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Thoughts from Chris Lake...

It's been a little while since I did a full blog post, so now that I'm sat on a flight to Budapest, I thought it was an ideal time to lay down my thoughts on what I've been getting up to, what I like, what I don't like, some things that are relevant, some that are not................  

Tonight I am playing at a big event at Cafe del Rio, in the Hungarian capital, called the Rio Summer Festival.  I'm very excited about this party, as there is a massive lineup, including some trance favorites, ATB & Marcus Schultz.  I believe I'm on before ATB tonight, so I think that gives me license to play anything I want. Just how I like it :)  

Either side of the show will be a few hours of press, and then I'll grab a few hours rest before heading back to London. Unfortunately this week I had my Friday gig in Cyprus cancelled, much to my disappointment. I don't have many details on the reasons for this cancellation at the moment, but as soon as I have more info I'll get something up on the Rising Blog about it.

So now with a bit of last minute schedule shuffling, I've arranged some studio time with Nastala, to help her finish recording her new single on her album. It's probably one of my favourite jobs to do, working on tracks for other artists, as it just allows me to open up my creativity, and maybe allow me to try out ideas I wouldn’t necessarily use for a Chris Lake track. I also have a few other projects to finish off, so studio time is a must. Not getting to enjoy the summer in the way I originally hoped (horizontal, with a cocktail in one hand, suntan lotion in the other), but I'm trying to take advantage of an insanely big creativity burst that I'm experiencing at the moment.

The collaboration I started with Marco Lys this year has definitely been one of the highlights of 2009 for me. He is such a great guy, with a well practiced talent in the studio. Sonically he gets it, and he understands how I like to approach a track. When we work together, or pretty much when I work together with anyone, its a case of leaving me for 20-30 minutes to sit in front of a sequencer and keyboard, load up some synths, and just create LOADS of ideas, until I get bored or frustrated, then Lys comes in, and wreaks havoc on the project :)  

Having already released 'Violins', and now the current release 'La Tromba', We're keen to capitalise on the attention the music is getting, so we're going to finish off a track we started the last time Marco was in London, via the internet. We finished Violins this way too, so we're confident it works.

The problem we've had is that his studio in Northern Italy is too hot to work in during the summer months, and I've been touring so much that we haven't found any more dates to hook up together. I'm sure once September and October comes though, we'll finish up 3 or 4 new tunes to release. Good news on La Tromba though. The Swedish House Mafia have been going positively ape shit about the track, so Steve has picked up the record for his Size imprint, to release a round of remixes by himself, Dirty South and Christian Smith. I can't wait to hear what they all do to it.

I've also been doing a lot of remixes recently. My remix of Mini Viva - Tokyo should be dropping soon. Big house action is the order of the day here. I uploaded a clip of the mix on my MySpace player if you want to check it out. Other mixes I did were for La Roux - In for the kill (USA release). I dropped this last week at Cream, Ibiza, and the place went MENTAL. Lys and Myself did a remix of Sour Grapes - Stay for now, Coming out on the first week of August, and we also did the lead mix for the debut single for 'Nelski' called Body Pop. This track smacks of a cross between XPress 2's 'Lazy' and Tom Novy's 'Your body'. HUGE!  Lastly though, I was lucky enough to get on the new remix package for Madonna's next single with Paul Oakenfold, called 'Celebration'.  I just got news 2 days ago that it was accepted by Warners and Madonna, so I'm super happy this is coming out. Sounds like Madonna back to her best. Catchy stuff.  

Other than that, I've been having a good mess around with new ways I can play out live. I mentioned at the beginning of the year I am considering doing a live show. In the mean time, I'm looking at more of an evolved DJ performance. I picked up a Jazz Mutant Lemur last week, and I've hooked this up to my MacBook pro running Traktor Pro, and running this into the Pioneer DJM800. I probably have a month of setting up to go, but early signs are that this setup is a lot of fun to play with, and allowed me to be a little more creative with how I deliver my sets.  Again, many of you will know about my hookup with www.awdio.com, where I have streamed many of my shows live through their site. With this new setup, I can record every one of my sets easily, making them available online the week after if I choose, as well as easily publishing track listings from my shows. The downside is that I doubt I will be using controller CD's for this new setup, which means no beat-matching, but you know, I've been beatmatching for 10 years now, and it's no big deal, and proves very little. Not having to do it will allow me to do many other things, and that satisfies me much more. I'll keep you updated if I manage to work anything else exciting into my setup.

