I haven’t written anything for a bit, sorry about that. Got plans for various things but other commitments have kept me from this. Plans to write more hi-fi reviews, plans to create new free Photoshop and Illustrator brushes. Also my plans to write 100 random facts about Smoking Drum appear to have dried up at about 29.

Anyway, recently I’ve been boosting my stock image folio and the images above are just a few of the images. I specifically took stock images recently on holiday in Cornwall and it seemed to work well! Out of just over 200 images, 63 were good to submit and only a handful were rejected.

Also, shooting for stock has enabled me to find some photo mojo which I’d lost for well over a year, so that is reason enough. So what if I’m not shooting arty images?

In a couple of weeks we’ll be off to both of the UK ATP festivals where I go out shooting images in the morning whilst everyone else is asleep, so maybe I’ll get some more then!

11. I always prefer quality over convenience, almost without exception. I’d rather have some massive speakers taking up half the room, vinly LPs, a big camera…

12. Following on from the last point, I truly believe simple is best when it comes to quality. Any technology which rests heavily on its features is bound to be a load of rubbish! I’d rather have something with one feature which is done really well.

13. This also explains why I so love old technology, because so much old technology is simpler and, as a result seems to work better or sound better. Valves, big transformers and vinyl are the best examples of this – they’re so much better than CDs, digital downloaded audio, modern tiny transistor amps with horrible switching power supplies which focus entirely on convenience and being as small as possible.

14. I currently work on a farm. I never thought I’d say that!

15. I like 0.9mm propelling pencils, the fatter the lead the better. I always have two books with me, a notebook and a sketchbook.

16. Speaking of writing, I love using a fountain pen. Can’t stand biros. Horrible things. I believe in writing by hand as much as possible and not using the computer.

17. When it comes to creative things, such as music, film, art, I prefer flawed things to things which are perceived as “perfect”.

18. I love the films of people like Terry Gilliam, Jim Jarmusch, David Lynch, Krystof Kieslowski and Jean-Pierre Jeunet.

19. My musical tastes are quite diverse but some of the artists I love are Amon Tobin, Built to Spill, David Byrne, Soul Coughing, Four Tet, Alias, Why?, Jaga Jassist, Squarepusher, Calexico, They Might Be Giants, David Bowie, Robyn Hitchcock, Sage Francis, Spoon, Deerhoof, Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, Seb Rochford, Menomena.

20. There are lots of things I used to do. I’m sure that’s the same with most people. But there aren’t many things I want to do.

Hello everyone. I’ve been slow to write anything new this year and it was suggested to me that I should write a bunch of random facts to shed some light on Smoking Drum without giving too much away! This is mainly about music and film…

1. Smoking Drum is a musical reference – it describes a particular style of drum beat which is smoking or sizzling. It has nothing to do with smoking tobacco! Sorry to disappoint any readers but I have never smoked tobacco.

2. I studied Film at West Surrey College of Art & Design, worked in the film industry for three years and almost followed a career of cinematography. I had the opportunity to become a camera assistant for a documentary film maker but it would have meant traveling the world six months of the year—something I didn’t want to do as I’d just got married.

3. I learned violin and piano as a child, and later guitar. I haven’t played for a few years but I’m really hoping to do so again, very soon.

4. Music is in my blood. I don’t know why, but it is. I’ve written this before but music gets me through all times, good and bad. I must have a deep connection with it! This is why I know that one day I will play again. Maybe I’ll be 70 by then!

5. I built my first electric guitar in secondary school in Modular Technology. It was a “flying V” type guitar made from mahogany. I have no idea why I chose that style!

6. I played in various bad bands and had a horrible Marshall transistor guitar amp (eugh). One of the bands was called Pernicious Anaemia!

7. I used to work as a Telecine operator where you transfer film to video tape. I worked mainly on rushes, where the film crew would send in the raw unprocessed film, it would be developed and then I’d whack it on the Telecine machine and “grade” it on the fly onto video tape – basically colour correcting in real time. The tapes would then have sound put on them and sent back the next day to the director ready for viewing.

8. We tried to create a little film company in the early 90′s, we shot a few shorts (on 16mm) and it was immense fun. Some of the actors even went on to bigger performances in The Bill and Casualty!

9. I have met a few well known faces I suppose…my favourite was John Peel who I met a few times as he used to come into the sound studio to record voice over for programmes like “Classic Trucks”. I made him cups of coffee!

10. I haven’t been to nearly enough gigs as I’d have liked but I have been to a few memorable ones, like Motorhead in Reading in the 80′s where there was literally a riot as the gig was closed down (police and dogs running after metalheads) and the last gig of Alice Donut. Recently I’m pleased to say I’ve been able to enjoy the ATP festivals and have seen some truly excellent bands like Built to Spill, Sonic Youth, Battles.

