japan part 2

through problems with my keyboard, and then my display not working on my laptop, and general busy-ness, i have let this blog get way out of date...

so, last time i wrote i was staying with marcos fernandes, an all-round great guy who, along with his lovely wife, hosted me for my first few days in japan. he also arranged a phonography show where the two of us performed alongside cal lyall, who organises shows at super deluxe - more of that later, and tetsuro yasunaga. the space we played in is an old bank building called nitehi space, which has been renovated as a really cool bar.

while with marcos we also went out recording, and i watched him play in an improv group and a stones-styled rock band, so got to see all sides of his musical talent!

on 5th august i headed back to tokyo to stay in shinjuku area, met with will long, miko and also takahiro yorifuji (hakobune) and koji obinata - all lovely people.
the following day i just wandered around, trying to find one thing and ending up finding another, helped by a lovely young lady called junko. then visited a small jazz bar called sakaiki in the evening, joining takahiro and koji there, and arranging a couple more concerts while in japan through takahiro.

on the 7th i had a concert at super deluxe, which is a huge basement bar with a great sound system. i played first at one of cal's 'test tone' events to a larger than average and most appreciative audience. i had to duck out early as i had to catch a bus to kyoto the next day, but it was good to see folk there and chat to adoring fans! ;-)

so a long trip to kyoto by bus the next day, and then a long walk to the hostel, which was in the north of the city close to nijo castle. i dumped my luggage, hit a 7-11 for some food - something i will come back to in a bit - and had a shower.
i mention 7-11 because food is actually quite expensive (for me, being from uk) in japan. however, all the convenience stores sell rice balls for anywhere between 100 and 150 yen (£1-£1.50) and also bento's which cost around 400 yen. much healthier than what you'd normally find in a convenience store in most other countries...
once the sun went down i went out wandering with my recorder, got a bit lost, found my way, got back to the hostel and slept very well thanks.

the next morning i had to move hostels and checked in to the 'tomato' near the main bus and train station. wandering the city once again, visiting various shrines and other historic places, i also went to the 'manga museum' - for anyone who doesn't read japanese, heed this warning - don't waste your money going here! it's just a manga library really. it was good to see some of the old manga books, but the english section is very small, the french one smaller, going down through korean, spanish and a couple of other languages where the collections were miniscule!
that evening, in the hostel, i met jenny logico-cruz, a performer from manila in the philippines, who was in kyoto studying noh theatre and invited me to her recital the following evening...

so the next day i visited the kyoto art center, as i have previously applied to participate in their residency program and been unsuccessful. i met with the residency coordinator - whose business card i inadvertently washed with a shirt - and chatted about the possibility of a residency there. and also visited meditations record shop - which is definitely worth visiting for those of you who like vinyl and experimental music.
then i attended the recital and the noh theatre, which was really fascinating. i enjoyed the stylised actions and delivery, as well as the music. jenny was great in her performance - much more intense than i'd imagined she would be!

on 11th i took a train to osaka, and then a tram to the hostel, which turned out to be in sakai, which is actually another city!! it was nice and quiet there actually, and small enough to walk around in one day. i got some nice recordings in the park there and around the dockland area.
the following day i visited the castle in osaka, which was great anyway, but i also got to watch some kendo for around an hour - fantastic. again the sounds and the ritual were fascinating. i also visited nu things, the club/bar that i was performing in the next day. then back to the hostel to chat to the guys there.

on 13th i moved from the hostel i was in to a capsule hotel in the centre of osaka - which proved fun as i had booked into one that was nowhere near the one i had found on my map, so through being helped by various postal workers and hotel managers, who spoke little english, and then visiting a strange internet/manga bar, i managed to find the right place. i then met with another lovely young lady, aya, who showed me around the city a little and introduced me to okonomiyaki (a kind of omelet or pancake) and takoyaki (octopus balls).
then a quick dash to nu things to set up and perform, alongside yousei and tomohito matsumoto - both excellent guitarists and nice guys! it was a small but intimate crowd, and i even got asked to play more when i had finished my set!! thanks to the other musicians and junya for a pleasant evening.

on the 14th i headed back to tokyo on the bus, which because of trains not running took 4 hours longer than it should have, so basically i spent the whole day on the bus...
which meant the following day i was a mess, so took it easy, wandering around the akihabara area, and then meeting with hiroki sasajima, sawako kato and takahiro once again for a delicious meal of sushi and radish tower, washed down with some japanese black beer - another very pleasant evening!

i'm going to stop there, as if anyone is reading this they may need to do the same. i'll be back soon with the second half of the month...

china - korea - japan

apologies those of you who actually do follow this blog, i have been really bad with updates!
i will update for the remainder of july in journal form as there is much to write...

8th july - early start, train to shanghai, negotiate shanghai subway and find mcdonalds i am directed to to find their internet service is not working. thankfully i have my friend josie's phone no. so borrow a young lad's phone and call her. we meet,drop off my stuff and head out to visit the pudong area. as i said before, shanghai is so different from beijing, all high rise and bright lights!

9th july - i visit people's square and the contemporary art museum, recording general city sounds, then later josie and i go for amazing dumplings in a place local to her apartment.

10th july - visit rockbund art gallery - very cool 1920's building with good exhibition of paola pivi work. meet top chinese sound artist/musician yan jun at the swatch art peace hotel where he is artist in residence - amazing high end hotel - i immediately decide to apply for a residency also! we meet with some more local musicians called zuzhi, go for food, then are also met by my old friend lin zhang. very good to catch up with him.

11th july - meet with josh atkin,a brit who has been based in shanghai for a couple of years, and we have a delicious noodle soup and chat about music and life. i return to josie's to tool up for the concert, then meet yan jun to perform with him in someone's living room. the concert is great, with us playing through headphones for the gathered audience. quite a challenge to play in this way, but rewarding, and fun. then we all head to a street barbecue place which is, as you will guess, really good!! thanks to yan jun for inviting me to join him. it would be a pleasure to work with him again...

12th july - an attempt to find a gallery run is thwarted by heavy rain and general uselessness on my part! so i wander around a huge shopping mall while it pours down and then once the rain stops i head west to some alleyways and quiet areas of shanghai.

13th july - i haven't mentioned how hot and humid shanghai was while i was there, so the friday was a relaxed affair, catching up with admin and making the most of joies's aircon! i have to thank josie so much for her hospitality - i really appreciate you having me stay! and i hope one day i can return the favour!!
mid-afternoon i headed to the main railway station to meet lin and his wife, and we traveled to a town called hangzhou together. although only an hour or so away, i realised how easy i had it in the bigger cities. it became very obvious that very few people in china speak english... the hotel i was in had only one member of staff that had any english at all and his was really limited!

14th july- lin comes to meet me at the hotel at 5am and we embark on an early morning trip to record the (much quieter) sounds of hangzhou. we hire bikes and explore various parts on the outskirts of the city, capturing some good stuff and generally hanging out. by early afternoon we are flagging so head back to our respective beds and sleep. i am invited to lin's in-laws for the evening for a meal so head out in the heavy rain around 7pm to try and get a taxi - we had already had problems getting one in hangzhou when we arrived and me being a foreigner (because of the language problem, not racism!!), and the weather, made it impossible to get any to stop for me, so eventually lin came to collect me. we had a lovely evening and the food was incredible! and visiting a couple of pubs afterwards where live bands playing odd choices of cover versions completed the evening nicely!

15th july (happy birthday to my bro) - i leave the hotel around 11am, and wander around hangzhou for the next 8 hours, just exploring and recording. a really nice, hot but relaxing day.and witnessing countless newlywed (or soon to be wed) couples having their photographs taken in any piece of parkland. very strange. then back to shanghai.

16th july - fly to seoul, korea. i am met by  ryu hankil and my brother carl, who flew in 8 hours or so earlier. we drop bags off and then go for (delicious!) porkrib barbecue and soju! a perfect start to my visit to korea!

17th july - carl and i wander around the local area, finding our bearings, trying to find a streetmap and good places to eat where they have picture menus or menus in english. this didn't last as there are not too many in the area we were staying in. i should mention, we were housed in the mullae art center, which is a fantastic place to be and thanks hankil for arranging!

18th july - we visit the cheonggyecheon palace for a few hours and then try and find the folk flea market, which takes forever to try and then we just stumble across! i buy a replacement violin (possibly) bow for a couple of bucks so it was definitely worth finding!!

19th july - meet hankil, visit art center nabi, then head to an area of seoul that has lots of alleyways, gallery shops and coffee shops - quite a gentrified area that is good to wander around, then to a building that houses a music market, so you can buy any equipment you'd ever need - i bought some much needed rosin for the bow... we then meet with ji-heun, who is best friends with my buddy soo in bristol, and also sungah, ji-heun's sister, and we go for some more amazing food and then tea afterwards. and these lovely ladies paid for it all! thank you so much!!

20th july - carl and i head to the museum of contemporary art, which is surprisingly far out and takes ages to get to - unfortunate as i had to return to the art center to prepare for a concert that night. this only left us around 45 minutes to actually see the place. plus i had developed ahead cold through forgetting to turn off the aircon the previous night. things got a little tense, but we worked through it... the concert was hosted by jin sangtae at his space 'dotolim' - an apartment, but a great, intimate space. and we had a good sized audience who seemed to enjoy the show. sangtae, hankil and i performed two sets as a duo, the second of which worked much better than the first i feel... then out for more great food and soju! a shame my headcold stopped me enjoying a longer night out, but i was exhausted way too early...

21st july - a brief coffee with hankil and then we head to the north seoul tower to try and catch the sunset, which we miss completely! we do go up in the tower however, which has amazing views across the city, but strong lighting inside the tower does detract somewhat from that...also, because of a massive queue for the cable car to the top, we decide to climb the hill to the tower, going the wrong way at one point. hard, hot work, but kind of fun, and just as hard on the thighs coming down!

