We’re jamming on the modesthaus vibe again because we have to get performance orientated again, we don’t need to be demanding in performance, but we need to some exposition going on, what I’m saying is keep it modesthaus, keep the low key weird cryptic arty vibe going, you can fill in the gaps and wallpaper over it later.

Who cares if I make 10 videos that don’t make sense? At least I make 10 videos, and like the music videos I can build on the narrative from there.

We need some kind of guideline, and doing music videos may be the only guideline we have that has a genuine direction, we need some intro videos, what’s the idea of noob eats? Introduction.

It was supposed to be weird and disjointed, of the modesthaus school, completely without ambition. Now I see another direction, it’s kind of supposed to be beat making tutorial but it’s totally fried, because the influence of the space captain is buried beneath.

(interior) Hi this is DJ Romantech

(quick cuts of my various fashion styles, dj, playboy, pirate)

Have you ever wanted to make a beat before? I can show you how to make a beat.

(exterior, night) Things happened to me. Things I can’t explain, time passes, what does it mean? Beats can sometimes help you to understand things that cannot be understood in any other way.

Are you into cameras? I’ve got 2 cameras. I’ve. got. two. cameras. (do a super weird double camera mash up)

(stand on dominion rd) This is the street, cars. people in the cars, you can see.

I’m all about the street, In the street is where the people live in the houses, and girls who are young beautiful they listen to the latest songs and wait for their dreams to come true.

These are all the houses but no one really knows who is in them, but they all have lives. All have stuff going on with their lives.

This is my BMW

I like to roll in BMW in the streets, and I’ve got my camera, I don’t know what the hell I’m doing.

I don’t know.

Then I do the interview sequence, cutting back to the tune.

How do we finish up?

I only really wanted to be somebody.

Like say if my life was beverly hills 90210 I wouldn’t have to be the main character, but still one of the characters who got to have a girlfriend.

Hi I’m DJ Romantech, and tonight we’re making a beat, beat this beat is called “New Beat” because it’s mainly about how we wanted to explain about something, but that information wasn’t available so we’re making this as a record, that our findings in regards to these were limited in their conclusions.

A lot of things in life are hard to explain so . . . yeah, so you might like to make a new beat.

*

Noob eats New Beats is a short clip from me inspired by modesthaus – doing as little as possible to create meaning and introducing voiceover.

So in “Noob Eats New Beats” we need

Random shots of the streets, cars, me walking out the door in different outfits, my car, me driving in my car, houses going past from a car.

Then I do the random interviews segment

Then I do the producer bit

I’m thinking . . . the tone of the thing is to show a quirky quality that I am average in some ways but also odd, and that oddness is at odds if you will with the BMW driving DJ guy image. So yes, it is a bit of a humblebrag to be honest. But it also plugs directly into Home Alone, which starts out exploring the house.

Noob eats new beats is more about exploring and establishing basic concepts outside of the house, setting the scene for Home Alone taking place in the house.

Hi this is Matt Romantech bringing you a Realpound comdity presentation.

It’s called my new light.

Hi I’m DJ Romantech.

This is the street. Cars.

People also, in the cars. You can see.

I’m all about the street. In the street is where the people live in the houses, and girls who are young beautiful they listen to the latest songs and wait for their dreams to come true.

These are all the houses but no one really knows who is in them, but they all have lives. All have stuff going on with their lives.

This is my BMW

I like to roll in BMW in the streets, and I’ve got my camera, I don’t know what the hell I’m doing.

I don’t know.

Can I have an interview man? I don’t have the answers man, look at me I don’t have a clue.

Am I even asking the right questions? What questions should I be asking?

Have you ever been married? Are you into like taking drugs and raving out to some drum and bass?

You can talk to girls?

Hi!

Would you like to my girlfriend?

Did you know I’m a DJ? I have a BMW, it’s pretty nice.

Do you think it could work out between us?

You’re just going to take all my money and stop having sex with me aren’t you?

I only really wanted to be somebody.

Like say if my life was beverly hills 90210 I wouldn’t have to be the main character, but still one of the characters who got to have a girlfriend.

Hi I’m DJ Romantech, and tonight we’re making a beat, beat this beat is called “New Beat” because it’s mainly about how we wanted to explain about something, but that information wasn’t available so we’re making this as a record, that our findings in regards to these were limited in their conclusions.

A lot of things in life are hard to explain so . . . yeah, so you might like to make a new beat.

