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.

Well I’ve been pretty much using my blog for practical purposes, and being somewhat reflective when at this time of year you expect the full on reflective tone, which means it’s pretty boring here observing as I’m combing over the minutiae of various creative resuscitations by way of my massive digital inventory archiving drive. But like I said it’s about using your blog as a journaling tool that helps you keep focused on all the creative and personal vibes flying around.

I guess recently I have embraced more the idea of writing my blog is something I do as a background maintenance process in support of my other creative work. Not that interesting to read right now though.

Funny how I went from writing about neanderthal zombies and flying pyramids back to more practical stuff. It’s interesting to reflect on how that narrative devolved back to a more “realist’ vibe.

But right now it’s still about practical application.

- Archiving is going well, pushing forward making ground, despite my doubts
- Music videos are going well, Low Key is pretty much done and it looks good.
- My proper videos aren’t going so well because I’m still thinking about the pirate stuff I have to do

DARK HOURS BEFORE ARCHIVING DAWN:

This archiving is crazy because I really don’t know if it’s essential or useless, if there’s a rainbow on the otherside or I’m just off on some more avoidance behaviour.

I seem to remember after last nights push, getting on quite a positive vibe, because it’s not that hard to make it look as if you’re a superstar surrounded by babes. But in the morning I always wake up not really feeling like a superstar and not surrounded by honeys. So there’s a disconnect there.

I order bacon and eggs, the sun is out, life’s not so bad. If there’s a honey for me, or 2 or 3, then fine, if not . . . I have a song in my heart . . . hahaha.

I think too many buddhist dudes would suggest I focus too much on the fact I don’t meet hot babes all the time. I don’t enjoy enough and just live in the fact that I make good money and my lifestyle is relatively relaxed but I still can’t focus clearly on my art.

I tend to blame that on work issues, but it really is just discipline.

Hey that’s me. But I’m ready to do what I do.

But when inspiration changes like the auckland weather, it’s just too weird to say oh yes, once all my unfinished songs and all my photos and designs are organised I’ll be way more centred, grounded, focused, generally, but especially creatively . . . or it’s just more stupid behaviour, me hiding under a rock to avoid having to do the actual work on improving myself like sorting out my filmings and chasing girls in a serious way.

I guess I have this hopeful perception that I will simply just drift down like a feather into a bed of creative dominance, video fabulousness, hot girls and parties out of nowhere.

ANGRY BOYS

I’m following Chris Lilley on twitter, after finishing angry boys, I haven’t had a creative crush this strong in years. I mean look at this guy, I want to be dominating with my artistic vision! I can’t really just drift down, I need to go at it, I sense the doorway, the opportunity is open to me if I can just force my way forward a little bit. A little bit of brute strength focus and push could connect me with the breaks I need, which to be honest is really about boosting my confidence.

I spend a lot of time ummming and aghhing especially right here on this blog before I feel confident to move forward with a video idea.

I mean Chris Lilley could . . . that’s the thing I just see him as a guy like me. Except that he is a huge star who is, I can imagine, lauded as some kind of genius. I don’t mean disrespect when I say “I could do that”, nor do I honestly believe I could match him for skills, but it’s just like Concord Dawn all those years ago, I see what they’re doing, I see that people are appreciating it, and I’d like to have a go, and if I’m lucky like they were then maybe I can get a few breaks and people will appreciate what I do.

Just the whole pirate thing, I can’t focus.

I want to throw down but I don’t have a net as a prop for one of the scenes, I need a net. So I just have to get back to my fairy business, y’know I want to throw down some videos to let these fairy’s know that I was serious business and that I’m the real deal.

I want pirates coming out of the gate first because that’s where I’m going to. Not only is it where I’m going to, but it’s easy to get kicked in and on it.

WORK ARCHIVING

I think I must be mad to be thinking about the archiving with my business, we actually have to go in there and be brutal.