Not necessarily recent releases, though, as I keep discovering old stuff too, but here are some of the best things I’ve found recently:

Valgeir Sigurðsson “Ekvílibríum” (2007)

Soul Position “Things Go Better With RJ and Al” (2006)

Alias “Resurgam” (2008)

Alias “Muted” (2003)

Dan Friel “Ghost Town” (2008)

Lars Horntveth “Pooka” (2004)

Robyn Hitchcock “Luminous Groove” (boxed set of 8LPs plus digital download of all tracks) (2008)

Clark “Turning Dragon” (2008)

Why? “Alopecia” (2008)

Band of Horses “Everything All The Time” (2006)

Ladyhawk “Ladyhawk” (2006)

Efterklang “Parades” (2007)

Most are available on vinyl LP, all are available on CD. I forgot to include the Robyn Hitchcock boxed set in the photograph, sorry! It’s a lovely boxed set, all on heavyweight vinyl.

I’ve been thinking about upgrading my phono stage for as long as I can remember. It was the one remaining component left to upgrade after the turntable, tonearm and cartridge and now I’ve finally done it. Wow! What a huge difference.

I originally bought my Music Fidelity X-LP phono stage when I purchased my Unison Research Simply Four which was sold ages ago. The guy in the shop said “phono stages are basically all the same” and that it wouldn’t really matter which one I bought. Also, I didn’t have the £500 in my pocket for the Unison Research valve phono stage!

Anyway, to cut a long story short, changed Unison amp for Decware Select Zen amp, built loudspeakers…sound got better but still a bit thin sometimes. Upgraded turntable to excellent Origin Live Ultra, got Origin Live Silver tonearm, new cartridge, new speaker cable, Vertex AQ Jaya mains filter and eventually built new Decware HDT speakers.

Each time I upgraded these components the sound became more detailed and more refined. When I got to the Origin Live Silver tonearm, the Vertex AQ Jaya filter and especially the HDT speakers things were getting extremely good and new experiences like spaces around instruments, a defined soundstage (including the first signs of depth) and tonal details really started to make themselves known.

But still the sound could be thin with vinyl, especially some bad pressings like Living Color “Time’s Up”, and The Pixies albums. I had high hopes for alleviating this problem with a new phono stage.

So, I spent a lot of time researching this component. I considered Graham Slee’s Era Gold, the Trichord Dino, the new (and well reviewed) Pure Sound P10, the Moon LP3, various Pro-Ject stages, Tom Evans and quite a few others. After reading lots of opinions, though, I discovered that the Era Gold and the Dino wouldn’t necessarily bring a lot of “body” to the music, the Moon was a bit of an unknown, others were less flexible and the Pure Sound P10, while raved about, is Moving Magnet only.

One phono stage kept coming up in my mind, the Lehmann Black Cube, especially in its Special Edition version with the add-on power supply. I kept reading great reviews which really talked about qualities like soundstage and especially its “full bodied” tone and wide bandwidth. Other bonus points for the Lehmann were that I could buy the Black Cube and then get the power supply later, making it a more achievable purchase and also that it has a number of user-definable settings such as the cartridge loading, custom loading (by inserting resistors), low pass filter and gain settings.

Wow, this is a long introduction! I will try to speed things up a bit. I purchased the Black Cube, and pretty soon after added the power supply to turn it into the Special Edition version.

The result was actually far more than I was expecting, from a phono stage upgrade. Having got used to fairly subtle improvements in sound from changing various components the Lehmann Black Cube SE made the music gel in a very impressive manner. Not that it wasn’t pretty coherent already!

The soundstage was very much more defined with instruments clearly positioned now. Yes, the Decware HDT speakers did this very well but now there was more depth front to back, too. Also, even more attention grabbing is that before, certain instruments and voices had a wonderful sense of their own space. Now, with the Lehmann in place, everything imparted its own space. Every single element of the recording now breathed, reverberated, sang in a space and position within the soundstage.

You might think that this definition and pulling apart of each instrument would have a negative effect on the overall sense of musical coherency but I was delighted to find that it actually pulled everything together, I was really getting into each track and enjoying the music on a new level.

Another amazing aspect was that, while seemingly tightening up the sound over all frequencies, my previously unlistenable recordings became listenable! High frequency sounds which, I guess had been more blurred, focused into well defined elements and the result was no more splashiness and painful (for my tinnitus) sound.

To the same degree, the bass reached down deeper but stayed tight and together, with many interesting new textures emerging from the depths. The speakers help of course, being single drivers, they’re so tight and fast that you really get some explosive dynamics.

Music from Calexico, Spoon, Menomena, David Byrne, Buena Vista Social Club and Ladyhawk really revealed just how startling the togetherness and sense of space had now become. Finally I feel that I have achieved the system I’ve dreamed of for years! I’m not suggesting the Lehmann Black Cube SE made that all happen, of course it was just the last part of the puzzle, but it’s pretty much impossible for me to clearly define which component brings which aspects to the audio reproduction. All I can say is the music now sounds…musical! Highly detailed, with an expansive yet focused soundstage, tight and fast, full of the subtleties of tone which really make it all sound so enjoyable.

I’ve written so much I feel I cannot go into why “there’s no going back now” in this post, so I will write that next!