“Noob Eats New Beats”

we’ve go this huge list of ideas.

romantech masterpiece theatre
maximizing explosions

last transmission
artist promotion
jamjar the refugee
the preacher character

buying a microphone:
happy time with morris the monkey
noob eats new beats
purple cow

There are distinctive goal outcomes in drum and bass lifestyles, rocking out crowds and basically enslaving them to the mix, or journeying deep into vibes, deep into knowledge of space and frequency.

We have blogged about advertising before, we knew the time would come that we would need to put effort forward in this area. Marketing and promotions, until I began to feel it wasn’t artistically robust. Paying to get people to pay attention to you because your work wasn’t important enough anyway.

But who decides what’s important and why?

My official position is that we will use advertising but we won’t rely on it, I just want to a interesting variety of campaigns going, be creative with it, but not really spend more than $30 a week, that keeps it creative rather than just mindless polluting marketing nonsense.

But we are still limited – though we have a front page, we need more content and ideas that link fans to this content. It’s not about getting people to click the ads, it’s about getting them to click the ads and then being aware of what it is that you do, and being into it, even so much as to get people signing up for the newsletter.

How do we engage with people wanting to read this newsletter, who are the people who want this? How do I connect with them? Put it out there, put it down, show it, work it, throw it out there, don’t try and make yourself more palatable.

Write ads that would make me go what?

Just like twitter, come up with a concept and tie it ruthlessly to drum and bass and any other core romantech concept, keep ploughing out the ad variations, do 10 minutes work every day, get used to getting in adwords and coming up with a couple of crazy lunatic ads, and 1 straight decent one, and after awhile start killing 1 or 2 ads a day also, so you get a large and productive stable of 100+ ads that hopelly all get at least 1 10c click each.

Or maybe 200. That’s a lot of visitors for $20, hopefully we can build our newsletter up quickly, but we may have to consider more of a landing page approach, which needs photos, content, ideas. They will come, we’ll get in there and start working it.

The first goal is to be getting 50 hits from adwords per week for $10, first we’ll be working to make 50+ hits a week, then we can focus on bringing the price down, if by the end of the year I can be getting 200 hits from $25, I’ll be happy.

But you must continue to push forward with ideas around your strengths, like connecting with the videos, connect with people who are writing and such, if you can build a core of 20 people who love video or writing and deep drum and bass, think, think of how to work it. You need to write in your newsletter and present in videos ideas that are engaging, and are illustrative and demonstrative.

Can I put my finger on it?

Well we do a midas theme, which means a song with a video maybe we borrow fan concepts and use some skype clips of contributors talking about the vision, y’know I’ll talk about the legend of midas, and my personal response, and some philosophical, psychological angles thrown in.

That would work as a newsletter episode. See it works. The idea is also to be rolling this content months in advance so when the tune comes out all this goes out to the first level of fans who want it all. That’s only the handful of people in the video but still, you’re opening up new angles, you have to be working it all the time. Again, I practice here on my blog, churning out content when there is none, keep to a varied but broadly defined theme, so that in years to come should i be lucky enough to need to feed hundreds of fans weekly with content scraps, I’m used to it.

I’m learning to be able to make six figures, write drum and bass tunes and cool newsletters each month, even doing videos every week and blog posts at least once a week. But there were all those blogging rules, don’t talk about yourself, or it’s boring, so what do I talk about?

Well I’ll write as much as I do now, but I’ll edit out all the rambling so it’s easy to digest. I won’t have sentences or even paragraphs about this stuff, about what I should do, I’ll draw a bigger conclusion.

Which is? I talk about interesting stuff in an interesting way because unlike the blog now, it will be interesting because it is edited, revised and worked on, not just whatever.

This is where guru vibes come in because that what the blog here is, a sandpit where we can play with ideas and the best ones can be concentrated into the newsletter, this blog gets so thick and woolly, only insane stalker fans will ever deduce, and by the time I have fans that loyal I’m not sure it will matter.

We need ideas. That’s becoming truer every day, ideas that fuel interest and curiousity. Play games with people, set up a message and then dance around it. How, show me?

Ideas and riddles that communicate to people ideas about materialism, create a concept that encapsulates the real feeling that detachment from materialism engenders, that you’re okay in your body, okay to look after yourself without stuff. So maybe we won’t get it first go, but ideas around materialism.

- sleep rough for a night
- diaries giving up various things.
- videos discussing the concept.

