web analytics

Into the wild

by

Well – I think that I can now officially report that the new Anam Danu album – “Winter Blue and Evergreen” – has been officially released into the wild!

You can – should you be willing to give it a listen – find it at many of the usual online outlets – Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon, iTunes, YouTube, Bandcamp et al – whence it can be streamed, downloaded or purchased in the usual manner.

The best way to locate it is to visit the Anam Danu website at:

https://anamdanu.com

…where you will find information about the album and appropriate links to a number of the most common digital music sites.

We are awaiting physical CDs (wrapped in Martin Springett’s gorgeous artwork) to arrive from our supplier. For those who are sufficiently old-fashioned (like me!) that they prefer a physical object do let me know and I will happily send you a copy. It will be winging its way from the west coast of Canada, however, and if Canada Post’s recent Christmas performance was anything to go by I would advise hunkering down and settling in for a significant wait. Still, with lock-downs abounding around the world, what else do you have to do?

If you do have a listen – and like anything that you hear – we would be most grateful if you were to do us a huge favour by recommending it to someone else.

Thank you in advance. Enjoy!

The excellent gift

by

“The excellence of a gift lies in its appropriateness rather than in its value”.

Charles Dudley Warner

Photo by Andy Dawson Reid

Even those gentle readers who have been following these jottings since the get-go would be forgiven for not recalling the various pieces that I posted way back in 2012 concerning my search for – and subsequent purchase of – my first serious(ish) camera – the much appreciated little Fuji x10. This diminutive camera is getting a bit long in the tooth these days and – though I still use it regularly – it has on many occasions been usurped by the sheer convenience of the camera on whatever is my current cell phone. The choice has, of course, been hugely facilitated by the frankly amazing improvements in such phone cameras over the last decade.

I have, however, from time to time mulled over the prospect of upgrading to a better camera – not least on the several occasions during this last year on which The Girl asked me if I had ever contemplated so doing.

“Certainly…” – I reassured her – “but it isn’t something that is on my personal radar at the moment“. Too many other things on which to  focus.

The Girl – however – just loves to surprise me, particularly when she can do so to spectacularly dramatic effect. We had mutually agreed this year that our Christmas gift giving to each other would be restrained to the point of being positively abstemious. The impact was all the greater then – when after the expected exchange had been apparently completed – she completely stunned me by presenting me with a beautiful, shiny new camera.

Ladies and gentlemen – the Olympus OM-D E-M5 mk ii – complete with an Olympus 14-150mm telephoto lens!

For those interested in such things the OM-D E-M5 is a Micro Four Thirds compact mirror-less interchangeable lens camera. It has many of the features of a full DSLR but is smaller and lighter and considerably easier to carry when traveling. From my point of view it has the great benefit of having an electronic viewfinder (I wrote in my original postings on the x10 about my preference for the old-fashioned way of framing images).

The excellence of this gift does indeed lie in its appropriateness and The Girl – being who she is (excellent herself!) – does not do things by halves. She had spent a full three days online researching suitable cameras for me before venturing out to consult several of Victoria’s oldest established photographic outlets. Having finally found an ‘expert’ (hooray!) whose opinion she felt she could trust she made her decision – based on the sort of images that she knows I like to take.

Let us look a little more closely at those two images at the top of this post (you may wish to click on them to get the full effect):

Photo by Andy Dawson Reid

These snaps of Mount Baker were taken from the same spot on our deck. The first I posted in the fall of last year. It was taken on full zoom and then cropped out of the resultant image – thus being enlarged further but with concomitant loss of detail. The second is the compete image – taken on the OM-D – at about 90% zoom.

I think that – considering the scale of the land in which we live – the gentle reader will be able easily to discern the benefits of having access to such a splendid device… once I have finished learning how to use it, of course!

Kudos to The Girl for having – as the aphorism goes – “knocked it out of the park!“.

Connecting the dots

by

“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards”.

Steve Jobs

Yes – it’s that time of year again. Time to look back at the good intentions that I enumerated in the equivalent post last January – ahead of the first year of the new decade – and to determine just how well or how badly we did in our efforts to accomplish them.

Now – I hardly need to point out that 2020 did not turn out the way that it was expected to – for anyone… so, when I look down last year’s list I really don’t expect very much to appear in the ‘tick-done’ column.

