9th December 2006

(http://www.urban75.org/photos/manchester/

this photograph was borrowed from)

Just sat here...

With a glass of whiskey in the early hours of the morning, watching a video recording from today of ‘Have I got news for you?’ and I’m deep in thought about latest and forthcoming music releases.

First of all, Mitch from Hallo Excentrico (http://hallo-excentrico.com/) has recently released a M.A.N. at Christmas album of mine, which isn’t really a M.A.N. album but rather a compilation of M.A.N. tracks, which has appeared on the DIH albums at Christmas series since 2002.

For those not familiar, the DIH at Christmas albums has been a pet project as a bit of fun since about 2002.

DIH, like M.A.N. has always being a spoken word project but in contrast to the almost pop like nature of M.A.N., DIH has always being a bit harsher.

DIH, itself has been knocking around since the late 1990’s perhaps as Mogwai or The Aphex Twin fronted by Jack Kerouac but in 2002 as a bit of fun which has since being carried on since, DIH decided to do a fun project too where the trio would also do a experimental cut and paste album yearly where they would for fun try and break as many copyright laws in the album and then pass it onto friends (the 2005 album holds the current record with 140 or something broken copyright laws).

Andy M, the voice of M.A.N. came aboard in 2003 just for fun and in a way I guess, those first tracks formed the basis of what followed with future M.A.N. recordings over the next few years and over two official albums.

The Christmas albums, from which this compilation formed is a interesting development over the years and shows the dafter, sometimes darker side of M.A.N. like tracks like ‘Christmas Eve’ for example, I can honestly say would not dare release officially on a M.A.N. album, although it gave me a bloody good laugh when Andy recorded the vocals. Cheers, mate.

Next up, in no order before the end of the year (hopefully) are the following two releases:

Minimal Impact VS M.A.N. – Narnia

This is a sort of sequel to the M.A.N. ‘Narnia’ remix album released on ‘http://hallo-excentrico.com/’ earlier on this year.

The first album of Narnia remixes was by my own admission, a surprising mixture of remixes of all sorts of styles. At the time I’d heard rumors of a longer full length remix from Steve who is Minimal Impact, although I had never heard it myself so I dismissed it as an urban myth.

Fast-forward a few months, and out of the blue a copy off Steve and I was left spellbound by it. Stripping away the original completely he took it to a new level and left it more as a journey of noise spread out across a hour which really got under my skin in a good, good way.

Also just completed for this year is the 23 track annual DIH and friends at Christmas album for 2006, which I have just received the last track of and needs sending off to Mitch also (Will be done next).

This year is something special, I’ll tell you for nothing.

With previous years, the core of me, Keith Hicc and UK Dragon has had a number of guests who would regularly appear including M.A.N., Tony aka Gingertea my ex vocalist in W@, my brother Gavin who is Gavino Productions among others, but this year the rules have changed altogether with outside unrelated projects allowed into this circle including the Sitar/ electronic wizard Chris Cook aka Same Actor who recorded a near 19 minute epic, as well as Minimal Impact who produced 2 very different tracks, breakcore madman 7UP, and even two tracks from UK Dragon’s daughter, who produced two very surprising tracks.

All of course shall be released soon, but believe me this is a cracker of an album, possibly my favorite DIH @ Christmas album so far.