How to Get Notified of Blog Updates....

Apparently you can sign up to get notified of updates to my blog (or any blog) at www.weblogs.com. Presumably you'd get sent an email... sounds handy.

machine.records festive stuff... :)

Hey... so 2006 is pretty much dust, hope you had fun?

We did. Let's see... First we put together a string of top notch shows for you: Cylob (Rephlex/Breakin'), The Hidden Persuader, Info_Cifon, Oddskool, Orcop, Fumezombie, Stabmaster Vinyl (High Quality Recordings), The Doubtful Guest (Planet Mu/ Seed), Evils (Peski), LoVid (NYC), DJ Methodist (Post Office), Chris Clark (Warp), Yellotone (AI), MoQ (Seed), Schneider TM (Mute), Redfalls, Anatomist, Nathan Fake (Border Community), Lifting Gear Engineer, Kansas City Prophets (Seed), Loz Koleszko (1 Man Army), Michael J Rocks (1 Man Army), RandomNumber (Highpoint Lowlife), John Barnes, and Dogmixer (Replicant Society)... as well as support slots with Subtle (Lex) and Mike Paradinas (Planet Mu) and at a host of other events.

Big up to Forecast for making some of these shows possible, to the artists, Clwb Ifor Bach (where most of them happened), Machines In Our Souls, Lesson No 1, and all of you who came along!

Then we had those new releases... 11 altogether - every one of them garnering praise and much-deserved radio airplay on stations like BBC Radio 1 (Huw Stephens, Rob da Bank, Mary Anne Hobbs), BBC Radio Wales (Adam Walton), BBC Radio Cymru (Huw Stephens and Huw Evans), The Selector (Andrea Oliver), Another Nice Mess (Marcelle van Hoof) and elsewhere. Thank you for supporting the Welsh electronica scene.

In order of release:























And, in another new development for 2006, all these releases (and the rest of the catalogue) are available in high-quality MP3 format from www.bleep.com.

2007 is going to be here before you know it... watch this space for news about our new release schedule and more!

In the meantime, check out the new Drone album, 'Colour For Money' (on My Kung Fu; Drone has previously released a track on machine.records as Arcangle and put in some stirling shows at Terminal), Industrial Circus at the Tafod in Cardiff (home to regular sets from Orcop and, coming up soon, Access Tonal Communications), Superimpozer's new 'Thought Fungus' album (on DubiousAudio), and the Skipping Beats label (run by Redfalls and friends). All good stuff.

Cheers
Dan

www.machine-records.com.

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bits and pieces

London...


Silver Spurs @ Clwb Ifor Bach, Cardiff


Somewhere Between Auckland and Wellington....


The Mount, New Zealand


It's a mountain, stupid.

Just a Few More Vancouver Pictures.... Grouse Mountain

Music

... and finally some decent-looking weather!

Well, that's the forecast for this week (11-15th December) anyway... given how sunburned I was after a day that was only 16 degrees it's a little scary actually!

5th December - 'Christmas Works Do'

Somehow I managed to feature in a few of the pictures taken at our Christmas 'works do' - lawn bowls at Wellington Bowls Club. Actually good to do, except for the ridiculous sunburn I got from being outside all afternoon. Apart from the redness, the worst part was brutal definition of my hairline... That's me in the bright blue t-shirt (with black jacket in two of the pics)!

Actually New Zealand. Choice!

I shot this minute-long video on a digital camera on October 18th, driving down from Hamilton to Wellington. The quality was actually higher and surprisingly good but loading it onto YouTube has put it through some sort of crude, automated compression that has created the blocky effect.

Reference Number: 2654530/G

Reference Number: 2654530/G
Universal Time: November 16 2006 at 22:42
NZ Daylight Time: Friday, November 17 2006 at 11:42 am
Latitude, Longitude: 41.08°S, 174.21°E
Focal Depth: 50 km
Richter Magnitude: 4.6

30 km north-east of Picton
40 km south-east of French Pass
50 km north-west of Wellington

Felt throughout the lower North Island and the upper South Island.

My first earthquake. Although apparently there have been FOUR since I've been in Wellington, I actually felt this one!

Vancouver II

So my blog has fallen straight into the classic problem of not being updated. I get it all set up and then - two weeks go by in silence. Here at least are a second and final installment of pictures of Vancouver. I took way too many photos in a very short space of time so this is just a selection, ample though it is! Click on them for a full size (600x450 pixel version). Now these have been made web-sized I can make a start of my pictures of New Zealand!

Vancouver, October 2006

Here's some pictures taken in Vancouver. We stayed there for four nights between October 2nd and 6th this year, en route to New Zealand. The idea was to check out a new city and also break up the otherwise gruelling effects of jetlag that result from doing the whole UK-NZ journey in one go. This sort of worked, as we experienced the majority of our jetlag in Vancouver; still, being wide awake at 3am isn't such a hindrance to a day of sightseeing as it might normally be and we were out of our hotel room bright and early every day. Restraining ourselves from taking more than a small packet of pringles from the mini-bar was more of a challenge.

First, the view from our hotel window, in a very central spot next to the BC stadium, although here you can see some scenic tower blocks and a building site - both very typical of Vancouver. All the towers are built in this style in accordance with some sort of regulations, so all these building that were actually built 20 years apart look more or les identical. Also, the whole city seemed to be being torn down and rebuilt around us.



Next, down at the quay in Yaletown... more of those tower blocks. We headed down here on our first morning and caught a small ferryboat across to Granville Island Market.



Here's more of those towersblocks. In the foreground is a hamlet of floating houses. These are just like regular houses but they are... er, floating.

Here's some more pictures from Granville Island, which as well as an amazing market full of giant vegetables (although apparently they are meant tobe that size and it's just that UK ones are puny) has an art school and lots of little galleries seeling contemporary art, crafts, and soon. It all used to be an industrial area and the water was badly polluted from industrial effluent, but seemed to have been cleaned up very well. Not sure if I would have gone swimming or anything, mind you....






Reassuringly, the danger of electric shock is clearly taken very serious in Canada.


It's a hydrant! These were everywhere in Vancouver. I began to wonder how the UK manages without any hydrants..?


Some natural and man-made displays of colour.


Despite the blue skys and sunshine, Vancouver was pretty chilly and the trees (except the millions of Douglas Firs) were turning.


This is the underside of the bridge seen in the background of the picture above (behind the floating houses).


Produce at Granville Island market.

Later on we headed to Chinatown and visited a Chinese garden...







Visible from the garden were these messages.