You know I had some idea that is would be significant if I fully digitized all my masters, but now I’m realising, even archiving my own personal stuff is starting to feel like we’ve crossed over to more of a hoarding obsessive vibe then trying to distill knowledge and experience.

I guess I have this crazy idea that I will be using all kinds of random footage from DVD’s to make odd videos in the future, I have this fantasy of finding all kinds of odd stuff which I can recycle creatively. But I don’t actually have a CD player except in the car, or a dvd player, and not only do computers take a process to load in disc information, but it’s not always a reliable way of knowing if material is corrupted.

So I made a small tent and moved on knowing this was real hardcore archiving for dirty archiving whores and I hadn’t sunk that low yet!

MUSIC VIDEOS

The new video for Low Key is coming along really nicely, and I’m looking at a nice jump up for my music videos, which is exciting to be making some progress there.

I’m sort of wondering if I shouldn’t shift the push to music videos over archiving, which would be a no brainer but music videos aren’t really real videos, to me, music videos help to build short term legitimacy, when we’ve got a fair few songs and they’ve all got videos, we look like contenders. Then when we actually start being pushed with some good tunes all the groms will be checking on our music videos like it’s the authentic business. Until you have the tunes and people ready to back those tunes, videos are nothing, but once your competing on the next level, the fact that you’ve got this heritage of dozens of videos behind you puts you ahead when you’re trying to build that essential cohort of fans who are backing your every move.

I’m going deep in, I’m into Pure Juice now, and I’m scrapping heavy reliance on the plot for Juice of Life because I want them out the door.

Pure Juice I’ve got some footage left over from the new cam, plus me and karl at upfm, and me busting out some moves, plus I got sent some squeezer snippets and I can poach some bits from the last raw footage since we seemed to have enough vibes on that. We need to do a fair bit of youtube research to dig up all the airforce and quarterback footage we need, and I think we may as well throw in some eagles and cheerleaders too. I think we need some Percival and Ubermensch easter eggs.

Percival is a stupid name for a quarterback. Second name Percival, Troy Percival, because Troy is a good name for a Quarterback.

Troy Percival
Hometown Hero
They Want Him To Come First
To Win The Team

Fight The Ball
Beat The Game
Touchdown!
Team Victory!

Look Out
Enemy Attack
Cleared For Take Off
Save The Day

Fight the Sky
Fight for Freedom
Beat the Enemy
USA!

Fight For The Right
To Be A Winner

Fight For Freedom
Smash the Sky!

This is just my little commentary for the pure juice video. I don’t want to give away too much really because I want to do this concept properly, this is just introducing the concept. I will have some knights and stuff, Troy flies into battle and he’s like the knight percival, seeking the purity of the grail.

This connects with the kings in Kings, I want heaps of conquering armies in there now, grand paintings of conquerers to go with my chess shots and pics of us walking around with little crowns and sceptres.

The issue is with Gonna Getcha. We want chicks in it, but I want me in it too, if one thing archiving has taught me is that lots of chicks makes it look good, but how can I do it?

I would much prefer to go with a camera to town by myself and convince random town honeys to get in my music video, but who is going to make sure we get the good shot?

The thing we’re dancing around is pirates.

The reason we’re archiving is because we have to do something but we don’t want to, like shoot a pirate video, do a photoshoot to make some of our businesses a bit more professional, do our tax or crack the whip on our website, but we’d rather do archiving because it feels like we’re doing something.

Archiving won’t change my life. I’m just trying to clear out some of the weeds, stack some of the junk so it’s out of the way, and we can play pirates. I’m actually over on the pirates blog talking about kinds of pirate stuff but you know I wouldn’t be going full steam ahead if I didn’t think I was getting into some creative goodness because I’m not doing it for the money.

The fact that it makes money is just a rationalizer, so even if it isn’t exciting and fun, at least I’ll get paid and won’t feel like I’m wasting my time, we’ve been over the reasons why it’s so compelling, pirates will never get old. In ten years, I can still be a pirate. In ten years, it would be surprising to think that a similar trajectory to my cd dvd business would have to occur, what is realistically the end game?

