James Hastings

Orbits came about as a need for contrast with Hiperad.  Hiperad would be slightly unstable and potentially busy, Orbits then would be more drone-like and minimal.  At the same time I was working more with the band and enjoying beats…

I came across this post on Mastodon:

The blog post is worth a read.  Essentially though, Dave is making his music available for free and pointing people towards charities he supports to make a donation.  I like this approach.  I…

I took an enforced break.

Nothing too serious, but it did make some things a bit tricky and give me a lot of time for thought, albeit not entirely coherant.

1. My go to thing when I feel bad is to…

Strange Textures is the name of the podcast, the name of the website, the name of the project. It isn't the name of the band.  The question is, does the name limit the ideas?  The original project has run its…

The Hiperad Series is here!

I had prepped Hiperad for release on Bandcamp in May (and other services June).  So as I came to set up the release here to be a bit earlier I noticed the message had gone…

So, after discovering that my approach to being self-contained on Mastodon leads to me disengaging from the community, I've been on a different instance and I feel more engaged, more part of something.  I see other people not being impacted…

The tracks of mine from today's Space is the Place (4/4/2024) on CandoFM are on this little teaser album as the full items aren't released yet…

The whole show is worth a listen (every week) and available afterwards as a…

So I did - I find it tends to improve my mood.  I thought I'd do this quickly and make it available with a CC license and free to download.  Just to cheer myself up.

Incidental Mood

Incidental Mood ©…

I've deleted the merchandise store.  Its another thing that I always felt I needed as a professional musician - because loads of places say that, and loads of people sell merch.  I really like all the podcast merchandise for example…

In order to write, I have to align myself into lines that make sense, so the communication is linear in order to be understood.  This filter sits over the organic nature of reality.  When I play music, I'm still communicating…

The Hiperad cover art is all done, and so is Orbits.  In theory I could release them all now, but that would be an awful lot in one go.  I think I might do each as a collection of 3…

Saturday morning.  An electrician is here doing some work and I'm waiting for all that to be done before I get on with my stuff properly.  In the meantime I'm doing a bit more cover stuff for Hiperad, so some…

It's 3:14am at the moment and I've been up a while, so I thought I'd write a few things down as it's nice and quiet.

• I've moved Mastodon instances.  Self-hosting was fine, but I'm not the most social of creatures…

Now the reshuffle of Season 3 has happened, I'm working on a few things at once:

• Editing the long versions into highlights.  That's going better than Season 2 to be honest, I'm not having to do much EQ and glitch…

In order to work on editing Season 3 down to publishable albums I thought I'd start by separating out the different sections of each episode.  Effectively that means I've shuffled the episodes round.

The final (roughly 20 minutes) section of…

In order to work on editing Season 3 down to publishable albums I thought I'd start by separating out the different sections of each episode.  Effectively that means I've shuffled the episodes round.

The middle section of each episode (usually…

In order to work on editing Season 3 down to publishable albums I thought I'd start by separating out the different sections of each episode.  Effectively that means I've shuffled the episodes round.

The first section (usually around 20 minutes)…

At the bottom of each page, in the footer, there are some links.  I've just updated them to remove things like Spotify and Apple Music.  Partly because I'm feeling more independent, partly because if you use that sort of thing…

And now, the time is near - its the last volume in the XPLRR series!

Coming from season 2 of the podcast, this needed the most editing I've needed to do and I'm so pleased with the result.  From a…

Have I mentioned before (I know I have) that I have problems with verbal and written communication?  It's sort of noticable to people sometimes but I've had many regular day jobs that require better than regular performance in that area…

With Root Creation releasing last week, and it being the holiday season, in some respects it's been quiet and I've just been hanging around.  I also seem to have had COVID again so it's been a struggle somedays as I've…

Hear ye, hear ye!

Root Creation, the second part of the XPLRR series has arrived.  Rooted (oof) in the middle of Season 2 of the podcast, this is a collection of ambient guitar tracks that are stretched, edited, and…

I had occasion today to have another look in detail at one of my podcast episodes and the edited version.

The episode was Island Space Tours from Season Two Volume 1

Podcast Episode

And edited for inclusion on Maker's Dawn:

…

I did a rambling post about ongoing projects and I thought I'd do a quick update.

1. The bit about why I do this is in the back of my mind and buzzes a bit when people mention something similar or…