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The 4AM set is chilled Acid Jazz, heavy on the breaks and grooves but light on the changes! It was spawned from a Jazz set my friend Dave Carson was performing, which I helped him out with a couple of times.

Taking recordings of live jams, then cutting them into loops and heavily processing the resulting samples produces some fantastic textures and grooves which are so different from the original songs – the new structures became tracks in their own right and we did a few gigs, with live sample performances (courtesy of Ableton Live and a Launchpad controller) mixed in with real guitars, synth, sax and flute.

Working on this stuff gave me a break from my more “prog rock” leanings, and allowed me to focus more on the production and sonic texture than I generally have been able to. It certainly has given me a new way of working, which I intend to use when I start writing again!

Downtown

Latin

Paparazzi

Lullaby

Smoking room

Same Head

There’s a place I know

Cognition

Blue Agave

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Dave Carson

Probably the best advice I can give any musicians who have fallen into the writing block trap is to temporarily switch styles – try a new genre of music, preferably one you wouldn’t normally listen to. Spend a few evenings immersing yourself in it (youtube is great for this).

The 4AM set (with Dave Carson on Guitar and Richard Woodling on sax) is so far out of rock territory that it allows me to experiment and try things that I would normally never put into my progressive tracks.

All we are trying to do is create chilled music with a latin/jazz flavour – I can bring in all sorts of influences from Weather Report to Portishead without worrying if it’s “cool” or “cliché”. In fact some cliché helps, because it makes the music more accessible. Using a couple of sampled loops as the basis for a jam is allowing us to work really quickly. I’m just recording these sessions in Ableton Live (leaving it recording) and then pulling out interesting melodic fragments afterwards to construct new tunes.

After the session, I can replace the sample loops with my own parts, we then learn the “found” tunes to complete the tracks! An interesting way to work, and one that is proving quite successful in producing quite a bit of new material.

Anyway – today’s track, “Down Town” (part of the 4AM set).

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Part of the new 4AM set.

This one features Richard Woodling on sax.

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It’s a bit of a shame that I only get limited amounts of time to muck around in the studio, but that is definitely what the Christmas break is for (well, apart from spending time with the family, walking the dog, catching up on paperwork etc…).

Here’s a new jazzy groove with some laid back fretless work.

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Some of you have been asking when I’ll be gigging again – well, I’m taking a break from rock for a while and have a new chilled Acid Jazz set with Dave Carson called 4AM. You can catch us on the first Sunday of every month at the Penn Central – 4 ’till 6 pm.

update – Chris (Croft) came ’round and kindly laid down some cool sax and flute for the track, so I’ve updated the mix to include it!