So today I was in a pretty lame mood but Mike Paradinas' lecture was great. He's put out some crazy music on his label Planet Mu and made plenty of it himself under a zillion names. He's also one of only a few people that have released a collaborative work with Aphex Twin, and said he learned nothing from the great one, other than how to dance behind the mixing desk when making a track.

(contrast this comment with one from Derrick May last week, who said that it's wrong to dance to your track while you're making it, because it means you're being too egotistical)

Mike talked about running a label, his fears, his way of making music. As seems to be the norm for anyone who gets through the doors of the Academy, he was utterly sincere and that was quite touching, especially as I was feeling pretty down.

So down, in fact, that I skipped the afternoon lecture and went for a walk and some time on my own, as it'd been quite a while since I'd been alone. So sorry, mr UFO-man, I'm sure you were great but I had to have it out with myself. 

On my return there was a listening session where we played the tracks we've been working on. There is some seriously good shit getting made here. Lots of hip-hop, some very jazzy stuff, a couple of minimal tracks and some experimental gear as well. I played my track, feeling very self-conscious, and it was quite difficult to do but I'm glad I did.

Some lovely dinner on the roof followed, as well as a new burst of inspiratio, fuelled by a great tutorial with Todd Osborne on how to use the tracker software I mentioned previously to chop up beats - can't wait to have a crack at that when I get back. Anyway, I was playing around with one of the MPCs - I found some chord samples that were on the machine already, liked the sound of them and got a bit of a groove going. David from NZ, who is a wicked keyboard player, came and had a listen, and commented that the MPC actually belonged to him, and that the samples I was using were parts from a track he'd done with his band. The chord stabs I was using are triggered live when he plays out, his MPC beside his keyboard. So, I was unconsciously making a remix of this track I've never heard. Dave has said he will only play me the original once this track is finished. It's cool little connecting experiences like this that are in abundance here.

So it turned out to be a great day - I left the academy after midnight, and headed to a bar called Loop to see a show with an all-academy lineup. I sadly missed Sergei at the beginning who apparently nailed it with an audio-visual experimental extravaganza. However, I DID catch Natalia from Poland, who was jamming with Irish Daniel. Natalia has an incredible voice, and the pair teamed up to improvise something that was absolutely breathtaking. So melancholy, so moving. After Natalia came Varo, with an hour-long set of electronic house music that was one single Reason sequence that used about 70 separate devices. Varo is a madman, and the chaos of his reason sequencer window goes a little way to describe him.

I left as Jonas was happily DJing - he'd brought no records with him, so I lent him my laptop for the night so he could use the serato box and the three MP3 CDs he'd burnt. It's a strange world we live in when you can rock a joint off three CDs...