Another gig!  I’ll be playing the first official zeal gig of the year next wednesday Thursday the 24th at 303 supporting Sydney’s Karoshi.  The new audio visual set’s really coming together after last weeks trial run and it should be even better by next wednesday.  I’m also scheming some evil live streaming schemes so all of you in internet land can check out the shiny new moving pictures and sounds…  more gigs coming.  and videos and things.  oh, the unbearable intrigue.

dig the facebook event

P.S. I’ve revamped my facebook page!  go like it, eh?

a former melbournite, now osakian commarade of mine, Kid Transistor, has just released an EP of collaborations called “+ others”.  the first jam on said EP features me singing stuff and shredding some sick axe.  stream and/or download why don’t you? it’s free because the internet says so.  http://www.kidtransistor.com/

zeal has been appearing in interesting corners of the blogosphere in the last couple of days.  there’s an interview at fiese falle about process and gear.  they’re the sort of things that interest me in interviews so maybe you’ll be into it.

also, there’s a write up about my guitar hero to midi app AXIS on one of my fav blogs – hack a day.

the post has drawn out some entertaining flames like: “Get a haircut and a real job.  Also, learn to play the real guitar. It’s a lot more fun, I promise.”

upon reading that i got a hair cut and a real job and learned to play the “real” guitar.  it’s not as fun.

speaking of fun – fun new things to buy appearing soon and even fun new ways to buy said fun new things.   but for now…

bob out.

as promised, a brand spanking new track from my upcoming album.  download and share to your hearts content.

Zeal – Wasps

Wasps was sampled and sequenced on a PS2 using this software and some of the lyrics were borrowed from a Benny Hinn song.

It’s been picked up by New Weird Australia vol. 3, a way cool compilation of interesting Australian music.  CHECK IT!

and Rose Quartz picked it up almost instantly and said nice things like “this new Zeal track is some cool fucking shit.” READ!

my EP This is how I hear your voice is now in delicious digital form.  you can stream it from this lovely little widget,  you can listen to it here, you can click share and tweet about it, you can click download and buy it for half the cost of the physical disc and you can click download and pay significantly more for it because you want to support my whimsical endeavors.  isn’t the internet great?  the EP will be up on itunes soon too so you’ll be able to do that whole thing too if you’d like.  i tend to avoid itunes after it ate my entire mp3 collection (TWICE) but maybe you’ve had better luck.

it’s all quite exciting and in celebration i have a free EP set aside for you.  just send me a tweet, leave a comment or send me an email answering this question:

how do you think YOU will survive the approaching inevitable robot uprising?

the best answers received before November 4th receive a copy of the EP and stickers with robots and swear words on them. robots and swear words!

photo by J.F. Sebastian

the last year or so i’ve been fooling around with getting a video camera to fly. you might think that’s about as likely as getting a pig to fly… but, if you think that, the variable you’re not taking into account is weight. pigs are heavier than cameras and thus requires more lift to get them airborne. and even if you do get pig airborne, what good’s it going to do? i suppose a whole lot of people who’ve carelessly used the phrase “when pigs might fly” may be forced to commit to verbal contracts they thought at the time they’d be able to disregard as they continue to wallow in their own crapulence. but pigs have already been flown around in planes so their wallowing must have been spoiled years ago! ok, back on track…

i’ve been using a radio controlled foam glider to carry a little HD video camera into the air and so far have had some moderate success. the plane flies well enough but to get usably stable footage is a challenge. the glider gets thrown around easily by the wind and also needs a good deal of space to get up and flying. on top of that, there are shot’s you just can’t get with a plane. from months of scouring forums about aerial photography (or AP as it’s abbreviated by people who’ve got nothing better to do [like me]) i’ve come to the conclusion a much better way to get a camera up into the air is a helicopter. further, an even better way to get a camera up is a tricopter. a tricopter is basically a tricycle with propellers instead of wheels. actually it’s nothing like that but the word “tricopter” is pretty self explanatory. sheesh. i’ve ordered parts to make something like this:

as a cool little demo of why flying cameras are so awesome i was going to embed blur’s clip for beetlebum but EMI in their omnipotence have disabled embedding. just one of the many signs that record companies have lost touch and are crumbling into the void. hooray for the internet. ok, no embeded beetlebum (that sounds like it requires surgery), here’s something else… people get really fancy and beam the video back down to the ground so they can fly from a first person view…

the technology’s just getting smaller and smaller, cheaper and cheaper. won’t be long ’til hovering cameras are the norm and they’ll be used on idol. maybe then they’ll give me a job and i can ‘accidently’ maim the competitors.

i discovered this awesome plastic model camera kit a few weeks ago. after two weeks of waiting for it to ship, two hours to put together, two days to take photos to fill up the roll and another two days to wait for it to process, i now have twenty four  beautifully grainy photos.

my original plan was to modify the camera to allow infinitely long shutter speeds and also to allow for multiple exposures but cameras inner-workings turned out to be more complicated than i expected so i i’ve resigned myself to the creativity inspiring limitations of point and click. pics post jump.

this camera’s destined to capture the new album art. i think it’s a knock off of the supaheadz plamodel kit.  the supaheadz site is definitely worth checking out just because it’s awesome.

i’ll be shooting a new film clip in a few days.  cocoons and projectors and many people from many places are involved.  i will share.

bob.