16th February 2012 - Release updates
Well, finally there is some actual news! The Blackbirds' Revenge will be out on Jozik in March, as part of a batch of four tapes. It will come in a rather lovely fabric sleeve (see the Jozik website for examples of this)! I should hopefully have some concrete news on an actual date (or rough date, at least) nearer the time.

There's some further news on some collaborative pieces, too. The Off Land version of 'May', 'May Second', should be appearing on Tim's Bandcamp page on... May 2nd, funnily enough. He's done a wonderful job reworking the track, starting with some deconstructed versions of the main chord sequence, before heading into a really beautiful climax section and eventually fading away again. Elsewhere, my collaborative work with Craig of Loose Link is complete, and will bear the name 'Rooms and Trees', under the cunning alias of Sturmazdale. He's taken a lot of my basic tracks and put them into a very different context, reflecting his current life in Melbourne. It's not quite as dark as the original Sturmazdale, A Room and The Tree - although retains a fair bit of the sinister mood. I'm carting that off to a couple of labels who may be interested in it. Oh, and Jerky Oats closed, finally, a couple of weeks ago, with great releases from Thom and Gregg. Quite relieved not to have to go through the stress of releasing stuff there again.

It's nice to finally have a release date for The Blackbirds' Revenge, as I've recorded pretty much all I can in Maidstone with my current equipment. I need to do some mixing, mastering and a lot of listening to work out what I'm going to do with my current set of compositions. I reckon the next one will follow close behind Blackbird, but given that album's 'transitional' status, that might not be such a big deal.



22nd January 2012 - Frustration, and other minor things
It's funny, seven years ago I found myself in very much the same situation as I am now, waiting for an album to come out, and feeling guilty for making progress on future music. The Blackbirds' Revenge has been added to the 'coming soon' section of the Jozik Records website, which signifies that things are definitely in motion, so hopefully that'll be out soon. The lead times on self-released physical stuff and net releases are so much shorter that I think I'll probably be going down the path of a combination of those in the future. Over the past year I've become increasingly turned off by the whole physical 'product' release thing. On a related note, I don't think Bullfinch Records is really going to be happening anymore. I might retain the name for my own releases though. Similarly, I shan't be compiling the second FSOLBoard album, Terminal Window 2; Craig (Loose Link) is putting that together though, and a couple of pieces from last year's unheard electronic-classical sessions will be appearing on it.

Elsewhere, my good friend Tim Dwyer is currently working on an Off Land version of my Second Thought track 'May', which will fall somewhere between remix and cover version and will hopefully be released this May. It's sounding great so far and I can't wait to hear the final thing! Speaking of Off Land, Tim recently produced a podcast for Stasis Recordings called Reconnection, which features my Obliquity track 'Erosion Reversed'. That can be heard at the Stasis site here, or on iTunes here.

I recently declined a slot for one of this year's Awakenings shows, as in all honesty I don't think the music I'm currently making would be at all suited to an ambient/electronic music gig (folky guitar stuff not prominent in the EM scene), and more importantly, I have no idea how I'd transfer it live without other musicians anyway! This is the last year Jez is doing Awakenings, so unless somebody takes over the reins, it could be the last chance to go to one of these gigs! So I'm hopefully going to be attending as many as possible, what with moving back to the midlands at some point.

Composition-wise, I've been playing with some more stuff on my 4-track. I took some speech from the television for one track which is sounding rather nice, on the only synth-based piece I'm really working on at the moment. No title for that yet. I've also updated the writing page with lyrics for some songs I'm working on at the moment. I'm not sure what the instrumental:song ratio will be in the future, although it'll still be more instrumental based I think. Listening-wise, I have been going through a Talk Talk phase recently. Their progression from 80s new wave to longform, experimental acoustic post-rock is incredible, their albums come highly recommended to anyone who isn't familiar with them. And I think that's probably enough ranting for now! :)



11th January 2012 - Recording update and website bugs fixed
I've given the site a quick revamp due to some errors people were having with the frameset. To tie in with this slight redesign, all of the Second Thought stuff has been moved to my Bandcamp site. You can even get your hands on a Safernoc CDr there as I've put the remaining few copies on sale.

