natmarshall - Tumblr blog

[natmarshall]

this is hauntingly gorgeous.

[natmarshall]

oh! its london. week two.

well, how do you do! thanks for stopping by. 

another week has indeed passed, and i've been continuing in my incessant lurking of the fine streets of london. soooooooo much lurking. lurked all over the place, one might say. to summarise for those of you who prefer that, this week, I:

1. found out it was "national coffee day." that's dangerous. mostly because, as i would later conclude, london tends to be divided by a 10:1 ratio of crap to not completely crap coffee. i'm sure they do fantastic tea. 2. discovered that the walks preceding the visual gratification of a "tourist attraction," (i.e. benny boy the clock guy, bridge, palace, etc.) are often more exciting than the attractions themselves. photos soon. 3. got stuck on a roundabout during peak hour traffic on a barclay's bicycle for about 3 hours near trafalgar square.

yeah, shut up.

4. took photos of buildings i probably should know the names of but certainly didn't.

5. walked out of a certain well known shopping establishment with a completely full green bag...

6. most importantly, i saw a squirrel. in real life. in a tree. and it did not kill me, not even a little bit.

okay first, there's something you need to know. the new caribou and flying lotus albums are both amazing and if you haven't listened to them yet, you're guaranteed to come out the other end at least 90 percent more disinterested in my opinion on music, replaced by a sense of thrill and entitlement regarding your new personal taste for it. i shall say no more, other than...here are the links. get on it. Flying Lotus – You're Dead!

Caribou – Our Love

speaking of rough trade (and my crate digging ventures), i was lucky enough to wander into the wax outlet in question right as a young garage/power pop/psychedelic/shoegaze/grunge/krautrock band were hitting the small in-store stage for an album release gig. ladies and gentlemen of the interweb, i present "the history of apple pie."

i have a lot of praise to be shared about the history of apple pie. for instance, they were...loud. you couldn't hear the singer, which is totally rock and roll, props to the mix engineer and small room. and finally, they made me feel like i was in a scene from "scott pilgrim vs the world." it took everything in me to not yell "IS THAT GIRL A BOY TOO!?" however i figured because there was in fact, two girls in the band, perhaps that would come off a little more offensive than my quoting whimsy could cater for. so i kept my mouth closed.

national coffee day followed, which upon revisiting, i now realised that the basis of my "national" coffee day was based entirely on information passively alluded to me by people I follow in instagram...who are american.

face, to, the, palm.

so, i had my own gosh darn national coffee day, whatever.

among the successes for the day, was workshop coffee. one sip and a riot of gentle bitterness and velvety glory ensued on my highly trained nubbly tongue. it was by far the best coffee i've had in london so far, so i decided to let them know of my completely unbiased praises. as it turns out, they're an australian owned company grinding australian beans with australian coffee blends and a hearty australian bloody attitude. more or less. my tastebuds knew it all along. i then proceeded on a "short walk" to the nearest tube station, which for someone without wifi, a sense of direction, or a woman to yell at me for lack of the former, took many, many...hours longer than it perhaps could have. getting lost isn't such a bad thing in london, i suppose...

let it be known that while the london bridge was within plain sight when taking this photo, however i found it somewhere within my hipster eye to assume taking a photo of the light globes that hung nonchalantly along the sidewalk to be of more worth photographically. plus, it never ceases to amaze me how i relentlessly take unintended, blatantly crooked photos. the bridge looked more like a ladder into the grey mist descending upon london to devour everything in it's path. or something.

and then, one day, i went here.

i was pretty set on taking a photo of the zebra crossing, you see. because there aren't many photos of it around, you see. but, since there were a few others who for some reason had the same idea as me, i had to pull the "i am a musician so i can do whatever the bleep i want" cocky guitarist mentality that in most cases, tends to work. always needing to one up on everyone, aren't we? at least i'm aware of it. anyway, so i went inside. there's certainly a vibe about the place. it felt like important things were happening, like everything outside those doors was subject to be influenced by what was happening there at that very moment. i got away with it, i'm not going to tell you how. greetings were exchanged, documents were printed. hello.

