I’ve followed the Flecktones since the late nineties. Paul Jennings the drummer in the band I was in got a copy of Live Art (1996) and it blew our tiny minds.

Being a bassist I was instantly hooked on Victor Wooten’s charismatic, virtuoso take on the funk. In-fact his solo album “What did he say?” (1997) was part of the late nineties funk bomb that saw Jamiroquai’s “Travelling without Moving” (1996), Prince’s “Emancipation” (1997) and the “Return of the Headhunters” (1998). Man that was a good era for funk! Anything you imagined seemed achievable, the possibilities endless and bands like the Flecktones were out there forging new paths and redefining the limits of musicality, creativity and technical excellence. I don’t mind telling you this was a very formative period for me musically, artistically and philosophically. So yes Victor Wooten and all his brothers are heroes of mine and a major influence not only in music but on my whole outlook.

In funk I trust!

At that time I would say the the Flecktones were ostensibly a fusion band, mixing folk, blues-grass, blues, funk, jazz and even the odd bit of rock. However on witnessing what they played last night I would say that this fusion has developed and settled down into it’s own unique genre. What would you call this genre? Well; Flecktones I guess.

It’s hard to pin anything down listening to these guys. The melodies, chords, bass, beat and time signature seem to be continually evolving from one idea to the next. If it wasn’t for the absolute technical precision of the playing i would be inclined to liken it to a frenetic style of sketching. One thing is for sure, this band are at the cutting edge of musical innovation and have been ever since their inception. Even without the undeniable skill they posses their sense of adventure and gallus defiance in the face of blandness would be worthy of applause in itself. Well and truly a revelation.

http://www.flecktones.com/

Sometimes life becomes a little Abstract, you can’t really put your finger on anything and a mind swim ensues. I label these times as purple, it seems the appropriate colour for such vividly, non de-script moments. As much as purple is blue it is red. I quite often get struck by how weird things can seem in real life, the normal suddenly becoming surreal, intensely vague and wonderfully sad. Truth is – as they say – always stranger than fiction.

These photos serve no real purpose other than to provide some eye candy. Artistic types might well harp on about how abstraction can draw a viewer in. Give an insight which would not normally be grasped and to be fair I’d agree with them. However the modern world seems to have little time for such innocuous introspection and as a result – it would seem – neither do I.

Search for things that are illusive, chase them, capture them; then shrug them of as fleeting intangible moments of clarity. They are after all worthless.

That said, it’s important to note that the most expensive photo to ever be sold, is fairly abstract. A very geometric scene of the river Rhein, nature fitting nicely into human ideals of order and structure. It’s a nice picture in my view, well composed and coloured with plenty of high fidelity detail. Click here to see it.

So does this mean i value abstraction more. Because it is worth money? No! To find something abstract in real life is palpable, when you and you alone are witness to something unique. With the camera as a tool these moments can be captured and sometimes even manufactured. Whether you are witnessing the abstraction or seeking it out through experimentation what you are looking for is essentially the same. Something magical, un-earthly even spiritual but without the tools to record, ultimately lost.

Rant over, normal business will be resumed next week. I thank yaw!

This project has been a mammoth effort. Imagination, technique and patience have all been tested. The result is something which is radical for the genre in which this band are classed. The brief was ambitious and convoluted, trying to balance full frontal heavy metal edge with the staid sensibilities of the folk scene.

The main influence for the logo were ambigrams; ambigrams are words constructed into a bespoke typeface that enables the word to be read from any direction. This is and artform in itself highly time consuming and the end result is often something that only the font savvy can read. Here’s some examples. This was an enormous challenge; By it’s very definition a logo has to be relatively legible, in all honesty i’m big fan of convoluted, indecipherable glyphs, I find them engaging, they hold a lot a weight and if associated with something successful can elevate something from the mundane to cult status. However when taken in a modern context and especially in a music scene which is pretty conservative, this balls out approach was something that needed curbed. It’s fair to say that i created a lot of fonts to arrive at the final logo. What we arrived at was nothing anywhere near to the original brief but this is what development is all about, taking a creative ideal and forming it into something that people can still easily engage with. In fairness this logo is still not especially readable to a lot of people but in the end it’s something with a certain amount of individuality, it certainly looks more metal than folk but it certainly has a solid graphical footprint and is identifiable at any scale and on any background.