See this is strong, if I wrote a quick 2 minute piece, edited really heavily, and did it to camera on materialism.

I could do some guru core, stuff but to be honest, this is the journey of Matthias, who appears to be completely mad, but is only having really a sound spiritual reaction, and the ideas are designed to at first be laughable and bizarre, until under closer examination, make more sense.

Well if you’re not obsessed with stuff, you can see more important things. People, who they are, what they want. You offer people ideas as well as art, you get deeper connection, how do you connect? Well i’m just about art, I’ve got beats, and I do video and I can contribute, and sooner or later, more people will be buying my tunes and paying for my services.

Why not be that drum and bass videos guy who does the $500 videos? Yeah I do videos, they’re nothing special but if you’ve got $500.

The point is we need ideas that reach people, great music, and ideas. Characters, videos, blog posts, rants whatever.

What kind of rant can we post to twitter, ye olde linkbait?

We need to build some kind of brand that you can cash in on. Sure, I was just saying, doing videos for drum and bass guys would be a great way to make a bit of cash and get noted, but whether you want that or not, you have to put the hard work in first of establishing yourself with solid ideas and concepts that make people motivated to buy in.

I’ve gone pretty guru on this blog at times, but we were always waiting for a time to bring that marketing and promotions knowledge to bear, and now is the time.

I got some videos for you. What’s it about? Well y’know,

Okay so you got like the spaceman from the other dimension, and the preacher guy who does exorcisms, and the puppet hipster dude. The spaceman is out there exploring, he’s aucklands most wanted. The preacher takes to the streets, a mad man protesting and banging his bible, he’s a mad spiritual crusade, don’t forget we roll with hamlet and don quixote in pyramids with aliens (kind of). Pirate Matty sets sail on his journey.

Episode 1 must intersect this at some point.

The journey is in sound. It’s about ideas that accompany the music. But there is the story, the storytelling of the narrative represents themes that are being brought to the surface. Things as the have transpired need to be understood in some way. Or we’re just being expressive and working towards some kind of form.

Y’know but you need to be more clear what weird dumb videos do. Well, they express ideas don’t they? That’s where the story is heading to. The spaceman realises he is not the spaceman, I mean space captain, and the preacher is on a crusade, I don’t think he’ll ever come in. Is he american?

He’s just this crazy cultist. Basically getting caught up in his own propaganda that was originally supposed to be a scam. He’ll be guruing out hard. He might not come in. The muppets thing might be shortlived. It could be pegged to Matty’s fun time or whatever. A list puppets at work and play. I’m just wondering if that just moves on to the puppets kicking off gazestep movement.

Can we converge with pirate matty? Well in a completely abstract and non arbitrary way. If one minute it’s matty’s fun time and the next it’s pirate matty, who need mention? What mention does there need to be of Lord Jonathon and Pirate Matty? It’s various levels of awareness.

Maybe it plugs in the anti reality show – rather than a reality show that is scripted but pretends to be real, reality compound is real but pretends to be scripted. Every character is me playing a character, sometimes i’m in character and sometimes I’m not.

There are parallels between the pirate and the space captain who both leave in search, do they both lead, and the preacher lead, to the choice matrix?

At some point RC are going to launch their modelling agency. The legend of the powdered tiger penis must rise and is there a connection to the space captain having revealed clone identities, crazy cult dudes, and a weird pirate?

Once I was this dude who was a dubious trustafarian bottomfeeder working in the music industry who then constructed this fake band on myspace then became some kind of brand guru and went off the deep end on drugs. This was romantech. The space captain is romantech. Does he go round committing cultist acts without knowing? Really?

No of course not they’re not schizophrenic clones, they’re this one guy trying to do teh funi on youtube. He’s got characters, a pirate, a crazy preacher, a hipster gazestep puppet guy, oh and of course the powermaster and all that. Where do they fit in.

Episode 1, business guy trying to do business man thing, but can’t ends up drunken pirate. In episode 2 there is a girlfriend and model search. In episode 3, the tiger penis caper begins.

Now it gets a bit thin, which means we need music stuff to push the content until we know otherwise. But we know where it’s heading. The big picture I think, I see, and we can actually be quite upfront about this, a string of dr. who like girls or some kind of twisted equivalent, where I’ve got some girl trailing me who is dumb enough to believe I can make her a model. Y’know, this is reality compound, it’s no longer about some dude who pretends he’s in a band! It’s about some strange business guys misguided quest for acceptance.