The first point of business on last year’s list was actually a reference to the fact that we were – at that point – pleased to be playing host to a very long-time friend (particularly of The Girl’s – they having done some of their growing up together in Kamloops) who had been in urgent need of somewhere to live. It was truly a delight to have her with us, as she was until well into the summer. She is now working in Vancouver and we are delighted that she found considerably better fortune as the year progressed.

I mentioned that I was teaching a new course – an introduction to Computer Science – about which I had been quite nervous. As things turned out it went a lot better than I had expected and I found myself rather enjoying it – in spite of the fact that the shutdown with which we were inflicted in March resulted in my having to teach the last three weeks of the course online. I taught again in the autumn – this time entirely online – for upwards of thirty environmental science students whom I never met face to face. Strange times.

I also mentioned last January that we were going to run away for a week in February to Mexico. This we did – and had a lovely re-charging break there – though the COVID-19 lock-down undid a fair bit of the good work that had been done shortly afterwards.

The pandemic has disrupted so many lives – in some cases, of course, tragically – and The Girl and I feel particularly blessed in that we have been affected way less than have many others. We are very fortunate in that our property here on the peninsula affords us a very benign environment in which to be locked-down. I found teaching online to be less of a challenge than I expected, though it did take a fair bit of work in terms of preparation. The Girl works pretty much exclusively from home and that works reasonably well also. She thought at one point that her new business would have to go into hibernation whilst the pandemic lasted, but meeting clients in video-conferences has proved more effective than she expected it to – and she has found herself with rather more work than she anticipated.

I professed the hope, in last year’s missive, that I might get the opportunity to do some more music-making with The Chanteuse. As regular readers will be aware, things turned out to be considerably better than we feared might be the case – and we contrived to record a whole new album purely working online. I will post more news on that front in just a few days from now.

Naturally all travel plans (post-Mexico) went out of the window, something that we don’t expect to see changing anytime soon.

I rather suspect that the companion post to this one – in which I look forward to the year ahead – will be considerably harder to write and probably also considerably shorter, as it is very difficult to tell how things are going to pan out over the coming months.

I will, however, do the best that I can.

 

Here comes the rain again

by

Photo by Andy Dawson Reid

Here comes the rain again
Falling on my head like a memory
Falling on my head like a new emotion

Annie Lennox, Dave Stewart

First things first… The Imperceptible Immigrant and the Kickass Canada Girl wish you all a (slightly belated) Happy New Year.

This Christmas period was always going to be an odd one, given that the necessary response to the pandemic was to curtail much habitual yuletide activity. We attended no gatherings of friends or family – we went to no Christmas-tide theatrical or musical events – we entertained no gatherings of like-minded souls for Christmas feasting.

In the circumstances perhaps the only Christmas-related activities in which we might have been expected to engage would have been the bracing and frequently blustery walks that we use at this time of year to help us counteract the expected surfeit of good cheer (too much food and drink!). Regular readers may recall that I normally take a camera with me on such jaunts – the resultant snaps featuring routinely within these postings.

This year – sadly – there have been no such expeditions. Not – I should hasten to add – for COVID-19 related reasons, but quite simply because for the last week (and more) it has not stopped raining…

…and raining – on occasion – in what can only be described as a biblical manner. Well – we do live on the we(s)t coast of Canada!

Bah!

Oh well – one really mustn’t grumble (no – really one mustn’t!). Things could be much, much worse – and at least we get to sleep in, cuddle up in front of the fire and watch old films and satirical reviews of the year (laugh? I nearly… er – didn’t!).

So – that’s all good then…

Illustrating the story – 2

by

Having described in my last post how we came to be lucky enough to have Martin Springett designing for us the cover of our new album – “Winter Blue and Evergreen” – this post demonstrates how Martin’s design evolved from the draft pencil drawing to the finished artwork.

Martin was generous enough to keep us informed throughout the process and watching the eventual artwork slowly emerge was a fascinating and valuable lesson.

