new notebook

essentially, i've been filling these notebooks with exactly the same thing since the age of fifteen.

       

calliope in the mix

when you mix an album, there is always one problem track. one track that, no matter how much you push and pull it around, seems intent on escaping you and wriggling its way out of your increasingly frustrated grip. you know it's capable of greatness, and as such you refuse to let it go quietly into the night, no matter how much it seems to want to. it's almost as though the thing just doesn't want to be heard, as though the mere fact that it had once existed is enough for it and we should simply leave it at that, thankful that we had once had the chance to bask in its conceptual greatness, its figurative grace.

calliope is that track. rather fittingly, calliope was the greek muse of the epic poets, the inspiration for the odyssey and lover of Ares, the god of war. too much symbolism to take in, there.

but we're gonna nail it today. we're going to pin it down and make it our bitch and not accept its pitiful cries for release. today we will emerge the victors.

(replace all the 'it's in that last paragraph with 'her's as i eventually decided to do, and you will see why i made said editorial decision. sounded all hella kindsa wrong.)

album is getting really close now. getting all giddy with glee.

hope this track doesn't break us.

red kite artist lyndsay martin - work in progress

always nice to see.

she also takes the nice pretty pictures i use in the blog posts and new website ads.

which, incidentally and for posterity, can be viewed here:

going for the treble

today's overly ambitious mix session includes poltergeist (pop gem), dance with crow (funeral march) and saddle up son (cowboy ballad).

three in a day.

we will not achieve this.

opened proceedings with a fry up on the roof.

all days should begin this way.

this is cerebus (that is not a misspelling)

this is cerebus.

for those of you who do not know who cerebus is, here is a brief summary:

cerebus is an aardvark. he is also the central character of the comic book series which bears his name, and which ran for 300 issues over roughly 25 years and was collected in 16 volumes (affectionately nicknamed ‘phonebooks’) which greedily inhabit a solid foot and a half of shelf space.

cerebus was written by dave sim and it occupies a particularly peculiar place in comic book history. it is one of the greatest achievements of the art-form, combining literary pastiche, satire, philosophical treatise, belly-busting humour and exquisite, groundbreaking draughtsmanship (aided by gerhard’s background artwork which began to appear part of the way through the church and state storyline). 

it was also completely mental. sim struggled with an assortment of mental conditions and over the course of the comic’s run developed some rather reprehensible views on women, homosexuality, politics and religion, not to mention taking in the odd divorce and drug-induced bouts of paranoia and megalomania. 

and all of it made it into the book.

and yet, despite all of that, i still think it is brilliant. 

i won’t delve any deeper other than to suggest that anyone with any interest in the subject should check out tim kreider’s excellent essay in the comics journal 301 (this article, partially reproduced here, hits the proverbial nail precisely on the head), as well as tim callahan’s articles here and here, and douglas wolk’s piece in the believer for mcsweeneys. if you think it sounds interesting then start saving and, yes, do read it from the beginning (that sense of duty to the work will stand you in good stead for future issues).

only here’s the thing: i never finished it.

nope. 

i got all the way to the final volume, the last day, number 16 of 16 and... i couldn’t do it. part of it was no doubt the fact that, like much of the later volumes, it contained page after unforgiving page of barely decipherable text that i knew, again from my experience of recent volumes, was going to be largely bat-shit, box-of-frogs lunacy with smatterings of unquestionable genius. but the main reason was that i just couldn’t let the little fella go. i knew how it was going to end (and it is telegraphed early on in the series, arguably rendering its actual taking place twenty years later even more remarkable), but i just couldn’t bring myself to do it, to draw that curtain on something that had become something of an obsession for me; some of those volumes were extremely rare and had cost me far more than i should have reasonably allowed myself to pay to get hold of.

that was about 4 years ago. today i pulled it off the shelf, far more tattered and worn than any of the other volumes (i carried it around in my bag like an a4 albatross for many months, intending to get going on it as soon as i finished whatever i was reading at the time). i’ve just read dave’s introduction and he assures me he has stumbled upon a unifying theory of everything and that it lies within these beautifully drawn 250 pages, and that the only reason the scientific community has not bowed down to him in worship is that he is an anti-feminist comic book artist, shunned and exiled by nearly everybody in his field for his views.

the scary thing is that i think he means every word.

