The Lost Cavalry's Diary

1/11/10 : New music PC

Well, my new music PC arrived - and it's a beast! A huge black rack mounted case that you almost can't lift, with a big grill on the front and a lock. But it's nice and fast and the monitor is nice and big. I also treated myself to Sonar 8.5 Producer edition. Sonar is like Pro Tools or Logic but better (in my opinion!) and I've been using it for a while for recording and mixing. The new version seems pretty good so far.

At the moment I'm mostly concentrating on the Booked Out film music as well as working on The Lost Cavalry's song 'The Tower' - one of our live favourites! It's sounding great, lots of energy and life plus some pretty beautiful sounding stuff twinkling in the background - including this music box. I've also been trying to build a Theremin - from a kit... it's a lot trickier than I expected it to be, it's been too long since I did any soldering. I will post updates as I go!

12/10/10 : Music on the go

Here's my next invention. I doubt it will work.

We're all very excited about releasing our track 'The Elephant Of Castlebar Hill' as a single, we're really pleased with the new mix (which you can listen to here). We're also excited about some new tracks we're recording at the moment. I think it's time to upgrade my little home studio though - I'm going to splash out on a new computer I think before starting to mix the new songs.

I've also been doing some other recording recently - I recorded a track for Sony Extreme music for this production music album which was good fun, and I'm also in the middle of working on the score for a new indie feature film Booked Out along with my co-composer Derek Yau. It's quite a challenge - really different to be writing music that needs to fit in tightly with the film action and also set the right mood - which often changes quite quickly within one piece of music. It is absolutely brilliant fun though and we're making good progress. I think there will be around 45 minutes of music we'll be making in total though, so there's a lot to do. Definitely a good excuse for getting a new music computer...

Mark.x

19/8/10 : LeeFest 2010

At the weekend, Dave, Nick and I went to LeeFest down in Kent, a one-day festival headlined by Futureheads. We were there in the role of 'Wandering Minstrels' and so, despite the rain, we wandered the festival arena and played our songs to the people, even if they didn't want us to, or didn't know what on earth was going on. In fact, most people loved it and everyone seemed to want to have a go on my concertina.

5/8/10 : Floating on the Thames

Well, our EP launch gig on a boat went well! Thanks to everyone who came along and said nice things to us afterwards. It turns out that the boat we were on (moored to the side of the Albert Embankment) only floats for a few hours each day, as the tide changes. We were afloat while we were playing, which was interesting - fortunately there were no sudden lurches causing Toby to miss a glock note! It was a little scary seeing the water get closer and closer to the bottom of the window until it started to lap over the glass though!

David Cronenberg's Wife and Thomas Truax were both great too, love Thomas' crazy gadgets. Yep, it was a top night, and I hope we can play on the Tamesis Dock again some time, it was a very charming boat - I'd love to own one and turn it into a floating house and recording studio... Next stop for us - The Lexington!