Segue

A few packages hit the desk today, including the Mackie 1202 VLZ3 which replaces the rather heavier and larger console mixer which has been the staple for Segue and the odd Silent Shadow gig over the last year or so. Most excitedly, the Monome 40h kit has arrived. Unfortunately I don’t have time to assemble it this weekend, as I fly out to Hong Kong on Saturday and will be busy eating noodles, buying robots and getting custom Kung-Fu suits made simply because, well, that’s what you do in Hong Kong. I think. But I’m very excited about coming back to put this together for the gig at Bar Soma. Check more photos of the new Monome kit out on the Segue FlickR page.

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I finally got around to doing a proof of concept test of a timelapse animation over the weekend. Hooking a Canon 450D DSLR digital still camera up to a Macbook, and setting the remote capture software to grab a frame every 10 seconds, I had the intention of roughly capturing a recording session. Instead I just quickly tidied up the studio, watched some Underworld videos on Youtube, posted on Twitter, and for the breifest of moments actually worked on a track in Ableton. Dumping the photos into Vegas, I knocked up this rough timelapse video. This is my first time testing this out, though our VJ collaborator Jaymis has done quite a few interesting timelapses over the years. I can’t wait to try this out in Hong Kong in a couple of weeks.

The track snippet in this video is a rough mix for a remix I did for Vitreous. The track is called “Pine”, and will be revisited for a fresh mixdown before being signed off and released shortly. More on that soon. Not in the “will tell you when we can” mysterious sense, but in the “we don’t actually know” realistic sense.

One of the things a blog should be about, and certainly for a band, is sharing some raw ideas. As I write a few different things for a few different publications week in and week out, I think I’ve let the original fun idea of a frequently used Segue blog fall into routine and a form of uniformity. Thankfully, I had a nice dose of inspiration on Friday night, heading out to catch the dual joys of Berlin Sessions at Bar Soma and Jody Wisternoff at Moon Bar. At the latter, Kris had a DJ set after Jody and ambitions to be entirely sober for it, and at the former it was great to catch up with the Logic lads and appreciate how far Nick and the crew have taken Bar Soma. So it was an interesting night. Kris dropped some originals, I lost my voice, various friends were escorted out of various venues and the usual collection of unprintable antics. I came home and threw together this little idea, before sleep overtook me and I eventually woke up wondering why I couldn’t speak anymore. I’m thinking it’s a voodoo curse. Or just talking loudly over loud music. In any case, here’s what I woke up to. It’s not a track. It’s an idea. And it’s about time to start sharing them more:

The name is literally the first thing I saw. Not being in much of a state to ponder deep and meaningful names at the time, and indeed, as per the picture above, being entertained at the time by a dancing Isobot robot in front of a rather moody lamp. Which is about all I really have to say on the matter.

Challenged with condensing years of gigs, arm swirls and smashed samplers into a debut release, Segue stepped off the back of an epic performance at the Big Day Out festival and temporarily retired the live rig to the studio with the goal of capturing the excitement from the stage into two tracks of raw electronic music. As homage to the excitement and energy of the live show, Dave Dri and guest percussionist Kris-Ko locked themselves away to record a double single featuring two of the original Segue bombs.

With the bubbling acid and tech riffs of encore favourite ‘Reset’, and the driving tech house grooves and abstracted vocal wanderings of ‘Forever’, this is Segue stepping off stage clutching samplers and synthesisers and headed straight to the after party. As the band evolves, its sound develops, and its players collaborate outwards, “Reset & Forever” is a classic slice of the energy and electronica that has defined a live act at its most smoke machines and strobe lights obsessed. Released on Australian label Smash Bang Records, “Reset & Forever” is available on Beatport now.

Happy new year! We say in February. This is a quick update on what 2009 has meant for a resting and busy Segue so far. You can read the 2008 summary previously, but heres a taste test of some pretty exciting stuff for the year!

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Short geeky post to say our webhost has migrated our server and a few things seemed to have dropped off. Things should be a bit speedier now and we can start to safely upload our mixes, track snippets and live recordings again! A few posts seem to have dropped off the blog in the process so we will be running a backup and all should be fine by Friday. Let us know if anything is buggy!

Late one night in the studio, we received an email from a friend overseas citing some difficulty in downloading our Chemical Brothers remix from the site. Taking a cue from the many clips on YouTube acting more as a streaming audio link than a film clip, we grabbed the beleaguered DV camera that films each gig and threw together a quick edit or two. As such we present a quick vid mock up for Chemical Brothers – EBW9 (Segue Remix).

Catch the video on your flavour of Vimeo or YouTube. Also you can still download the track from the original post on the site here.

Here is the Segue remix of Electronic Battle Weapon 9. Its a dancefloor homage to the EBW series with our particular progressive acid flavour, and as you might notice, a departure from the original. We’ve gotten a lot of emails about this so here it is, you know the drill, right click and save as. As ever we’d love to hear what you think or if you play it out, so let us know via the contact page. Also please feel free to jump on the mailing list and we’ll keep you updated on the original tracks we are getting ready to release and gigs we are playing. This remix has made its way into our live set and we will eventually get around to editing some of the accumulating DV tapes. In terms of the track itself, well, if you’re interested in some back story, Dave explains further.

Listen:

Download:

Chemical Brothers – EBW9 (Segue Remix) - 14.7meg 320kbit

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