Either some content I sell or I sell out my brand for 6 figure pay outs.

The mum’s are happy, the kids are happy, y’know? I can’t stress this enough, it’s not that I feel I’ve done a good thing, I KNOW I’ve done a good thing, I’ve made people happy.

I make more people happy than a prostitute and I only charge slightly more.

But there’s one more attraction for me, that ties to the fact that I am performing and videoing, that is access to a narrative, I’m playing a character, I’m interacting with characters, I can easily turn the

I started to think that this makes a perfect rebirth to reality compund, from the myspace era to the pirate era. Because the pirate game is very similar – online, meeting girls who play fairies, entertaining kids, etc.

The new pirates of the compound, has the opportunity to follow the lord jonathan concept of mashing fantasy characters with reality, especially when you see the pirate phase bridging to the nice young ladies phase. In this reality, pirates and fairies and trolls and fantasy characters lurk in amidst the urban chaos, so similar to the search party idea, where you put fantasized characters in a realistic space.

In reality compound, matt is a sad pirate, because he is no longer a myspace star and the lurid details of a weary path – nerd, high school president, intellectual, drug dealer, DJ, myspace personality, events promoter, pirate, entrepreneur – have left him bereft and in pained anonymity. He ends up getting drunk and bemoaning that girls don’t like him because he’s just a DJ. That’s supposed to be episode 1. In the meantime I’ll be frontloading it with all sorts.

In the second episode it’s supposed to be about me finding a girlfriend I’m seeing fairies standing in here quite fiercely. We’re setting the scene now, so we can then bring the backstory into it and the tiger penis. It’s going to get messy, that’s why we hitch it to our pirate activity.

Basically we’ve got these reality compound vibes crossing over. Everyone wants to be famous, the pretend pirate matty wants to be the greatest adventurer in the land, but he needs the help of fairy magic. Episode 2 could go very hipster pirate, leaning on lots of my fairy footage.

I worry about going full pirate because it will cloud what reality compound is about, but we’ve just traded out myspace for pirates and the connection will be told. It’s hipster pirate.

The word is I’m gonna have to go out and film a lot of pirate stuff and stitch it together, again I’m getting dodgy on this rctv2 concept. In the first episode we’re supposed to see that Matt has been reduced to a pirate and it’s bubbling underneath.

On the channel we’re going to upload:

whiskey on the rocks
the auckland pirate video
hamlet
problemantech
maximizing explosions

I don’t know about preacher mathias here, he was supposed to add to the narrative of me being desperate and trying anything. But maximizing explosions is designed to flow into the beginning of RCTV #2 and I don’t think we should interrupt that flow. It still says on the page that reality compound is about a bunch of losers that pretend they’re a band on the internet.

Maybe we just need to leave it at that and let people work it out by following the loose narrative

Now I guess it’s like:

After the band split and the memories of short lived internet fame begin to fade Matt is earnestly trying to get some of his new internet ideas off the ground.

I am trying to get into the reality compound account. Sweet, got it. I am getting the short circuit stuff up first. I’m putting up the teaser where I’m fully breaking character which wil be funny in fact, it even seems like I’m taking the piss when I’m actually being serious. The character I play now is closer to the real version of what I was like then, taking youtube all seriously like wow for real man.

It’s cringey and guess what? It’s perfect!!!

There we go, the reality compound account is officially back open for business

Awesome, just when it looks like I’ve lost the thread, I strike back, having put down/up the first of my funi videos “Maximizing Explosions”

Man I be gettin dislikes on that already, haters be hatin.

Maximizing Explosions is my first video since myspace purposed to be silly and funny. What I love about it is not only is it silly and funny standing alone but it sets up the development of my character, we’ve set up the marketing guy angle, now we can expand on that concept.