22nd july - travel to mokpo in an attempt to visit jeju island. we get to the ferry terminal to find we missed the only ferry on a sunday by about 3 hours! so we check in to a motel very close to the terminal and head out to explore a rocky outcrop close to where we stay. we see the sun set from the top, then head into mokpo for something to eat. details of what i actually did eat in korea are sketchy as for some reason i didn't write them down, and half the time didn't know what it was called anyway - apologies for this - it was all great though!!

23rd july - travel to jeju by ferry and then check in to a hostel really close to one we had booked, but way cheaper! only one bed, but fortunately there's a mattress i can roll out to sleep on on the floor. i don't have a problem with sharing a bed with my bro in principle, but when he kicks me in the night i'd rather not!! ;-)

24th july - we walk in the hottest part of the day once again to find the bus terminal and visit the seongsan ichulbong crater to the east of the island. it's so hot and the climb to the crater is strenuous, but thankfully not too long. and nicely breezy up top! on our return to jeju city wehave a problem with not being able to order one meal between the two of us, as had have done countless times before, so end up in a great little place where i try dog soup for the first time. and it's actually pretty tasty!

25th july - visit to halla mountain to try and visit the huge crater there, but as we climb, knowing it's an 8-9 hour round trip,we see signs that tell us if we don't reach a certain point of the mountain by 1pm we can go no further. we continue up, then take a steep side path to a smaller crater where i get some nice photos and hydrophone recordings and we eat lunch on the bank of the crater lake. a round trip of around 4 hours back to the bus stop, we realise to do the whole climb would have been really hard!

26th july - back to seoul by ferry and then 5hr train journey, taking in the scenery.and back to the barbecue place hankil took us to the first night!

27th - an easy day wandering around the gallery area, which is pleasant, if a bit touristy...and then one more helping of dog soup, this time much more heavy on the dog meat. the regulars seemed really impressed we were there, eating dog and drinking soju...!

28th - visit seoul musuem of art (sema) which has some nice stuff (marred by an awful audio tour!) and where i saw an amazing film: 'the cloud of unknowing' by ho tzu nyen. find it and watch it! time for the second concert in seoul, this time at lowrise, an abandoned workshop space perfect for these type of events!
the evening was a great success, with all the artists playing very different styles that complemented each other, although the high volume of the preceding acts happened to affect my performance so i played very softly (for once!). carl and i stayed up drinking soju until it got light, and then slept until mid-afternoon the 29th! we did venture out around 6pm with a new artist in residence, debbie ding from singapore, and had a chicken rice soup that has a whole chicken in it! perfect for a hangover!! it caused us to sleep further, then go out and drink a few beers outside the local gs25 convenience store!

30th - carl leaves seoul at 9am - sad to see him go,and it felt totally weird then being there without him! i headed to the art centre at changdong for a meeting with curator heejung park and also got to spend time with tao, a slovenian artist thereon a residency who had also performed at lowrise on 28th. then a meeting with hankil and soojung at art center nabi to discuss my possible return to seoul in the future. i left them after an hour to meet once again with ji-heun and sungah, and then when hankil joined us we went for dumpling soup. once again great to see them all and a perfect end to my visit.thank you all for everything!!

31st - fly to japan, chatting to a very interesting officer of the us army all the way there. amazing how you have expectations of someone like that and they totally blow you away by their liberal views and opinions of their own government.... arrive at the capsule hotel that is to be my home for a night and explore the asakusa area, firstly with camera and then with recording gear. funny things, capsules, because they are basically an enclosed bunk bed! not bad at all really!

1st august i head to yokohama where i meet with all round great guy marcos fernandes, who is currently hosting me. more soon...

China - part one

so the show in phnom penh, cambodia was a little disappointing, especially after the great shows in vietnam. the venue was good, a german run arts house with regular events and screenings, however as i started to perform, so a bunch of chatty expats came in and just talked through the whole set. there were moments where i was going to move aroundthe space more to engage them, but somehow i knew they just werenot going to be quiet and listen... which was proven when beat poet antonio pineda joined me to read some of his works to 'musical' accompaniment. he got louder and louder to rise above the chatting, which of course then drove people away... a great shame, but then there will always be bad shows to balance out the good ones! after the show we went for drinks and i ended up staying out until daylight (no idea what the time was, as you will recall my phone was stolen in hanoi and that is my only means of timekeeping...). so for the whole of my last day in cambodia i slept off a hangover!

on the 1st july i got a taxi at 6am to the airport to fly to china. i still had no idea what was in store for me when i got there, but found my way out of the airport easy enough, changed some us dollars easy enough and although slightly ripped off by a taxi driver, got to my hostel. here i faced the prospect of sleeping in a room with 5 other smelly blokes or 3 so took the latter. i set up bed on a lower bunk, met a somalian guy wh was staying there for a year to study and a chinese guy who had no english but was super friendly.

wanting to venture out and explore, i asked at the desk if they had a map but was told they only had one in chinese. then of of the guys behind the desk asked why,so i explained i wanted to just wander around, find some food but not get too lost, and he offered to take me on a walk around the area, which was awesome. he showed me to a really cheap noodle place - a bowl of noodle soup and a bottle of coke came to 160rmb, or £1.60 roughly... then we wandered along nanluogu hutong, which is a kind of touristy alley, but has some great bars and snack places. and found me a map, which cost 80rmb, which apparently was also too expensive.

2nd july i wander around the city the same way as i went the night before, which would be west from the hostel, but then headed south from the landmark i recognised from the night before, the drum and bell tower. from there i headed to the forbidden city and walked around the west side of the perimeter until i got to tiananmen square. i should now mention the heat - it was around 35 degrees C. i was melting! and i could see most other people were too.always reassuring! from there i wandered up a street that i discovered was one i was going to try and find through the week, which has at least two massive bookshops with english language books in stock. i had finished martin amis's 'the information' - which is a great read by the way - and needed another travel book. i eventually plumped for the latest david mitchell. i took it very easy that evening as far as i can remember, having walked quite a distance and been roasted all day...

the following day josh feola who runs xp with his girlfriend lulu came to meet me and we visited the venue. a really nice space - i advise anyone who is traveling through beijing, and wants to perform, to play there! i looked over the place and found a few objects that i could possibly use in my performance, and then headed back to the hostel to meet another expat, brad seippel, who i met through his sister michele (whom i met at the mcneill street pumping station festival in louisiana last year). brad is also a musician, and we chatted music over food, heading back to xp to catch a concert in the evening. first up was a guitar and iphone duo playing trancey rock in the vein of spacemen 3, whose t-shirt the guitarist happened to be wearing. and then a guitar and bass duo with drum machine followed. all loud and pretty good, but for me too much use of loop station!

on the 4th i had to get up pretty early as i had a trip booked to the great wall. i was with a great group of people- 2 from the uk of nigerian descent, 2 from hong kong and 3 turkish guys who were hilarious. we were taken to a jade factory (and pushed to buy stuff), the ming tombs (or one of them), the great wall (one of the steepest parts - a solid 45 minute climb again in the midday heat, but good to do), lunch (which was pretty good and varied), a silk factory (where we were pushed to buy stuff), the bird's nest building (where we pulled up on the side of a road not very near to the building at all), a tea house (where we were pushed to buy stuff - and at this point the turks got really angry and stormed off to get a taxi back to their hotel!) and finally a tibetan health centre for a foot massage (and yes, once again pushed to buy stuff!!). it was a fun day out and i should have got contact details from the guys that were left on the trip as we all got on really well. i got back in time to have a wee lie down and then headed to xp once again to catch a fantastic violinist and an interesting guitarist, but again the loop pedal was very much in use...

the next day brad came to meet me, as i would be staying with him from that day, and had the afternoon off, so we dropped off my luggage at his place and then visited the temple of heaven to explore with microphone and camera... we were there a couple of hours, then headed out to the end of a subway line to see what there was out there. we found quite a poor area that suddenly turned into a demolition site, but with people still living in it... i did attract a little too much attention, recording the resonance in some holes in a concrete block, but generally people were friendly. i don't think many foreigners go to that part of town. we must have been walking for around 6 hours all together, so when we got back, and faced the prospect of going to xp once again,but having the added fun of it raining, we decided to call it a day and rest.

on the 6th i made preparations for my performance in the evening , and then headed to the forbidden city, to go inside this time. i don't think i have seen so many people in a place, except maybe in a stadium. it was incredible! because the site is just huge, but there were people everywhere! it was an ominous, gloomy day which i think helped the ambience of the place. oh, and i had my first 'tea girl' experience. a pretty girl approaches the single male foreigner and asks lots of questions, stating that she is learning english and wantsto practice. she will invite you to go and have a cup of tea with her. if you accept, you will have a nice chat over a cup of tea, and then be charged something like £200 for it! well folks, i didn't fall for it, you'll be glad to hear...

so, to the concert. li jianhong started the evening off with some fine noisy guitar gnashings, and then his wife vavabond played a subtle glitchy set using a light sensor on an iphone and laptop. i played my more recent set,with recordings from australia, argentina, cambodia and vietnam, using sound exciters on the stairway and a microwave to play sounds through them, plus grinding sea shells and getting some nice abrasive sounds from a metal dustpan. we also played a collaborative set between the three of us, which was nice, but i feel the solo sets were much better.

we met up with a friend of brad's called michael, whom i had met briefly earlier in the week over donkey burgers, and we had beers a plenty and great food until around 4am - as seems to happen after my shows!

the following day was definitely an easy one, not walking too far, catching up with emails, and then heading out to catch brad's concert that evening. we grabbed some awesome dumplings before the show, and then hung out with another american expat, also called michael as well as a scot, mary. brad's set was really nice, combining abstract electronics with pop tunes and a traditional instrument called a pipa. he was supporting a chinese 3 piece pop band who were very good at what they do and great fun, even playing covers of boney m's 'daddy cool' and calvin harris's 'i get all the girls' but changing it to 'i drink all the beers' - all the more arresting by it being sung by a very sweet looking young chinese lady.

a late night was not on the cards - although i think we still didn't get back until 3am - another meeting with michael #1 and his girlfriend, barbecue chicken and more beer... however i had to get up early to catch a 09:20 fast train to shanghai. following my friend josie's directions i arrived at the metro station closest to her place and then found none of the cafe's including mcdonalds had working wifi, so i had to ask 3 people if i could borrow their phone to call my friend! i got through, she met me, and after dropping the luggage once again we headed out to the central area of pudong to get something to eat and have a walk around.

