Joshua Van Tassel

When the tattoo is on in Edinburgh, these guys mean business. I forgot about this sound; you get to hear a bunch of different accents all in a 45 second span, I love it.

Minutes after pulling into picturesque Edinburgh, I jump out of the van take a deep breath, look around for some scenery…..and see a man’s wallet with the credit cards scattered amongst used needles, bottles, a crack pipe, and a can of red bull. Lovely.

So the past couple of days have been spent at Canterbury Studios mixing the Outlanders record with the band and Jeremy Darby, the fantastically talented, big hearted, and dirty minded engineer. It’s been a lot of fun, but also a a lot of work, more then some people realize. Over the course of a few hours we came up with this analogy to help anyone who hasn’t gone through the laborious process of listening to themselves over and over for 2 days straight understand what it’s all about.

So you’re about to go out for the evening with that special someone for possibly date number 2 or even 3. you’re excited, you’ve spent enough time together to know that it’s got the potential to be really good and long lasting. You want to look your best obviously. So, call up four of your friends and a make up specialist. Get a giant not only full length mirror, but one that magnifies your every blemish, mark, pimple, tiny scar, everything by 100 times. Next ask each person in the group what they think would help fix the blemishes, one by one. Now, chances are, they’re all going to have differing opinions about what to do. Some will make sense, some will be totally ridiculous, and chances are someone will have been on the phone or writing an email and need to have all the options repeated to them again. It can get messy, or sometimes everyone agrees on a little bit of cover up ( reverb), a little something to smooth out the skin (compression), and voila you look great.

Does that make any sense? Here’s a something that’s just been started yesterday, unmixed mind you. This is like going outside in your Budweiser t-shirt with no pants and cigarette hanging out of your mouth to get the paper on a Saturday morning.

These headphones cost more then my rent. For 2 months. They make me nervous.

I’m very lucky to have written some music for a great play called Norway Today, put on by everyone’s favorite independent theatre company Theatre SMASH. It’s a very affecting play revolving around the stories of two people who meet in a chat room and decide to kill themselves together by jumping off a very very large cliff in Norway.

Sound bleak? It’s not actually. The cast and direction bring out all the humility and humor the subject matter could offer, and the sound design and usage of video really sew things up. Anyway, enough with the commercial, go see it at the Tarragon Theatre at Bathurst and Dupont starting Tuesday the 9th. Here’s a clip of one of the pieces I wrote, and a shot from the first run I saw….

For no reason whatsoverer, the strange blond creature on the left swung her shopping bag at me and hit me in the shoulder. No chance of it being an accident, because this little oompa loompa was about 3 apples tall and smelled like a wet bag of concrete. Plus, her and her younger evil henchman laughed at me.
Therefore, you get blogged because I was too confused to say anything to you 5 minutes ago. Now back to the chocolate factory, you small strange woman.

Today at 2 and again at 10pm I’ll be playing with Kate Rogers on CBC 99.1 FM for the show Q. We’re doing a little acoustic set and some good old fashioned talking. If you like music and the disembodied voices of humans check it out…….

Here’s some beats from that fun little iphone app beatmaker I blogged about a little while ago that i made on various forms of transportation as we traveled around…..

BBC Manchester had a tv museum where I met this handsome gentleman. We became fast friends and I promised to keep in touch with him.

I’m back from a super fun tour of the Uk with my good friend Kate Rogers, and I’ve got plenty of little aural snapshots to help me remember things. Here’s a few that I’ve heard so far from London that stand out - -

Ah the tube. So fast, and so very small. Tall folks like me have to watch out for yellow bars and people moving very quickly and quietly.

A nice classic London church, peaceful, old, and full of tourists like me.

Here’s possibly my favorite sound I’ve heard so far. There’s a great neighborhood called Camden Town, kind of like a Toronto Kensington market area. Lots of shopping, lots of food, and a whole lot of people. I recorded this in a tiny tiny little boutique that just sold hats that were way to hip for me to even attempt to put on my head. It came from a tiny little portable record player, and it was the most calming thing I’ve heard in a while. I would have stood there all day, but the owner seemed a little suspicious of my slack jawed glassy stare and my phaser looking device that I was pointing at his beloved french 7 inch…

More to come as I get myself together…..

So for the first time in about 2 weeks the sun is shining in Manchester. The tour is almost done and it’s been great. I spent about 8 hours in scotland and am thinking about buying a castle and becoming a lord. Not the lord, just a lesser lordly dude who owns a castle.