But it’s about getting done. Having something to show, making progress rather than sitting around for years waiting for something to happen because for some reason it doesn’t, when you simply won’t do it. When you don’t even show up. When you’re too scared to be judged because your thing isn’t perfect.

It’s youtube, there’ll be people telling me it sucks. I don’t care, I like to do it. I run a successful business. I’m a signed drum and producer. I don’t care if some little dick wants to be “aha you suck.” This is the reason I have written this blog and pondered, like the monk on the mountain, I know why I am acting like a dick on youtube, because it’s me, and if you’re not into it, whatever, I don’t care, I do it because it’s what I like to do.

It doesn’t have to be perfect, I got no claim on being some super funny video guy, I’m allowed to be half baked making videos because no one expects me to be good at it. I like the fact that I do it all myself, the writing/concept, the acting, the filming, the editing, the music, I do it all and I like it. I like the feeling of saying “I did that.”

It’s as I say, certain things feel pure. Doing video and pirate stories gives me positive vibes that feel pure and uncompromised where making a grand in a day or 3 grand in a week or bringing back some chick from the club, or rocking a full dancefloor in the club, those are all amazing things but there’s always a sense of compromise, at some point I am always given to pause, was making that money or taking that girl home really the right thing to do? I never ask that about being a pirate or making a stupid youtube video.

Making money and picking up chicks and rocking dancefloors are wonderful things but they relate to a cool guy narrative, a narrative I have become disdainful of, it supports a whole like of bullshit ideas about who is of merit and what for.

I think it’s politics, down to the microcosmic level. It’s all about how people arrange and compromise to establish power.

We’re going to need more blog! This was supposed to be a post about video, and now I’ve actually gone and finished my Hamlet video!

There’s obviously a theme running on this blog recently exploring as to why I’m motivated to dress up as a pirate and make silly youtube videos instead of doing serious drum and bass, but I like to know where creativity is coming from, not so much where it’s going. It’s all about what it’s about. The creative urge to express is what has to recognised, honestly whether I make drum and bass or dress up as a pirate matters little outside the iterations of contents that play out in my blog, interactions between semi conscious thoughts and reactions and how they play out.

We needed to get back on the video narratives this is almost becoming an emergency situation I believe with this latest scandalous bomb of wisdom, that I only need tell my story. often I’m trying to boil things down philosophically, and I think telling stories and relating experience whether it be through tunes or videos or blogs is central to what I’m doing. Expressing who you are through narrative is a way of exploring what you are and why you feel and think what you do.

The pirates thing just keeps coming up again and again and it is relentless in it’s presence I can’t fight it, but this is reality compound, it is what it is. Most reality shows pretend their not scripted, reality compound is the opposite, working with reality and trying to infer it makes sense as a story.

Whether I’m running around dressed as a pirate or being serious mister drum and bass guy, it doesn’t matter, I do what I do just because drum and bass is what I like and dressing up as a pirate is what people want it doesn’t preclude either activity or anything in between.

So I’m a pirate and it represents certain themes which I’ve been playing with, especially the idea of adventure for the sake of itself. I want to go real reality compound, take up the reality compound method as I go further into this pirate thing. Start one skit with me counting all my money again and again, wistful for the thrill of adventure. I’m already trying to recruit a fairy sidekick.

Then we have this latent fairy romance angle, the fairy is the perfect girl, but she’s a fantasy. The pirate is in love with the fairy but the fairy isn’t really real and is often flattered, but yeah maybe I don’t need to go into deep analysis of some fairytale thing just yet, more that well with Maximizing Explosions and Hamlet in the can, we need to step up in terms of purpose and that’s what the pirate thing is up to now – getting some pirate videos done.

PREACHER MATHIAS

I’ve been in two minds about preacher mathias I really started to think he wasn;t funny and didn’t mean anything, but now I see he is important to represent deep religious themes. Why does he have to give a sermon about myspace? Because I desperately want to tie that in, I want to carry forward all of those reference points, but I think it’s too much right now, I can’t do it right away.