meet "borris the barclay's bicycle." 

i decided it wasn't a true london experience without a good old fashioned bike ride. and then, somewhere along the line, i met borris. borris had an immediately noticeable quaint characteristic that attracted me to his services. he had seen many things, had stood the test of...london in general. he was the one, for we would endure many endeavours together, drifting tight corners of cobblestone pathways, gracefully gliding far and wide, wherever the wind would take us...

oh, and getting stuck on roundabouts.

you see, i have not ridden a bike for about, oh, seven or eight years. and obviously somehow i managed to entertain the thought that such a lapse in time without operating this means of transport would be fine when one is simply occupying the peak hour roads of inner city london. there's not much more i will say other than, i learned my lesson, the whole ordeal lasted about 7 and a half minutes (7 in which were on a roundabout) and my 2 pounds merely bought messy pants and a lifetime's supply of vividly accurate nightmares. round and round and round and round and....

hyde park is nice, though. a thrill. it's really on another level of green, orange, squirrel and crooked photo. thanks, autumn.

other ventures this week have included plenty of time in brick lane, soho and a short tour of lord's, lead by quite a proper englishman with the flawless scripted tour guide humour to boot. the guy was like a stand up comedian really, i might post a highlights reel, as i've been recording plenty of voice memos whilst i'm out an about seeing as though it almost impossible to take a crooked audio recording (though I'm sure i'll find a way). 

next week i take a short, dodgy air bus ride to a place i've heard merely consists of milk and honey, called "berlin." should be a classic. will get you in on it, as well as my last few days in london, a place that i think will be very hard to leave behind...

until next time!

[natmarshall]

oh! it's london. week one.

allow me to enlighten you as to what i've been up to! if you're interested. if you're not, that's okay. you should listen to the new aphex twin record instead. or even better, read on WHILST listening to the new apex twin.

glad we got that sorted.

so here's what i've been up to for the last week and a bit. the first few days in london were a culture shock as many of you may have experienced before. it was very new to me - the social quirks and rules that people live by daily over here. there's certainly a "right" and "wrong" way to go about doing your business if you're central. "inner city pressure" comes to mind..

in other news, meet mike:

mike is male model or something. he and his flat mates are letting me sleep on the comfy couch. it's really nice of them, because it's a pretty small flat and would perhaps be a certain percentage more spacious without a giant hairball occupying half of their living area (i am the hairball). i'm very grateful. mike is on another level. he's like judah smith if judah smith was also both leonardo di caprio and ronald mcdonald. we've been galavanting about the dense jungle of people and concrete alike for days and he has been showing me all the important places in london: where to get good wifi, where to drink coffee and also have good wifi, where to drink coffee and get good wifi and have a power socket at your disposal to continue using the good wifi. and also, nice tables so that i can take a picture of this:

my op-1. i still have absolutely no idea how to use it properly, but my goal is to write a record on it that sells fourteen million copies. true story. turns out if you don't plug in the headphones properly, everyone else around you can hear how crap you are. like  i said, social quirks. love you, london.

and then, i entered the county of "devon," or more specifically the town of "brixham," and i had no idea what i was in for when i agreed to head down with my cousin verity and her husband jo, for a few days. as it turns out, a short four hour trip south of london will actually take you to another world. or so it seems, this is brixham:

a pretty old place, i'm told. and it shows, because it is wonderful and packed to the brim with secret hideouts, most of which i didn't get to inspect thoroughly as i would have liked in my short time there as there was much to see. it's a fishing town, and the people there live a quiet life. it's a very gentle atmosphere, there's a soft hum of daily business without hurry, a feeling of heritage holding true amidst an older generation that occupies a large percentage of the population within the whole county. it was, needless to say, a stark contrast to my welcoming committee in oxford circus just a few short days earlier. it felt homely, cozy even. i loved it. it was good spending time with extended family as well, and it was a few days of tempered sightseeing that eased my jet lag and sense of adventure into their appropriate places. a few days of this, and you'll probably find you will be ready for anything...

