jonnybaker

fractured broken and beautiful - dubh

dubh (pronounced "duv") is irish for dark (and a bit dubby). it's also the guise for ikon's own jonny mcewen who has recorded his first solo album fractured broken and beautiful. you couldn't get a more honest title - it sums up the music perfectly. made on a laptop, a couple of synths, a kaos pad and samples this instrumental electronica is dubbed out, trippy, warm, mellow, chilled, gorgeous, ambient, almost dub step in places. it's hard to know what to compare it to. it's a very unique sound with a real edge, an instant proost favourite!

somewhat confusingly the title of ikon's album was
dubh but this time round the artist is dubh!! and just to confuse you a little more we also have an album coming out on proost shortly by dubb :-)

there is a dubh facebook group you can join and listen to a few tracks online. go say hi to jonny and become a fan! this is the sort of release that reminds me why proost exists. it's hard to imagine any christian record label releasing anything like this!

it's currently available just as a download in the audio section of the site though a physical product is in the pipeline in time for greenbelt in a cardboard recycled sleeve as proost gets eco friendly. (if you subscribe you get access to it in the downloads area as part of your subscription).

spotify collaborative playlist - worship trick 67

matt who co-ordinates the DJs for the grace cafe each month came up with a fun idea for last week. he created a collaborative playlist on spotify and then invited a few of us to contribute in the week. you simply drag and drop tracks into it. then at grace the soundtrack in the cafe was that playlist on random play... collaborative DJing! worship trick 67 series 3. apologies if you are in a country where spotify isn't licensed!

in the spirit of collaboration i have created a jb blog readers collaborative playlist. so if you are a blog reader of mine and want to drop some tunes you are listening to on spotify in there then here's the http link and the spotify url

pipedown

well you never know when a new blog starts if it will actually get going, especially if it's a blog run by a few people, but it seems like pipedown could be here to stay reviewing new music, adding mixes and urban graphics. seizing the opportunity of the G20 summit the guys made a banner saying pipedown to wave in the crowd in any riots that erupted - photos here! i particularly like this one...

if you are going to the big chill... or even if you're not

have a listen to bands that will be playing - simple but ingenius

heaven UNKLE

UNKLE heaven with spike jonze

update: thanks to darren wright - download the movie here

if you were at spring harvest...

if you came to the teaching that joy and i were doing on the theme of apprenticeship/discipleship i have uploaded our slides for you to download as a pdf file apprentice. i really enjoyed working with joy - we were very different stylistically (- spot the difference in our slides!) but i think that difference brought very different edges.

if you came to the sessions i led on prayer, my wife jenny is better in this area than me. a few resources you might like that she has written are tune in chill out, and heart soul mind strength. you can download the breathing prayer here and there are a couple of examens here. sleeping with bread was the book i mentioned on the examen.

if you came to the worship we led, we loved having you there. grace has an archive of prayers and liturgies some of which we used - see wounded and slow for example. and i run a series of worship tricks - 1 | 2 | 3  which you can scroll through for ideas. if you had to describe the worship i guess it was contemplative but it comes out of a movement known as alternative worship. i have co-written a book or collated a book called alternative worship. and in recent years proost is a web company i help run that has a ton of resources - music, books of liturgies, and movies. harry was amazing this week and people loved his poetry, half of which was written on site. he goes under the name dubb and is on myspace here. i think we invented a new genre of worship mixing chants with rapped invocations! we will be putting an album out on proost of his stuff in the summer. laurence keith goes under the artist name harronell - his music is beautiful and he has an album harronell on proost that you can buy to download. listen to the track archangel on his myspce - one of my favourite tracks of last year.

if there was anything else we did that you want to know where to find it let me know in a comment or e-mail.

i work with cms and chatted to lot sof people about the current exciting shift to community

it's the first time i have been at spring harvest for 7 or 8 years i think. for those of you who haven't come across it, spring harvest is an evangelical mainstream christian festival. it caters for families really well with a very good childrens and youth programme. then there's a mix of bible teaching, seminars, and a celebration in the big top with lots of singing, preaching and all that (i was in the bar last night having my own celebration as chelsea beat liverpool so brilliantly at anfield!!). it won't surprise those of you who know me if i say it's not where i am most at home these days. in fact i feel like i hardly connect with this world - i don't even know any of the songs. and it seems pretty similar to when i was last here. the worship we were doing was on the edge, an alternative - always a place i feel more at home. called reflective readings we attracted a crowd who really didn't like the big top either because of taste, or because it was simply too noisy. we ended up with an older crowd but we so enjoyed them - they didn't have any of the usual postmodern angst!! a highlight was an evening where we went and lit a fire and built a cairn on the beach...