Shanghai is a very different city from beijing, with a number of different centres and many more high-rise buildings - it seems a much more modern city, but i think i have to explore more....

Goodbye Vietnam - Hello (again) Cambodia

this will possibly be the last update for a couple of weeks as i am not sure which sites i can access when in china (1st-16th july).

following my phone theft in hanoi i pretty much stayed in the local area, working on a new piece for the performance at atk using recordings from argentina, australia, cambodia and vietnam. i did meet with luong hue trinh once more -we attended a pretty awful contemporary dance show at the youth theatre, and then went for some pho cuon (i think that's how you spelll it) and some other kind of noodle that is almost like tofu, deep fried and delicious! a lovely evening - thanks trinh.

and the next day i met with trang nguyen and her friend for lunch - more gorgeous noodles and beef -again no idea what  this dish is called. maybe you guys can help me out here! trang is working with the onion cellar guys who arranged the concerts in hanoi and saigon for me.

so the concert began with me giving a short description of what is i do, and then i began to play, using sound exciters to play sounds from the back of the room as well as a little speaker device i bought in the market in hanoi.this little wonder takes micro sd cards and charges via usb -very handy for moving sounds around a room, and all for less than £10! the response to the show was great,especially as i think 99% of the audience had never been to this kind of show before...and then trinh took me to a little place run by vietnamese once again for some pork and tongue noodle soup.

the next day i caught a flight to saigon, visited the same are emma and i stayed in but found a place for $9 a night which was perfect. the lady running the place warned me of the thieves and prostitutes many times - what kind of a person does she think i am?? in the evening khuong (one of the onion cellar - the other being hung, but he's in london right now..) came to the hotel to take me to meet giang, who i was to perform alongside, at his family's restaurant. i can't even begin to discuss the food here as there was so much and it was all good!

another day of work and then an evening out with khuong once again to visit the venue, la fenetre soleil. we attended a music quiz where two french guys played the intros to songs and the crowd have to shout out the band/artist playing. as you can imagine, it got pretty rowdy, but it was good fun. i even got two right!

and then it was the day of the concert. we arrived around 7 and giang and i set up and briefly soundchecked, and all the while people were coming in, sitting down, chatting, eating... i started to wonder if they would actually stop and listenng to the show. and then it was upon me, khuong introducing me and asking people to be quiet, close the eyes and listen. and it went really well.the beginning wasn't noticed too much, but playing some loud rain sounds and moving the speaker and playing the venue's bell seemed to make people notice and concentrate more. i was definitely the calm before the storm, with giang starting with some abstracted beats and then filling the room with fuzz and feedback- a great set! and once again, we head out to a place no tourist would be likely to go and have some local delicacies like 1000 year old egg on deep fried rice - awesome!

at this point i'd like to thank hung, khuong, dougie at atk, trang, sebastien gesell for playing some great music at atk, giang, john at the word for his article that introduced me to the onion cellar guys, and especially trinh - you all made my last days in vietnam really special.

the day after the show i took the bus (at 9am) back across the border to phnom penh.arriving in the middle of the central market, i was taken by tuk tuk to the hometown hotel, where i am now. great big room with a fridge and aircon (which i have stopped using - maybe i'm used to the heat at last!). i visited the meta house, where i perform tonight, and met with nico who organised the show as well as antonio, a poet who i will be working with tonight... and today has been a lazy-ish day of wandering around, admin and preparations for the concert - wish me luck!

Vietnam through June

the overnight bus to ho chi min/saigon wasn't too gruelling, remembering back, but the reason for this will become clearer as you read on. we had the good fortune of meeting thien on the journey, who gave us a lit of foods to try, places to visit and his email address. and thankfully the bus dropped us really close to the place we were staying. a quick wander around made it clear we were in tourist central, but found a great pho restaurant just on the edge of the area.

during our time in saigon we visited the cu chi tunnels, which the viet cong used to hide from the americans during the war. a very funny guide and some eye opening sights (plus a very claustrophobic visit to one of the tunnels) made the experience very memorable. i also had a wander around alone to visit the modern art gallery, which really isn't very good - sorry saigon - but also watched the sun go down from the bitexco financial tower skydeck- beautiful!

that evening we met with thien, who took us to an area of town where we were the only whiteys to be seen, and had - wait for it - amazing food!! a strange but enjoyable folded omelette with beansprouts and prawns inside, and an even stranger but enjoyable rice flour and fish dish.

the next morning i headed to the mekong delta on a day trip that cost $7 - the tunnels trip was 4! - while emma met with thien again for breakfast. she then headed to da lat to find us a cheap place to stay. so i visited a coconut candy making place, where i also saw  group making rice paper, a riverside village and took a smaller boat up the narrower waterways. oh, i also had my finger shoved into a honeycomb covered with bees - pretty scarey but escaped being stung, and the honey was incredible!

on arriving back to saigon i caught a bus to da lat to meet with emma. my bus was cancelled so i had to wait another hour for the next one, meaning i got to da lat at 2am.thankfully he was waiting for me at the bus station, with all the local homeless people it seemed.we caught a taxi into town, giving a lift to another traveller - eric from seattle.

the hotel we were in hired scooters soo we got one of those bad boys the next day and headed to a mountain range called liangbang, where we hiked up the first part and had lunch in a tiny little cafe/restaurant run by some locals (and i recorded a rope bridge with contact mics), and then on to datanla, one of the waterfalls to the south of da lat. in the evening we met up with larry, a guy from los angeles that emma had travelled with to da lat. we also managed to catch up with eric once again, hiring scooters then next day and visiting various temples and a gorgeous lake,  before getting a bus to danang.

this was a bus journey of around 14 hours, with very little leg room and no space for rucksacks so didn't get much sleep on that one! and when we left the bus, we were supposed to have a shuttle service to our hotel, but the guy took one look at the address and told us to get a taxi! when we did get to the hotel, it was actually rather pleasant, and a stone's throw from a gorgeous - and empty - sandy beach. i'm not a beach person, but it was really nice to go and swim in the warmest sea i have ever been in and sit with a cold beer in the sun.we could only manage a short time however as it was sooo hot. after a siesta we went out around 6 to get some food and the beach was absolutely full of people and scooters everywhere!

escaping danang the next day on a scooter - where we were was practically a building site surrounding the street we were on -we saw the caves and pagodas of the marble mountains which were amazing, nd then to where everyone else seemed to go, hoi an. this is a nicer looking town than where we were staying in danang, but the beach nearby was nowhere near as nice.

catching a bus to hue in the morning meant we were there by lunchtime, so took a wander around the citadel, which was fun as the map we had didn't cover that part of hue! i think itwas in hue that i had my first western food of the trip - burger and fries -  and it was gorgeous! i realise i haven't mentioned the food too much until now - but i think it's because pretty much everything i have had in vietnam has been great, and i'd have a hard time singling out the best meals! one was a fresh grilled fish in danang, in a crazy big outdoor place where all the locals were having family meals or getting drunk!

the following day, the 17th, we hired a scooter once more and visited ming mang tombs. now up until this point i also haven't mentioned how pretty much everyone who offers to help you here then expects some money in return. ladies will show you around a cave or a temple and then hold their handout or just ask for money - and will tell you if it's not enough!on the way to ming mang a lady stopped to help us and then tried to lead us to her village rather than the tomb! it was weird!

and while we were at the tombs we parked up next to a small cafe, so felt we should buy a drink when we returned to the scooter. when asking how much it was we were told a coffee and a sugar cane drink cost 90,000 vnd - $4.50 or £3. seems cheap right? well you normally pay around 20,000 vnd for a coffee so no, not really cheap for here...we then discovered our front tyre had a puncture and so at one point it looked like we would be pushing the scooter 11km back to hue!! thankfully one of the locals stopped and took emma to the nearest village where she waited for me to arrive and we had the tube repaired. phew!

we then decided to go ino the citadel once more for lunch, before catching our bus to hanoi. now remember i said our map didn't cover the citadel? well after eating we tried to head out the way we knew, but couldn't because of a one way system. cutting a long story short, we drove blindly around and around the citadel, trying to find away out even, and eventually asking at 3 gas stations, finally escaping and arriving at our hotel with 15 mutes to spare before the bus arrived!!!

this was another14 hour journey, so we'd booked on a sleeper bus but we found our seats had been taken and the people in them wouldn't move, so we were at the back, right by the engine, and the seats are inclined at an angle with your feet beneath the person in front, and this wasn't big enough to put your feet in! basically one of the most uncomfortable journeys so far - and then we had a further 4hourson an overcrowded minbus to halong bay when we arrived in hanoi.

while in halong bay, which is gorgeous, we stayed on a boat. here we hung out with other tourists and were taken - en masse- to some caves and a floating village, then headed out to drop anchor in amongst the rocks. i won't dwell on negatives regarding this part, but there was once again the feeling that you were being ripped off all the time...

back to hanoi for a couple of lazy days before emma sets off home - and when she let i headed to atk where i will be performing on sunday evening, meeting dougie who runs the place,and trinh, a local musician whose music i am listening to right now on soundcloud - very nice! a couple of beers and some sticky rice wine and i was ready for bed, so headed back to the hotel. as i neared the place three girls rode by on a scooter, then stopped and two got off to offer me a few favours for money - i think you know what i mean. now i am still polite even when telling hookers to leave me alone, but did not realise as one was talking, the other had found a front pocket in my bag and stolen my phone!!

thankfully it was an old one i was traveling withso my current one didn'tget swiped, but of course i then had to report the theft to orange and get the sim card blocked - at 1am - after beer and sticky rice wine. all done though, and even found i have stored all my contacts on my current phone's memory card so although annoying, not a great loss...

