Yes, it’s been a long time no blog, but here we are again, with a report from the Asheville Electro-Music Festival 2015, where Spiral was one of a plethora of performers to delight their audience with some seriously smokin’ electronic music goodness. The Asheville electro-music festival brings some of the world’s finest electronic and experimental musicians together to offer a series of concerts, workshops, demonstrations and collaborations in addition to the live music and l

Are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin. Musique concrète, according to our friendly Wikipedia: “can feature sounds derived from recordings of musical instruments, voice, and the natural environment as well as those created using synthesizers and computer-based digital signal processing.” In other words, it is music formed from processed sound, rather than a sound made directly from an instrument you’re seeing right in front of you. Sounds are recorded and messed with, t

You’ve got less than two days to clear your calendar! With the holiday season on us, there are plenty of offerings for your seasonal entertainment. If you wanted to go to a club and listen to the latest winner of The X Factor, you’d not even be reading this blog, so chances are, you’d like something a little different. Well EEK! EEK! It’s music, but not as we know it… EEK! for your information, is The Eklektik Elektrik Kolektiv – a group of some of the great and good of the e

I had meant to share this quite some time ago (don’t ask me where October went, I’d rather not discuss it), but hadn’t the chance. One of the ambient musicians I respect most is the phenomenally talented Lee Ellen Shoemaker, better known to her legions of fans as The Tunnel Singer. She is literally that: a lady with an incredible voice who creates ambient music by singing in huge reverberant spaces like tunnels. Her music is powerful, evocative, and hauntingly beautiful, and

Live music is always special. It has an energy all its own and it’s not an option for the faint-hearted. Performing solo to an audience that is there simply because they wanted some refreshment is not an easy thing to do. Anyone who has the nerve and the skill to pull off a good set deserves kudos. Certainly, this evening at La Vita Bella, Longmont, Spiral wowed hisStillstream audience (and his audience on site) with an outstanding set of skillfully evolving, exciting and exc

I will be streaming live on StillStream right after that day’s scheduled programming; if you tune in, you’ll hear Rebekkah Hilgraves wrapping up her show, At Water’s Edge, and we’ll then hand off to the live show, possibly already in progress. It’d be great to see you at the show, but if you can’t make it in person, you can always listen in and chat along in the chat room! MrSpiral #vitabella #livemusic

And so my dream has come to fruition…! Here’s the rig I’ll be using for the gig at La Vita Bella on September 20, or near enough; what you see here is no fewer than six different controllers all running the same Ableton Live session. One Ableton, two Novation, and three Akai, with lots and lots of shiny blinky buttons to press and cause all manner of sonic mayhem. Details will follow soon—enjoy the blinky shininess in the meantime, and keep the afternoon and evening of Septem

It’s Second Life’s eleventh birthday on June 23rd 2014 and that means an excuse for one of the biggest celebrations on the Second Life grid, and one that will involve Spiral himself! For those of you who aren’t on Second Life, the scale of this event will be hard to comprehend – and the fascination with it possibly harder. Let me attempt to give you my perspective and show you a few teasers along the way… It opens at midday Second Life time (Midday PDT, 1pm Mountain Time, 3pm