agents of the future - alt worship gets out of its laid back soundtrack

agents of the future are part of the bridge community in portland, oregon in the usa. their debut mini album of 6 tracks has a fantastic raw energy. none of the usual laid back alt worship electronica for the old alt worship folks! you can listen to samples in the media player on the proost site. they are our latest unusual suspects on proost. this is what they say about themselves

We are a bunch of Jesus-loving, jalopy-gospel way-backers who get together and do creative things: Shrieking, speaking, flailing, failing, storytelling, fear-quelling. In the process, songs and stories are smithed and written, friendships and families are stretched and shaken, stirred and strengthened. Genre-gender-class-past-death-defiers and town-crying demystifiers of mystery history lead these pacifistic, full-frontally ballistic missives. Best of all, on frequent occasions, we see entombed voices raisin’ and we peek through the haze.

i raved about andli mac's sea parable before on the blog and even went and bought it myself. well i'm delighted to say that you can now get that on proost as well. it's a beautiful animation that tells a tale of sailors who live to rescue people drowning in the sea. their mission keeps getting subverted by the lure of the comfort of the boathouse. sound familiar?!

one of my personal favourite movies on proost is jon birch's manga style 12 stations. if you've not come across it take a look. this year he has taken some of the still images from it and worked them into a meditation for easter 12 stations meditation. it is a flash file where each page has an image associated with a station and a written reflection. when you are ready click the button to move onto the next page. it's perfect for good friday (though skip the resurrection station at the end - which was never part of the traditional stations anyway!)

i know i have said it a few times but if you subscribe you can download all our stuff and get a year's worth of new content. and every time i say it there's more there :-)

pipedown

a new music blog pipedown is launched today by joel and 3 friends - jack , simon and matt. there are 4 mixes of ten tunes - one mix from each of them, a soundcloud drop box where you can place a tune you'd like them to hear and the promise of a buzz about music and culture so i assume tunes, reviews, club nights and so on.

the design (as you might expect) is very neat. they've taken up the notion of web presences through icons which i picked up on my blog in my redesign - but stripped it back. i particularly like the icon stream next to each name. in my view the header's too big - on a lot of computers it will fill half the screen... but it looks likely to be a good space for music. i doubt it will be just be on a dance tip either though that will be the main flow - jack brings a different edge with a love of alternative bands and song writing. the challenge will be whether a group blog works for them - not many i know out there keep the momentum. but if you launch on april 1 i guess it's a sign of not taking yourselves too seriously! (which reminds me that was the date i started my current job ;-)  )

so follow along in whatever online presence you are accustomed to hanging out in...

what about me? - tracked it down...

well i finally tracked down the 1 giant leap new double cd to download. i have kept an eye on 1 giant leap's site since the dvd what about me? came out -the site is unbelievably lame and lacking in news for a project with such a huge investment! it was darren wright who mentioned it was out and got me looking again - it doesn't even seem to be on itunes yet...

it is wonderful - such a profound, celebratory window into global culture, humanity and spirituality. it's one of the best pictures of god aside from jesus that i know of - in the sense that all these people and cultures  image god...

i wish i could have voted for barack obama

i wish i could have voted for barack obama, originally uploaded by jonnybaker.

on friday jen and i went to the late opening at the tate (amongst other things i was trying out a new camera in low light - the ISO is unbelievable - so little noise at 1600). soweto kinch was playing in one of the galleries. he has done a project with the gallery to take 6 pieces of art and create interventions and put a ghost in the machine. you can get a set of headphones from the desk and listen to his interventions (music, poetry) which riff off the pieces of art. he did his usual brilliant free styling though his VJ was possibly the most hopeless i have seen in my entire life! this was a temporary installation - a new one is being added each week in response to the altermodernity exhibition.