The last two weeks in Australia - part 2

realising i have much more to tell, i have split this post in 2.

managing to get back to castlemaine in the early hours of the morning on saturday 26th may allowed me to do some much needed laundry in the morning,and then go and set up the installation ready to run from 2pm. although the show ran for 4 hours, i only received a couple of visitors that day, but the ones who made it stayed and enjoyed it. eamon also came on the saturday to have a listen and try out some ideas for the performance on the sunday. on the way back to the house i was staying in we stopped in to selvi's curries to get a take away, tried some of the food before buying, and then were invited to eat in the restaurant, which was a huge room with an open fire that was very welcome... for anyone visiting castlemaine, try it out!

the next morning we all met up at the icu at 11am to set up the sound system and sound check for the performance, which was scheduled for 5pm, then packed way as much as we could to run the installation from 2-4pm. this time i had quite a few visitors, and most then stayed for the performances. i started off, with a precomposed piece using various tones and drones captured in the space,and then used various objects, moving around and within the audience. i was then joined by lizzie pogson, who performed with a combination of sounds from the local area and japan. a very pleasant, nicely paced set. next up was tarab, creating vibrations through a plate attached to a wire mesh that makes up one side of the space,and then taking a signal from the mesh using contact mics and playing that back into the room. again nicely paced and a good use of space. tarab was then joined by jacques soddell for the short overlap crossover characteristic of 'active crossover' performances, which worked really well, with jacques playing what was arguably the most musical set of the evening and closing the event perfectly. thanks once again to eamon, lizzie and jacques, as well as the guys of punctum for their support and hosting the event.

over the next few days i was kindly hosted by eamon, emily and helki in melbourne, which gave me a chance to catch up with friends teresa lane, simon hampson and sophie trebilcock, as well as get some tattoo work done by kat scarlet (http://katscarlettattoo.blogspot.com/), reworking one old and one new piece, and then creating a new one for me in return for a food hamper when i'm back in the uk!! i also managed to finally get my second japanese encephalitis vaccine injection and my visa to visit china in july. itall cametogether nicely at the end of my trip, and it was great to see everyone and spend time.

then on the 2nd june i flew to bangkok airport, where i waited for around 11 hours for my friend emma to arrive, then we had to wait a further 6 hours to fly to phnom pen, cambodia. once there we were taken to a nice hotel on the riverside. we spent 2 nights in phnom penh, visiting the killing fields on the first day and arranging our visas to visit vietnam, and explored a little of the city. as many people will be expecting, here comes the food bit - fish amok is awesome in cambodia, as is lok lak. and as with most places, the best food is in the cafes and restaurants that the locals eat in!

from phnom penh we got a bus to siem reap, where we are now. on the first day we visited the main temples, took it easy yesterday,and then did a couple of the remaining ones today. i also recorded the dawn chorus at angkor wat today which was great - i even managed to escape the surprisingly big crowd of people, all of whom had gone to see the sunrise, which because of cloud was not so impressive... then we traveled further out to banteay srey, visiting ta prohm afterwards - this was the best for me, with the trees and the temple becoming as one in places. many tourist groups and a huge restoration centre made it difficult to get around but we managed.

so now we wait until 12am when we get a bus overnight to ho chi min city in vietnam. more later!

The last two weeks in Australia - part 1

so it seems from the last post that i had not played the show in sydney by the end of it, so i'll start there... i invited kate carr to join me in the performance, so we played in the same style as the active crossover events, with kate starting, playing a solo set of nice musical parts combined with field recordings. i then joined her for a short collaborative section where both of us were unsure who was playing what(!) and then i continued solo. after playing a laptop set combining recordings from the trip so far, i then proceeded too move around the room grinding two pieces of concrete together that i had obtained from some workmen outside of serial space. the grinding sound combined nicely with some metallic tones i left playing and worked well in the room. we had a nice appreciative crowd and the guys of the now now who organised the show were great. and of course it was a pleasure working and hanging out with kate.

heading back to melbourne the next day, i managed to catch up with anthea varigos, who also goes under the name 'chopin's lovechild' and who i have many mutual friends with, as she used to live in bristol. very nice to meet her after all this time as well as her fella and housemate, then had to run to the airport, fly into melbourne (to an airport waaay out of town called avalon), get a very expensive bus back to southern cross station, get a train to castlemaine that was delayed for over an hour because of an attempted suicide on the line, meet jacques soddell at castlemaine train station, take his speakers and connectors to the icu and then try and relax in preparation for setting up the installation over the next few days. thanks once again to jacques for the loan of all the equipment.

for the whole of the week i was in the icu space composing with my recordings and combining them with the compositions supplied by my 3 collaborators (lizzie pogson, jacques soddell and tarab/eamon sprod), working out speaker placement (6 active speakers), and also using my sound exciters once again to play sounds through resonant objects. it was great to have the time to get it all working without too much pressure. during that week i was also fortunate enough to have (a gorgeous african) dinner in melbourne with eamon, camilla hannan and lawrence english, who was in town for a couple of days.

also during that week i met rex hardjadibrata, a sound artist and musician who has recently moved to castlemaine, and it turned out lives really close to where i was staying. i had a most pleasant evening with him and his wife katey - thanks for dinner guys, and the records - haven't listened to the vinyl but the cd is great!
and then the following night i was invited to bendigo to have dinner with jacques and his wife fran. again a very lovely evening and once again thank you! during my short tour of bendigo when jacques picked me up, we even saw kangaroos in a field close to his house - my first of the trip...


i ran the active listening workshop on the sunday, which was attended by a few folk but went pretty well - unfortunately the weather was a little cold so the blindfolded walk had to be a little shorter than i would have liked. then once again to eamon and emily's as i had to leave early for perth the next day.


part of my trip to australia was always going to be a drive through the outback in a campervan, seeing as much as i could and recording along the way. and friends had advised to visit the west coast as the landscape is very different there. i had 3 days before i had to be in perth again to perform, so drove up north to a town called geralton, and then headed inland for around 60km to a small town called mullewa. i had to then stop as i was really low on fuel, and it was dark - having been told my insurance was invalid if i had an accident driving in darkness i thought it best to stop! it's funny to think of it now but every single scarey movie i'd seen came to mind while trying to get to sleep in the middle of nowhere. and another thought that crossed my mind was that someone might see the camper and come and shake it as a joke to scare me!

thankfully i wasn't bothered by psychopaths or pranksters in the night. i did wake up just after dawn, got some fuel and then headed south east, trying to get to baladjie nature reserve, but having to stop close to the nearby town of warralakin, as i also was told not to drive on uncovered roads. this evening i managed to record the dusk chorus, with one bird even landing right in front of me and singing it's little heart out! a great moment. upuntil that point, i had only managed to record some sand blowing across a dune (which was nice btw) and some of the infamous western australian wire fences.


on the wednesday i had to head west as i had a performance scheduled at spectrum in perth, organised by cat hope. the evening went well, with an improvising trio playing first, all from different spaces in the gallery (the drummer was in the kitchen), then dr. nigel helyer presented some of his works, and i finished up, playing a 4 channel piece, and once again worked with the space,rattling and grinding some shells i had picked up on my travels during the previous 2 days. after the show i was taken into perth proper for chinese food and then stayed at cat's place the night - thanks for all cat!


after hanging out with cat's partner carlos in the morning i hit the road going south. this part of western australia seems to be more populated, and cultivated, so it took a while to get completely away from civilisation, but i got there in the end, sleeping in the greater kingston national park. here i got some nice recordings of kangaroos jumping around in the woods - lovely.


the friday was spent heading back to the airport to drop off the camper and fly back to melbourne. the plan was to get the last train back to castlemaine, which left southern cross at 23:45, however the combination of the plane taking off and landing half an hour later than scheduled, and then the luggage taking around 15 minutes longer than normal to arrive meant it looked like i would miss that train. speaking to the bus driver who was heading to southern cross from the airport, he suggested i take a taxi to one of the stops closer to the airport and catch the train from there. a tense taxi ride, with a driver who did not know where the station was, and neither did the satnav, we got there with 5 minues to spare... so i did manage to get back to castlemaine that night- or rather the next morning, so i could be there to start up the installation and greet any visitors to it.


to be continued...