But let’s review that girl connection and other characters, because we need a fairy for the pirate. Maybe puppet guy could have a deep gazestep romance. I’m getting this vibe there too, in the beginning it’s always the kids show with voices, then it goes to the after dark bit and it’s gazestep with subtitles.

kids show puppets wont stay in character – club scene

forming a band yay – gazestep out

girl involved – romance step gazestep

The preacher doesn’t need a girl, he’s insane. So we’re consistently looking a girl to be tiger penis assistant huntress, fairy and gazestep love interest.

But eventually . . . I just happen to be DJing more. I actually begin to make it happen for the models and that is a crucial point. So what happens after that is those characters start taking more focus, and what happens to me? I’m other character in the background, reality has shifted again.

LIST OF IDEAS AND CONCEPTS FOR UPCOMING VIDEOS

Pirates

powermaster
preacher mathias Myspace sermon
Noob eats new beats/Home alone
Last transmission
Aucklands most wanted

penfacing
matt’s happy time

RC1
Lil titty ad #1
Jumjar ad
Purple cow
Rc sports

As I said, well I was saying something but that’s all changed, well it hasn’t all changed it’s just, well now I’m getting all the money I need and gigs I need, and everything is going all great and everything in that way, but what the most recent issue is, is that I can’t focus, I can’t keep up with processing how I’m earning more and I’m getting more gigs.

I’m just trying to get my brain out of this business coma and ready to function normally so I just spent this whole blog post rehashing ideas about what I’ll do with my old songs – working backwards is a good way to maintain momentum when you’re not making progress forward.

It’s just exciting to be making money all the time and it’s hard to settle down into getting some creative stuff happening when I’ve got good news about some more money I’ll be making coming in every few hours.

But as you move forward into more complexity, subtlety and nuance, you can understand what distractions exist that you hadn’t considered. Long since I threw out my TV i continue to titillate myself with profits which have in and of themselves no real value. What does it profit a man . . . if he doesn’t use the profit to create something good.

It’s really a stuggle to break with the money / business orientation that has got me here, but is now declining in terms of it’s use to me – it was great to establish a foundation for art that was materially solid, but now I require more complex support systems, rather than just a bunch of cash.

This is about focusing on making good art rather than focusing on being a good artist. It’s very hard to focus for me right now. That’s why I’m clinging to getting my websites finished because it’s a concrete thing. Pretty soon we’ll get super energised and hit those new web designs and get the new video ideas rolling, so it’s all rolling and happening again.

I just need to go on a bit compulsively about all my music and all my little plans, it always helps me to get settled in, making a little plan.

Focusing on art and getting sleeves rolled up and into it. Not thinking about what other people will think of what your creating but just creating, worrying about art, not worrying about whether you’re artist, or if you feel like an artist, or if you’re doing or behaving like an artist. Because that’s just another ego trip.

JUMP START MUSIC VIDEO PRODUCTION

I’m just getting this ice breaker video done, which is a good idea, when I’m not making progress moving forward with my professional tunes, I’ll work backwards through the tunes I kind of did but didn’t release, or in any case, won’t be releasing as an original in future. I’m doing all the tunes before Power Supply that were mastered. Yeah that means Where’s Baby, Mandroid and Ice Breaker etc., it’s kind of like a card game really where you want to get rid of your lowest cards . . . I want these songs up on youtube with a video but I don’t want there to be a strong vibe of dinky old tunes, I want to get these tunes out of the way before we start doing really decent videos – well as many as possible.

Then I remembered one of my more recent mastered releases was of course the sharkweek remix – robospacejesus, an excellent tune to whip a zany video out to just to keep them churning along, and it’s the whole idea, if I go dancing naked into the sunset, my videos are on youtube forever so forget about it.

I’ve done my bit there. If this happens in 5 years and I’ve got 100 videos up, then all the better.

There will come a point where I go back so far and my tunes are coming forward so far that I can’t put up an old tune without rethinking and retinkering, at the very least, if it’s some old thing with charm, I’ll have it mastered – like I Can Only Ask. After that tune, I’ll have to ask – is it really worth spending $150 on mastering and $100 on the video for an old song that will never sound that good?

Further songs . . . well only hazels ones we can get away with. But all those old cd’s may yet turn up mastered versions of this stuff.