On a production tip, I've been messing with a few new pieces of gear.  I got myself the UAD2 card, which I think sounds great.  Some of the plugins are superb.  Personally, I'm really into the Roland tape delay and chorus, along with the Fairchild Compressor, and the De-esser for vocals.  My friends at Arturia have also now updated their minimoog synth to v2, and the new features turn it into a whole new monster for me.  Unfortunately, for production, I've not found the upgrade for Ableton Live so enjoyable.  It still feels very buggy, and a horrible sequencer to use when opening old live 7 projects in the new version.  It also doesn't run so great with my Access Virus TI, giving a lot of latency issues, and in general, using live with external synths, or for recording vocals, feels backwards compared to many other sequencers on the market like Cubase and Logic.  With the new features made available in Logic 9, I feel its time I use Ableton Live, only as a sketchpad for my ideas, then do everything else in Logic.  

There are a couple of new pieces of kit I have my eye on though. Vengeance Soundshave just announced a new line of plug-ins, one of which I felt has been a must have for a long time:A multiband sidechain. This would allow me to sidechain a bassline against a kickdrum, only reducing the volume of certain frequencies, allowing me to push the sound louder into the mix, and without giving the bass that total 'sidechained' sound. I also tried out a demo of the 'Sawer' synth. Looks good to me. If they feel generous and give me a copy, I might even give it a full work out in of my tracks... 

The last bit of gear I'm looking at is a re-issued AKG C12 Microphone. Nastala was using one in a recording session a few weeks ago, and after hearing the results from the session, I need to get one asap. The only downside is the $5000 price tag.  

Anyway, my flight is starting to land now; so time I wrap this up. I've got a new iphone application being made available very soon for free, so more news on that soon, and in the next few weeks, I'm making a brand new track freely available for download. If you join my Facebook fan page you can keep right up to date with everything there. 

Chris 'very talkative today' Lake

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Policing Personal Privacy

Ok folks, so we're going a little bit serious on you here....but we think there's some valid points to be made...

Privacy Settings. A very important aspect of life online, as our soon to be director of MI6, John Sawers, has discovered. Following his wife’s lack of Facebook knowledge some rather embarrassing media coverage has ensued. Who knew you could still buy speedos if you’re not an olympic swimmer!? Worrying…

I’ve been working in this space for a while now, but still manage to educate myself on pretty much a daily basis. Most people wouldn’t be aware of the ethics and codes of conduct that should be acknowledged and in some cases adhered to… obviously as they probably haven’t the faintest idea they exist. As technology continues to advance at superspeed, the general public always seems at least three steps behind. With landmark decisions in courtrooms continuously being made, even the law has trouble keeping up.  

We have been warned those dodgy photos on Facebook may not make a great impression on future employers. Many of us are well versed in the post weekend ‘de-tagging’ ritual, but we now have to look to the actual job we do. With a recent ruling the identity of the detective constable behind the blog NightJack was revealed. His employers were not best pleased. It won an Orwell Prize for political writing, but alas, is no more. So our presence online can extend our freedom of speech, as long as we are willing to stand up and assume responsibility for it. Yet to do so, dependant on our employer, could endanger our job. This is a debate for another time. 

With Facebook such a huge phenomenon, as a police officer how would they engage with such a network on a personal basis? There is no room for anonymity on such a site. I have it on good advice that although they are not ‘banned’ from using it, they are warned very heavily regarding content and presence. Yet what would make a police officer have a better understanding of privacy settings than the wife of John Sawers? There isn’t a workshop you can attend. So as Mrs Sawers has experienced, would an education in said settings come at a price? The experience could easily be something far more serious than a picture of their partner in budgie smugglers smeared across newspapers. With so much information being available on Facebook, without the correct privacy settings, it may not be only themselves and colleagues they are endangering, but their own families.

Luckily for Mr Sawer it seems only his reputation has been dented. When it comes to our police force though, whose relationship with the public can be somewhat tentative at times, it could be irrevocably damaging. Even more seriously though and not as far fetched as some may think, it could endanger lives.

