for your listening pleasure:

I've converted the above to the major formats, so that you may enjoy them without having to subject yourself to the hidden cookies, pop-up adverts, and God-knows-what-else that Real/AOL has up their sleeve for us.  Even Sony plays Windows Media format now, which has a much higher quality than Real formats anyway.

Sites kind enough to play my music are found below:

Other Current Projects:

x	Songs for Commuting

This is a collection of pieces inspired by places around London and other places like LA that concern themselves with public and other transit.   Titles include Buses On Diversion, Mind the Gap, Roundabout, Tea Break, and Way Out and might give the impression that these are primarily British-inspired.  Assumption is of course dangerous.  Progress is beginning to bear fruit on this collection, and the first versions of "Tabla Tale" may find their way here soon.  Like, "before 2007."  Okay, perhaps later.  Bloody workmen! (note in 2008: "Well, we're done and I'm going to do more on this web site at last.")

1	Songs from a Tunnel

This is a set of pieces originating from years of playing ambient acoustic bowed guitar in the San Gabriel Canyon's unfinished Tunnels, which you may have read about on this site for several years!  Originally in this collection are "For Absent Friends", Dragon on Glass Lake, Fever Dream, and other classics.  While I'm doing everything but getting the CD done, like moving in with my Mum-in-Law, In the meantime the industrious may find the individual songs at the MP3Station, IUMA, and many other sites!  All of my music is on sites that actually have an intention to pay the artists who produce the work they broadcast now.  If you want to know more about my opinions on the music biz, go here.

'S'

Rescheduled release, now reshuffled.  Back-shelved in the interest of other works, but as a result there are several volumes of this material, to be subtitled '2', '3' and so on..

3	Club Meditation

This is a collection of 15 pieces designed to be used in meditative activity.  In this I have tried especially to create pieces with no rough edges, and hopefully creating sonic pockets of peace in which you may find same.  The only criticism I've ever had about this collection is that the pieces aren't long enough for one listener, who has prompted me to do another version of Club Meditation that will eventually find its way onto a DVD Audio release due to the sheer size of 15 or so 20-minute compositions.

OuterEye, a streaming video company, chose Club Meditation XIV to be the backing music for footage at trade shows and on their web site.  We've not heard from those folks in a while, and the web site is down.  Next?)

The Loop Of The Week #254: 8 November 2006

As anyone who has ever done renovations on an old house in England will tell you, "It's valuable experience, but I never want to do it again!"

 

Alas.  Despite all the experience we thought we could stomach about builders and other workmen in the UK, we had not planned on a nasty species here - the con artist we'll call "J" (British libel laws tend to protect the guilty against having the truth told about them, despite what one may believe from the tabloids here).  It's been nearly a year since my mother-in-law died, and during that very difficult time we were effectively persuaded that "J" and his men were more than just very good at their work.  Turns out that even the "visit my last client" showing was a complete sham: While claiming to be of project manager-scale expertise, and having a superb talent at woodworking, not only was "J" incompetent as a woodworker - but the only reason the job looked so good was that he and his men were supervised by an architect.  "J" and his men did just enough of a good job to persuade us to let them do the rest of the renovations on this old house - and we had confidence enough in them to go on our first vacation in nearly six years.  Upon returning in March we found MDF (a thicker variant of what folks in the US may remember as "Masonite", but illegal for proper construction in the US) being used instead of plaster board; broken possessions; damaged floorboards, radiator pipes with screws through them, and, as something I've come to recognize as  the hallmark of the incompetent, too many screws to hold things together.  "J" and his loafing bastards nearly burnt down the house by throwing lit cigarettes onto piles of underfloor sawdust and shavings.  We've had touch with another victim of "J" who was much worse off than us, though, and had to spend seven weeks during last Christmas in a hotel because "J" not only caused a lot of water damage (screws through the radiator pipes, hmm!) but disconnected most of the power cables including those to the alarm system.  "J" also made copies of their home keys, and after the poor woman kicked them off the site, she was sitting at her PC one night to hear the door open, shortly before feeling "J"'s hands round her neck, growling at her to "give me my f*cking money".  While she called the police, the coppers here are useless.  My only satisfaction is that we kicked "J" off-site before more damage could be done.  

 

Unfortunately in May I crushed the end of my left middle finger between some flagstones that "J" and his men left onsite, and it's been only now that I can get some feeling back into the tip sufficient to be able to play guitar.  Thus my absence of updates.  Why does one have to be an expert in order to hire one here?  I won't answer that yet.

 

Since May we've been having just individuals here to do work: good if spotty showing-up on the part of the cornice guy (probably maintaining some illusion on his part about workers being in control or something), and a string of electricians, plumbers and general builders who've given me lots of practice firing people.  My blood pressure's still reasonable though!  But there's a place in the front cellar for he who wants to try it on here.  There are only two major rooms left and I want them done by Christmas.  At this time of course the socialist cornice guy decides to keep control by just not showing up.  I'm torn between firing him and/or the carpenter who just put a hole through a 150-year-old banister.  Very soon...

 

Hallowe'en on the upside was a good one, with lots of little ghosts and frighteningly-cute witches showing up at the door (Sarah told me "I saw those three coming!").  Where were these girls when I was 14?  Jeepers!  Here comes Thanksgiving, a holiday they of course pretend not to recognize in the UK, and one I'm kicking everyone out for, thank you very much.  Sigh.  There's peace in music.

 

And of course for the fine print:

 

Know that downloading any of the forms of the Loop Of The Week is a clear indication of acceptance that you never represent this work as anyone else's under US Copyright Law and the copyright laws of the rest of the world; and that you never use this work in public performance or composition without my permission.  In addition the files made available below have been pre-scanned for your protection to assure their safety in use, and therefore free from spyware, adware, malware, trojans, and any other current violations of decency.

 

The RIAA and Big Five's efforts to keep independent musicians from being able to produce their own work continues, despite multiple failures on their part to manipulate copyright law and royalties rulings.  Diligence will win this fight, and also assure that a bunch of elderly cigar-chomping dinosaurs will someday stop trying to shove creatively-bankrupt acts at the public.  Think of the advantages of creative freedom.  If you're frightened about them, you're either misinformed or realize you're one of the dinosaurs I'm talking about.

Want to know more?  Check out the Copyright Office's page about what this all means to all of us at  http://www.copyright.gov - from there you can make your voice heard!  Tell them you don't like democracy bought and paid for by anyone!

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