Mike Outram ~ The Electric Campfire

Inspired by ‘1000 Recordings To Hear Before You Die’.

Mike Outram — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 17:07:02 +0000

Stuck for something to listen to? Try this.

I have a book by Tom Moon called ‘1000 Recordings To Hear Before You Die‘ and it has been sitting on my shelf for a good while now, taunting me with it’s implied ‘1000 recordings you’ll never hear because you can’t be arsed to go to a record shop to buy them’. Anyway, I’ve been meaning to make a Spotify playlist to go with the book for ages so here, nudged on by this chap, it is.

Here’s the first playlist: Inspired by ‘1000 Recordings To Hear Before You Die’. 01-20. I’ll be going through the book and putting the playlists on a Posterous site. Here’s the URL: http://1000recordings.posterous.com and you can click on the subscribe link on that page to have the playlist and Spotify link delivered straight to your e-mail inbox.

I guess the usefulness of this is just to have some directed listening that’s full of stuff I wouldn’t normally hear; to open my mind a bit; force me into hearing something new.

So 20 albums a week for around a year should do it. We’ll see how we get on. It would be very cool to look back after a year having heard all that music that otherwise wouldn’t have been discovered. Might be interesting…

Check this out

Mike Outram — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 22:26:07 +0000

Haven’t blogged in ages but I will post an update very soon about some great things that have been happening recently but in the meantime, here’s a fantastic new album to check out from two fine friends.

In their words…

Brotherly are soul-mates Anna Stubbs and Robin Mullarkey, creating soulful beats with finesse, deep cinematic textures with edgy intensity, stirring vocals with purposeful intent, and puréeing them from their north-london flat, to a palatable paste.

Rob, by the way, plays bass on most of my album and he’s ridiculously amazing on it; he’s a proper freak of a genius at anything he does. But not at WordTwist though. I annihilate him at that :)

Anyhow, what are you waiting for? Go check their new album out. It’s utterly brilliant. Really brilliant. As brilliant as a white cat drinking milk in the snow in the centre of the sun.

Here’s where you can hear it.

Here’s where you can find out more about them.

Oh, and they’ve got a gig in London at Cargo this Sunday. http://www.cargo-london.com/event/brotherly

Little South West tour and Birmingham date

Mike Outram — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 15:35:42 +0000

Quick post

I’m on tour this week with the Tony Woods band. Last night we played at The Beaver in Appledor. It’s an amazing gig; a little pub by the sea in North Devon. Always good to play there.

Tonight we’re playing in St. Ives. Here are the rest of the tour dates:

9th. Western Hotel, Royal Square, St. Ives. TR26 2ND.
10th. Doing a workshop from 11.30-1.00 at Truro College in the day followed by a gig at 5 Degrees West, 7 Grove Place, Falmouth TR11 4AU
11th. the Visitor Centre, St. Austell Brewery, 63 Trevarthian Rd., St Austell.
12th. Symphony Hall Foyer, Birmingham. 5.30 to 7pm

BTW: If anyone down there is reading this and would like to hook up a lesson then get in touch via the contact page.

Site Meyhem: MysqHell

Mike Outram — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 01:00:11 +0000

Hello. If you’ve checked the site in the last day or two you’ll have noticed that it’s in a complete state. Sorry about that. I’m just moving the hosting and as my basic method for internet problem solving involves random button pushing and this sort of thing I’ve managed to mangle it good – real good – in a really bad sort of way. Like, totally broken. But broken in the kind of way that lets you know the solution is there, and is probably head-slappingly simple, but you just don’t know it because you’re a foot-licking half-wit. So I continue with my button pushing experiments until either I: a, abandon it altogether; b, destroy the machine; c, drink lots of beer. Option c is looking most likely right now.

*update*, hic.

It was a plugin that I’d previously altered/bastardized. Sorry, Dan – Gigs Calendar is great but I’d mangled it too much and it didn’t survive the move. Anyway, WHAT GIGS?

So welcome back, Dear Reader. Me miss you long time :)

Live At Sin-é – West London

Mike Outram — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 11:23:21 +0000

Last Saturday I did a trio gig at Ronnie Scott’s. Didn’t really advertise it as I haven’t done anything like that – playing standards in a trio with bass and drums – for a really long time. It’s quite daunting for me to play trio as it feels really exposed and I’m responsible for so much more. But, that’s what makes it more rewarding when it does work.

Anyhow, I really enjoyed the gig. I hadn’t played with Sam Burgess, the bass player, for ages, and he was completely amazing. Playing with him reminded me of what’s good about trio with just guitar, bass and drums: you get a lot of space and freedom to mess around with the harmony; and, as the only pitch information that’s coming at you is from the bass, it means it’s easier to hear and interact with. The great thing about playing with Sam is that he puts a lot of stuff out that’s really interesting and creative in itself, but he also really responds to what you do too, with frightening immediacy.

So, now I’m thinking I’d really like to get a regular trio gig. Somewhere where I could do some playing on standards. I used to do lots of that ages ago but I’ve been doing mostly original music lately. It’d be nice to explore a bit of that for a while.

In my utopian dreamworld It’d be great to have a little weekly trio gig in a coffee house or a bar in West London. Maybe somewhere that’d be a good place for students to come down and jeer or whatever. A little more specifically utopian (if one can have gradations of utopianism) – wooden floors wouldn’t go amiss, and free to get in, near the tube, good food and coffee, jazz-loving owner, beer too… I’ll stop short of a helicopter landing-pad :)

So, maybe you can help me out? If you know of anywhere that could be as cool as this place, let me know! Or better yet, if you’re a regular, why not ask them if they’d be up for some live music. You never know. I’m off to make a big list and get scouring the West Side. There must be somewhere out there…

Bottles, Bottles, Bottles.

Mike Outram — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 10:30:46 +0000

I’ve been saving bottles for a while now and yesterday I had a go at recording them. They’re pretty easy to tune. You just pour in water until you hit the right pitch. Here they are:

Below are some very small excerpts of the things I recorded. The first track has a little bit of normal bottle shredding; then it’s flipped backwards. Then I slowed it down a lot, changed the pitch and added some other gizmos in the machine.

My idea of an exceedingly good day would be to spend 48 hrs in a darkened room fiddling around with bottles, mics and laptop, and drinking copious amounts of coffee. Bliss…

Anyhow, I’m going to get someone round who can do some serious rhythmic damage on them soon. Then it’ll be on to recording cats thinking.

**Should have thought of this before, but I’m off to YouTube to find some interesting music with bottles and water. Here’s one that springs to mind. [no pun intended]