The cover art was a far more straight froward effort, again the final result was no where near the brief but the original idea was taken on, developed, grew it’s own legs and ended up forming itself. The album entitled origins had to reflect the bands traditional roots yet covey the modern influences of dance, metal, funk, jazz… The brief was based around tree roots, a simple and straight forward way to convey what the band wanted. So off I set into the woods on a bright summers day camera in hand and an eye on the bottom of trees. I must have walked about 8 or 9 miles on my quest and I certainly picked up lots of nice shots of treee roots; whilst wandering through the thicket I saw a fallen tree, it’s gnarled roots planted in a bog had lifted a huge pit of earth up with them and created a pretty sizeable pool. After snapping away at the roots for a minute I noticed that the pool was teeming with pond skaters. They look cool i thought, out came the macro lens and I tried to get the crosshairs onto them. Standing in a bog trying to get a shot of something 2cm long that move at speed with a 200mm macro lens is no mean feat. So I had to improvise, my light reflector was fashioned into an ad hoc mat and I lay on my stomach in the bog using my bag as a foundation for my elbows and shot there for a good half hour. I got the shots but when I stood up I realised that I, my relfector and my bag were pretty muddy and soaked through. A small price to pay for some photos which i’m not afraid to say i am pretty proud of.

Getting the graphic design done on this cover was also a long and winding road of collaborative development. Many long nights were spent in huddles round the mac, sometimes 6 or 7 people strong, trying out ideas, moving stuff around and trying to arrive at something that the whole band was happy with. I’m not afraid to say that this was testing job, patience wore very thin with pretty much everyone involved and at times it was hard to see how it would all hang together but perseverance is key in any creative endeavor. Slowly but surely the problems were solved and it was a valuable exercise in sideways thinking. It’s a credit to the band that they became so focussed and involved in the graphical portrayal of their music. They want to stand out, they want to push things forward and they put the hard work into achieving a balance that the record company, the fans, themselves and I were happy with.

Aside from all the hard hours spent in huddled development the website t-shirts and posters have all come together quickly. The website is a nice standard WordPress job, simple, effective and easy to manage. The t-shirts were done by the ever reliable bar-one, the print is nice and thick on lovely smooth 100% cotton shirts which have a lovely quality feel. Posters have yet to be printed but i’m looking forward to seeing the photographs in large scale.

This job is by no means over, the band are ambitious and in my opinion have the ability to cross over and enjoy a great deal of success, time will tell but in the meantime you can be rest assured that there will be videos, more photos, more music and more merchandise. We all have the bit between our teeth and the future of acid croft, turbo diddle, ethno thrash is well and truly on the blast. I have a lot of faith in what this band does and they have invested the same faith in me, this makes for a powerful partnership and I am confident that this shit will fly. Is the album artwork a timeless classic? I don’t know. Time and what the band do in the future will test it. One thing I do know is that it’s constructed from a lot of good peoples blood, sweat and soul.

— Website is here http://www.treacherousorchestra.com/

— And my post on the band photography is here.

It’s been a busy end to 2011 at the design hub. Models, prototypes and real life working machines have been flying out the door. Misha – mk whistles has been polishing at a feverish rate creating scenes like something from a space odyssey in the process. There was some stylish stationary ordered for select few 4c clients and Robin and Will posed for the Glasgow School of Art website. 2012 looks like an exciting year for everyone in the hub with projects coming from all angles and heights, so i’ll keep adding to the collection over the year. Here’s to the lot of us and all our clients in 2012. Slainte!

We had quite a time getting these done. Turning up early we were met with a locked door and not a soul in sight. Not a good start but our man Mutley eventually turned up with the keys and we swung in to action. We had chosen the main hall in the complex in SWG3 which is usually a club, It’s big dark and has a lovely concrete floor. Ideal. All the gear was hulked in and whilst i got the lamps and flashes warmed up the boys got their make up done, by the very capable Ashley Jane. Ashley did a great job of getting things tweaked the way I and the camera wanted them and needless to say it was a great source of entertainment.

Now taking photos of 11 people all of wildly different heights and shapes is no easy task. People move around and block the view of others, sometimes the light deflects badly and directing people to the correct position is a job which needs a good deal of patience. We started out trying to capture the classic band in a crowd shot. We nailed this after not to long and then moved on to jumping, moving around, looking all directions etc. This got everyone going and some momentum started to gather and enthusiasm lifted. After we had a good deal of these standard type shots in the bag we moved in to more adventurous territory. It struck me that 11 people in one picture is not an easy thing to make stand out. Luckily the Boys have plenty of charisma and all look individual and different but to capitalise on this I started to organise them in to rank and file got them to march, stand to attention, at ease and so on. This created a pleasing composition that stood out far more than the ad-hoc group shot.

So with group shots done we moved on to individual portraits. This is when the enthusiasm dried up and people began to become a little self conscience and stiffened up. My clever solution to this was to shout abuse ( given that i know them all this was quite easy ) and kind of attack and jab them with the camera. This not only created a cloud of foul language and insightful insults but also managed to create some nice animated shots that really got across some character. I also used these portraits to make up another group shot in post, where everyone is well lit, full frame detail and not obscured by anyone else. This again gave me control of composition and resulted in a sort of action figure toy soldier sort of feel.

