It’s been a long time. Of all the things that have happened since the last post in 2015, maintaining the blog was simply a lower priority than everything else. I’m kinda trying to getting back to writing again, so here goes…
Barkhausen Effects Is Dead
It almost goes without saying that the idea of designing and building guitar or modular synthesizer effects has been abandoned. I’d set up shop, bought a cool old Iwatsu oscilloscope and began designing what might have been a very useful Eurorack module, but upon following Scott Monk’s blog (who produces the amazing Count to Five guitar pedal), I realised that while design can be fun, a life of actually building hundreds of small electronic devices was not so intriguing after all. But I learned a lot and had some fun experimenting. Time to move on…
Long Live Barkhausen
Since then, Barkhausen (the band) has posted over 130 tracks onto our SoundCloud page, released our first album/CD The Length of Heaven, and just finished producing and mastering our second (called Johakyu, to be released as soon as I’m able to get the CDs pressed).
Here’s a link to a track from The Length of Heaven on SoundCloud:
which is also available as a digital download and/or CD order from our BandCamp page.
Both albums were mastered by Denis Blackham of Skye Mastering, who’s had quite a career, with over 4500 albums from artists including Brian Eno & David Byrne, Cocteau Twins, Fennesz, Antony & the Johnsons, Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, Eric Clapton, Black Sabbath, etc. He’s also been a real pleasure to work with.
Travels
In 2016 and again in 2017 I enjoyed playing with Kaetsu Takahashi in Tokyo (to be correct, just north of Tokyo, near Miyahara Station in Saitama) and a group of musicians in Munich: Anatol Locker, Ralph Fischer and Wolfgang Schmetterer.
Here’s our second gig from 2017:
The first Munich jam from 2016 is captured below:
with the second in 2017:
I can’t afford to travel every year like that, but do hope to play with them all again sometime in the future. It’s been a really great experience.
