams.
That is me as my comedy character "Kathleen Dawson". But oddly enough, Kate is liked, hearted, and thumbed up tenfold over me, the man who's underneath it all.  I actually have had the opposite result over the years and Kate is easily a 4.8 on the media social scale. And all I am is that person in the final scene screaming "FUCK YOU!"
Anyways a brilliant piece and I expect nothing less from Charlie Brooker. I happily rate this as a 5.0, all the stars.
Very good Brooker, now GO AWAY...!

Friday 7 October 2016

Michael Pennington AKA Johnny Vegas






Michael Pennington AKA Johnny Vegas
From time to time I like to write my thoughts about comedians and British comedy.
I believe my last review was about the British comedy awards 2015 and I felt that British comedy had lost it's way and that British comedy and it's comedians had fallen into a ground hog day of lame pannel shows of limited interest.  It's not that they aren't any good, it's more that we have too many of them and I personally feel this to be lazy or prehaps that production companies aren't willing to invest in new acts and we end up with masses of fresh comedains with nowhere to showcase thier funny bones apart from these carbon copied pannel shows.

I've decided to write about Johnny because to me he is the last great comedy character actor that we had.  He broke all the rules pushed the boundaries danced with taboos and told you all to "Fuck off."  He was as Johnny Vegas the under dog the sad clown a loser showing key elements of any great comedian of worth. 
He was over weight drank too much smoked too much shouted alot and told the truth, there was a little bit a Johnny in us all.  Well maybe not all of us but most of us!
I first came across Johnny in 1995 on a TV show called Win lost or draw and I think this was Johnny's first appears on Britsh television.  Although Michael wasn't Johnny at this point, it give him that all important first break that all comedians are looking for including myself as a would-be character comedy actor.
 
Naturally I could write about his past life experiences of being a potter etc... but honestly I feel most people know this about him, hell I've been a roofer labourer greens keeper and so on, we all come from somewhere in our past lifes.
Which is why it's been a great delight to watch Micheal over the years steal the stage and lime light at award ceremonies, going over time and being dragged off stage only to see him a few minutes later stagger back on and continue ranting.  A joy to watch his character develop and mature with shows as 18 stone of idiot, Ideal, Benidorm and Dead Man Weds which sadly only got one series written by Dave Spikey.

Johnny Vegas gave us real pure comedy as brash and grim as he was as a character he was gentle kind and thoughtful and would take us all on a wild invisible rollercoaster ride.
I know at this point that this may read as a eulogy, but in some respects Michael has pushed his character of Johnny Vegas to one side and matured into his ownself.
In a way Johnny was singing and shouting from the roof tops and getting a few pressing matters of his chest whilst getting paid and having a blast.
If I could ask Michael one question?  When are you and Kathy burke going to work together?
I wish him well in his further career and look forward to seeing him in any new projects.

Written by Kathleen Dawson

Saturday 23 April 2016

Audio Glitch Electronic Music



Audio Glitch
Been working on a few tracks lately under the name "Audio Glitch" as a side project, most of these will be drone and minimal but with heavy atmosphere. For me as back bedroom recording nobody artist this is a style am most happy fiddling about with at the moment.  I can relax and take my time over these pieces :)  Get the depth and distance right and hopefully present and interesting listen...!

Had another side project to deal with of the pass few weeks of writing three Hip-Hop tracks for a person who was looking for some music to write and spit raps to, so that was interesting for me to beadle to flip out these tracks in a different style.  Not really sure if much will come of it, but there seems to me a small about of interest in my ability to mix and match music genders... If only they knew ^ ^



Thursday 7 April 2016

X Rated Electronic Music

 All Bets are off (TRACK)
 I'm Your Biggest Fan (TRACK)
 Follow The Evidence

 How Many Horses

 It's been nice to make 4 or 5 short X Rated video bloggers, nice in the respect that I can just do them straight off with no faffing about.  It also allows me to use lots of new Glitch art clips and odd effects of which is a major bonus.
Pictured above in order top to bottom are screen shots from 4 new pieces of music I've been playing with.  Two drone scapes one ambient and "Follow the evidence" which really has got a thing going on! 
[There are 2 links for 2 of these tracks added with the art work.]

May run the odd X Rated Surreal blogs on and off - Dawson/Kate is having a well deserved time out and a spring clean!  As an independent artist of mixed flavors I have to split off and produce a range of things rather than just one thing {boring} I make a lot so I give a lot.

Although Kate has proved to be a highly liked character and has build a small and humble following, I still need the time out to work on other projects.  In other words the Cross-dressing still continues - You just don't get to see it... Yet...!  So I'm more or less just about the music at the minute.  It's not as rewarding as Kate in views or comments etc... But rewards come in many different forms and feeling :)



Friday 19 February 2016

Multiple Sclerosis Brain Melt






To make it perfectly clear if I upload a video about my Multiple Sclerosis it's NEVER for sympathy!
They are uploaded to either gain awareness give support to others or for my own study of the disease.
As the proud owner of said disease I am interested in how it effects my body and mind over time.  I can actually learn a lot about it just by watching myself back, and in return see where I am losing ground.
Recently somebody commented they liked the way I speeded my videos up!
The reason behind that is because I talk very very slowly, so you either get a video of me talking a normal speed which would make a standard video say six minutes long or I speed it up and you get four minutes and something that sounds normal and a little bit comical to the ear.
You have to work the illness in your favor - make the most of it - use it as it uses you...!
Unless you have the illness you can't know what its like on a mental or physical level.

Hopefully in some small way this will show you one side of the many faces of MS.

LOKI

YouTube Video Link

Thursday 14 January 2016

Minimal Sounds






Minimal Sounds
So to my first little solo offering I've built up a short ambient piece of music which I felt had a slight Boards of Canada feel to it in places or more to the point I'd had stumbled across a few sounds that I'd heard often used in their work.
On this particular track produced using Reason 7-8 I've used the following.

1- Sound Cell After Glow
2- NN-XT + RV7000
3- Dr Octo + Alligator
4- Antidote

Sound Cell is a lovely little refill, packed full of those really handy little ambient sounds that can really make a difference when constructing a track.

NN-XT which I always use for running my samples through, mainly because its easy to use and does what it's suppose to do with zero fuss!

Dr Octo and the amazing Rex loops - This tool is the boss - If your dead lazy and can't be bothered to sequence a pattern, then Dr Octo is your new best friend :)

The video isn't much to speak of, but I was more or less trying out a few new filters and wanted a moving object that would allow me to see the changes as it plays out, it's more an experiment of colors and layers of footage to gain sharpness and a testing ground for future videos to come.
So there you go, short nice little jolly minimal ambient piece of music and a crappy testing ground video :)

Thanks for watching the video and listening to my music.

YouTube Video Link
Download Track Here

And YES feel free to use my music in your videos - a credit or link to my YouTube channel or link to my Soundcloud would be nice :)

Flutterby AKA Nlin Loki

Friday 1 January 2016

Starting over


So I thought it would be a good idea to start the year with the last video from 2015 that I didn't get time to finish, but if I'm honest it actually works better this way.
I wanted the video to be more of a clean slate, and a fresh start of a new line of video.
I've invested more into my music software this year to give me the chance to develop my sound tracking skills, writing small pieces of ambient styled tracks.

Which gives me plenty of scope to come up with some equally interesting looking videos.