nik newark

Centre Of Trap

Pick any musician, and the chances are that when they started out, they were extremely prolific, and then slowed down with age. The classic example is Kate Bush, who released her first album, "The Kick Inside" in 1978, and the follow-up "Lionheart" later that same year. The third album, "Never Forever" was released in 1980, and the fourth "The Dreaming" in 1982. There was then a bit of a hiatus of 3 years until "Hounds of Love was released in 1985. Another three years until "The Sensual World" in 1988 (the record company being forced to release a best-of in 1986 to fill in time). And then a massive 5 years until "The Red Shoes" in 1993. Then, a gap of 12 years until the most recent album, "Aerial" was released. Kate Bush is not alone - the same is true of Peter Gabriel, String, Paul Simon, Joni Mitchell, Steely Dan, Kraftwerk... the list goes on. So, what happens? So far as I can see, two things happen:- (1) They become perfectionist. Where once upon a time, anything was fresh, new and acceptable, they now feel compelled to push into new areas, and do things better than previously. Coupled with vast amounts of record company cash, they retreat into the studio for years at a time. (2) Life gets in the way. They have a family. They do other things outside of music. So where am I going with this ramble? Ah yes. Children. For all of the pleasure and life-enrichment that children bring, they certainly limit the amount of time available for music making. During the day, the little cherubs are running around monopolizing mummy and daddy, and then during the evening, they are asleep, and cannot be woken up by loud recording of rock music. 2004, the year the last Chrysanthemum Fiends CD was finished, also saw the release of Alpaca Guessed and RH- Impressions. Since then, there's been nothing (aside from a few children's songs about dancing zebras and suchlike). During this time, my Mac in the studio forgot what the date was, the piano grew cobwebby appendages, and all of my guitar strings rusted. In late October 2007, Mrs Kittenhead and the kidlets went to visit the grandparents in Houston, leaving me alone in the studio for a week of intensive writing and recording, which became the new CD Centre Of Trap*. Whilst recording was very quick, the mixing and mastering process has taken from November 07 until now to get right. I'll explain how this worked another day. * This is a Centre Of Trap. You can't come in here; it's purrrivate. (Favorite saying of Digi for a while now, and increasingly being adopted by Kalila).

Google Insights for Search

Google have this week unveiled, Google Insights for Search is a pretty nifty tool which lets you look at search patterns across time, geographic regions, and by category. So for example, let's take a look at searches for the word "NASCAR". You can see a pretty interesting pattern here - interest in NASCAR peaks at the beginning of the year, and then falls towards the end of the year. I don't know why this is, but I guess that there might be some sort of NASCAR season. To be honest, I've got no idea what a NASCAR is, but I can tell that Americans seem to like it, as, using the same tool, I can discover that only Americans search for NASCAR:- Well, that's almost true. As you can see from the list above, lots of people in Iraq also search for NASCAR! And according to a search volume (filtered to only show Iraq), NASCAR only became popular in Iraq in 2006:- . What can it all mean? There are other things you'd expect to have some sort of seasonal variance, such as an umbrella. However, the stats don't bear this out. They do however show that people started being very interested in umbrellas in mid 2007! Or perhaps this coincided with the release of "Umbrella" by the popstrel Rihanna. Other things which you wouldn't expect to show any seasonal variance, in fact show a surprising seasonal effect. This is for "Mongoose" I couldn't find any other animals which showed a seasonal variation like this. Cat, Elephant, Giraffe, and Hamster are all flat (though there is a sinister uptick in hamster searches throughout 2008, mostly from Great Britain). Other exciting searches include:- "Maddie" - Portugal very excited "Cup of tea" (Go UK!) "Hot Teens" (Yemen, Pakistan and Syria interestingly topping the charts on this one...) "Cliff Richard" (UK again, though note the interest in Cliff seems to peak around Christmas each year) "Global Warming" (has captured the interest of lots of Island nations. Funny that...) "Britney Spears" (clearly popping out babies, getting married, divorcing, getting married, divorcing, shaving her hair off, not wearing panties, and going a bit rubbish were just a cunning rouse to counter her declining Google popularity. Except in Madagascar, where she has always been massive.) I think that's about enough for now. Go see what you can discover, and let me know!