When I went through the edit I was pretty pleased. Lots of good standard shots and the more constructed compositions stood out well. However I still felt I could achieve more edge, make them a little scarier more engaging. So I simply started painting peoples faces out, I know this is photography sacrilege but it achieved what I was looking for. In my view each member of the band had enough distinguishing character that removing their faces would actual highlight this. It’s true that people are drawn to other peoples faces but I think after a certain amount of faces is in one page it becomes confusing and actually harder for people to look at. Painting peoples faces away is something I’ve always done through illustration and drawing. I have often concentrated on peoples character and tried to convey this rather than a realistic representation of how they look.

— More at http://www.treacherousorchestra.com/gallery/

— And the post on the album design and promo material is here.

These three folk are very close friends. I have know them since i was knee high to a grasshopper and played music with them for many years in Croft no Five. I left the music scene behind and pursued the visuals but these guys have kept at it and their new project Halcyon should be the most innovative of all their musical endeavours thus far. Spad is a master of the electronic arts and pumps out some momentous beats not to mention being one of the finest electric rhythm guitarists Scotland has ever produced (in my humble opinion). Anyone who knows their tunes will have heard of Adam Sutherland and John Somerville they make a formidable duo. Although it must be noted that Halcyon will not just be a simple cut and shut tune + beat fusion. What it will be is anyones guess; just be sure to be at the inception in the Arches on Feb 3rd.

Get your tickets here
http://www.thearches.co.uk/events/gigs/celtic-connections-2012-beat-bothy-feat-halcyon-niteworks-and-djs

It was quite a scene getting these photos taken. Off we went in the wind and the rain and set ourselves up in the woods above Strathblane – Cuilt Hill to be exact, a favourite mtb haunt of myself and Spad. We set a fire and waited for a nice hot base to develop so we could create some smoke. Fair play to the guys, they were stood in clouds of acrid wood smoke for a good hour and a half and between coughing and crying it was mighty craic. Employing a technique i’ve lifted from vintage skate / bmx photography where flashes are placed on the ground acting as up-lighters we got some cool results straight out of the camera. It’s fair to say that controlling smoke in a gusty wind is pretty challenging but it all adds to the look. The addition of the rain getting caught by the flashes adds an extra element of detail and all in all I think we achieved our goal of creating some pretty original shots.

I did the logo too. Pulling an old tessellated wireframe explosion from my days of experimenting in 3d max and vectorising it. It gives a nice futuristic bent and although pretty complex creates a strong image even when tiny small.
The font is Dekar by Font Fabric.

So hopefully see you at the gig it’ll be a total thumper.

I’ve know Ross for many years, he’s a mighty talented man and has written some of the finest and twisted tunes i’ve ever come across. After years of playing in other bands like Salsa Celtica, the Treacherous Orchestra and with luminaries like Dougie Maclean Ross has decided to chase after his own music and i can’t over state how pleased i am to be part of it. He’s just about to release a tune book and trust me if your into to tunes you have to learn some of these, they are all time classics that range from aires to full on trance like  poly rhythmic pipe madness that’ll twist your mind and understanding of music on the whole. There will be an album out next year and I’ll bet it’ll be a stonker.

We had a classic day out in the woods at the start of October taking photos, we couldn’t have had better weather the sun was splitting the sky. Met a crofter on a quad (=50points) ran into the local gentry who seemed to think they had some sort of copyright on the river that ran through their estate (???) and went to the cross where the last witch in Scotland was burnt. All in all a classic day that gleaned some pretty descent results.

I also built the website. WordPress cms with the standard 2011 theme, which i’ve found to be well built, hyper modern, well marked up and easy to customise.

http://rossainslie.com

After my minidrome video I got the call from Red Bull to come and document their Canvas Cooler event in swg3. I jumped at the chance, I have an enormous amount of respect for Red Bull and all they do to progress Sports, Arts and generally keeping western culture kicking along in a caffeine, taurine fuelled craze.

I arrived at the venue early on. I had spent a full day in swg3 the week before taking photos for the treacherous orchestra (they will be up in december) so I knew the lay of the land pretty well. Hanging about in a room full of spray paint fumes, glue and various other solvents certainly puts a fair head on you and between bouts of intense concentration the craic was flying. Charlotte, Nick and all the other RedBull folk looked after us really well and kept us all inspired and ticking over.

All in all a classic event that i’m sure will go from strength to strength. Here’s the official RedBull article.
http://www.redbull.co.uk/Fifteen-of-Scotlands-Best-Art-Talents-Create-Bespoke-Coolers

And some gallus photos from Steven Atichinson (4130 / Hman) http://www.facebook.com/media/4130

Music is Wrong Platform by Pretty Lights.