Where’s Baby
Mandroid
Small Turtle
Ice Breaker
Robospacejesus

Who Da Man
Left and Right and Wrong
I Can Only Ask
The Book

Still Hope
Floored
Version / One Glimpse
Judy Jetson
Acid Jam

Hazel Songs

With tunes like The Book, Innocence, it may be too good to release as it is, I may want that on my album. A lot of these songs I have to think – do I want to jam up a shitty vid with the old song if I want to put that song, an updated version on my album in 18 months? No way. With Still Hope, well, do I really want to go back and do still hope again? No, I want to do a short circuit slideshow and leave it at that.

Metro Sound and possibly Almost Home are the sorts of songs I could throw up a video now and then do remixes for later because they come from my classic roots.

I could do that song Heist, because it’s got such a big Thievery Corp sample in it, like 16 bars or something, I could never release it as my own original.

But after that we have limited choices, throw an old song up as a laugh or completely revamp. But I’m saying we’ve only got about 20 at the most old songs we can do.

Upfm beat dungeon presents Downbeat Syndrome gig 2009 at lot 44 ponsonby auckland new zealand.

Soul Science DJ’s, Micah De Wolfe aka Stray Theories on saxophone, Shane Hollands on the mic!

Short Circuit / Open heart circuitry! Represent!

I’m pretty well positioned, so I continue to get into my video projects, all this footage I only sort of remembered that I had from NSU is like, well, I’m pretty cheap and I can do a lot with all this in terms of milking it for as much as possible.

Not only am I gonna get the 2 juice videos done, but I got 3 little mini clips I’m milking out – the sax jam at lot44 with micah, then footage from that night to make a short short circuit clip, and also all the upfm beat dungeon endorsements we got.

But the juice of life is still the one I’m working on mainly now. So I do the full my source edit of the clip and then mash it with my outsources, and then I give it to karl to throw down some animations, and then we go to the next clip, and I’ll just plunder the first clip, and mash it all in again, but I’ll be throwing in more of the upfm stuff.

Then I gotta do something funny. But I also gotta do stuff for Kings and Polyps because they’re coming out real soon! I need to get my videos in sync with tunes when they come out. That’s why we can’t faff about. Especially with the dnbb stuff like weirdos and whatever else don’t get decent videos just a basic one for animals and some simple, lush concept for paper tigers. Hopefully I’ll recover this tour footage. That should last me out for all the stuff on release. The Polyps video will just be hardcore nature and microbial business.

So as long as I get my tour footage back, and I do my little kings routine with the crowns and the chess theme, we got ideas for 2 good videos and those other 4 to rattle off. Lots of music videos. What’s our budget again? $900? I could do 10 videos for that cost, let’s go! Don’t be lazy, get these guys going for it.

But I have to do something funny too. I can always just do something funny but we have to push the narrative . . .

Oh look it’s seth godin.

Are you leaving behind an easily found trail of accomplishment?

The first thing is more difficult: If the work you do isn’t worth collating and highlighting, you probably need to be doing better work.

I’m right into the collating and understanding that but it does make you think about what you’re doing in a different way. What have you done?

It’s what I’m doing. And the more I do, the more I sense that I need to really take hold of the narrative, because romantic feelings and atmosphere can drive potent narratives. I started thinking about the power of those narratives, they ask why in a world of possibilities some things happen the way they do.

I need to start drawing out the narrative more, and trying to understand why it exists. I think this was a key concept to be revealed in the friction between fantasy and reality. Do you just unravel with this concept in your head of how life is meant to be on some romantic level, or do you continually try and force it into reality when perhaps it just doesn’t exist except for in the eyes of a wide eyed teenager.

I have to get out there with the DAW and the camera rolling there’s no way of explaining except for stories, the narrative.

I want to keep rolling out the music video but I have get into the narrative. I’m thinking about the preacher, the kiddie, the puppet concept with all these stuffed toys leading hipster lifestyles. There’s lots of narrative driven stuff I can do but I also thinking about the noob beats stuff – less pretentious narrative stuff that introduces me etc.

I think we want to be aware of how we can do pirate stuff and the new beats stuff in one hit.

I see this concept of putting yourself out there in order to attract people to your ideas but it’s about important ideas that are expressed clearly and powerfully. Maybe I have to rediscover my space captain narrative where I’m exploring the landscape of auckland to understand how to get the vibe on.

