Weekend Monolake: Sun 21 Dec

Lunch at Gore Core...

From left to right: Sean (Jeane Poole), Robert, Grant and Mark out by the car, Steve Law and Bunny.

Same, but this time with feeling...

From left to right: Paul Abad and Ross Bencina. It was Paul who helped to get Robert out to Australia.

We leave for the park in Grant's EK. It breaks down. We learn that to get it going we need to "thrash the shifter", a term Robert found amusing so much so we laughed outragously till we arrived at Edinburgh Gardens, Fitzroy.

Alan and co have been known for organising frequent Sunday arvo gatherings with battery powered PA and frisbies. We were due to play this fine afternoon, the rain taunting us all the while.

Grant did a great job getting us about and around Melbourne over the weekend. Safe and sound in the EK. Every driver deserves a beer at the end of a day long arching steers!

Left to right: Myself, Paul Abad and Ross Bencina, author of the infamous AudioMulch.

Left to right: Robert and the rest of what turned to be 5 of us...

The Terminal Quintet! Special guest appearance of the silent, but generous Steve Law.

I think we played at least two or so hours. It rained but no one cared much. The music was great, it was warm and plenty of friendly people :^)

Photos: Justina + Andrew

Weekend Monolake: Sat 20 Dec

The 20th of December saw the arrivel to Melbourne of one Robert Henke (aka. Monolake). He stayed at Gore Core leaving the following Monday for gigs in New Zealand.

No sooner had Grant arrived from the airport that Robert had his laptop out and online. Just earlier he showed me an MAX Patch he had cobbled together to emulate the sound of cicadas.

Intruiged by the Tibetan bowls he had seen and heard at Paul Abad's place in Brisbane, he made perhaps his one and only Melbourne purchase.

We had fun using the floor as a resonator :^) The trip to sound check was a treat to be heard!

Robert Henke with camera at Public Office, West Melbourne. Sound check!

Front row: Andrew, Grant, Robert.
Back row: Ben Dixon and Justine Leara.

Alan Bamford, pretty much the energy and vision behind our Public Office event... Here's Alan having a good old chuckle as Mark Harwood leaps off stage having completed a hiliarious work that included a brief show of fireworks at its end.

Surely not a day goes by in Melbourne when a musician really needs their beer.

Rapidly setting up for my set... I played works from the new album, Son of Science. A semi-autobiographical work spanning some 15 years or more of ideas, unreleased pieces, demo recordings. Planning to have the project completed, ideally, early to mid 2004.

The trimmed down rig: laptop (Ableton Live, AudioMulch), PMA-5 and MIDI controller/keyboard.

Visual accompaniment produced in collaboration with Andrew Thomas. "Rot Emulsion" was originally produced for Tat Fat Size Temple. It will accompany, at least remain as feature visual, all my forthcoming performances.

Down on the last track, Stars & Vermin.

Robert felt very connected to the audience... I think we all did!

Looking back down the venue from the side of the stage. The tall chap striding towards us is Mit who wrote a fine set for the evening. I think we all worked hard on our individual sets.

From the back during Robert's second and evocative set.

Robert and his (working) gear getting an encore... Most fine :^)

Photos: Justina + Andrew

Merry Crispness @ Gore Core

Crispness began with the making of our Crisp-Utopia cards, reflecting the light that shone on us in the many countries, many spaces we have inhabited this year or so past.

We posted these cards to family, friends and then some...

All the presents, still in their mailbags, were placed on the Crispness Piano.

Twas the night before Crispness and all the lovely presents had arrived. We celebrated Crispness Eve, as the Garton family does, and we opened all the presents marked "Andrew".

Some, like the records we kind of opened earlier in the day during the treasure hunt Justina took us on :)

First thing in the morning we opened all the presents marked "Justina".

Before we progress any further into the day, let's take stock of our gifts, some of which we chose to wear today. This is the chilli jam we got from Andrew's sister, Grace.

Some of the creams, lotions and gels we chose to wear today! The shaving gel from Justina's Mum gave Andrew a clean, pain-free shave.

Here's Andrew sporting a new pair of top-the-range headphones (Sennheiser HD 25-1). Thanks Justina :^) 15000Hz never sounded so good!

