Um, anyone in Mexico next week?

Yes indeed, that’s where the first ever birds in branches show is.

Those who know me (which is probably most of you since I haven’t released anything yet) may be a little perplexed. And fair enough. I have never been to Mexico and can’t speak spanish. But my wife Nai is heading over for work, I am joining for fun, and a cluey cafe owner heard some tracks and was keen to roll the dice. How could you turn down an offer to play in Mexico? You couldn’t, that’s how.

It won’t be quite the electronic tapestry of the album, as I can’t take a band or my gear. But I have packed my macbook full of software and my mind full of ideas and confused spanish phrases, and am going to give it a decent go – cafe style. There is a ‘geek aside’* below for the gory details on the laptop rig, for those who love that stuff.

I can’t lie, it is certainly a very exposed way to start. A laptop, borrowed midi keyboard and a mic. But if it does go down in awkward flames, I can always skip the country, right? Right. Either way, it sounds like a cool place full of cool people, I’m real glad to be starting there.

Incidentally we’re also galavanting over to New York for a few days. Maybe I’ll sign up for an open mic in a dive somewhere and call it a North American tour?

Helloooooo america.

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*The Geek aside:
“what laptop rig??111?!?!?!!//’???”

Wellll, I bootcamped my macbook air with windows 7 and those charming asio4all drivers.

NI Upright, NI Mark 1, GSi VB3, Poise and Uhe Zebra are happily residing in Reaper.  Very similar to the studio rig, but with the Nord Stage, MFB Synth 2, Timefactor and Blofeld replaced with software.  After the normal tweaking and hair pulling required to chase down the crackles (Nvidia’s fault this time) it’s happily prancing at 44.1 and 64 samples on the onboard sound. Sounds and plays actually rather great. I was surprised.

I’m not really a ‘laptop on stage’ lover, but it’s great to have a set of tasty sounds hiding away in a thin little piece of aluminium. Lets see how it all ends up…
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