You can’t just stand around, you can’t grab the spotlight and say nothing, what are you saying? That you rise above the petty malicious bitching and entitlement, this is preacher mathias, firing full on in the humility and suffering of the lord jesus christ, in the midst of life we are in death, who we are is nothing as a number but everything in the glory of god.

I live this life where I’m on this digital wave and I do alright because people want to be and do things and I help them with that because I understand what it is to want to be recognised and appreciated for who you are and as technology and humanity grinds forward, this manifests even more and it’s interesting the relationship between individuality and the existence of society.

There are distinctive artistic tangents to this as well as in business. That’s what I was saying before. I seem to get it when it comes to making money but not when it comes to making art. How can I talk, how can I speak to people with art?

Because I portray a character swings between ambition and narcissism back to humility and empathy? Difficult. I really have always liked the fact that because I have a job I’m not really reliant on my art in a commercial sense, I can do as I please. Then there was that DJ concept that I’m just with you on the ride. This is your dream. I kind of a brand as a companion rather than a hero.

That’s what I’m seeing with my camera, getting out and getting info people want. Getting a bit more experience as a spectator and documenter rather than being all in on the action. It’s kind of extending the new beats concept to filming and making beats and being like that, doing it in one night.

Experimenting with what people want to see that I can give them. Is it funny, is it documentative, is it music, is it advice or thoughts? Is it branding? Now that we’ve found video, what’s your dick like?

I have spent most of my day on a video buzz, which is as it should be, I’ve spent so long getting ready to do my pirate video, and then I just did it with the very barest effort. No masterpiece but done for the sake of having done it.

Maximizing explosions was a bit of a hit when I’ve showed it to some Reality Compound fans

After maximizing explosions, I decided to do another music video, which was “Low Key” which I was pretty happy with, to be honest. Low Key’s a project I will look back on and be happy with a solid tune with a cool video. Today I uploaded the hamlet video, that I’d been holding back so I could stagger my vids a bit more changing up between music and more um entertainment vids.

The idea of the hamlet video was just to do some acting, the plan was to just do easy, modest videos, and it’s working, I’m doing lots of videos now because I didn’t try too hard to do anything that major. With hamlet I just wanted to remember some lines and try some real acting.

But yeah and I’ve been updating the reality compound channel with more videos too, basically just warming up the channel with activity,

But yeah I just went at that pirate video, well . . . in the most casual fashion. I honestly just went ohhhkkkayyy set up the camera, filmed one take, and was done. Y’know, like, whatever. I could have done 10 takes but I didn’t. It’s about doing it, about getting with video where I’m at with blogging. I blog hard, now all I need to do is bring more quality to it.

I did that pirate video, it’s done, so I’m afforded the luxury of reflecting on what that was about and what’s next. Like Hamlet, it was about doing it, proving a point that I can throw down a video. I can do it. Now I want to start upping the quality, for the next pirate video I want to use a net and do some real slapstick.

The point was my old video was years old and old and ragged. My new video looks much better quality although perhaps I didn’t make the biggest effort to ensure it was as effective as possible. Who cares. Done is done.

The next video project we’re going for is pure juice and juice of life. I have gathered heaps of resources but I’m still trying to get my ideas together. I’ve got the film resources I want to use now I just have to round up my own sources. What have I got?

What I shot of karl and I at upfm studio
Snippets of live footage from karl
Footage of me + Ivan at upfm solar series
additional footage of me at mine and john’s
Ivan’s online stuff.

I’ve actually uncovered a few discs of footage Ivan’s given me so I should have enough, but I still want to use some of his south island tour short circuit footage.

My plan is to actually use all my own sources on both videos, but juice of life is soul science remixing NSU ft. squeezer but pure juice is just us remixing squeezer so all footage of ivan goes to juice of life.

pure juice

ray ban electro
football theme montage
80’s dancing
Concrete TV
top gun

juice of life

interactive-installation – prisma – 3 mins
pieceofpaper – 3 mins
forest footage 7 mins

So what we’ve got here is 7 minutes of forest footage and two 3 minutes of futuristic noir and cyber lights.

so basically forest 0 -1.27 / 3.38 – 4.22 / after 5 minutes
strictly techno lights 2.32 – 3.38 / 4.22 -

and sort of mashing them up in between. I’m pretty much thinking all the footage of me and karl at upfm and me and ivan at solar series will be for pure juice, while all the footage I found from ivan will be for juice of life.

intro – 0 – forest / intro bits
bass – 1.27 – paper introduced /
“chorus” – 1.52
roll out – 2.32 no forest
breakdown – 3.38 forest / microscope scenes
2nd drop – 4.22
wind down – 5.48

Oh man going through all this footage ivan gave me, there is a tonne of stuff! I forgot he digitized my whole tape from downbeat syndrome, there’s enough stuff for a whole short circuit mini clip, and tonnes of stuff I can use in the vid for our stray theories remix.