There’s this idea of creating original sin, the creation, the fruit of knowledge in a technological paradigm as a parable of myspace, I think there’s going to have to be stuff I do to cover the mysapce stuff, and I am simply foreshadowing that. If the material isn’t working on the bit, forget it. The problem was resolving the story into the narrative and the representation of the reality compound philosophy, the fake it to make it ethos, again I’ll have to come back to this, the video thing is rolling like behemoth.

MUSIC VIDEOS

I want to take a look at my music videos before I move on. We want to finish the released stuff, Low Key, and the New Clear stuff, Pure Juice and Juice of Life.

Once we clear our recent backlog, then we can either move forward with videos for new tunes coming out, or start working backwardswith the DVD footage and archive we have to do the videos for Mandroid and Ice breaker, and working backwards from there.

cheap video production

So for low key, it’s up next, I wanted to do bars around auckland, but we’ll just go with what we’ve got:

- south island
- music visualization
- harvest moon
- all my tapes from my shitty little 720 camera, god it’s rotten.
- soul science archive

That should be enough. In fact that crappy camera has about 12 minutes of goodness, I’m starting to wonder if I’m wasting too much, or that the result will be quite strong because I’ve got so much to work with and when the next videos come along, it will be a challenge. Well they are kings, so good, polyps and gonna getcha we should expect really, a bit of a jump up.

It’s like taming wild animals the concepts running around here.

After zombies attack and take complete control of new zealands political affairs, we manage to escape with the loot following tales of a far away land.

Zombie attacks are possibly on the rise, or at least you need to be aware. Get locked in, and off you go lurching forward to pay your student loans, hire purchase, mortgages and be entirely normal and predictably tragic, you don’t wanna go there. You’ll trapped wandering the wastelands looking to feed on signs of life as you shamble about.

And so you’re nihilistic. These people shouldn’t be this way, but they can’t be free until our technology can transcend our current state of politics.

You’re hedonistic because change is moving to slowly and is driven by inevitable crises, so you try to protect yourself against the crises and basically there no justification for not having a good time.

There’s no justification for becoming somebody if you don’t enjoy who you are.

See I’m guruing out again people are going to be lobbing cash at me soon to start an ashram or something.

Someone who was me dared to say there was something beyond art which sounds preposterous. It’s to do with the possibility of doing something. It makes me realise that art is probably just another step up, but I need to become an artist before I can see any further of where the staircase is leading.

Today we are back on the home alone trip.

It’s a bit complicated because I’m trying to use the little rearrangement I’m doing with my offices to take advantage of the rooms being bare and empty which is the vibe for home alone, the haunted garden, and probably some stuff for polyps. But now I’m thinking that I wanted to do last transmission, I want to do that in the front room but I want to make it look like a real bombsite, like I’ve just been salvaging and hoarding various items.

I think it’s no big deal, I can just bring computers and gear I need back into the front room, I can’t do it now because I need my decks for that and they ain’t here. Remember the first last transmission is supposed to explain how the space captain has made use of primitive earth technology to potentially produce power through vibes created on primitive computers, communicated and broadcast over the internet and using turntables.

So now that my shots for home alone are done, and the office has been moved, now the front room is good and messed up for the last transmission.

The excitement that comes from finally pushing up against the walls and attempting to roll them down can subside pretty quickly but it still matters because it’s still real, the scent of success, possibility and endeavour is in your nostrils, flaring as you gather steam.

What matters is that the possibility exists.

I’ve installed my firewire card and have begun capturing video from my hamlet bit, the maximizing explosions video and bits of video for the pure juice video.

When it’s actually happening and working, you’re getting excited because you can begin to perceive the whole process and go in with the head to make it happen. That’s something I taught myself over years with tunes, so where it used to take a month to write a tune, now it only takes a night to put down 80% of a tune (there’s some things you can never do in just one night) – but I hope that a similar trajectory of acceleration will occur in my videography.

