Iain Cameron's Diary
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2002-05-14 - 2:18 p.m.

Back from Birmingham - last night's dinner with the new Chairman of The Board seemed to go well. Alan has an interesting way of developing new ideas - a kind of disciplined step by step approach that doesnt force closure too quickly. This could well be part of the Toyota worldview - anyway I like it. Its so common for people to have completely the wrong attitude at this stage and to concentrate on inessentials.

I had a chat with Graham in the car afterwards which was reassuring - he sees the project as a must and my background absolutely vital to get it to go.

I looked around Solihull first thing to get some idea of property prices and found a shop selling everything for a pound. I bought the three CDs for a pound and listened to them on the drive back - two winners. The Trance Dance collection won me over straight away with the off centre flute sample on a song about the power of love - the collection kept my attention all the way through and for a half way through a replay. The second CD is somewhere between hiphop and acid jazz and very well produced - maybe I'll take my life in my hands and ask James what he thinks of it.

I have just sent James de W 2 CDs - I should have known he has an enormous pile to get through!

I spoke to Miss Annable this morning - thats her name believe or not. She is bidding on behalf of Quadrangle for the training contract I wrote the spec - a firm I have had dealings with on and off for a while. Its owned by John and Christine Gambles and has offices in Shad Thames at the south end of Tower Bridge. The only way I ever get into the Groucho is with John. He read English at Oxford in the high punk era and made his name in some film related enterprise. Then he joined a very "1980s" ad agency called WCRS that I spent a lot of money with (on behalf of a grateful taxpayer).

The training spec is partly about "account management" - a black art with WCRS had down to a tee. My last account guy there was Justin Baramian who is an utter devotee of Van Morrison and an Oxford educated Armenian. I hadnt seen Justin for a few years but one night there he was exactly where you might expect him. We were both at the launch of the NickD biog in a cellar in Denmark St with BBC there to record the proceedings. Needless to say Justin was living 2 doors away from the biographer in "Poets Corner" in Brixton. Somehow I don't think DTI will ever do account management quite as well as that.

John Gambles has a lot to answer for in terms of the musical taste of my children. About five years ago he lent me a couple of CDs - Songs for Drella and Nevermind. I got into the first one bit missed the point on Nevermind. James didnt and he became an utter devotee of Kurt C - something he has passed on Vita - who got her own copy of Nevermind for her birthday last Friday.

Anyway I had been ask to "field" Quadrangle's queries on the spec - and so I rang Miss Annable this morning from the hotel and gave her the lowdown.(John and Christine bought a copy each of Serious Music).

An interruption - some pieces of paper are carried from place to place here in locked blue boxes - a bit like the Budget Boxes. Two guys have just turned up with one allegedly destined for me - I sent them away cos I have let my clearance lapse (and I am not sure what I have done with the boxkey). In my previous job I was the person who issued the clearances - now there are a few interesting tales hanging by that thread. Mostly this is fairly boring but sometimes truth is stranger than fiction.

Yesterday I put a couple of takes of Weve Only Just Begun down - actually quite hard work. I used the dynamic/condenser mike combination and mixed the flute line quite a long way back with a deepish reverb. The high partials persist as a presence over the note and seem to react with some of backing harmonics.

I was looking for the keyboard parts to

the Bach flute sonatas which I didnt find but I did find the parts to Stravinsky's Three Pieces for SQ - a work Andrew K drew to my attention. The more you think about this piece the more unusual it becomes. It anticipates both Cage and Minimalism - yesterday I saw that the 3rd piece is a forerunner to the Chorale in Memoriam Debussy. I took some of the second movement as WAV and loaded two copies into Traktor and then busked some cross loops which I also took out as a further WAV. It seemed to draw me into an interesting area of scalar improv on the guitar. Think of a chromatic scale - take out three semitones a major third apart - consider the triads left in the reamining 9 tone set - use those thoughts to drive an improvisation. Very absorbing but maybe the music is crap!

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