My new radio show on The Cat officially starts tomorrow, Tuesday 24 November 2009.

Following a week of trial broadcasts on the internet, The Cat started its RSL (Restricted Service License) on 87.7FM today in the Crewe and Nantwich area in South Cheshire, as well as broadcasting live on the internet at www.thisisthecat.com.

I'm presenting the mid-morning show between 9am and midday every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday for the next four weeks, accompanied by nuclear scientist Dr Gavin Hammond and (when he's not touring with Thea Gilmore) Dan Logan.

You can get in touch with the show by calling or texting 01270 266877 or emailing studio@thisisthecat.com. You can also keep up with the station on Twitter at twitter.com/thisisthecat.

Thea Gilmore's new album "Strange Communion" is now available. It features 10 songs including a cover of Elvis Costello and The Chieftans' "The St Stephen's Day Murders". Thea has recorded it as a duet with Mark Radcliffe (BBC Radio 2 and The Family Mahone) and I sing backing vocals on it along with three other guys ('the four wise men'!). The rest of the album is also well worth a listen.

I found a copy in HMV but you can also buy it on Amazon through the following link:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d.html/ref=redir_mdp_mobile/276-3093790-7589504?ref_=sr%5F1%5F1&s=music&qid=1257119375&a=B002RVCXU0&sr=1-1

Or from iTunes:

http://itunes.apple.com/gb/album/st-stephens-day-murders/id335335951?i=335336013&uo=6

I'm told that songs from the album are currently available to stream on Thea's MySpace page at www.myspace.com/theagilmore. Check out her website at www.theagilmore.net for tour dates. Dan Logan from my band will be joining Thea, Nigel and Fluff for selected dates on the tour.

There's a new version of iTunes out and it includes a whole new look for the iTunes store!

This means that my music and podcasts will appear slightly differently on there once you upgrade. You can find my music directly (whichever version of iTunes you have) at ...com/octagonitunes, but here's a glimpse of what my new page looks like on the Mac version of iTunes 9:



I think it makes everything a lot easier to see, and means that all the albums/singles and podcasts now appear on one page. It seems a good time to have a quick run down of the content I currently have available on iTunes. Prices are given in GBP but should be available at the local standard iTunes pricing worldwide. The links may get blocked on MySpace due to their filters but you can either search directly in iTunes or find the original blog entry at www.dayve.co.uk/blog:

Music

Octagon, 11 tracks, £7.99
Octagon EP, 4 tracks, £3.16
I Could Be Happy With You, 1 track, 79p (only available in Europe)
Another Christmas EP, 3 tracks, £2.37
Still Life, 12 tracks, £7.99

Podcasts (all free to subscribe and download)

Free Download of the Week
Video Podcast - High Definition
Video Podcast - iPod compatible

The free download of the week podcast is updated pretty much weekly and I'm now hoping to do the same for the video podcasts so keep looking out for the latest 'episodes', or subscribe in iTunes to have them automatically downloaded as they become available.

And to give you an example of what the new look for the albums is like, this is Octagon in iTunes 9:

This week's free download is a song I wrote 13 years ago called Music of the Spheres

I wrote Music of the Spheres in 1996 as part of an A Level Performing Arts project. We were asked to create a piece using one of a number of phrases and quotes and I eventually chose to write a song influenced by music of the spheres, which is the idea that the movement of the planets creates a silent form of music. I'm sure the internet has many better descriptions of it! Read what Wikipedia has to say about it at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_of_the_spheres.

It took me a while to decide which phrase or quote to choose. It didn't really occur to me to take the phrases at anything other than face value, and two that appealed to me at first were 'Not Waving But Drowning', which I soon found out was the title of a poem, and 'And There Is No Health In Us' which I started to write a song around but never really finished. I still remember the parts of the song I had written and it's possible that I'll finish the song at some point and it will end up on a future podcast. My teacher at the time certainly liked the parts of the song I played to him, and I think actually preferred that song to this one, but I hit a bit of a block while trying to finish it. In the days before the internet, it was not so easy to just Google a reference and I wasn't really interested in finding out where the phrases had originally come from. I've just done a search and it appears that 'And There Is No Health In Us' is from some kind of religious confession, so it's possibly better that I didn't check it at the time!

I found out about the concept of music of the spheres almost by chance, I seem to think by an article in a newspaper at the time, and after researching it a little more was inspired to write this song almost in one go.

Originally written for guitar, this version of Music of the Spheres uses piano, violin and just a little bit of guitar. It was recorded using Garageband on my Mac Pro which is now feeling well again after its replacement hard drive. However, I started to get too overconfident in my new found computing power and after leaving it on for several days and working it hard with video, music and photo editing and uploading, it finally decided it was going to crash. I'd forgotten to save the last few days recordings, so lost a few days of work on the song! It was a mixed blessing though, because I'd hit a wall with trying to play the violin (an instrument I can't really play, so I have to record numerous takes and edit together the best bits, helped out by pitch correction and reverb effects) and get a nice vocal take. The computer crashed pretty much as I'd decided that the song was as good as I was going to get it, and it left me with just the piano and guitar parts. The rerecorded vocal and violin parts are much better than the first attempts.

As always, let me know what you think either by leaving a comment on the blog or in the Facebook Comments box at www.dayve.co.uk/downloadoftheweek/downlaodoftheweek.shtml, or email me at mailinglist@dayve.co.uk. You can download the podcast on my Download of the Week page, or through iTunes.

I'm really excited that I've been picked to do an hour on the Fourth Plinth at Trafalgar Square tomorrow (Friday 25 September 2009) between 9pm and 10pm as part of the One & Other project.

I've been interested in this project since I heard about it a few months back, as well as the other artworks which have featured on the Forth Plinth over the last few years. I signed up to take part as soon as the option was made available but missed out on all four of the random draws for a place. However, I was placed onto the reserve list and yesterday received a call asking if I would be able to fill the 9pm spot on Friday.

I will be able to send the time up there doing pretty much whatever I like, so it seems to make sense for me to do a bit of a gig up there in the busking style that I've been doing for various charities recently including Oxjam (for Oxfam) and Busking Cancer (for Cancer Research UK).

I'll also be doing a live interview with Sky Arts earlier in the evening, sometime between 7pm and 9pm, talking about the One & Other project.

You will be able to watch me live on the plinth from 9pm tomorrow evening at www.oneandother.co.uk and it should be archived there for later viewing. There is also a profile page for me on the site which has now become active, and you can leave comments on there both for and about me, and thank you to those who have commented already.

And if you'll be in London, come over to Trafalgar Square, have a listen and let's have a chat!

I'm going to be playing at the launch event for the Nantwich Words and Music Festival later today, Sunday 23 August 2009. 

I've posted several blogs about our time up in Edinburgh last weekend to play at the Festival Fringe.

This week's free download song is a cover of You're With Stupid Now by Aimee Mann.

I've been a fan of Aimee for a number of years and recently rediscovered this song from her second album through Spotify. I like its simplicity, harmonies and the lyrics, particularly the Margaret Thatcher line!

Download it for free from www.dayve.co.uk or iTunes.