so spotify isn't going to have it quite so easy...

spotify (if you don't know what i am talking about sign up!) is putting noses out of joint or so it seems...

spotify

spotify - like early napster only legal. consider yourself invited

[update: the invitation to use the free version only works if you are in certain countries - see the comments on this post]

k7! sampler

k7! sampler - free music... [ht mike]

currently listening to...

last year wasn't a great year for music at least in terms of what i discovered so i'm hoping 2009 proves to be more inspiring! with the redesign of the blog i have lost a few things in the sidebar including the list of what i am currently listening to and currently reading. so expect the occasional music and book update.

i actually am listening to some great new tunes/albums at the moment including -

nu balearica a 2 cd set of warm house chosen by fred deakin
fourth estate by jon hopkins - an amazing 32 minutes ambient piece, the perfect soundscape for alt worship
undo by bjork - a single track but the most gorgeous piece which i heard in an advent reflection in austin last year
vampire weekend - yes guitar music i know! but really enjoying it
dear science by tv on the radio - coolest band on the planet right now apparently
a chilled selection of tunes joel put together from 08 (dubstep and all that) - very nice. you'll have to contact joel via facebook if you want to know what they are...
styrofoam - a thousand words and nothings lost

thanks to bob carlton, mike rose and joel baker for helping my taste!

christmas ambient tunes - worship trick 53

i was looking on jon hopkins web site (perhaps my favourite artist of the moment) and followed a link to sound asleep records who look like a label worth keeping an eye on if you like your music ambient or electronic - i guess a little in the vein of kranky records for those of you who have discovered the delight of the incredible dead texan album.

anyway it turns out they have a free 8 tracks of their artists doing christmas songs. i am not sure how long this offer is up now christmas is over. you can link to it from their front page or this is currently the direct link. there are a couple of tunes here that are gems including an amazing 11 minute ambient silent night and they will no doubt be providing a soundscape to some alt worship in ealing next advent...

this is worship trick 53, series 3

pipedown - joel launches club night tonight

joel is launching pipedown in london tonight. it's in camden. you can download a minimix here and here's the spiel...

Dubstep. Electro. Wonky. Fidget House. Bassline. Garage. Grime. Hiphop. Soul. Funk. Jungle. Drum&Bass. Gutter Bass. We play it all.

This is real underground bass music, a reaction to the countless amounts of soulless student and club nights out there. Instead of added gimics, expect a night purely about music and the occasional art happening. We promote eclecticism, future talent, down right dirty beats and lets not forget, fun!

cinematic orchestra

after working the last two weekends it's nice to have a weekend free...

fri night jen and i went to see the cinematic orchestra at the roundhouse which was simply brilliant. the first half they played live with the movie man with a movie camera, a 1929 russian silent movie which jen described as an early koyanasqaatsi. then the second half was songs from ma fleur. and it was sublime to have lou rhodes present to sing on two tracks - her voice is heaven sent.

fields of forel

fields of forel - free pretty mellow instrumental album to download [thanks joey tulino for the tip]

voice of an angel - notes from the chill 2

i mentioned jamie woon in the last post but wanted to say a bit more...

he has an album out soonish apparently - put it on your christmas list now. i first came across his voice via joel in a remix track of wayfaring stranger remixed by burial that is brilliant and made it into the worship tricks list. but wandering past the open air stage on saturday at the big chill i heard a voice i knew that i had heard before and worked out it was jamie who was standing in for someone else. sadly it was his last song so we missed nearly all of his set - matt sent me a link to that track on youtube - spirits which you can download from his myspace. someone said in introducing him later on that he had the voice of an angel which isn't far off.

looking at his hits on myspace he is still a pretty unknown but i suspect not for long...

on the subject of new music the big chill label has a couple of new albums out by animat and john metcalfe, both of which are worth checking out if you like your music instrumental and chilled. i have been a fan of animat's ever since seeing their live rescore of belleville rendezvous...

a few links

back from the big chill festival which was brilliant as ever. i'll blog more about that later and edit photos (haven't even managed holiday ones yet!). meantime a couple of links i have meant to add...

25 photography tutorials from round the web

if you are missing the mix tape

what one diocesan bishop did to understand the conflicts around sexuality