interview with Bruce

The good folk at the excellent Cockburn Project site have linked to an excellent MP3 recording of a 2004 phone interview with Bruce Cockburn from the Drew Marshall show. The interview took place just as Bruce had wrapped up his major You've Never Seen Everything Tour.
Something that continually inspires me about Bruce's work, that is apparent in this lengthy interview, is his complete inability to be placed in any kind of category. I felt at times that the interviewer was trying to pin him down on some things - maybe only for the benefit of more conservative-minded listeners. No such luck. Mr Cockburn however, effortlessly shares his experiences of seeking God in the day to day, and his discomfort with religious language and terminology.

Banksy in NY galleries

Banksy has smuggled work into several New York galleries, noting that security staff are more concerned about stuff going out than going in. BBC story here.

side-chain dynamics

Richard Hulse from Radio New Zealand had a great article in the current Pro Audio Asia magazine on parallel (or side-chain) compression, not to be confused with side-chain triggered compression (as in ducking). Mr Hulse kindly sent me a link to a version of his article on the web.
I first came across the technique of parallel compression in the late 90s in an article in the short-lived Australian Sound magazine. In this case the method was used to create a heavily compressed drum submix to run under the normal drum mix, thus adding density without interfering adversely with the overall drum sound.
Running a compressed version of an audio track alongside a clean version enables low level passages of music to be lifted without effecting the loud transients. Very useful for achieving transparent squeezing for broadcasting of classical music.
Yesterday I fired up Pro Tools and played with the technique for a while, using a commercial recording of Pergolesi's Stabat Mater as the program material.
Further inspiration for my ongoing fascination with audio dynamics processing...

3rd episode of Chartbusting 80s tonight. I'm seriously thinking about using my dbx Driverack as a Swiss Army Knife compressor/limiter tonight. Not ideal, but the only thing I have.

tv stuff continued

Well the first episode of Chartbusting 80s for 2005 was held last Thursday. Keeping levels under control is going to be a task due to the dynamic nature of the hosts. I think a brick-wall limiter will be in order.
My sister Imogen is getting settled in Austria and is maintaining a blog here ( I certainly didn't encourage the loud colour scheme!).
I recently acquired a copy of Tim Winton's latest offering The Turning and it really is magnificent. All the atmosphere, regret, longing, despair and characters you never quite met in Dirt Music turn up in the pages of these seventeen interwoven short stories. Highly recommended.
Also worth seeing is the film Hotel Rwanda. Probably not a masterpiece and not quite as compelling an African epic as, say, Cry Freedom, but highly worthwhile. Should we feel guilty at the west's lack of interest/intervention in the events of the mid-90s in Rwanda? Quite possibly.
Village Cinemas have $5 Tuesdays at the moment so I might go and get a few movies in.