From the draft Martin drew the final outline of cover in a larger form:

He then started to fill in the detailed shading – still working only in monochrome:


…until the final form was complete:


The image was then digitised and coloured on the computer. Doing so has the significant advantage that different colour values can be tried before the final version is settled upon. Martin also added the titling and borders to turn the wonderful image of the Goddess into a CD cover.

 

At this point the artwork was sent to us – in digital form – so that we could submit it to our chosen Digital Music distributor and to work it up into a cover for physical CDs:


Martin is in a position to be able to choose from whom he accepts commissions and we are greatly honoured that agreed to design and create our album artwork for us. Do check out Martin’s splendid website – as well as that of his band – The Gardening Club.

Illustrating the story – 1

by

“Album covers are like any other vehicle, they are a means of illustrating a story”.

Peter Blake

The fabulous cover for our new CD – “Winter Blue and Evergreen” was created for us by Toronto-based musician and artist – Martin Springett.

That we ended up with such an excellent and fitting cover is entirely down to the Chanteuse. She describes how it came about:

“How I was connected with Martin is through a friend and work colleague of my husband’s named Joan Steacy.  Joan is an award-winning graphic novelist and instructor at Camosun College’s Comic and Graphic Arts program.  Joan was over one day and I had her listen to a track from the new ‘Anam Danu’ album.  She said the music reminded her of her friend Martin’s music, and then she explained that he was also fabulous graphic artist who had done album covers for his band, and other bands, as well as being a children’s book illustrator“.

The Chanteuse investigated Martin’s website and found that the style of his artwork fitted with thoughts that she already had in mind for the CD cover. Joan put the Chanteuse in touch with Martin – she called him and introduced us and asked if he might be prepared to take on a commission for us. Having listened to some of the tracks from our first release – “Winds of Change” – Martin most kindly and generously agreed to take on the project.

Martin and the Chanteuse engaged in an email exchange to determine the elements that the cover should include. Martin sent her examples of previous works in similar styles to those that they were discussing and the Chanteuse sent him images of Celtic designs that she had sourced.

Common ground having been agreed upon, Martin quickly came up with some initial ideas as to the form that the cover might eventually take. These lovely drawings show how it rapidly evolved. (Note that we had clearly at that point not settled on a final title for the album!).

 

 

 

Martin wrote of making the figure “more lively“; of creating “a big gesture that would flow across the square shape“. This is what he came up with:

 

We loved it and immediately gave it the thumbs up. We loved the flow and movement of the Goddess herself – we loved the elements of the circle of life that have been incorporated and we loved the way that Martin had pulled into the image ideas and themes that we had addressed in the songs on the album.

We eagerly anticipating seeing the finished cover. The process by which Martin turned his draft into the finished artwork will be the subject of my next post.

It’s Christmas, Jim…

by

…but not as we know it!

(Parodying a line that was never actually in Star Trek!)

There is no getting away from the fact that this is a Christmas unlike any that we have known. In fact, unless one is old enough to remember the Second World War it is highly unlikely that such a level of disruption to the normal cycle of celebration will have been experienced before. None the less, we will persevere – because that is what we do. And come next year – when much has returned to a state considerably closer to the ‘old normal’ – we may find it difficult to recall just how weird this one was.

In the meantime…

…to friends, acquaintances and gentle readers…

…from the Kickass Canada Girl and the Imperceptible Immigrant…

we wish you a safe and peaceful Christmas and a Happy Hogmany!

Sláinte!

Photo by Andy Dawson ReidPhoto by Andy Dawson Reid

Every picture…

by

…tells a story.

 

Well – part of one, at least!

So – what might be going in this particular picture then?

(You might wish to click on the image to see it in greater detail!)

I wrote in this forum a little earlier in the year about the wonderful live-streamed performance that we had enjoyed from the Old Vic in London of the late Brian Friel’s ‘Faith Healer‘ – one of my favourite plays.

Now – The Girl and I usually treat ourselves to a visit to the theatre at around this time of year, usually to take in something of a festive nature and very much as a prelude to the Christmas season itself.

This year, of course, there is not much on offer in this line – for the obvious reasons. The splendid Old Vic has – however – re-staged for live streaming Matthew Warchus’s production of Dickens’ immortal classic – ‘A Christmas Carol‘ – as adapted by Jack Thorne. We eagerly signed up to experience the production this Monday just past.