Heaven Tent

So festival season is upon us once again! Sunshine, wellies, red noses, warm cider fuzziness and for those more hardcore than ‘girly day event’ me, your trusty tents. For those of you in possession of an iPhone – your prayers may well have been answered. The most latest and greatest iPhone app? The TentFinder! Yes ladies and gents, using the latest GPS technology you can simply load the app when next to your tent and apply a ‘GPS stamp’. Bosh. Your virtual compass, with a handy built in torch, will then guide you (in my case it would be unsteadily) back to your beloved, much needed, tent. 

 

I feel it's my duty at this point to also mention the Glastonbury iPhone app – now this is the serious stuff. Yawn. I’ll make it quick. This takes it to a whole new level. Ok, I admit it, being able to see each stage and the acts listed is handy. Yet to ‘schedule’ the acts you want to see in an organizer has well and truly got my goat. It’s a festival! Staggering from one tent to the next, trying to work out which tents you are actually in, stumbling across some random act you never intended on seeing and being blown away is the essence of festival! The thing that then kicks ten bells out of my aforementioned ‘gotten’ goat is being able to connect to iTunes and buy the music. Isn’t the following jaded week at work, in between facebook tagging of course, exactly when this is meant to be done?

 

Ok, that wasn’t quick, but back to the tent app. My favourite bit has to be determining the nearest source of a pint. Which is the nearest bar? Voila! Or even toilets. My only criticism is it can’t measure the length of the queues at each place for you. There’s something for you techies to work on. Oh and one more spanner – charging the blessed iPhone….

 

Enjoy peeps!

Crazy Diary: 002

  So this US tour so far has really had some extreme high's and low's.The highs being the great shows I've had so far, and the time spent with all the great people in San Fran, Miami and Canada. The lows though, frustratingly, have been annoying at best.

First off, I got to San Francisco, and don't ask me how it happened, but I had a bag of electronics stolen from my laptop bag. In it was my duet apogee soundcard, microphone, then 3 USB keys with files, and software licenses on them.  In other words without these keys, I can't run my software. This has put me in a buggers muddle, as I can't now complete my March podcast as planned (we're working on a solution!). Over and above that, I can't write until I sort all my replacement license keys. I just want to add, all the software companies have been amazing to me. Most turned round a replacement license for me within 24 hours, some quicker than that.

Unfortunately, the company ilok, who manufacture and supply the USB key which holds the licenses, have been very poor. I ordered a replacement key with express next day delivery, and there was a problem with the order due to me asking for the key to be sent to my hotel, not my cardholder address. It has been over a week now since I emailed them back to resolve the problem. Still nothing back. It's a shame I have to use a company like this, as I think their customer service is terrible.

Anyway, enough of my rant. I get to California on Saturday, so I will look to get some new equipment so I can get podcasting once again! We have the first live show with Awdio tonight when I play in Calgary. Hoping for a smooth experience!

On a lighter note, here's a snippet of last night and some photos Seb's put together:

Lake 2.0 - fingers crossed!

Tonight see’s us take our next step into the new media world. Chris is playing the Camel Club in Huddersfield, for a one off gig as part of Up For It, an initiative set up by my old agency Wolfstar to get the students of Kirklees off their arses and enjoy life beyond pot noodles and day-time TV.

As most of the Wolsftar team are now complete Web 2.0 geeks, and will be in attendance, we thought it’d be a fantastic time to give this KYTE banter a go. Now we’re promising nothing, so please don’t take what I’m about to say as gospel, but and this is a BIG but, there is about a 70% chance that if you check out our chrislakeofficial Kyte channel tonight, (between the hours of 11pm – 3pm GMT), you’ll be able to see real-time footage of Chris and the team. From the minute we pick him up to the minute we put him to bed, we’ll be filming as much as we can, so if you’re a fan or just a tad curious, come check it out! There's also a chance we'll get the chat-room sorted as well, although I wouldn't hope for too much intelligent conversation!  

If you really like the set up, you can post it to anything you want; MySpace, Facebook.. All your blogs etc etc... pretty cool really. As soon as we hit the stop button on any live-streaming, the clip is posted and can be watched again. Oh and please don’t expect the sound quality to be amazing when we get in the club! We’ll be doing some filming with half-decent cameras so should have something up on YouTube and Vimeo pretty quickly. Wish us luck!

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