Gustavius’s “am-bee-yent” photo set

~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment
Gustavius's Thumbnails

Gustavius added one of my little flickr photos (the distorted car) as a favourite, which was flattering (since my flickr page is singularly unvisited – most visits seem to come from people clicking on the picture in the sidebar here, and the blog is relatively unvisited). Anyway, having a look at his flickr site I discovered his am-bee-yent set of photos (see ultra-mini thumbnails there) which are pretty cool and would look great as the covers of some ambient albums. I’m guessing this is the same Gustavius I remember from the 12k Forum online forum for discussing minimal and ambient music. Anyway, there are nearly 200 images and they’re fabulous – try running them as a slideshow with some music playing. Very Zen.

[The Core] by I Awake

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I Awake – [The Core] is a 60 minute-plus album (it has a “hidden” track at the end) that’s probably more chill than strictly ambient. There are a lot of beats compared to some of what I listen to. Nothing too fast or imposing and much of the record is made up of atmospheres and gentle drifty melodies, supported by some deep bass, choir sounds and a little singing. [The Core] is made up of shorter tracks – mostly between four and five minutes, unlike many ambient albums around which often have tracks which clock in at 15 minutes and upwards. I like to write to this album when I’m wanting to be fast and punchy – the music is an hour with energy and drive, ebbs and flows and this gets reflected, I think, in slightly more upbeat writing.

Like other releases on the exquisite Ultimae label, this comes with a gorgeous 16 page booklet of photographs.

Missed the boat on Howl

~ Sean Monaghan ~ 2 Comments

The soon to be published Lame Goat Press anthology Howl looks to be a stunner. I had an idea for a story, but had so much else on that I put it aside – life is a series of choices about what not to do. Part of the reason for wanting to submit to the anthology was the fabulous cover, but it’s growing and growing. There’s now a fantastic book trailer for the volume, which is also on YouTube, one of the stories has been podcasted on archive.org, and the contributing writer’s list includes lots of my faves (Jodi, Angel, Mark Anthony Crittenden, to mention a few). I’m green. Still, it’s cool to be associated with Lame Goat Press and great to see it going from strength to strength.

(whoops – my bad, and see the comments, Laura’s not in this anthology, but she is in a couple of others – Diamonds in the Rough, and Flash! out soon. Sorry Laura).

Pecha Kucha consumes weekend

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I put my hand up, perhaps foolishly, to participate in a local Pecha Kucha event. Pecha Kucha nights are presentations of 20 slides, each shown for 20 seconds, while the presenter talks for the 6 minutes and 40 seconds. It sounded straightforward when I agreed to do it, but coming up with a theme (music, writing, graphics?), then an engaging talk, then trying to match slides to it all has left me drained. I’m perhaps halfway there, but I’ve got to have my slides delivered by Thursday, and the event is being held on March 25th. Had I realised how much work I was getting myself in for, especially when I have other stuff on too. At least it has been good for my right-brain/left-brain stuff – thinking in different modes has got to be good.

“Can’t You Find Anything Up There” – new flash sci-fi story on 365Tomorrows

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The wonderful team at 365Tomorrows have published my story Can’t You Find Anything Up There. This is another light-hearted Mars story, of explorers and researchers. I noticed a little formatting thing that I forget with the web – my fault – there were originally line breaks between the two story threads as they swapped back and forth, but they’ve been lost in the translation from .rtf to .html. Whoops – I should use asterisks. Anyway it might take a little reading with patience to keep track of who is where and what is how and so on.

As the name would suggest, 365Tomorrows publish a new science fiction story every day. Each story gets a full day as leader on the home page, then drops to archives as the next story goes live. There’s a strong community based around the site – a cool forum with some intriguing discussions.

phantomshadows available again

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The Venus Vulture album phantomshadows, which was originally released on the Resting Bell netlabel, is available again. It can be streamed or downloaded (for free) on the Venus Vulture Bandcamp page. phantomshadows is a minimal ambient drone album of four tracks, each around 14 minutes. The release was combined with a set of images, which are available on the Flickr page.

The funny details:
The release went out of print because I, silly me, had joined APRA – the New Zealand branch of the Australian Performing Rights Association. I think they do good work, but they’re not really compatible with creative commons licences. Christian, who does an extraordinary job at Resting Bell, was faced with paying GEMA (the German equivalent of APRA) fees for releasing my music – even though it was never my intent to generate money from this release. My bad. I’m no longer a member of APRA, though GEMA’s rules are different, it appears possible that I will never be able to release music through Resting Bell or any other German netlabel.

Wake by Jean David Morvan and Philippe Buchet

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Wake is a multi-volume science fiction graphic novel from the early to mid 2000s. I came across volume five, which combines story 6 (Artifice) and 7 (Maximum [in]security). The stories are fun, both brutal and humourous and a bit over the top. Navee, the main character is quirky, tolerant and at times impatient. What I really like most about the volume, though, is the illustrations. Buchet’s use of line, framing, colour and so on is hyper-real. The pictures remind me a lot of Moebius’s work from Heavy Metal. In particular I like the attention to detail – Snivel, Navee’s robot buddy, gets disected and retrofitted to two different bodies, ending up with a nice replacement, yet he always looks like Snivel. When Navee pulls on gloves from the three-fingered aliens, her middle two fingers are forced into a single finger space – not overtly done, but when I noticed that, it was pleasing to see the care that had been taken.

How does a graphic novel fit with reading for writing?

1. Read widely.
2. Graphic novels still have a story.
3. Maybe the story you’re working on but struggling with might lend itself better to treatment as a graphic novel.
4. Read widely.

New Venus Vulture track – “Doubtful Sound 3 March 1963” – available now

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I’ve uploaded a new three minute track to my Reverbnation page. This is another short drifty piece, a little very slow melody/chord progression with some distant voices speaking quietly. The title comes out of the story I’ve just submitted (see this post), and in keeping with my other Reverbnation tracks, is dated (arbitrarily, perhaps, but that’s all part of it). The track, as with the others there, is available for streaming or free download.

As I mentioned elsewhere, I’m having less focus on Venus Vulture music this year as I work on writing more – but I will keep shooting for a track a month.

Matthew Florianz

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Dutch ambient artist Matthew Florianz has a great catalogue of minimal ambient music to drift off to. His work is deep and subtle and very moody, and has been well reviewed in the ambient community. I have most of the releases on CD, and have been lucky enough to get some limited edition releases too. Niemandsland from 2006 was originally released with two disks of extra material and the three make a great developing soundtrack for a day of creativity. It’s nice to listen to CDs, rather than just streaming or listening to downloads through Winamp – in part because I can have the computer off and just edit or handwrite.

Florianz’s CDs are available through Shopsonic, and you can check out his MySpace page for updates, happenings and samples and songs to listen to while online. There is an album’s worth of tracks to listen to on the MySpace page.

Creativity

~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment

Well, it was a busy week – I finally got my story ready and submitted for the Southern Horror Writer’s Horror Club on Flashes In The Dark. This was a story that took a lot of false starts. First it was about a Blight hitting Slope Point (Slope Point is the Southernmost place on New Zealand’s South Island), then a different version of the same premise (Blight rewrite), then a new story with the same characters (House at Bluff), then, finally, Doubtful Sound:

First started back in January, several runs at the story didn’t cut it. Not every file there is a totally new story – ultimately there are variations on each of the four. Finally, with Doubtful Sound I got something that I was happy with. You can see here, too, how I organise my files as I write – date each new version with the day I start it so that I can backtrack, give it a title that makes sense to me. I keep the old versions as I work through edits and redate the file as I make the changes on the screen.