Already I’m sitting here capturing my last video saying to myself that I can do this. I can throw that down that video, I can digitize the footage, I can edit it up and get it on youtube. And then I can rest a couple of days and then crank it all up again. Throwing down again and again, improving ideas and execution.

It’s the same as my music I’m at an intermediate stage of working and crafting closer iterations toward the elusive masterwork.

I need to do my BBC intro before I can finish my hamlet bit. Because hamlet is meant to go up before maximizing explosions because hamlet is supposed to represent me in training to get match fit for youtube.

Hamlet will then go up on the romantech channel, then problemantech can go up on the reality compound page, ready for maximizing explosions to go up on both channels and the kurb channel because it serves as a silly ad. Music videos will usually go on the romantech site, ads and demos on the kurb site, all funi vids and RCTV episodes on the RC channel.

What’s next?

The shooting I need to do before I can move/expand my office, I think I just went over this, I said:

Next in video I have to go back to preacher mathias, last transmission, home alone and noob eats new beats. And then there’s the puppets. or Puppet. Man that’s a lot of video and not even a thought yet of RCTV1. I had no idea it would be such a big deal to make happen, we really must push on.

The reason I started writing this post was that I was excited because my video had begun to capture and I could see it all rolling out in front of me. The silly morris the monkey sketch, preacher mathias and morris the monkey are examples of bits where it’s just me and the camera and me bringing the funi – that’s something that I may learn is not going to be that hard to do. That’s why I built this trajectory because once I get running I’m going to want to get out there.

The whole idea of the vanilla ice recital is not just continuity for my BBC character but it’s a cheap shot to keep me in it.

That’s why it’s important to have plans in place so if things start cranking up, you know what you’re doing, you don’t have to take 2 weeks to think about it. As long as you have the resources you can march your troops forward.

I haven’t got my money back from that last big lingering elephant of a debt, but at least I’ve familiarized myself with the situation and I’ve taken the step of asking. They’ll know I’ve declared my intentions, it’s all or nothing now, it’s game on. There’s every possibility I could have my missing $6k by the end of next week and I can rest easy.

My feelings were mixed. You mean it’s taken you 6 months to send an email that could result in releasing a tub of reassurance flowing over my thoughts like I am only just beginning to understand . . . it really is a conflict there – why did it take me so long, and what am I going to do now?

Not only is my business making enough money and I’m doing less to make it, but soon there’ll be no lingering issue, no niggling concern – it has kind of been freaking me out with each day it sets in, no more than today obviously because now the ball is in motion.

Yeah, I’m making a big deal out of it, yeah I know, if it’s such a big deal, why didn’t you deal with it earlier? The answer is in that conflict, there was always something else to do, getting me $6k back represented the horizon, it’s sat there for months.

Just like the website issue except I’m making progress there to. What if in a few weeks my websites are happening and I do have my $6k back?

I know the answer is to make music and videos, but it has to be a little bit more specific than that. It’s important to feel the fibre of the fabric of it. Is it too daring to imagine that like I have a normal life where I make money and I do some stuff, but mainly I’m thinking about tunes and video?

It just seems so simplistic! It just sounds like some kind of dream, that was my feeling today, a step further towards fully grasping having this money back where it belongs – it’s a massive thing! I turned it into a massive thing, and it is a big thing for me.

The psychological wall was there, I – accept now – have lost them as my top customers, they weren’t going to pay, the bad news would be hard, but it’s silly, they’re a big company, of course they’ll pay. But the new woman I deal with there is bitchy and she intimidated me.

I’ve got more money and freedom, but there was always that money stopping me from moving to another level of thought, seeing how things could suddenly emerge as easier, slowly my music and video has inched forwards over the last few years even as I’ve built this business, now that I’m about to stop building until it becomes necessary again, well what’s possible? It’s like I’ve arrived at the position of professional artist by a new back road, I’m supported by my business and so I am able to do my stupid videos and write deep drum and bass and blog.