back to london. it took a few days, but i started to get into the swing of things. it's a "live and learn," sort of thing. for example, in the space of about three days i managed to, in no particular order: 1. catch the wrong bus (and wind up in some bizarre baron wetlands area) 2. make a friend out of a geezer who claimed to be best mates with dame edna 3. pretend to be interested in a gym membership in order to use the sauna for half an hour 4. spend an hour looking for a cafe 3 minutes walk from the tube station i came out of 5. get sliced into two even halves by train doors 6. almost miss a train back to london in order to run my cousin's house key (which i realised was still on my person) down to the station administration.

and last, but not least...

smoked skittle flavoured shisha.

apart from all that, i've been listening to a lot of music and have been doing some serious crate digging. soho has been a place that has occupied a few days of my adventure. there's a bunch of cool record stores, it seems like one on every corner, many of which have entire basements allocated to "bargain bins," where i've picked up a few important classics for a few quid each. one particular shop had "kind of blue" by miles davis going brand new (lp) for a "tenner," a deal my wallet exposed it's naked plastic to without a moment's delay...

i've met a lot of cool, talented cats, seen a lot of beautiful buildings and had some intense spiritual moments. it's only been a week. i expect that i shall be updating in the next few days with, hopefully, a few sound bites. london has been everything i dreamed it would be, and more of course. there's more to come. until next time, my friends.

much love.

(p. s. i put together a little playlist of some stuff i've been listening to ever here the past week. like a summery of my trip in musical form. see what you think)

spotify: oh! it's london

[natmarshall]

how to find your sound

where is your sound? i am looking for mine right now. it could be anywhere. it could be up on a face.

or in the cupboard

on your clothes

drifting amidst the aroma of freshly brewed coffee

in the newspaper

a picture!

someone else

covered in fruit juice

aboard an old sampler

in motion

holding hands with a birdsong

...you don't get a second chance at a first impression. so whatever the sound is, it'd better play nice.

from nat

[natmarshall]

this is a track that i had the pleasure of doing for my friend elise. she has a label called elise vivienne that has just launched an online store. i did this track for their promo video which i will also upload soon. they wanted some 90s flavours and i them for that. simplicity and groove thanks to my old friend the roland 909.

the method behind this song was quite simple. the main synth line that you hear at the beginning is an old idea in my sample orphanage that has been collecting binary dust in my laptop. i sent it to grant and he liked it so i moved forward with that as the heart and soul of the track.

then i began with a 909 drum beat, and i decided that it should only make a brief appearance in the lead up to the "drop," because i wanted the 90s influence to be more implied as opposed to an overall theme. i like nostalgic elements in music but only if it makes room for new ideas.

the trap-esque beat at the end also began with an older idea - a pitched woodblock which you can hear doing a call-and-answer with the hi hats. i wanted this beat to feel slightly more acoustic so instead of a traditional pitched 808, i opted for a simple rimshot that i sampled from vinyl.

grant is a fan of british style dance music arrangements for his videos and so the arrangement of this track followed suit in the same vein that my previous track for elise vivienne did.

www.elisevivienne.com

enjoy

[natmarshall]

looking good, logic pro x.

excitement!

[natmarshall]

made my girlfriend a mixtape for old time's sake.

remember when you could be keen on a girl and then you make her a mixtape loaded up with songs with 'subliminal' (bloody obvious) messages telling her that you only want her to be your love forever? even going as far to put stuff you absolutely can't stand on there just to get the message across, like "love story" by t-swift, as if it weren't a cliche because when it's on a mixtape it is merely a chapter in a book that must be read in it's entirety, and therefore, it is cool because the result is greater than the sum of it's parts.

yeah, these days, it's spotify. pretty sure jasmine fell for me hard when a certain playlist called "for jasmine." popped up on her spotify inbox one wintery swiss afternoon. it really is the modern mixtape, isn't it? and moderately legal for the first time in romantic history.

anyway. we both still think that CDs win every time. free high five to whoever figures out whose album art i was aiming to rip off.

clue: kanye.