This is really exciting to dig up new historic material!

Which means for juice of life I have:

Downbeat syndrome material, rescape material,

And for pure juice I have both the upfm related tapes.

So I’m doing the same as I did with low key, making a full length clip based on my own source footage, and adding the bits later. With Pure juice, I have to look at the footage. I think I will use the solar series footage for the melodic parts and the studio footage for the drop, which I’ll also try and put in the bits I’ve got of soul science playing and squeezer playing.

So there will be a little bit of double up on the playing out footage for both vids, and possibly all the best solar series bits, but also 2 clips I took of myself and super sped up so it looks like madness, I think I want to use these in both clips, just try to tease it out use it in different ways.

I mean they’re not supposed to be freestanding masterpieces just yet. They’re videos that are cool to check out if your listening to the song, and I like the idea that having these videos will make us stand out, especially if I can catch up and have the videos ready as the songs come out! That’s why I can’t muck around and if that means using the best footage in 2 videos I’ll be putting out together for the same label, then hey, I’m lazy.

Finally my rendition of the hamlet soliloquy . . .

I did ask why I am not doing my pirate stuff.

I guess no one wants to answer that.

FINGERS CROSSED MUSIC VIDEO SCHEDULE 2012

Jan: Pure Juice / Juice of Life

Feb: Ice Breaker / Where’s Baby / Mandroid

March: Polyps / Kings

April: Gonna Getcha / So Good

May onward: Animals / Weirdos / Paper Tigers / Dark Matter / Higher

The next tunes to consider for the archive are whether “Left and Right and Wrong” and “Who Da Man” can go forth as mastered tunes. Otherwise “Innocence” and “The Book” are 2 of my best tunes that aren’t really out there. But I may want to consider these, all these tunes for the Romantech album.

Before we go onto that though I want to finish off the video vibe, because it might be time to focus on the data:bass video at that stage, and also, of course, any good tunes we put out before now and may, like Kingsland dawn, secret place, it’s done. That’s a lot of work, if we do all that in a year we should be stoked.

THE ROMANTECH ALBUM: Narrative / Archive

That’s right, it’s basically just the same concept as it always was, except there just won’t be those killer singles I thought I’d write, but that’s okay because I know it’s a vanity project, there’s not gonna be killer singles that take the underground by storm, just a guy releasing some beats.

Core 13

Innocence

Who Da Man

The Book

Ice Breaker

Where’s Baby

Left and Right and Wrong

Acid Jam

Mandroid

I Can Only Ask

Problemantech

Still Hope

Like You Do
Metro Sound
Nag Champa

Floored

Small Turtle

What I see is the album with like, tops, 20 tunes, possibly less because we want as little kack on the album as possible, but then have teh killer 80 minute set of at least 40 tunes, which will rip it up.

I can call the album Archive and the mix Narrative.

I notice with I Can Only Ask, Acid Jam and RCTV have pretty solid indie vibes, and Mandroid, Still Hope and The Book have quite emotional vibes too, so quite a deep vibe coming off it. Innocence is funky and Ice Breaker and Floored are cool and jazzy. Left and Right and Wrong , Who Da Man are more soulful, Where’s Baby, Small Turtle, are more experimental while problemantech is the dubstepper.

point being – don’t release videos now for the best songs on the album. So when are we doing this album? probably late 2013 I reckon.

Y’know I’m just thinking of the power of giving people an album I think they’ll enjoy. Lots of deep indie psychadelic electronica with deep melodies, and cool, soulful and jazzy breakbeats.

Who da man, I can only ask, The book, still hope, acid jam, Left Right and Wrong all have leady parts to them which are really musical.

But what is really going to result in me putting out an album of old songs? Well it’s all about a personal thing for me, to say I had a romantech album, and if you listen to it, you can check out my best tracks that aren’t drum and bass. In a lot ways it’s about achieving minimum standards of actually having an album to push.

