Jon and Libby

The Mighty Nowhere!   Last Thursday was another chance to get back over the Pennines, and a journey through landscapes that could easily melt your eyeballs with their beauty. Yes, it was time for the Holmfirth EMOM at Nowhere again!  This time, Martin Christie started us off with a funky track played on a tiny box of tricks. If it wasn't called "Welcome to EMOM" I don't know what else it could be called. He also told us about setting up the first speculative EMOM a few years ago at Fuel Bar in Manchester and watching it grow like Topsy and become a global phenomenon. Very inspirational stuff.   Martin and his box of tricks! So, next up was a man with quite literally a box of tricks. In this case, a cardboard box holding his kit. How Buildings Fail is a new name to me, and put me in mind of The Fall, or some of the spoken word events I've been to where Mark E. Smith has performed.   Another box of tricks, this time a cardboard one, courtesy of How Buildings Fail....

  This blog post is dedicated to Inky Da Kat. She was always such a big supporter of the EMOM community, and will be sadly missed by all of us.   Well, we've managed to get to the giddy heights of 21 EMOM sets now, and with the confidence of ignorant naivety, I've started to notice some rules of thumb about what makes an event go with a bang for all concerned.    I've split them into a list of Dos and Don'ts for performers, organisers and sound engineers. these are just things that have occurred to me. I hope you agree. If I've missed anything, or you wish to argue that I'm wrong, please get in touch, but be kind or I'll set Libby on you. Thanks to the vibrant EMOM community, this is a living document and I'll strive to keep it updated as a resource and fount of knowledge as more comes to light.  Performers: Do: Level your set. Run through the whole thing with a free LUFS meter, such as Youlean, on the very end of the master bus to make sure that the lev...

  1 Behold, the mighty Muson synthesizer! It was back to Totally Wired in Chorlton-cum-Hardy last Thursday, and the scene of the previous ghostly goings-on during election night in June. The Lloyds is a big venue, and I like playing there a lot because it has a "lay" crowd of very appreciative Thursday night drinkers who are up for something different. This time, I hoped to make peace with the unquiet spirit of Martin Hannett. Did I manage it, or did he cause even more spectral mischief?  PP Roy was on first, and was using the most glorious synthesizer I've ever seen. A Muson synthesizer from 1978. His wife told me later that she bought for next to nothing. Though limited in scope, this baby has a 10-note sequencer and (according to the spec at Polynomial ) 2 note polyphony and (ahem) MIDI! Quite how the makers implemented that last facility several years before it was even a twinkle in Dave Smith's eye is probably just wishful thinking on the part of a seller. Spea...