So – to the right of the picture above you can see our TV, showing the opening scenes of ‘A Christmas Carol‘. This is streaming live from London over Zoom. It is 7:00pm in London – 11:00am in Victoria.

To the left of the picture is our Christmas tree. That in itself has a tale behind it, which may be told in another post.

Through the windows one can see that the crisp morning air is filled with something else. Snow!

It is true that we don’t get much snow in Victoria – certainly when compared to other parts of Canada – but we do occasionally get things like this – a sudden, sharp and highly unpleasant snow storm with vigorous winds.

Now – the temperature outside on Monday was not particularly cold and, as a result, this snow was very wet. It came down hard and the gusting wind blew it into thick drifts covering everything in a short space of time. The snow froze on the branches of the many pine and fir tress in the surrounding areas and – assailed by the accompanying winds – brought down many sizeable branches, not least in our own garden.

At around midday – just as ‘A Christmas Carol’ had paused for its intermission – the power went out! This of course not only deprived us of the TV but also of our Internet connection. After some frantic scrabbling about we were able to watch the second half of the show – huddled closely together – on The Girl’s cell phone. Not quite the experience we had imagined, but we still gleaned enough to be moved anew by this excellent production.

The power was out for some four hours, as crews from BC Hydro struggled to fix the trail of faults that the storm left in its wake as it crossed the peninsula. The power finally came back on at around 4:00pm and – as it was by then getting dark – we breathed a sigh of relief.

Fifteen minutes later we heard a loud ‘bang’ from somewhere down the street. A transformer had blown and we were plunged once again into darkness. It is at a such times that we are extremely glad that we had gas installed in the house when we moved in. Our fire in the drawing room kept us warm and we were able to cook our supper on our gas range – by the light of the new LED headlamps that The Girl had thoughtfully and recently provided for just such occasions.

By the time the power came back on some three hours later the impetus to seize the day had somewhat evaporated, so it was not that long before we headed for bed.

Rather more ‘excitement’ for one day than we had anticipated!

Flying the nest

by

Artwork by Martin SpringettSince my last update on the subject of the eagerly awaited new Anam Danu album – “Winter Blue and Evergreen” – much has occurred.

The tracks have passed through the mastering process described in my last update and have been assembled into an album. Final tweaks were made and all is now as good as we can get it.

We now have a splendid and beautiful cover for the CD – the which you can see at the top of this post. This lovely piece of work was created specially for us and I will pass on the full story of how it came to be in a subsequent post.

All of this goodness has been bundled up in the approved fashion and shipped off to our Digital Music Distributor of choice. All we can do now is to sit back and wait, because the process normally takes around three to four weeks. With Christmas looming it may even take a little longer – but as you all know: “All good things…”

Once all has been through the approval mill the album will become available through all the usual digital channels.

Finally – Anam Danu now has its own website, which can be found at:

Anamdanu.com

We are pretty pleased with the way that the website has turned out, but is is conspicuously lacking in any of the usual atmospheric band shots. The reasons for that are sadly obvious; in times of pandemic trying to organise a photo shoot runs that gamut from difficult to downright foolhardy.

The website will be kept up to date with all manner of musical goings-on as things progress. Needless to say one of the first things to look for there will be the firm release dates – once we know them – as well as details as to where to find the album.

The music on this album was very much born out of this most unfortunate year. Our hope is that in this manner (as of course in many others) something good will come from it.

Out with the old

by

Just for completeness – and who doesn’t like a little completeness – I thought I should wrap up my thread from earlier in the year about having to apply for a new Permanent Resident card (documented here and here). Well – I finally have it – and here it is:

You will notice that I have intentionally blurred some of the detail for security reasons. My face – on the other hand – usually looks like that first thing in the morning!

This is the old and now redundant card – strangely suffering from a similar lack of focus.

It struck me – as I was manipulating these images – that there is perhaps something a little perverse in having a Permanent Resident Card that must be renewed every five years.

That seems to be a whole new definition of ‘permanent’.

The instructions that came with the new card dictated that the old one should be destroyed. Naturally I did as I was directed: herewith the proof:

Hmmm! I think one of my projects for 2021 must be to try to get my citizenship sorted out.

Onward and upward!

+ More