Castlemaine - Brisvegas (Brisbane) - Sydney

just when you thought i'd be updating once a month, here's a quick update from sydney, where i am being hosted by my new friend and great musician kate carr and her partner tanya.

i had to leave the house in castlemaine around 7am on 10th to drop off the keys to the i.c.u. and then catch the train to melbourne, then got the bus to the airport and printed off my boarding pass. then just checking with one of the virgin australia staff found out there was something up with my flight, as i was booked to fly at 12pm and the pass said 3pm! on complainingi found my flight had been cancelledand although put onstandby for the 2pm flight, had to take the 3pm, which got to me brisbane around 5:15pm. a frantic taxi ride got me to the venue i was performing in at around 6pm. thankfully the excellent sound engineer was ready and we got soundchecked super quick. so th show kicked off at 7 and i played at around 7:10, tentatively at first and then hitting my stride and giving the merzbow fans some melody mixed with more gritty textures and tones! i hope they liked it, although i didn't have too many adoring fans worshipping me afterwards...cured pink followed me, with motors affixed to industrial ducts moving around the audience, and then settling into a gently throbbing spacerock section - nice. a short break and then the man himself (merzbow) proceeded to blast everyone with a caustic set of white noise that was actually a processing of a self-made tin pan instrument played most of the time with a pasta scoop! i sat on the floor to soak up the low frequencies, and made sure my earplugs were rammed in, but even with that precaution my left ear was ringing for a while afterwards!

following the show lawrence english, who kindly added me to the bill, masami and i went to eat dinner - salt and pepper tofu, a mushroom hotpot and steamed greens - delicious! we were then joined by andrew, the driving force behind cured pink, and as masami and lawrence are not drinkers, when they decided to call it a night, i headed to 'the brunswick' with andrew and a couple of friends. it seems this is the place to go on a thursday night, and once again karaoke was on the menu. some great performances, including a rendition of ac/dc's 'back in black' from a guy who looked like thursday night karaoke might be the only time he left the house, and amazingly men at work's 'down under'! seemingly without too much irony!! what a night!

i stayed in a lovely room at the judith wright centre, where the event was hosted, so the following day headed into the city centre to have a wander around. i actually ended up at goma museum of modern art and spent quite a bit of time there.

later on i met with lawrence once again for food (mexican, which was pretty good) and then hung around to see the concert he had arranged. a very nice night and met loadsof very nice people, including greg hooper,who i met the following day for a japanese gyoza lunch. yep, talking great food again!!

we then parted company and i headed to the train station to catch my overnight train (which turned out to be a 3 hour bus ride and then a 12 hour train ride) to sydney.

i must have got more sleep than i thought i had, because all yesterday i actually felt quite fresh! kate had her mum visiting so i killed 4 hours by walking around sydney, stumbling over the opera house within the first hour of being there! after a bit more meandering and a spot of breakfast (the most expensive bacon and eggs i think i have ever had) i met up with kate and tanya, had a spot of lunch and headed back down to the harbour to visit the art museum in sydney, mainly as they had marclay's 'the clock' playing. some really great work there, but only catching 15 minutes of the clock i realised i need to go back and see it for a longer period....

amazing thai food (crispy basil pork belly - mmmm...) and then a couple of beers and not surprisingly i slept really well!!

today instead of going back tothe museum, i headed to chinatown for lunch, darwin harbour for a coffee and people watch, and a walk back through an area of outdoor supplies stores looking for a replacement soft shell and not finding anything under $200 australian. i think i'll stick with the one i have...

Buenos Aires - La Plata - a 2 day journey + a lost day - Castlemaine

updates are going to be more infrequent as the trip progresses i have realised, mainly because i am flat out busy all the time it seems!!

when i last wrote i was preparing for the performance at alianza francesa in buenos aires with my good friends alan (anla) courtis, juan jose calarco and alma laprida. however i completely missed out the presentation i gave on wednesday 25th at the cia, where we had a room full to bursting of people who listened attentatively to my history, thoughts and work... thanks to florencia and julia at cia, alan and fabiana for making it happen. i had to leave very quickly afterwards with jj and alma to play for a radio station based in buenos aires, which was kind of fun although i couldn't hear a thing through the guitar amp monitor.

the following night i ran a listening workshop from my buddy fernando perales's house - i had 3 participants, which was actually the perfect number for the exercises we did. we spent some time listening to the street from different positions on the roof of the building, then visited a nearby square where the locals were playing what looked like skittles, then tried to record some small detailed sound in the streets of buenos aires, which at 8pm in the evening is a very difficult thing to do! thanks to fernando for setting it up, and he and his partner rosa for feeding me that evening!

the friday alan and i arrived early in the afternoon to set up for the concert, then he had to go to work for a couple of hours, and alma and juan jose then set up and sound checked. and it turned out we had a 'green room' where we had snacks, juice, water, and most importantly 2 bottles of wine! thanks to leandro of mamba for that - much appreciated! we had a good sized crowd, and played in a new configuration of the 'active crossover' method of working, so we all played solo sets of around 15 minutes, but overlapped - so juanjo played first, followed by alma, then me, with alan closing - with an excellent bit of screaming into a netbook! after this we hit a pizza place and i had my first proper argentinian pizza - delicious, but so think with cheese i thought i was going to have a heart attack while eating it!!!

saturday i was invited to fernando's once again, this time to try asado - which consisted of chorizo and blood sausage as an entree, and then a huge piece of pork and an even bigger piece of beef, with ribs, and roasted potatoes - absolutely amazing, and i could hardly move afterwards!!
and then alan turned up to take me to retiro (the main bus and train station in buenos aires) to meet jj and alma, and then we headed to la plata, a nearby city, to play in the back room of the great store 'mal de muchas'. jose de diego and cristian carracedo kicked off with sub-bass and scraping metal object on turntable action - a very nice 15 miniute set that entranced the audience, then the four of us once again played a solo set with overlaps session, with alma starting with great performative gestures, then alan blasting everyone's eardrums with white noise, then me and juan jose finishing up in his elegant understated way. i felt the energy was much better than the previous night, even though everyone else felt their set was worse...

and then the dreaded day arrived - i had not only to leave argentina, but also had a 50+ hour journey ahead of me... taxi to the shuttle bus, then to the airport in buenos aires, a flight to santiago, chile; a flight to toronto, canada; an 8 hour wait in toronto airport; a flight to vancouver; a 6 hour wait in vancouver; a flight to sydney, australia; a 4 hour wait in sydney airport; a flight to melbourne; a 2 hour wait in melbourne airport; a bus trip of around an hour and a half to castlemaine... then met by jude and krista of punctum, who showed me to where i am staying while here, and then the space i will be working in (icu).

the lost day in the title refers to me crossing the international date line so i actually arrived in australia a day later than i thought i would!

so far here i have explored the route to and from the house to the icu; been visited by eamon sprod (aka tarab); met another collaborator - jacques soddell - who will kindly be supplying the speaker system for the installation also; visited melbourne with eamon, where i met his lovely family, partner emily and daughter helki; played a show at tape projects alongside tarab himself, jesse scott & alice hui-sheng chang and tim catlin - a fantastic sunday afternoon - evening event that was a pleasure to be part of.
thanks eamon for everything!
and also got to catch up briefly with teresa lane, whom i met in tallin, estonia in 2009 when i was artist-in-residence at the polymer factory.

yesterday (7th may) eamon and i headed back to castlemaine - after some delicious indonesian food for lunch/brunch - to record more material in the icu for our performance and installation pieces. the highlight was a point where i was bowing a metal dustpan with a violin bow and eamon was doing the same with the large round base of a metal post, with a thin rod of metal, creating some incredible tones that bounced around and filled the space - thankfully we have both recorded it so will have to hear the results and maybe combine them!

today lizzie pogson, the fourth collaborator for 'active crossover: seedpod', came to castlemaine from trentham and took us to the dredger near maldon: http://www.maldon.org.au/attractions/DD.html which we had to clamber along rusty cables to get to, but was a playground for the three of us for a good couple of hours!! thanks lizzie!

on returning i managed to get my laundry done - i was completely out of underwear!! - and purchase the next travel book - 'the diceman', which looks pretty dark, but will be a good follow on from 'the adventures of sherlock holmes' which i have enjoyed over the last month of plane flights - although towards the end i couldn't help thinking 'surely you can see where this is going, watson.... even i can!'... still, i love the way conan doyle describes both holmes and 19th century london...

Valporaiso - Santiago - Buenos Aires

during my stay in valporaiso i was hosted by fernando godym and the tsonami collective - thank you all!, stayed with cynthia conrads - thank you cynthi! - and the workshop itself was hosted by the good people of balmaceda cultural centre - a special thanks to paola, plus sympathy as she lost her cat on my last day.

the city is a crazy, tumbledown place - very steep hills and obvious damage from earthquakes and housefires, but also a very welcoming place, with lots of good energy. it was much colder than i imagined it being, but not unbearable.

and the workshop itself went really well. the first day i ran the blindfolded walk and listening exercise, which caused some interesting discussions afterwards - everyone gets something very different from the experience, although always positive.

then fernando had a surprise radio interview for me to attend - thanks!! the presenter, ronald, was super nice though and made me feel very at ease, and had a good number of interesting questions.

thanks also to michel, one of the participants, who was visiting from santiago specifically to participate in the workshop. we had a walk around the city in the afternoon, round the docks and then up and around the hills back to cynthia's place.

the evening of the first workshop was my introduction to the local bars and nightlife - all work and no play, etc... so i got to try pisco, the national tipple of chile, which made for an interesting evening, leading us to end up at 'la mascara', a club that seems to play only music from the 80's from what i remember...

so things went a little more slowly for our second day of the workshop - i gave a demonstration of all the equipment i currently use to record sound, and then we took a walk to an old prison that has been converted into a cultural centre. it was a good place to record small sounds, as it is high in the hills above the city. we spent around an hour exploring the space and then headed back to balmaceda so everyone could play their 'favourite' recording of the day. some very nice sounds were captured by the team!

that afternoon i got to sample another chilean speciality, a dish called chorrillana - perfect for those days when you have been dragged to an 80's nightclub the night before...

