Handmade; the Venue.

About a week and a half ago I had a word to one of the Pauls at Vitamin about the possibiliy of having Vitamin S support some shows at The old Brazil coffee shop on K Rd. Yesterday I went and saw Eddie at what is now called Handmade, number one to sell him a longboard skate board which he did actually buy so I could exist for another few days, and number two to enquire about doing some shows upstairs on something like a wednesday night. I also happened to have a new instrument in the car, a long spring attached to a potty basin thing of sorts, not as in potty for poohs and wees, but as in somewhat like a pot; having pot type associations… and he liked it and agreed , in principal to me setting something up.

When I was talking to Paul he suggested an acoustic set and I’m like nah, to myself because I’ve got to get this thing off the ground, because in my head I have an idea of having a backing group of musicians who work up , well, a background maybe with a emphasis on loopers… the rock steady beat equivalent in the improvisational world.

Theres two other people I’d especially like for this task so the three of us would be the mainstay but over that, and under it as well, I’d like to invite in soloists to add there stuff. Maybe one extra backing musician to set the scene for the backing and then a featured soloist to take up front duties as it were.

I’d like most to have my friend Felix Deuxe up from Raglan each week or fortnight simply because hes an absolutely great musician and two because he is adept at making his own instruments, both acoustically and electronically.
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And the other guy I don’t even know the name of but he’s been at Vit S a few times and I really like how he works. I’ll track him down somehow and the fact that he wears a hat, of a style currently in vogue, made of grass but not hippy or Islander church, that is reminiscent of the 40’s and that hes quite tall and lanky should make it a done deal.

I’d also like Ivan for backing duties, whom I visited yesterday afternoon, but forgot to ask about this. Ivan too, has been quite the made in the shed man so that will also go along with the handmade thing I’m hoping for. It’s not so much that everybody who plays will have to make their own instruments, but it’d be nice if that were to occur, but more that the general approach to music making has a quality to it that is more like mining for minerals and precious metals. In the sense that the instruments themselves aren’t something that is sought to be mastered but that they are merely tools to make sounds.

I kinda see two seams or approaches coming through at Vit S and one is people who always use the same instrument and work to always redefine and rework the palate of that instrument and the other approach which seems to be less about particular instruments and more about having the instruments help to define an approach. This isn’t tried and true as a categorisation and if anything it only serves as the loosest of definitions but to the latter group, who kinda stand in front of the instrument, I’d like work with these people to draw this approach into something more than a vague definition and give it a little more space to move.

And though I very much enjoy the free improvisation of Vit S I’ve always been a bit of a popster who enjoys beat and melody so I’d also envisage that this adhoc assemblage of music makers might find that area between common modes of practise to entice an audience, hooks and grooves, and the ethereal spaces of free improv which hint at a deeper unfurling of consciousness. This is not to say that sets would follow any constraints at all, alike a chord chart or written sequencing, but that the players might choose to drop into a groove and allow themselves to follow it. Deepest Africa meets deepest Europe maybe.

Anyways, Paul and Eddie are keen so now it’s up to me to formalise something and I’d give myself a month to get something together complete with my signature totally…um whats the word? Can’t think of it but it’s a way of advertising thats starts with hints and works its way up to the passing of straight forward information. Like teasing I suppose but its more enticing, or works to entice through making a game of guessing what its leading to.

On a completely different note I met a plumber named Pete at Ivans yesterday and he put me onto something called silbralloy which is a 2% silver brazing rod for copper which is significantly cheaper than using silphos (up around 12-13 bucks a rod at 15% silver content). I’ve got two ends off some hot water cylinders, which I actually got from Josh of the old Odeon, when he got a bunch of cylinders to top the bar with copper. He cut off the ends and just used the cylinder itself after flattening it out so lucky me has has a set of ends sitting about waiting to be used for a few years now. I spent a few hours yesterday hammering them into shape on a sandbay with a wooden mallet and later today I’ll get the dollies and planishing hammers out to get them into a more lustrous shape then I’m going to do a handrum similar to the one Ivan made from a gas cylinder though I’ve got a few extra ideas going around my head about what else I can do with it. A little Carribean, thats not spelled right, tone shaping in the tin drum style with raised areas defining notes but also some tuned length tubes here and there.

I’m off into town again today and I’ll get some photos of the Handmade space and also get some of the new instrument and the coppers. The other thing I really wanna do is get all my effets into one box so the scattering of individual boxes I’ve been living with is contained in one area with about 42 knobs!