"Dear Mr Thornton"

Head Of Accounts
Brighton Electricity Supply Ltd
Electric House
6 Electric Lane
Brighton

30th January 2004

Dear Mr Thornton

We'd like to thank you for finally upgrading and finishing your new studio setup.

You see we'd all been planning nice long holidays in the sun, and the MD had even ordered a brand new car, on the money normally brought in from your excessive use of electricity. However, we were starting to worry over the last few months as your consumption had dropped to previously unheard levels since you disassembled all your boxes full of flashing lights and shit.

Over the last day or so we've noticed however that your usage has gone through the roof again, and so have concluded the new studio must be up and running again (we're guessing 5 computer screens running at once? Yes? We have opened a book on this in the office if you'd like to confirm or deny as appropriate)

Yours Excitedly,

Mr. Bob Apple
Head Of Accounts

Posted By Simon Thornton @ 9:58:01 PM  trackback []  comment(s) []  

Welcome to the world!

Little baby Dolan has finally entered the world.

Well done you two!!!

(blogging in my own space now feels strange after a spell guesting somewhere else!)

Posted By Simon Thornton @ 12:33:12 PM  trackback []  comment(s) []  

Helmut Newton RIP

One of my favourite ever photographers, Helmut Newton, died today in a car crash.

That's all, really.

Posted By Simon Thornton @ 5:38:58 PM  trackback []  comment(s) []  

A serious point...mixing records and interference therein

Just read this paragraph in this months (Feb 2004) Sound On Sound magazine, in an interview with New York based mix engineer Toni Maserati, and I think it's worth copying out here verbatim. Just because.

'He's watched the committee approach to music production become a dominant force in the industry. "I do get pressure sometimes, more and more, actually," he says. "Someone from the record label will come in and say a radio programme director mentioned that this guitar part needs to come up or that vocal lick needs to be brought out more or flown in eariler in the song. They're coming back with ideas they get from market research, and it's getting scary that people treat music in such a way. I know a record has to be commercial, but it also has to be emotional. We're making three-minute pieces of art, and to judge them on the basis of ten-second snippets played over the phone to a housewife in Arkansas is annoying. That really characterises the times we live and work in."'

Well, hear hear and all that. About as well as it could be explained, I reckon. Thanks for reminding me why I choose not to be a jobbing mix engineer type!!!

Posted By Simon Thornton @ 3:15:47 PM  trackback []  comment(s) []  

I'm feeling comfortably numb

Our remix of the Scissor Sisters' "Comfortably Numb" is out today, go buy it please.

End of plug.

Posted By Simon Thornton @ 3:02:51 PM  trackback []  comment(s) []  

OMG, children's films are scary!

We finally got around to watching Finding Nemo tonight. It's absolutely and totally brilliant.

BUT NOT SUITABLE FOR ADULTS

What I mean is that it's really bloody scary (if you let go and allow yourself to be emotionally dragged around by it, of course). Within 15 minutes of the start, we'd had mass murder (400 fish dead), a kidnapping and an example of bloodlust. And it got Oh So Much More Scary.

I won't say too much more in case you haven't seen it yet - and I so recommend that you do - but, well, if I'd been a 5 year old child sitting in a dark cinema with all this going on in loud surround sound with these images on a screen 20 foot high in front of me I would have been scared stupid!

Probably the scariest film I've seen years, with definitely the meanest-looking monster - animated or otherwise - in recent cinema histroy.

You have been warned!

Posted By Simon Thornton @ 8:42:06 PM  trackback []  comment(s) []  

A Mars A Day

Yeah, so 1,000,000 people are blogging about this.

But, well, LOOK!. It's Mars! That planet SOOOOOOOOOO far away. Yes, a picture of lots of rocks you might say. But it's Mars!!!!

[in the lowest Eddie Izzard voice:] AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!

(you will have to have seen the Sexie tour for that last bit to make sense)

(ok, so I don't know exactly how you write down the "Mars is at the kitchen window Mum!" noise. Just another excuse to make sure my keyboard autorepeat is working though, been one of those days :) )

Posted By Simon Thornton @ 10:32:08 AM  trackback []  comment(s) []  

Round And Round

Some time near the end of the dim and distant past that was 1990 I created a little musical loop from a bit of drums from here, and little beepy noise from there. Nothing big, nothing special, but I liked it. The bloke I make records with rather liked it too, and asked to include it on a sample CD he had been commissioned to create. It was named 'Simon's Loop 1' or something similiar. Every now and again I'd hear the aformentioned loopette on a musical number created by others. Cool.

Next, fast foward 13 years, right to last night in fact. There I was - helping a female friend of mine put together some little bits of music (actually 'beds' in the radio-speak sense) for her new show she is starting this week. One of the tracks we chop up and edit a bit to extend it to 3 minutes of usefulness contains that - now overmentioned - loop. So there I was almost re-editing something I did way back then, contained within something else, all these years later....

Of course, said female friend happens to be married to said bloke I make records with. Yet, there was no actual link to get from paragraph 1 to paragraph 2. Purely one of those "what goes around, comes around" things.

Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!

Posted By Simon Thornton @ 9:57:06 AM  trackback []  comment(s) []  

It's gonna be one of those years....

A belated Happy 2004 to all you lovely people.

I had a great Christmas, a wonderful new year, a shaky recovery (still on-going) from said new year, a totally horrible ghastly sad and tearful yesterday, and a indescript today so far.

And it's only the 6th of Jan......jeeez.....

Posted By Simon Thornton @ 4:25:23 PM  trackback []  comment(s) []