the third day of the workshop i introduced the team to 'audacity' - a free composition program that is easy to use. i demonstrated the various editing techniques, some effects, and then let them get to work on thier own pieces. the results were very interesting, in that most of them were referential to the site and it's past.

we spent around an hour setting up the sound system for the concert in the evening and then took a trip over the mountains to a small beach town for a lunch of amazing seafood empanadas and then a nice walk on the beach where we bumped into ronald once again.

back to balmaceda, where i had a nice sized audience for what turned out to be a solo show - i was expecting fernando and a saxophonist to join me. we plunged the room into darkness and then i played a 4 channel piece that i am developing over the year. i also had a surprise up my sleeve - using a violin bow on an old metal pala (like a dustpan with a long handle), i moved around the audience, creating more sound movement and interacting with them and the space more.
i will thank previous collaborators john grzinich and jonathan coleclough, among many others, for leading my work in this direction...

the following day i took the bus with michel back to santiago, where i then met with musician paola lazo - we went for a coffee and chat and then i found that the concert i was to play there started at 6! i dragged all my luggage to the site of 'producta mutante', ervo perez's concert series. the events are run in a large room in a house, and the night was good and varied, with two guys playing droney stuff to begin with, then an improv trio, with me finishing up the night. once again i used a combination of recorded sound and objects, finding some small pieces of terracotta tile in a cup. i started to rattle some around in my hands, and then moved around the room with them - then gave some to audience members, motioning for them to continue to rattle them... i think i gave 6 people handfuls of tiles, all around the house, which sounded really nice and worked well in engaging the audience a little more.

rather than spend the night at ervo's sleeping in a room with two guys from cordoba, i ended up staying at paola's place. this was great as we hadn't had much time to chat and for me to hear her music.

many thanks once again to paola, and to ervo and his housemates for a brief but very nice visit to santiago.

on the monday i flew back to buenos aires to meet up with juan jose calarco for dinner - which ended up being the biggest piece of cow i think i have ever eaten! sorry for the vegetarians reading this, but it was incredible!

and yesterday i spent the day walking around the centro, trying to find replacement boots - my trusty magnums were falling to pieces! - and visit the auditorium that will host 'active crossover: buenos aires' on friday. a good sized space, although it seems i have to play from the stage, which i don't really like doing any more - we'll see what can be done about that... oh, and ended up walking to another city, avellaneda, through a mix-up with directions.

today i will revisit the city airport to reclaim my leatherman that i stupidly left in my backpack when flying to chile and make some preparations for the performance on friday using some sounds i recorded on the roof of the cia, where i'm staying.

Buenos Aires - Cordoba - Jujuy - Buenos Aires - Valparaiso...

ok, i'm going to try and keep this one as brief as possible, although it's been two weeks since the last update i think...

the last update was from buenos aires - i think i was there for one night before heading to cordoba on an overnight bus - possibly the best way to travel if your journey is 12 hours or so! so i actually slept pretty well and was met at the bus station by jorge castro, one of the organisers of the santo noise festival i was there to perform at. i was shown to the hostel i would be staying in (sharing a room with 5 20somethings who were all still in bed when i checked in at 11am!) and then taken to la cupula, the site of the festival. i met the group of yound musicians and artists who are now co-running the festival, going on a beer run with them and generally hanging out. i was also given a walking tour of part of the city by gustavo, which was nice - good to see a place rather than just a venue and lodgings!!

the show itself was good - a photo session (that i hope never sees the light of day...) and then 4 acts played - a guy playing guitar and electronics, juan castrillo and bianca (field recordings and nice visuals), axel pulgar (beats/dark electronica) and me. a really respectful and appreciative audience - it was a pleasure to be part of it!

i did actually manage to sleep in the hostel - i heard one roommate come in and go to bed around 3, but slept through all the others coming in - then had to wake up around 7:30 to go and meet juan jose calarco at the bus station. except he wasn't there. he'd got in early and gone straight to juan's place. i met them there and we spent a couple of days hanging out, listening to great music, planning our trip north.

so on 10th april we head to san salvador de jujuy, where juan's dad has a place we could stay. we spend an evening there and then head further north to yala, where juan's dad has another place we could stay. we tried to explore the termas de reyes - some hot springs nearby, but heavy rain stopped us going to far. that night we discovered the cooker wouldn't work, so had to build a barbecue/fire and cook pizza on it! by the time the pizzas were cooked i think we'd have eaten anything! pizza with a strong taste of woodsmoke and some hardly melted cheese on top is an experience you have to have once in your life!! after a second day of trying ot record around yala and getting rained on again, we decided to head even further north, this time to a hostel run by juan's uncle 'cookie'.

it was very beautiful at 'hosteria rural huasadurazno', which is set back off the main road quite a way, with the mountains rising up behind it, and we had the place to ourselves really. however, trekking up towards the mountains, the sky gets very dark and once again we get rain - this time a heavy downpour that doesn't last very long, although long enough to soak juan jose through once again (get a waterproof jacket!!), making his cold worse...

we explore the nearby village of uquia, which is a strange little ghost town that seems to be run by young children, and also spend a day in humahuaca, visiting the touristy places, the nearby hills (almost getting trapped on top of them), the market, many coffee shops and the hills once again.

on our last day in this most northern part of our journey we try to find a 'windmill' that has been spoken about for a few days. we visit a farm very close to uquia, where we climb the hills nearby once again, make some contact mic recordings, get tempted to record some beehives (me) and am advised not to (by juan and juan jose), and then try and record the animals and the farm's pond... which means entering a field that has all manner of animals, including two bulls and one young cow that has long horns and is apparently a little feisty.

so we are happily recording away, and then realise the farmer and his wife, who accompanied us into the field, have left us there. then the young cow decides to see what we're doing - sniffs around juan jose, who manages to escape the attention of it, meaning it then goes for juan. it actuallt started butting him with it's head, forcing him to climb out of the way up a tree! this sounds funny now, but at the time none of us wanted to mess with the cow, so i tried a couple of times to rescue juan's recording gear that was still on one side of the pond, but every time i went for it, the cow would show interest in me!

well, we managed to find the farmer and he got it to leave juan alone by chasing it off with a big stick - then we resumes our search for the windmill, which turned out to be a non-operational watermill. i had tripped while trying to save juan equipment, so my knee was killing me, juan jose was close to passing out with his sickness, so we decided to call an end to the trip and head back to san salvador, where we spent a night, and then juan jose and i got the bus back to buenos aires - a journey that took 22 hours...

back in buenos aires for 2 nights, getting a tattoo based on a design i had my friend alejandro calderon do for me while i was in residence at campos de gutierrez, and now i am in valparaiso to run listening and field recording workshops for the next three days. which means i now need to sign off and get some sleep!

Medellin - Cartagena - Buenos Aires

this post will be a little brief as i have around 30 minutes before i am taken to the bus station for yet another overnight bus trip - this time to cordoba...

the last few days in colombia were relatively uneventful really. the presentation went very well, although the audience was small. sound enthusiasts miguel isaza and his amigo alejo were present, as was felipe rodriguez whom i met at matik matik in bogota.

actually my spanish painter friend and i got a little worse for wear on the friday night (24th) and didn't end up back at the residency house until around 7am... ouch. saturday was spent just taking it easy as you can imagine - i think i continued to work on my website when i eventually woke up.

sunday mi amiga juliana collected me from campos de gutierrez and took me, along with her sister and friend, to an old family house her grandmother currently lives in which was around an hour's drive away from medellin. the house was absolutely lovely, as was the scenery, after lunch, juliana and i climbed the nearby hills to look out over the valley - breathtaking!

i spent the next few days trying to get a tattoo of a rose design alejandro has done for me, but the only tattooist who came recommended was busy until 9th april... so now i have to find a recommended tattooist here in buenos aires... if anyone reading this has any friends who have been tattooed in argentina and are happy with the results, please let me know!

i then took a trip to cartagena, on the invitation of juliana, who was working there for a few days, doing the make-up for a bikini shoot - i did offer to go earlier and help out but that never happened unfortunately... so we spent a couple of days lounging around in the very hot and humid city, the very hot (and for me dangerous as i got sunburned) beach and the rooftop pool of the building her uncle, juan, lives in.

so because of the sunburn, i did not go out in the sun too much after that but did enjoy the company of juliana and her family, an amazing beach resort i think called tierra bomba and generally just relaxing.

then on my return we ran around collecting my various bags of clothes and equipment, and then as i was checking in online for my flight to buenos aires i found i had inadvertentlybooked for may, not april! so i spent another day and a half in medellin, catching up with admin and again generally relaxing. and managed to rearrange the flight for a more acceptable time of day than 7am, for no extra charge, although it did mean three short flights through the night, so only 2 hours sleep before getting to buenos aires, where i thought i was going to be beaten up by everyone i met just for being british!! this hasn't happened of course, and is not the case - everyone is super friendly here and the city feels like one of the safest i have visited in south america!

i was met by alan courtis, who took me to the residency house i'm staying in while in buenos aires (centro de investigaciones artistas - or cia) and then we wandered around for me to get cash, then for us to get some lunch. i then had to sleep for a couple of hours in the afternoon as it had all caught up with me. at 8pm alan, alma laprida and juan jose calarco came to cia and we chatted music, etc. then went for peruvian food, which was fantastic, then to a kind of cool bar with really awful music, followed by a terrible bar with slightly less awful music. it was fun though!

so now i prepare for my overnight trip to a festival where the three artists above are not going now because of various issues, but i go to because i feel a commitment to my agreement to go. a shame as juan jose and i were supposed to perform as a duo and i was really looking forward to that. however i agree with his reasons for not going.

from cordoba i will however be travelling with juan jose to jujuy, which looks stunning and should be a fantastic place to record.

ha ha! not so short after all... ok, more in a week and a half!