I've recently started recording some of the ideas that I've been writing over the last few months. A lot of them seem to be based around guitar picking. Probably due to the fact that they've been written on my classical guitar, and strumming generally sounds shit on a classical. I could do with a steel string acoustic really, I think that would help mix things up. The 4-track has taken a bit of getting used to, but I'm teaching myself and getting there. Hopefully! I'm not making too many plans about releasing them, as I've lost interest in the music industry standard 'follow-up album' approach to recording - I quite like the way I used to make tapes of my music to give to friends, without worrying if they were 'proper' releases or not, so I'm hoping future releases will retain that casual nature. It certainly worked for Aphex Twin and Peter Broderick in the past!

A few months ago I sent my friend Craig - better known as Loose Link, who I've remixed in the past - a lot of the unreleased material from the modern classical stuff I put together last year, and he's working on making an album out of the session files, which will be interesting to hear once it's done. I'll keep you updated on that as the year goes on.

Been listening to a fair bit of stuff lately, going through a bunch of old albums I've got back recently, a bit of nice nostalgia there. My favourite album of recent times has been my friend Thom's fourth Jesse Conner album, Hard-A-Port. I've always liked his work, but this is the first album of his that has really bowled my over. There's a folky tinge to a lot of it that I'm hoping he continues with in the future. It's lo-fi in a subtle, natural sounding way, and the songwriting is astoundingly mature - in an intelligent, melodic way, rather than a boring one. It's a free download on my old Jerky Oats label and I highly recommend giving it a listen!

That's about all for now. Should hopefully have some details on The Blackbirds' Revenge in my next update. You can always follow my Twitter for more recording updates.



1st January 2012 - New website & new release!
Welcome to the new Ross Baker website! There are many changes, most of which reflect that this is definitely a new era, and not just Second Thought under a different name. The return of a colourful website (the first since the pre-cynical Vacuum Road Songs days), the 'writing' and 'images' sections, and first-person style are all in the aim of making this a personal site rather than just an advert for my music. Also, I've removed the 'news' page and replaced it with this blog, so I'll be filling you in on any changes and updates in here. This means I might be a little late reporting certain things, but it'll all be far more personal, which I think is a good compromise. Finally, the discography tidies up all the Second Thought material I endorse, alias releases and collaborations. And of course, my new material...

I hope nobody will be too disappointed to discover that some material from the A Room sessions will be appearing as part of a future release, and the album in its original format has gone. It was just all a bit cold on the whole, and I didn't enjoy it enough. That just leaves two releases.
First up is Revolution, which is a slightly silly experimental collage of material from the pre-Second Thought tapes. After some consideration I decided it would be perfect to release today on the launch of the website, as it works as a nice pair of bookends: material recorded before Second Thought, and the first thing released afterwards. You can read more about that in the Discography and download it for free from my Bandcamp page. Note: this does not sound like the material I'll be putting out in the future!
Secondly, and more importantly, is The Blackbirds' Revenge, my first proper album as Ross Baker. It's actually more of a transitional record, as it contains much of the ambient computer processing of Second Thought. You can read more about that, including tracklist and liner notes, here. It should be out on the Jozik cassette label soon, more news on that as and when it comes in.

I recently got diagnosed with Asperger's, which came as quite a relief as it's allowed me to make sense of a lot of things. The response from others has largely been of disbelief though. I think they should read through the older blog entries here, there is no better evidence for the utterly irrational obsessive thinking than those! That, along with a planned move back to the midlands, ties in nicely with this new site and the new musical direction (I recently got my mics and 4-track setup sorted, so it's back to lo-fi basics) in terms of a whole new era of my life. I'll end this blog in the way I ended my first Second Thought blog: the future's bright, the future's storange.

2011 journal >>