Carl and the Saganauts

Recently, a new band has been delivered kicking and screaming into the house of strange bathtub by that trusty midwife,  “Lady Imagination”. The band, which is really more of a studio project, is to be known as carl and the saganauts.

At their first session on sep 4th 09 they recorded the theme tune for a new radio show by that future-time well known lion of british comedy, Dan Schreiber. Their method was simple, yet labour-intensive: lacking an orchestra, but wanting to create a big, multilayered sound as quickly as possible, they decided to play every instrument  they could lay their grubby little phalanges on, and then worry about the mix later. This resulted in 150 tracks of overdubs, after workhorses “lucky” and “sandy” sagan had pulled a gruelling 12 hour shift. It then fell to engineer of mystery “surreal” sagan to weave the many threads into a sparkling garment fit for a late shift disc-jockey. The piece, dubbed “start of an adventure”, filled Mr Schreiber with such frabjous joy that he grew an enormous moustache.

start of an adventure

Their heads had barely stopped spinning when Rhys Darby, kiwi comic best known as Flight of the Conchords’ manager Murray, asked them to do it all over again for his radio show, “the Cryptid Factor”. Rather than learn from experience, the saganauts submitted themselves to pretty much the same ordeal, except this time spread over 4 days in the week of  oct 5th 09. Rhys was delighted with the piece, “in search of cryptids”, and it can now be heard weekly on NZ radio George.

in search of cryptids

A little more on the method used to create these recordings:

Usually, any given part (eg a melodic line or a sequence of chords) is played by a single instrument, or sometimes several of that same instrument. If two or more different instruments play the same part, interesting new textures can be produced. By using many different instruments for each part, the saganauts effectively created hybrid instruments that have their own unusual flavours.

vibraphone

clarinets

guitar 1

guitars 2 & 3

all together

Here is the main melody from “start of an adventure”, which is a mixture of violin, flute, vibes, glock and novation synth:

And here is the tenori-on pattern which closes the piece:

Carl and the Saganauts were also the team who recorded the theme tune for the 2nd series of BBC’s Museum of Curiosity which is written and produced by dan schreiber + rich turner. music written by Bill Bailey

New PikaPika test

done about a month ago. this is out latest PIKAPIKA test shot. it was originally going to be for the fairwell video but they didnt seem to fit very well.

it took about 2 hours to complete with hugo holding pretty still for most of it.

dont quite understand the green bar underneath the video. hmmmm

The 405

thanks to olly from the 405 who put us on at The GoodShip last night. my brain condition didn’t seem to get in the way of a great night.

they have a little to say about us here
photos from the night taken by Hannah Morgan can be seen here

Drunken Werewolf ….

the wonderful folk at Drunken Werewolf have interviewed me for their last addition of their magazine. there is also an article written by the magnificent Jeremy Warmsley.

art by Reena Makwana

… on Pigeon Post

thanks to Matthew from PigeonPost who wrote a snipette on the House of Strange

here it is

revenge of the evil space mutants …. episode 3

space mutants has been with us for some years now, 3 perhaps. it started as an excuse to not go out to dinner one night, but then became a vehicle to make our own sci-fi noises live to accompany awful acting. after a while it then progressed into an excuse for otis to do some 3D animation, and before we new it the House of Strange was experiment with some Vince dicola-esque sound tracks (Vince wrote alot of amazing 80 theme tunes and the rocky soundtracks, he is a king). the original the episodes were filmed on otis’ mini dv camera and edited by him. the sound was recorded by the house o strange and the voices by otis.

we have been planning this episode for a couple of months now. the story will be based around hell bastard and his new apprentice’s travels across the universe. hell bastard is getting an upgrade to his costume, he has a proper helmet now made by will (from the clockwork quartet). lovely. we are also upgrading the cameras for this new episode, which hopefully wont highlight our questionable portrayal of the characters.