Justina displays poise and delight at the new Crumpler bag that will carry her laptop and spare her back!

And Crispness would not be the same without Crispness cards. Our cards are displayed for all to see.

However, passers by on Gore Street will see not only cards, if they care to stop and look...

...there will be elephants fashioned from stone!

We spent much of the day cooking... preparing for a late lunch. This is a recipe for Crispness Cake that Justina prepared.

The kitchen... is it ready for us? You can be assured it is... 24 hours access (is) required! Thermos coffee cups at the ready (thanks Patsy and Mark)...

Justina's cake mix in full swing.

The (wild) salmon we purchased in Tasmania several months ago. Clearly thawing after a long winter in deep freeze Melbourne.

Preparing the fish for baking.

Oil, salt, lime and some physical contact with the fish.

Whilst all this was going on, Supercat was practising nocternal vigilance by our sides... well, slightly upstairs, on the bed in his special fake fur blanket (formally Andrew's winter jacket).

With the cooking done, we leave the kitchen and find our selves in the sanctuary that is Gore Core.

With a bottle of our favourite wine... (and we ain't had lunch yet!)

Gosh, the cake came out well...

Terminal Quartet V1.0

The Terminal Quartet performing Drift Theory 01, a structured improvisation and collaborative composition by Andrew Garton.

This debut performance was held at the Lambsgo Bar, Fitzroy, Melbourne, 18 December, 2003.

Once we got through the logistcs of space (fitting four laptops and MIDI controllers on a small table) and sound checks we met out the back of the bar to discuss the piece.

The Terminal Quartet V1.0 is Andrew Garton, Paul Abad, Steve Law and Jeremy Yuille (from top-right clockwise to top-left). That's Brains in the DJ booth finishing up his set before we hooked in.

Photos by Justina Curtis.

Fish friends

A couple of weeks ago Justina got our fish tank going. It's situated under the stairs that takes us out of the top floor and into the garden. The house is built into what was once a hill, so we enter on street level and walk down a set of stairs into the living area, kitchen and the fecund garden.

Here's the tank with Mr Fish and Mr Friend. There are two snails and five, surprisingly smart smaller fish from the Murray River (apparently).

A close up of Mr Fish... He has similar markings as Supercat, although Super is black and white.

Now here's Mr Friend, also a Comet, larger than Mr Friend, equally as gracefull.

Mr Friend and Fish spend a lot of time tailing each other.

The fish tank has become a kind of meditative corner where either of us, or both of us will sit, slow down, relax and empty our minds of inconsequential thoughts.

Post-D3

Apart from a couple of odd health days, I'm starting to regain my energy since D3 went public. It's been up for two weeks now and seems to have been received with overwhelming enthusiasm... 1000 people had been through the gallery on the first weekend it was open.

ACMI has all the important data about D3 on their site. We have some photos from the installation, courtesy of ACMI Public Programs.

It's now 3:02, second attempt at getting this published! It's the first all night session Grant and I have been able to get in since completing D3. We find one all nighter, every so ofter, gets us through some of the more complex items on our c2o/Toy Satellite/Secession to do lists. Well, it helps having someone to cheer you along, particularly if one is making progress!

Here's Supercat, watching over us from his new perch, constructed from crates I'd bought in Byron Bay, made from off-cuts, off-cuts from a planned UFO landing pad! Oh, and a pile of cushions.

Justina is in Manila having just completed a WENT trainers workshop. Very shortly she'll leave for her first visit to the Philippines country side, including one night in Baguio, where I had spent an inspiring week, at the Tamawan Artists Village, last November.

Bobby (same guy who loves our WOK CMS...) at the entrance to Tamawan Village.

A sculpture of an eagle on a distant rock someone managed to carve. Baguio does that kind of thing to people...

Baguio taxi... yeh, lots of mirrors and they charge far less than cabs in Manila... and pretty friendly too.

Back to the present... at least within the past hour. Grant just having solved the "how do we get multiple forms to work on the WOK" problem. He's coding up the "Punter of the Month" questionnaire for the Lambsgo Bar site we recently rolled out...

And a rare one of me... prefering life behind a camera... hairy too... a week indoors, chilling out with no serious deadlines, music to keep me curious, and emails from Craig Bellamy to keep my brain from stagnating.