[natmarshall]

sketch of my pedal board as it will look in a few months time. awaiting the arrival this week of: mxr dc power brick, mxr dyna comp, jhs morning glory and the one i'm most excited about, strymon blue sky reverb.

still have to get the board itself and i think my next purchases will be a stereo volume pedal and a jhs black buffer. 

then all the toys (strymon timeline delay, ehx micro pog, tc c1...

[natmarshall]

upload some music and update your site more often

good call

[natmarshall]

What are your thoughts on religion?

i know that it was what Jesus came to get rid of.

matthew 15 talks about this.

[natmarshall]

the new phoenix record is scrumptious.

[natmarshall]

Six hours later….many thanks to this week’s coffee-loving guest artist Andrew Frazer.

[natmarshall]

shopping.

[natmarshall]

Hello?

howdy.

[natmarshall]

We were driving. But I was caught up in another wonderful blur who happened to be passing by. Thanks, blur.

[natmarshall]

sometimes water blows up and hits my face. this was a bit of an attempt to recreate one of my favourite album art pieces (and album itself, for that matter) of all time, Vital by a band called Anberlin. that band has always fascinated me with their album art, and i saw the ocean behaving in such a manor yesterday that might warrant a small piece of 'fan art.'

[natmarshall]

seasonal things (sound like swing)

dear you,

it's nearly christmas you know. my friend grant fletcher (who has a mustache) made a it a good notion to point out that christmas means that suddenly everyone listens to jazz. and big band. and swing. and they like it. which is true, because today i went to my favourite store (jb hi-fi) and bought the michael bublé christmas album, and it is certainly croon worthy. i crooned all over my steering wheel the whole way home. i crooned out the window at the guy jogging by the foreshore in the obligatory pre-summer mini shorts. croons were crooned.

i love christmas a lot.

tomorrow i am having a party next to my letterbox. not just because i get to bark and bite the tyres of the postman's motorcycle, but because my recording interface is arriving tomorrow. and this is a big deal. you see, i'm not really a guy who is prone to doing a lot of clicking with a mouse to make music happen. i prefer it to come from real live sounds, and then buddied up with click-made friends later. and so with all the things i've been needing to get a hold of, to make my current musical thingies run smoothly, like this guy:

i guess for some reason a recording interface of my own got put on the back burner. i make enough to get odd musical makers here and there, and this is something i've been waiting a long time for. this is a very good thing. so as i was saying, i'm going to be chilling out by my letter box with a party hat and a spicy dip of some description. you're welcome to come, it's number *bleep* on *bleep* street. wouldn't want all three of you to come after me at my humble place of residence now, would i? oh, there you go, i've blown it. you know it's a street now, that nails it down significantly. 

it's amazing on how much nostalgia populates one's mind upon the mood that a season has to offer. how often must i sincerely make a gentle departure from the present, reflecting on those moments that changed and ruined and made everything better all at once, and throwing a stone into that puddle to mess the reflection up real good? the whole thing sounds like swing. from back to forth. croon.

i really need to finish a song or something, i guess. oh, but the good news is, this:

i'm really inspired by a whole bunch of sounds lately. what albums have you been listening to? i'd really like to know. as of a few hours ago, i've listened to "lonerism" by tame impala about 722 times, to the extent that the glue on the inside of the album cover has actually worn out and the case no longer holds the cd. so it lives in my car CD player, or the michael bublé christmas cd case, when michael doesn't need it. surely that's not some sort of sneaky manufacturing technique that causes for one to listen to a cd (such as lonerism) till their occipital lobe catches fire? also, frank ocean found his digital way to my new iphone (i couldn't make it to jb to buy the real thing that day), and i love it. especially the intro. and then there's flume, and miike snow, and anberlin, and san cisco. many sounds indeed, perhaps i will do a write up of my favourites come the year's end. 

until soon, friend.

from nat.