Colin OOOD

According to the party reports on Psy-Forum this week there is a one-word rebuttal to this point - Cosmosis.

Cangrejo - Do you include all artists (eg. painters, sculptors) in your list of creative people who shouldn't be paid for what they do, or do you reserve your scorn just for musicians? Your arguments are totally specious, but just to show willing I'll deal with some of your points. You're quite right. I don't spend 40 hours a week doing music. Just for the record, I've worked it out and Andrew and I spent 36 hours in the studio this weekend alone, from Saturday to Monday. We also played an hour's live set on Friday night (with added didgeridoo ) and I DJd for an hour too; it was 2 1/2 hours drive there and back for me. It was a benefit party so we didn't get paid a fee, just expenses. I also worked in the studio with another project during the evenings for 3 days last week, for an average of 7 hours a night. I make that 51 hours spent writing or performing this week; 56 if you count driving to and from the gig. So no, I don't spend "40 hours per week" at it. I also teach music tech for 11 hours every week, for which I have to drive maybe 8 hours in total - this is my 'day job' and pays my rent and utility bills, but not a hell of a lot else - my basic pay (not including travel expenses) is just over £500 a month, and six grand a year is NOTHING in the UK. I stay in this job because it gives me the time I need to do my own thing, and to take the pressure off the music to earn me my entire living. Not having to write means that when I do, I can express something other than "please buy my track because I'm hungry". Anyway, I guess you could say this week I spent 62 hours working with music in one way or another, and if you add in the necessary travel time that takes it up to 75. Kind of blows your 'exaggeration' out of the water, doesn't it. The fact is, mate, I effectively live below the poverty line here in the UK because I choose to spend my time making music and performing, rather than doing a regular 9-to-5 and earning enough money to have a comfortable life, and going to the pub (I don't drink) and having a girlfriend and all that shit you normal people do. I know for damn sure I'm not the only one. The scene is built on people donating their time and energy to giving people like you a good night out. All we ask is that if you enjoy the music or the parties or the festivals we make for you, you complete the transaction and show your appreciation by donating something in return that will help us get by and make more. May I suggest that this donation takes the form of a small sum of money? It's much more a flexible gift than, say, a loaf of bread or some roofing tiles. I'm tired of this. You either get it or you don't, and I guess you don't. I really hope that if you're ever lucky enough to get a full-time job you enjoy so much that you voluntarily work hours of overtime, your boss withholds your salary because you're having too much fun. Adios, cabron.

Sort it out dude, and let us know what you come up with. I want to shake the hand of the Psynews Ladykiller.

Reason's great but seriously guys, when it comes to mixing your tracks do it via Rewire inside SX or Logic or something... you'll be amazed by the difference in quality (at least, with the version of 2.5 that I have). The Reason mixer is the weak link... it really clouds up the sound. One of the tracks on Free Range was written totally in Reason and I mixed it in SX; it really brought the track to life.

I'm talking to the organiser right now - finding the best way for you to get a ticket since you're outside the UK. MSN me - O_O_O_D@yahoo.com Ticket sales are good but "there still loads left no probs .." [EDIT] I can recommend "Build Your Own Reactor" and Tron's album. Also Traveller, if you're interested, Voice of Cod are playing at a party in Reading the following night. If you want to come, a place on the guest list is yours.

...and all the acts on Twisted are from the UK

I just had a dodgy 5 minutes panicking, going "Where's my fucking Twisted ticket?" but it's ok now. Thought for a minute I was actually going to have to pay to get in! Can't wait... [EDIT] Anyone who recognises me from here, please grab me and say hello...

It's standard practise for acts to charge less for performances inside their home countries.

I agree with most of your post but this bit is a gross generalisation and is untrue for at least one act I know of.

Divide by 3 and you'll be in the right ballpark.

No.

I have a computer. Is that ok?

Can't promise you an old-school album, I'm afraid. Definitely can't promise you a full-on album either though! OOOD has different members than it did back then, and the technology is totally different so of course it won't sound the same. Try not to expect anything, and you're unlikely to be disappointed

And in the 4 days they spend travelling, recovering from jetlag, performing, then travelling home and recovering from jetlag again, they're unable to do any other 'normal' work to earn money.

But it can buy a roof over one's head, and some food and clothing. Or should I just smile at the bailiff when he comes to confiscate my computer for non-payment of rent?

No. You're wrong (and I don't normally make categorical statements like that). All you can say is "... and it usually turns out to be something I don't like". PS. Some of the opinions you have put forth in your posts have made me quite pissed off. I haven't got the time to reply properly right now because I've got to pack and leave for a gig very soon. I might just leave you to fester in your own 'idealism' (I bet you don't pay for all the music you download, either, am I right?)... being creative might not be a 'job' for most people who try and express themselves with music, but making stuff that's worth listening to takes TIME - far more time in some cases than most of you imagine. I worked it out on Isra once, and for what we (and most people) get paid for a track (if we get paid at all), the equivalent hourly rate works out at literally a few cents an hour. "What about gigs?" I hear you cry... sure, they can sometimes pay ok but for 95% of people who make trance getting a decent gig AND getting paid for it is nigh-on impossible as promoter's artist budgets are normally gobbled up by the fees demanded by headliners. I'm fed up to the back teeth of being skint; of not knowing whether I'll be able to keep my car on the road; of surviving on ramen noodles for the last week of every month. But I tell you now, if money was the motivation I could be earning £50k as a computer programmer right now... but if I did that I'd be too tired in my time off to make music. People like you make me sick; you don't have any appreciation of how much artists give of ourselves, just to give you a 10MB download.

Looks like a pestle and mortar to me.

The Voice of Cod album goes a step further, and gives you to-scale pictures of the audio waveform of each tune (with a scale calibrated in minutes across the top) so DJs can see how each track flows... as far as I know, Liquid Ross and I came up with the idea of putting track keys on the artwork independantly; however the waveform idea is all mine

There is no practical difference between AMD and Intel chips. I've used both and recommend AMD, if only because they're cheaper for a given processing power. And Macs are no way the 'best' for making music. Until the new Mac laptop came out (which uses Intel chips, by the way) even Apple themselves admitted that PC laptops were more powerful. Plus there's nothing inherent in OSX that means it's automatically better than Windows; Apple and Microsoft have been stealing UI ideas off each other for many years now.

You should get the XL version, with deep folly joyloading and static flange injector.

If someone has Placebo in MP3, could they send it to me please? I haven't heard it in about 7 years and it's still running around my head.

Yeah, I thought it was, I've just heard too many scare stories about virii etc to want to let it anywhere near any of the machines I use to make music, which is all of them. Are there any stats available to show how many times it's been downloaded? Garn... give an old man a smile and tell him it's really popular...

I don't have any P2P here but just for you, OD, I've spent the last half an hour searching trackers I can find for Voice of Cod and been unsuccesful. Perhaps you'd like to be the first? Download it on DC++ and seed it to the Pirate Bay or something. If you really can't find it on P2P (or like the music enough to want to help support us while we make more), you can buy MP3s of the album from the Organic Records Digishop - €8.99 for the whole album or €1.09 per track. Then just make an .nfo out of the promo information from the Organic website and you're away! PS. I'm serious.

If you're after melodic trance I'd like to recommend search for OOOD and Voice of Cod... may I? Great, thanks.