Bogota - Medellin

My return to Bogota after a year was slightly marred by the continuing effects of food poisoning... but after meeting up with David, Camilo and Sebastian on Thursday evening for a rehearsal of sorts with the quad speaker system we were to use on Friday, I was ready for the concert.
Then one of the artists involved in the evening's events starting acting as if he was the star of the show - I don't know, maybe he was, but I find overinflated egos unnecessary and distasteful in my line of work as an artist... it's such a small field we inhabit as 'experimental' musicians or sound artists, why assume you're much more important than someone else?
I actually find this behaviour unacceptable in life generally...

To top things off, one of the speakers that was working fine during the rehearsal and the soundcheck before the show started to sound like a bowl of rice krispies when I played a really rather subtle mid-low frequency sound through it! It took the edge off any dynamic I tried to build during my set, which is a shame. the spatialisation of the piece worked well though. Of all the sets, I thought David's was the best - nice textures and tones, good pace and development - well done sir!
Afterwards we hit a burger place - a test for my stomach and one that it passed!! :-)

Saturday I met with someone very special to me from my last visit to Bogota, Ms. Ana Gabriela Jimenez Devia. It was great to see her and catch up. Then a quiet night in watching the first Downey Jr/Law Sherlock Holmes movie, which I actually really enjoyed! Inspired by this, I bought a copy of 'The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes' from a bookshop in La Candelaria to read on the next few flights I'll be taking!

Sunday i was collected by David and Lina to go for tapas and sangria, and then after visiting David's parents - lovely people! - I was dropped at Matik-Matik for Sunday evening's concert with Ana Maria Romano. Ricardo Arias and one of his students joined us and opened the evening, playing sound making objects and processing the sounds - and then Ana and I performed a crossover set, so I began solo, was then joined by Ana, and then she played solo. I have to say, even though i was performing as part of it, the piece was gorgeous! Ana and I have very different approaches to making music, but they worked together really well! I look forward to working with ehr again at some point in the future...

Monday i flew back to Medellin, was collected at the airport by my make up artist friend Juliana and we visited a couple of the pueblos around Medellin. Very nice to see what lies outside the city.
And Tuesday i visited Casa Tres Patios to discuss coming back to Medellin for another residency early next year...

So now, safely back at Campos de Gutierrez, I prepare for a presentation this evening at Plazarte and continue to compose the piece I have created here.

Campos de Gutierrez/Medellin - Bogota

after checking where i had got to in my last post, i can continue... so from the 2nd march until the 10th work commenced on a couple of possible new methods of playing sounds in a live context, or maybe an installation. the main idea is nothing new - sound being played through resonant objects - but i also tried to fabricate a directional speaker using a huge beer can that held 8 smaller cans, lots of corrugated cardboard and a dayton sound exciter (a speaker driver that allows you to play sound/music through a solid object or surface).
oh, and also on the 3rd we were invited to the space where we were going to exhibit for a party. this was a fundraiser for a group of artists who needed to raise money to go to costa rica, and it worked! they had quite a crowd and a really great band. needless to say, my britishness came to the fore and i was unable to dance at all, even when drinking heavily! the trouble is colombians are just born dnacers - i was unable to even try as i would have looked like the flailing uncle at a wedding even if i could dance, and those of you who know me know i can't!! ah well, i met some lovely people anyway!

back to the subject - sounds were gathered for a few days at campos de gutierrez, and also continuing experiments with the sound exciters, playing 'wooden' sounds through the body of an old guitar and 'metallic' sounds through another beer can, although this was to be replaced with an oil drum i had spied at plazarte (the exhibition space). the homework paid off - once i got to the space to install on the friday, everything went according to plan. the two objects and the house speaker system were all i needed to play a multi-channel piece on the opening night. i also had plans for a small brass bell and violin bow - more later...

on thursday a young artist called miguel izasa from medellin visited us (well, me) at campos de gutierrez, and for someone so young, he's really focused and knows exactly what he's doing with sound and recording... we spent the afternoon walking up the mountain to the village of santa elena, recording when possible, but mainly chatting about sound/music/art/etc.

saturday came around and things came together on that day, with some of the artists working through the night on their installations. and the main thing was that some grass that an artist called chris wolston had ordered turned up and was installed in one of the open squares in the space. the down side of this was, as the grass was being installed, the door remained open and someone got access to the building and stole my buddy alejandro's computer (with all of his residency work on it) and projector. :-(
an absolute shame and it really couldn't have happened to a nicer guy... after fruitless attempts at tracking down the thieves, and much soul searching, he went ahead with his show, which was great.
also on saturday, david velez from bogota came to perform. he decided to play in a duo with miguel and their performance was pretty great, although affected by loud chatter and the sub-standard speaker system. they were set up by the bar and i asked the bar to be closed during performances but there was no stopping it!

i practically begged the organisers to close the bar for my performance, knowing it was going to be a lot quieter than david and miguel's, and thankfully they did. there was still chatter from other parts of the building, but in the square, the audience were really great, respectful and attentive. it may have helped that i moved around the audience with various objects, crunching a huge dry leaf to being with and bowing the bell i mentioned earlier - i have tried methods like this before but have felt like i was going through the motions, and just replicating actions of friends such as john grzinich and max shentelev, but this time i really felt it was part of the piece and needed the interaction. i even had some guy dancing (expressively of course) throughout, which definitely added an extra dimension!

after the performances, etc. david and i, and luke and elizabeth clark, decided to head back to campos and get some sleep. we stopped on the way back for some food and left all our stuff (computers and all) in the taxi while we ate. i don't even know if i'd do that in bristol!! no sad ending to the story there though, all was good.

and the sunday was pretty much taken up with david and i walking around medellin (centro and poblada) eating and drinking beer! we went back to plazarte and they gave us even more beer! it was a great day!! and fresh trout for tea, bought from one of the neighbours on via santa elena.

monday i went back to plazarte once again to record the guitar and the oil drum resonating with the various sounds i used in the performance, with a view to recomposing the piece to include these, and then was met by a young lady i actually met on the previous friday, who was doing make up for a fashion shoot that was being held in plazarte too. we went to poblado for lunch (a chicken curry for me) and then took the metro to visit the metrocable, when i suddenly felt really faint, had really bad stomach cramps and apparently went completely green! we got off a few stops before our destination and i had to sit for around 15 minutes before i could even face standing up again. juliana suggested i went back to her place to lie down (try to remember, i'm sick here people!) so after another gruelling metro ride back to where she'd parked the car, she then drove us to her place, which is up out fo the city, and also in a high rise - amazing views!
thank you once again juliana for nursing me!

after not much sleep that night through constant visits to the smallest room, i felt a little better by morning. this ebbed and flowed all day, and although i managed to eat a little rice in the evening, still felt pretty rough.

and guess what? i had to fly to bogota on wednesday! so i took as many pills as i could - although feeling much better than on monday, i still knew i was sick - and the climb from campos de gutierrez to via santa elena had never been so hard! but i managed to make it, with alejandro's help, and he also assisted in getting a taxi to the airport.
the journey went without mishap(!) and i think i even slept a little although the journey is only 50 minutes or so.

in bogota i caught a taxi from the airport to the area i'm staying in, la candelaria, which is pretty touristy but also quite nice - and i had to help him find the place! i had to ask at another hostel - in my bad spanish - as he just didn't have a clue! anyway, i'm here now. i took it very easy yesterday, still feeling weak - lack of food mainly, but the altitude doesn't help.

today i took a wander around downtown, passed by some places i recognised from being here last year and ended up at el museo de arte del banco de la republica, which is an amazing building with some good artworks - no sound pieces though and i think some of the rooms would really benefit from it! then headed to the university for 5pm where i met up with david once again and camilo rojas to rehearse for our show tomorrow - and after 4 hours there moving speakers around etc. we did rehearse... it's going to be a good show tomorrow!

oaxaca - mexico city - medellin

the show at cafe central was a little disappointing to be honest - and i should have known it would be really. i had to play from the stage so had no idea how the piece sounded in the room - low frequencies caused the whole stage to shake so i actually thought i was playing louder than i probably was - lesson learned once again. and half the audience where attentive while the other half chatted away, which i kind of expected but always distracts me... anyway, yadira and the rest of the staff at cafe central were great - really friendly and always ready to get me yet another complementary drink (after performing of course!) and i did get a little bit of cash for my troubles.
after going for more excellent street food with john jairo, gabriela (my hosts), federico and alejandra i headed back to the cafe alone to grab a couple more drinks, made friends with a norwegian guy and two young ladies from tijuana/san diego and we stayed out drinking until 6am! then i got lost trying to find my way back to jj and gabi's place! suddenly, a little drunk and more than a little worried, my spanish actually came back to me and i was able to ask a passer by for help in getting back to the zocalo, where i could navigate from - it turned out i had walked in completely the opposite direction!!
so after getting back around 7am and grabbing 3 hours sleep, my hosts took me for breakfast and then to monte alban, which although is a tourist attraction, is a great way to spend 3 hours walking around!
http://www.sacred-destinations.com/mexico/oaxaca-monte-alban.htm

another day of hanging out in oaxaca and then i headed back to mexico city by bus - the ride is one of the most beautiful i have done. half the 6 hour journey takes you up over the mountain range north of oaxaca.
so after more exploring of mexico city and meeting with marco morales at muac once more for lunch and to collect some cd's and dvd's of mine that my parents sent me and took 5 weeks to arrive, i meet up with dario bernal-villegas, an improvising drummer based in mexico city, for mezcal, beer and food - an honour to meet you dario!