That’s not all there is. It’s like girls, there’s still something else out beyond, beyond girls and art and money is another distant island of meaning, mythical, unfathomable.

Where could it be?

Round up post.

We got 4 new songs done and ready for release in the next few weeks so that’s good, we’ve got 9 tunes out so far this year, and still 2 more to come. Tunes are getting done and videos are coming along and I’m getting a body I’m not just this crazy blathering head squeaking and moaning.

I am on tour in the south island in January for 4 dates. And Soul Science is taking up a residency at Carpark.

I’d only start a political movement if I definitely couldn’t do music and video, and even then I’d probably end up with a tank bristling with feds coming through the front door of my compound. I’m not trying to lay down any kind of manifesto or chisel commandments out of stone tablets. I’m just writing a blog about what I think and do and then think some more.

So it’s lucky I actually been doing some new songs and videos, and not assing about, blogging about blogging.

And so we just end up back on blogging again, I just wanted to mention I wrote over 3000 words the other night about my stupid renegade political movement and various things, I know it’s all kind of stream of consciousness but it might be worth remembering that if I was writing a novel or something then y’know? I could use 3000 words alot more usefully.

If that’s what I wanted to do. Last time I checked I think we agreed that music and video had a lot more reach and also was more challenging in a sense, but I’m organised to make the move to make the spare room the “engine room” and the front room more exclusively for my own leisurely loungings and perusals.

That’s practical because it’s picking stuff up and moving it around. Thinking isn’t really cool like that especially when there’s meaninglessness about. It sets in like rot. But I guess that’s why we have a blog like this because rather than worrying about money, I need to keep my creative stuff pushing forward in the same way.

MUSIC AND VIDEO STUFF TO DO:

- Finish Kings, Polyps, So Good for release, asap – did that.

- reconfigure and reformat Beyond Faith video. This was pretty awesome, I was so wrapped up in that century of self and gothic high tech stuff, and I was going out, I didn’t even really think about editing the “Beyond Faith” video, I just got to it, that’s how I am, muck around endlessly then suddenly spring to life and deliver. But I hit the wall when once again the youtube video was all the wrong shape and I’m unsure if I’m getting the best resolution – did that too.

- Filmings for bbc character, preacher mathias, last transmission, home alone and noob eats new beats. Mainly emptying the spare room completely and filming in it before moving stuff in there. That’s pretty easy. Then I can do other stuff in the front room once most of the gear has moved in the spare room.

three things, if I could do those 3 this weekend I would be happy. Oh wait

- Get to set up capturing so I can capture hamlet and maximizing explosions footage

- Look over footage for Low Key, Pure Juice, Juice of Life etc. I can start working on Polyps in advance, but kings will be the first video where I want film soul science, in a video.

Quite a bit of stuff to do which is good, lots of options to push forward with. I need to throw down the videos for maximizing explosions and hamlet. Need them out of the way, need to throw down for the funi and push it forward, let people know I intend to bring the funi.

We need the songs Animals and Weirdos away to their homes and look at what remixes we’re doing.

Next in video I have to go back to preacher mathias, last transmission, home alone and noob eats new beats. And then there’s the puppets. or Puppet. Man that’s a lot of video and not even a thought yet of RCTV1. I had no idea it would be such a big deal to make happen, we really must push on.

The only other video ideas we’re committed to are auckland’s most wanted, and the next kurb promotions ads introducing silly artists and clients or the power master concept. That could take us 6 months! But, once I get things cranking and it really starts to settle in that business is under control, then I’ll be rolling creatively.

Still, a lot of work.

SOME LINKS

This is the original of the animatrix clip “Beyond” which I used for the “Beyond Faith” Video

This is an awesome infographic on the history of western dance music

And a sweet new documentary on pyramids because you want to get all the flying pyramid knowledge you can to enter creative zones.