As you may have already read, Hog programmed a series of depressing nuclear war films for his 30th birthday - it’s nice to have a theme.
Sadly he wasn’t in tip top condition - just a cold though, not the effects of crawling out the fallout, unless he was taking it even more seriously than we thought.
I made him a Computer Sings birthday DVD, which I was hoping to wheel out for the computer to deliver in “person”, though that ended up not happening, in fact we didn’t see that much of Hog at all but despite the cold & war conditions we were still determined to party . . .
. . . and dancing was had to DJ Richie Paradise dropping some strange kinda surprises and standards.
Guess I must shoulder some of the blame for letting the loon loose - I met Timmy at the Arnolfini’s Playing John Cage preview, and persuaded him to come to The Cube to see Daedelus play - when he got there he admirably launched into helping out behind the bar, but, in over-excitedly trying to retrieve an iced-in bottle of vodka from the freezer managed to stab the unit with a knife, so eliciting some sort of gas and widespread panic . . .
. . . to get it temporarily out of the office. Thanks to Kate’s trade-it work it is now replaced, and to be honest and fair to poor Tim it really needed replacing well before the knifing incident anyway.
Meanwhile in the auditorium Daedelus was wonderful - artfully getting round the old thorny problem of ‘live’ laptop music often being somewhat uninvolving by playing a special purpose built hardware sequencer linked to his computer that might not look like much below . . .
. . . but was a joy to see him virtuosically operate it live on stage, manipulating separate samples and tracks all digestible by the audience as it’s descriptive outward-facing lights flashed by.
Also kind of hard to decipher from the photos, but he sported a mean tailcoat. Correct.
No spelling mistake my friends, no sirree, for this week we welcomed 3 members of our Japanese outreach program, The Kobe Orchestra.
This was alot of fun for me. Clearly by now you all the know the vastly talented Tomoko bass player and occasional percussionist extraordinaire. Well she was joined by Yoshino 
(who had a great party in Montpelier during the summer where a few Cubist types ended up) and Tomoko’s visiting friend from Japan Akira 
. Well it turns out the boy can bash away a bit and Yoshino also did a good impression of a Geisha at times (kneeling to strike her item of percussion, very Japanese that) and Tomoko also smacked and shook away at the drums etc lieing around, so I felt like it was The Richie Paradise Percussive Four versus The Cube Orchestra at times.
In fact that was how we started proceedings our side of the stage 
versus the other side 
Lots of newbies, Krsh on geetar, Maz on sax, and Helen on flute 
who all contributed well to the kinda ramshackle and cold proceedings 
.
Musically very interesting. Different ‘cus we had some newbies who haven’t been driven quite as mad as the rest of us, so the music was probably not as far out as usual, in fact dare i say it, you could almost have danced to some of the stuff we played, possibly due to the highly percussive element of the music. Ok guilty as charged but baring in mind that we’re not here to jam but to create art darling I took it upon myself to destroy a far too flowing piece,
perhaps inspired by Liam’s clearly satanic influence
what developed though was great. We went from a kind of New Orleans second line thing to a dance hall reggae style thing. It was a fitting end to a good days music making. Well done all, hearty back slapping and big grins of satisfaction and smugness please for, and by, Tomoko, Yoshino, Akira, Maz, Helen, Richard, Krsh, Ale, Marcus, Belinda, Liam, Mark, Gareth, Myself, Barry and Ellie.
Mr. Hopkinson was also there finding out who’ll be available for weds performance at The Watershed.
So it’s good night from him 
and its good night from him
Richie Paradise
With Elin needing the room for the North Bristol Arts Trail which takes place this weekend, we needed to clear some space and finally got rid of the old essenhaitch props . . .
. . . which were made for performances at The Cube amongst other places, so it’s only fair to tell you about it here.
There’s a craft fair at Here on Saturday too.
Ages ago now, and already covered from The Paradise Perspective, but here’s some pics from the day Peter returned to see what had happened to Orchestra Cube in his absence, and Hugh came on all Toshimaru Nakamura ( of no input fame ) . . .
. . . Peter joined in just as another Orchestra member, twiddling in the effects loop . . .
. . . in in general pieces . . .
. . . I’d personally welcome a return to the conducted leadership and workshops more like the initial OC setup, especially as at the last practice, which I only briefly attended, the numbers were swelling upwards away from the potential cosy band syndrome that’s a possible trap now that there’s a core of members who know each other . . . not that knowing each other more is bad ( ! ), or I think it needs to be nasty, but . . . I reckon welcome revitalisation could come with more conviction and chaos care of our long lost conductor’s careful and carefree control . . .