EPISODE 2

EPISODE 1

ORIGINAL

PIKAPIKA tests

Jas blasts off

have you guys seen PIKAPIKA? they are a group of people from Japan (77 of them) who do animations with light painting.

there is no computer trickery here, the shutter is open for 30 secs on each photo, i was running around with lights while jas ‘charged up’.

im thinking of including some shots like this in the fairwell video.

dont get him mad

welcome and fairwell ….

a great friend of ours Fay Buzzard filmed Caribou playing some songs in a rehearsal space, not only was the room completely covered in pink cloth but all the music was recorded live! how exciting, a gig, that no one got to watch, in the safety on a rehearsal room.

house from above

that got my brain secreting all sort of envy chemicals. house of strange must do this, we have the space, and the props, and can sometimes play music.

that was all that was needed. i found a film crew of friends with sexy cameras (Sony Z1, Canon XL1s, and a mini DV cam) and started cutting confetti, making fake snow (Styrofoam in a juice blender), blowing up balloons, getting in touch with the extras (who were really the stars of the show), cutting curtains, connecting up projectors, that sort of stuff.

house of light

fortunately for us a bunch of people showed up on the day (i think it was a sunday) and provided some awesome dancing. we did a couple of rehearsals and then attack, one take of each song, then up to Ed’s for photos.

THE CAST

house of strangers

the videos will be up shortly ….

life at 1/3rd its normal speed

house of stamp

what would happen if you slowed down a song 3 times, played along to it, and then sped up the footage. and what would it look like if a photo camera was used to document the images. i didnt’t know until yesterday but it sure doesn’t look as far out as it sounds.

over the last couple of days i have taken about 2000 photos for these test shots. i took as many photos as i could (with my finger), which turned out to be about 4 fps. the camera could keep up with the speed with out needing to stop and compress the files. so i shot like that until the memory card ran out (around 2000 photos).

this is the version of Fairwell that the guys were playing along to (3 times slower, but in the same pitch)

here is a short clip of what you can expect from our next music video for the song Fairwell.

*the video is going to be shot up stairs in Patent House no. 7 @ Edward Saperia’s (Clockwork Quartet) apartment.

Alot can happen in only 12 Hours

Last Saturday, House of Strange Part 2 came and went. we started at 1.30 and with 8 people we set the show up over the next 6 hours. the time lapse (which you can see soon) lasted until 8 just before the doors opened. this being the second show at the space everything was less daunting and stress inducing. as usual the spaces employees were fantastic, no health and safety this and that. which made for a great show.

house of fear

the smoke was out in full force, we experimented with ducting to pipe the smoke around and keep it lower to the ground. although it didnt stay down being able to control its flow and direction better was a plus. ed seriously updated the confetti canons, the plastic water bottle on the back stores the confetti and the long poster tube gives alot more projection than we were used to. the space had also upgraded their in house projector so our visuals were bigger and richer in color than last time.

we even had a few more songs up our sleeve than last time. as i haven’t been writing too much (as i spend too much time in the kitchen) we have decided to start covering some more songs as an excuse to learn new things. Emmy the Great joined us for birdhouse in your soul by They Might Be Giants, Jeremy Warmsley aided us with Wonderful by the Beach Boys, and Cantopop Super Star sang Tomorrow Never Knows. we also managed a pretty faithful rendition of Daft Punks Robot Rock.

house of doctors

Emmy the Greatest

this time the show went down with even more chaos than usual. although that seems to be a recurring theme to our shows we cant seem to iron out. it might be something we are actually good at. sound was a problem on stage but my in ear monitoring for the first time really helped to not over sing. we tried a new arrangement on stage to give us a bit more room to maneuver but alas. we were still tripping over chime bars, standing on gongs, and slipping on confetti (which was everywhere).

the costume this time were really brave. pete started with a chicken on his head, hugo had an el mariaci wrestlers mask and a pig on his head, jason was dressed like a japanese BFG, emmy was holding a pillow and a flexitone, i wore  a wet suit, cantopop super star was wearing his potent moustache, but i think hannah ballou won all prizes with her green and blue looks. check bellow for proof.

house of strange w/ cantopop superstar

the clean up was pretty monumental, i had lost all motivation by then and clara took the reins and organized the clean up squad. i think we managed to save all the confetti, apart from the bunch hidden deep in Marco’s hair. i wonder how many times we are going to be able to reuse it before it is too drenched in beer to fly from our canons.

lamb chop magoo does CLEANING

house of mess

im thinking of changing venue for the next House of Strange and Friends in Dec, some where more accessible to people, and not in the middle of nowhere. with a backstage (for costume changes), large ceilings (for confetti and epicness), and staff that are not too conscious of health and safety (for an all round more extreme experience). thoughts? suggestions? ideas?

house of flames

* i wonder if we were checked by a doctor whether he would diagnose us as insane for traveling around with this much equipment with out massive monetary gain. filling up a transit full of equipment only to bring it back again 12 hours later.

Frankie Buckle’s photos can be seen here