i got to medellin, colombia yesterday after having to get up @ 4am. then amazingly had just enough mexican pesos to pay for the two nights at the hotel i was in and the taxi to the airport! dead jammy.
the flight took me to san jose in costa rica - that country looks amazing from the air - i may have to go an explore if/when my spanish improves...
then breezed baggage collection and immigration, to then sit in arrivals for over an hour waiting for someone to come get me...

ah well, at least i'm here now. internet access will be severely limited as we all (6 of us at the last count) are sharing a mobile internet dongle - the type you plug into your computer using a usb port.
the other artists seem ok - i have made good friends with a spanish painter whose english is only marginally better than my spanish! i think we'll be teaching each other for the month i'm here!

it turns out i'm the old guy here - everyone else is late 20's to early 30's but they're ok... another sound artist and his wife from uk (luke and elizabeth), an artist called bjork from iceland (not THE bjork...), a guy from the states doing ceramics called chris, a french video artist - oralee (probably spelt that wrong!) - who was actually born and adopted in colombia by french parents and the guy who is co-ordinating the residency, andres. hmm, i thought there were more - maybe i'm forgetting someone...

anyway, the house is incredible - there is a link on my facebook page but it doesn't do the place justice! i'm sitting on the verenda, looking out over trees and fields and i can see medellin in the distance - it's around a 30 minute bus ride into town - i went with alejandro, the spanish artist, yesterday to help him shop for the evening meal - that was an experience!! the driver doesn't take into consideration the standing passengers when negotiating a winding mountain road, believe me!

so today i will be recording, and seeing the space we will be presenting work in on the 10th... updates when i can! :-)

Morelia - Guadalajara - Oaxaca

wow, it's been absolutely ages since i posted!
the last thing i wrote about was being in rainy morelia. well, from there i headed to guadalajara, where i was met at the bus station by Michael Petch, the son of Maggie Royle, an artist in Bristol i have know for years. knowing i hadn't done any laundry for a while, he arrived with a sign saying 'Mr Stinky' - nice.
a camper van ride later and we were in his incredible dwellings in downtown guadalajara, where he and his brother David were gearing up for a film shoot the following week. straight away i was taken to try 'tortas ahogadas', an amazing drowned and spicy port sandwich, and then a short guided tour around downtown, where i was lucky enough to catch some mariachi action!
we then visited the roof of one of the tallest buildings nearby, to check it as a location for filming. from there i had an amazing view of gdl and saw how vast it is!!
i was there a couple of days before the show at Laboratorio Sensorial so spent the time exploring, recording, hanging out checking more locations (mainly bars!) and also spending time with Yair Lopez, one of the organisers of LS, and now a good friend.
i did manage to get some nice recordings which i used in the piece i played at the concert on the 17th feb, alongside Yair and Israel Martinez, an artist i'd met in london back in 2007. it was a great night, well attended - even the film crew came along, as did my next hosts Marie-Fred Dupree and her hubby Cuauhtemoc.
from that night i stayed with them in the very split Santa Ana Tepetitlan, Zapopan. i say split as where they live, if you walk to the left you are in one of the poorest looking villages i have visited in mexico, but if you walk left there is a myriad of new apartment buildings, manicured lawns and fences and gates with guards everywhere!
on the 18th i did head back downtown for an informal chat about my work at LS, alongside Yair and Israel once again, and then we visited a public square where Yair had managed to commandeer the PA system and was playing field recording based work to the public for the whole day!
the rest of the time was spent just hanging out, relaxing, walking, eating more great food and generally relaxing, although my final day in GDL was a little fraught, waiting for a courier delivery that didn't arrive until i had left for downtown once again (to record some sounds for the film using contact mic's for an added dimension) and then being told that UPS are going to charge me 1500 mexican pesos (around £75) to receive a delivery of my own cd's. to top this off, they then didn't deliver as Marie-Fred didn't have that much cash, and now won't be delivered until monday. i flew to Oaxaca today as i had booked the flight, and have my final show in mexico tomorrow night, at the very wonderful Cafe Central...

Mexico City - Valle de Bravo - Morelia

and it's this morning that i realise i have not updated the journal side of things here for a couple of weeks!!

i arrived in mexico city on the 31st january, and was kindly collected by a representative of MUAC. it was right then that i realised what little spanish has actually managed to remain in my head after listening to michel thomas and his patronising delivery instantly dissipates when faced with either trying to speak to someone, or better yet when they speak to me!! great discovery!

so after trying to communicate with the driver for a while we both decided to admit defeat and we travelled very slowly though the mexico city traffic, delivering me at hotel milan. for anyone visiting mexico city i can highly recommend the hotel. it's reasonably priced and has comfy beds.

on the 1st i travelled by metrobus to the university city of UNAM, which is massive. and through my not being told that there is an extra stop that is spitting distance from MUAC, i got off at the main university terminal. this was a mistake - as i said, the campus is massive... i walked through what i discovered was the engineering department, which has large open areas of park and around ten large buildings, and then decided i was not going to find the museum this way. then i tried to use the global sim card i purchased specifically to use on my journey, to find that outgoing calls were barred!! no way of contacting the museum, or finding out how to get there from where i was!!

walking back to the metrobus stop i noticed a large group of people waiting for the 'pumabus' - it turned out this collection of 10 bus routes service the whole campus, and wouldn't you know it, there was one that could take me to MUAC. thankfully there are a number of mexicans that can speak enough english to take pity on me and my poor spanish and help me out....

as i visited the museum and auditorium, which is amazing by the way - similar in size to the auditorium at the arnolfini in bristol, and with the same collapsible tiered seating arrangement - i decided to come back the next day (2nd feb) to make some recordings to use in the performance. while i was at MUAC i got lunch at one of the restaurants on site, and after selling some dollars as i hadn't brought enough cash, i had an amazing tortilla soup, which i'll come back to....

so the 2nd was spent in the museum recording various aspects of the site, and also hanging out with the sound engineer for MUAC, Gil. he gave me a guided tour around the site, and then we walked around a volcanic park to a crazy crater that is also volcanic, but has been ringed with huge triangular concrete obelisks that make it look very sci-fi... and then it rained.

i had been in touch with a musician in mexico city, Amede Barez, who was possibly going to meet me at MUAC on the 2nd, but hadn't made it, so we arranged to meet on the 3rd. he took me on a short tour around the centre of mexico city, showing me how to use the metro (subway, not bus - confusing though...), market places, the parliament square, the square in which Francisco Lopez had a concert a few years ago, an exhibition of 'el santo' which was so funny - he was a character!
and then we went for tacos - first up was tongue, and then he got me to try brain - and it was really good! i was kind of squeamish, and if you actually think about what you're eating while chowing down, it does turn the stomach slightly, but it was tasty, and at least they use all parts of the animal!!

Amede then took me to a cantina, which after a search up and down the street we were on, turned out to be two doors away of the taco stand - there you buy a beer, and then you get a plate of food - for free! we had pork in a spicy red sauce and goat served with a kind of broth that uses the juices from the cooking process - again all good!

on the day of the concert (4th feb) i got to the auditorium around 12:30 as i wanted to compose my piece in situ using purely the recordings i had gathered through this year's travels. after around 3 hours i had a piece i was happy with, presented in 4 channels. Gil then took me to a square nearby where we got more amazing food - i haven't had bad food since being in mexico i think - apart from the quesadillas in the hotel - avoid!

the concert itself was attended by only a few people, around ten, maybe a couple more, but they were very respectful and appreciative, and the piece sounded amazing (even though i say so myself!).

after the concert i went back to the hotel, dropped off my gear, and then met up with Gil once again to drink mezcal and then was invited to a party at his sister's place which was very close by and full of very nice people...

on the 5th i took a bus to valle de bravo, where i was invited to stay by a sound artist i have been in contact with over the years, Sol Rezza, and her husband Daniel Ivan. i managed to catch the right bus, after managing to find the right terminal, and was there in just over two hours. and there was no-one to meet me. and then i found that i couldn't call anyone once again. after sitting trying to work out what to do for around 30 minutes, Daniel turned up - i was so glad to see him! it turned out Sol was working over the weekend running workshops, so we dropped off my luggage, had even tastier tacos, and walked a little around valle de bravo - and then it rained. again. it seems the british weather is following me around the world!!! apparently it's very unusual to rain so much this time of year.

i spent around 5 days with Daniel and Sol, hanging out, recording, drinking tequila... and they were the perfect hosts. Daniel cooked most nights, which was fantastic, and then Sol made her speciality - tortilla soup! as mentioned earlier, i'd had a great one at MUAC, but Sol's is incredible - and she uses pork rinds (as in pork scratching for you Brits out there) in it which work really well.

on the 9th i took a bus to toluca, in which i nearly lost my luggage, and my head, as the driver began to drive away while i was fishing it out of the hold! from toluca i got a bus to morelia, which i had been told was first class, but wow! the comfiest bus i think i have ever been on - and they give you food and drink for the journey!! i arrived remarkably fresh and was brought straight to the offices of CMMAS where i have the use of the residency room until the 13th, plus food vouchers for 4 days.

most of the 10th was taken up with preparing for the concert in the evening, but i did manage to skype both my parents and my friends kate and rachel - great to chat and catch up. as i mentioned, the british weather is following me, so for the whole day yesterday it was grey and raining - which stopped a number of people coming to the concert, but again the people who did make it seemed to really enjoy it.

and then tacos once again (but believe me i'm not complaining!) with Francisco and Silvana, the co-ordinators at CMMAS, plus some great tequila which you drink with a spicy tomato drink - very good! kind of like a two-part bloddy mary.

today it's still grey but seems to have stopped raining, so i'll catch up with some admin and then go for a long walk - morelia is beautiful and i have only seen a little of it so far...