What kind of musician doesn’t have an album, but goes on about having a hundred and more songs, DJ mixes, producer mixes, tunes out on release, but not an actual album?

It closes that chapter in a lot of ways, and means I can relax a bit more. But what I mean by that is . . . well I just considered, it doesn’t mean much to anybody me just sitting alone in my studio making these beats. What’s more fundamental is me connecting with people when I give them my CD and I connect that way.

Well this year’s play, after throwing down that huge 6500 word storm is to get in there like a pitbull and lock on and not let go. Not so much ponderousness because you can spend all the time you like thinking about everything that you’re not doing. I think a lot comes back to the challenge of deciding what the right course of action is, knowing that most things worth achieving need to be built on a solid foundation.

This is simply because you can’t bank on the break out or the breakthrough, you can’t base your efforts on a long shot, your foundation has to be . . . a foundation, that’s why it’s often hard to establish yourself because you need to establish your foundation with very little sense if feedback or clarity.

You want an example, right? With my music, I’m just in that period where I have to keep writing songs to get better, at a point where I can barely tell I’m getting better, each incremental advance it’s barely recognisable to me while I so deep at the centre of it, it becomes imperceptible, and so you can easily spend a lot of time trying to isolate and define certain perspectives or aspects, which is in a lot of ways slowing you down. A lot of people are in favour of making mistakes and taking away the lessons, sooner rather than later, which sounds dandy if you have all the time in the world.

I’m just thinking about not thinking, just getting on with the job of racking up the shots, knowing the one song or one video or whatever won’t really make a difference. Archiving and organising and stuff sciencing everything won’t make a differentce what does make a difference id the forward motion, the momentum of your efforts to keep coming up and at them, again and again, without quitting.

There’s no guarantee it will work, but it’s probably more solid than praying for a miracle, or, by most people’s approach, assuming a miracle or divine intervention somewhere along the way between here and obscurity.

We get our songs amd our videos done because there isn’t much else to do between stopping to ponder endlessly.

So I’m finishing off the video for low key now and it’s gonna be my best yet, I’m now uploading it, all done! NEXT!!!

I’m gonna hit Juice of Life and Pure Juice at the same time so I can get them out of the way.

- Juice of Life is more Apocalypse Now While Pure Juice is Top Gun – lots of source imagery from youtube there.
- I got upfm footage both old and new.
- footage of ivan and karl performing
- karl offered to do some animations, might follow hip up on that now.

Just remember both those songs are long so we’re going to need lots of material . . . so I’m also going to cash out all the ripped videos I have especially the more techy arty ones

I think we need some pyramids and some sun worshipers in Juice of Life also. Some Apocalypto buzzes!

In fact I’ve got plenty of good stuff for juice of life, 2 videos of freaky lights, forest footage, so I’ll use most of the upfm footage for pure juice, and recycle the best of it for juice of life.

The one video I’ve got for pure juice is only 30 seconds long, but packed with action so I guess I can slow it down to 90 seconds and use it for the drop. Maybe I might re use some of the freaky lights stuff and mix it up in the drop. Now I wish I’d saved that mad 80’s mash up thing which was like an hour of 80’s night time TV madness, crazy cartoons, corny action, infomercials and godzilla type crazy puppet shit, that would have been perfect.

Haha found it, it’s called “concrete TV” some perfect sequences there for it, and omg god gosh, boing boing lets you download it too!

It’s kind of weird, there’s no mention of the thing I saw this year, but this is exactly the same kind of stuff, so why not.

I need the decks clear to start working on polyps.

I’m like, all the archival slide shows, get em out. Get out with I Can Only Ask, Still Hope, Early Soul Science mix, Downbeat Omnibus, RC with Fake It and possibly a data:bass ting too, the thing is I’d have to use a relevant data:bass song. It might be time to rip that data:bass DVD and get it up and out there, you see I’m about getting that content farm cranking.

As I said in the last post I’ve got to start fronting up to this latest ideas clash between the doers and the sorters, the processors, that are taking over at the moment.

Processing is easy and makes us feel in control like we are making progress. Tilting at some of these big things that have to be tackled is a little bit harder and more daunting. But this post ended up being about how we look forward with videos in drum and bass this year and we’ll be presenting the new video “Low Key” very soon, and getting our teeth into the arguments springing up around trying to get processed up and super next level organised with our archiving.

We do have to look closer at the issue of whether I should put effort into the quality of writing on my blogs, but again, later.