deep breath....

monster's here. and it is loud.

inspiration

going to scrap lyrics to entire album and (w)rap it up roast beef style.

hella yeah.

red kite album in the mix

todays track: new song poltergeist.

laura's coming down to do some vocals. it will get loud.

i'm reading achewood, tom's working like a dog, business as usual.

will try and book some shows today. it's been too long.

the site hasn't gone live yet, so none of you can actually read this yet. i've said 'none of you' as though there are untold legions poring over my every syllable.

never stop dreaming.



you showed me i had a way to go
before i could call you my ghost
you threw plates and rattled the corridors
blew the lights and howled at the moon
but i know i'll be okay

the spanish courtyard in progress

tom does all the hard work

essentially tom does all the hard work whilst i read old achewood strips and chip in every half hour with vague statements such as "make the drums more expansive" and "increase the dynamism".

phillipe is such a hoot.

red kite in the mix

today's mix: spanish courtyard.
a song about childhood, death and running guns on the high seas.
apparently the bassline sounds like the smiths.

the rise and fall of facebook

my facebook gripes, summed up neatly by emily gonneau, manager of ok go.

http://blog.midem.com/2012/08/emily-gonneau-beware-facebook-youre-on-a-very-slippery-slope/#.UB-FvzXplrY.facebook

mixing in the studio

mixing the album in tom's manor house laboratory. 

today's track - money up front.

stay tuned for updates on the album's progress. should have it finished by september.

may even be dishing out sneaky previews.

come back soon and find out.

how the magic happens, featuring laura hegarty

why are you here?

why are you here?

probably because you’ve followed a link from either facebook or twitter, though perhaps you happened upon this site of your own accord.

why is this site here?

in short, because facebook is infuriating. for no doubt dark and sinister reasons, facebook has decided that simply liking a band and wanting to hear news and updates about said outfit is not enough. that band then has to pay to advertise its presence or face the mute indifference of silence as its posts are kept hidden from anyone who may have once shown an interest. 

facebook was never perfect.  aesthetically, it was always difficult to escape that blue and white uniformity, and half of the time it just plain didn’t seem to work. but at least you knew that pretty much everyone used it and that it seemed to do its job of keeping followers informed of a band’s comings and goings, gigs and releases. then all of a sudden that seemed to stop. people weren’t hearing anything and as such had ceased posting and reacting. the only thing that made facebook seem worth using was no more.

the biggest problem, however, had always been the question of how to get people coming back to the site regularly. where was the incentive? what could be done with the limited format that was facebook and its post-react-shove a funny picture of a science-spouting cat methodology?

how could you make it your own?

well, people have been doing this for years with blogs. however, we hadn’t.  

some people are good at blogging. sean at drowned in sound is very good at it.

i am not. between making music, writing and reading books and comics, i have neither the time nor the inclination. in order to do a blog worth reading, one has to be very, very good at it. one has to enjoy it and take to it naturally. not being this type of person has always been my reason for avoiding the platform.

it can, however, have its uses. in the absence of the technical expertise and financial capabilities needed to actually run a website, a blog can serve as the next best thing.

this is not a website.

it’s not a blog.

what it is is a glimpse into the world of red kite. give it time to grow and we’ll see where it can take us.

all news and updates, as well as pictures, exclusives and new material, will be announced through this site. we’ll still use facebook and twitter, but mainly to direct people here. if you’ve managed to find it, then feel free to spread the word.

take a little trip around. in the links, you’ll find some of the stuff we like. in the failures section you’ll come to realise why i am a musician and not a writer. none of the stories are any good, but they come from the same place as the songs so perhaps they may be of some interest. perhaps not.

either way, we hope you enjoy it. we hope you come back. we hope you comment and get involved and get to know one another a little. 

leave your email over on the left and we'll even keep you up to date whenever something gets posted. no spam, we promise, just wholesome red kite goodness.

and if you like it enough to put something up on facebook, well then that’s fine too.

much love,

rk

milton in the wood

another short story, based on a true one.
dark and disturbing, it reportedly gave kieran mahon the heebie-jeebies.
an accompanying ditty can be found here in a red kite multi-media cross-platform exclusive just for you guys:

milton in the wood [soundcloud]


Milton in the Wood

seahorses

an early short story. be good to it, it's only little.


Seahorses