First Recordings - Out Now

01) Moving Stars (for Joanna Coote)
02) Offbeat Ukulele Hop (for Joanna Coote)
03) Warlock Party Sparkle (for Joanna Coote)
04) Blues Delay Portishead Yeah! (for Joanna Coote)
05) Jazz Party in a Passing Helicopter (for Joanna Coote)
06) That's not a Heart! It's a Pendulum! And it's Still Moving! (for Joanna Coote)
07) Waking Up in Traffic (for Joanna Coote)
08) Fiona and Out (for Fiona Shipwright)
09) Herbeccasong (for Rebecca Litchfield)
10) Ratufa Affinis Kalastus Musiikki (Pale Giant Squirrel Fishing Music) (for Sophie Scott)
11) Company Of Stars (for James Montgomery Doohan)
12) deadrobot
13) Song for Emily (in stereo) (for Emily Benson)
14) Ode to Jonathan (for Jonathan Hicks)
15) Panda (inspired by Noah Lennox)
16) Jonathan vs Copyright (guitar by Jonathan Hicks)
17) Louise (music from the motion picture) (for Louise Cooke)
18) Reprise (All Hail the Rucksack Magnet) (for Daniel Cooper)
19) Yes (in response to Lindsay Phillips)
20) Oops....I still haven't bought Steve Reich tickets (for Louise Cooke, Christopher Pencakowski and Martin Robinson)
21) Gs for Martin (for Martin Robinson)
22) Hugh (witch witch witch witch)
23) Mom bought some really great whole wheat bagels (for Shannon Whisler)
24) Happy Birthday Jonathan (for Jonathan Hicks)
25) Sleepy Lindsay (featuring Lindsay Phillips)
26) Throwaway Ambient Song Number One
27) Not Enough Instruments (Transmissions for Duncan I) (for Duncan Geere)
28) Lindsay Ventures into the Underworld and Comes out in Prague (for Lindsay Phillips)
29) Sea (theme from Panda Garden)
30) Piano (subconsciously inspired by Hiroshi Sunairi & Hideyuki Mari)

Released through Blue Jumpers Recordings on May 17th 2007. Price: £0, $0, €0 (including postage). Includes The Joanna Coote EP, 1285 word liner notes and CD and cover artwork by Filip Hnízdo.

To order a copy, please email your postal address to canIhaveyourcdpleasefilip@bluejumpers.com or wait patiently until you are given/sent a copy.

Tape recorder + guitar + trumpet = experiment

Finally moving from strings to brass, I had my first trumpet lesson on Thursday. It went relatively well, and I am now, after practicing, practicing, practicing, just about able to play five notes (badly).

Just before I managed this I thought I'd start early and record a "song" with the trumpet and guitar to see how it works. I decided not to use effects, editing, pitch-shifting or any of the other technologies I usually rely on to hide my bad instrumentation and just did two lazy takes on a dictaphone and merged them together.

The result is so lo-fi it's laughable, and quite a step down from the cleaner songs I've been producing, but I thought about it and decided to share it with you anyway to entertain you. Some bits sounds quite good and it suprisingly filled the room quite nicely when I played it through my cd mixer. I might re-record it once I can play in tune. Might.

Dead Robot by Filip Hnízdo

As it's the All Tomorrow's Parties festival from Friday to Sunday I thought it'd be fun to put together a CD of most of my songs to hand out. I put all the sounds I've recorded over the past two years together and it's about 3/4 of an hour which is quite a lot. I think I'll set myself the challenge of recording at least two more songs this week and will put together a tracklist and some cover art. I think I'll probably do about 30 copies. It won't be completely limited edition though so if you want a copy let me know and I'll post you one (the songs will remain online of course so you can just download them if you want). I think such a collection will be a good point on which to finally finish off the early part of my music making and begin writing some more complicated/better recorded songs (i.e Filip Hnízdo: The Album). With vocals. And lots of samples. Lots.

Some parts of the songs sound pretty terrible in retrospect but it's quite a varied collection so works quite well. I still think the best noise I've made is the opening section of Herbeccasong.

Football, Frog Eyes, sunshine and Italian chimpanzees

Just outside Lambeth College, London, in Larkhall Park, is a wonderful little artificial turf football pitch. As I live miles away and usually have to rush home for some reason or other I usually miss out on the football but this time I managed to fit it in for a second time and had a lot of fun. Aside from the two journalism classes, four or five people seem to enjoy just turning up and joining in which adds to things somewhat. Especially as, occasionally, these people are surprisingly enthusiastic and sometimes slightly insane. Three hours of football anyway. Tiring but very fun. Hello Summer weather. I'm Filip and I'm very pleased to meet you.

Frog Eyes have a new record out which Pitchfork tell me is very good. This doesn't come as much of a surprise as all the other ones have been very good. They are a bit of a love or not understand band though, amusingly demonstrated by Pitchfork itself which hovered between giving it the Best New Music and Recommended titles for about two minutes today. They stuck with Recommended in the end.


On Tuesday I read a rather odd article in METRO which walked a rather thin line between funny and discriminatory. It was about a study that found that Italian hand gesturing is very similar to the way chimps communicate, implying that the Italians are more similar to chimps than the rest of us. Here's a Google News link on the subject so you can get a nice fair overview. Our whole family hand gestures quite wildly. This may possibly be a cultural thing however.

The bank holiday weekend is approaching for us here in the UK. Is anyone doing anything especially fun?

Songs and The Spitz petition

Company of Stars by Filip Hnízdo

Samples
BBC Radio 5 Live news broadcast about the remains of James Montgomery Doohan being sent into space
Blackbird sample from Wikimedia Commons
Applause from the end of Cowboys on Portishead's Roseland NYC Live album

Instrument:
Evolution MK-7

Software:
Cool Edit Pro 2.0

Dedicated to:
James Montgomery Doohan

A Feast for Patrick by Boredoms in the Bathroom (featuring Filip Hnízdo)

Music by Boredoms in the Bathroom
Lyrics and Vocals by Filip Hnízdo

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Campaign/petition to save The Spitz as blogged about here