2018-2025

It is a great relief to finally declare my departure from Solstice. Although we went our separate ways last June, I chose to embargo any revelation until the band were good and ready to say it themselves. Nine months later, their Equinox announcement offers opportunity to reflect on the seven years I spent on bass duties.

I joined Solstice in 2018, having left previous band The Enchanted around fifteen years prior. Being a long-time fan since the demo days, the chance to play the songs I grew up on was sufficient to coax me out of retirement. Coming back to the challenge of making music instead of just appreciating it, it took a while for rusty hands to find their form, with weekly rehearsals in Huddersfield essential to getting my playing up to scratch.

Although that year closed as I took tentative steps back on stage in London, it was in 2019 that the journey took stride. Playing to thousands across Europe at Keep It True, Up The Hammers, and Party.San, it was a privilege to share these festivals with highly lauded artists and a passionate fanbase – to whom I always bore my heart in performance.

Starting 2020 strong with shows in Rome and a Belgian castle, any momentum soon crashed to a halt – along with the events industry and world in general. With entire populations placed under house arrest, it was hard to persist under the immediacy of making sense of the moment.

Band members came and went, and others declared their opposition to the age with vociferous conviction – earning enmity for unyielding words. It was a very different Solstice that emerged from these trials three years later…

… and one that never quite gelled with me as it once did. Suddenly finding myself in the firing line for words spoken by others, with dishonourable demands to distance or discredit, I felt doors close far faster than they had opened. The message, and the perceived need to set and be set an example in all arguments, became louder than the music.

Inspired again by the label signing, I continued with a number of high profile gigs through 2024. Ever alert to physical reprisal threatened in forums, the distractions were high and my playing sometimes sloppy, with joyless tension far tauter than any string. Pulling in professional effort before I started my Academy studies culminated in a far more successful September which saw a standout show at Prophecy Fest and a mini-tour across Finland.

With members dispersed across England and Wales, in-person rehearsals were few and far between, and time spent together increasingly bitter as frustrations came to the fore. Unaccustomed to playing remotely and home recording beyond synth-dabbles, I struggled with the new way of doing things and especially not meeting bandmates for months on end.

Balancing the band with studies and weekend work was a challenge in itself, and although I prioritised rehearsals in my calendar, short-notice cancellations and rescheduling took their toll. My final rehearsal with the band was over a year ago, and despite sustaining my availability (to the point of losing work shifts) and practising nightly between assessments, we had no further in-person contact.

It was an untenable situation, draining and unhealthy for everyone. After being presented with an unbalanced ultimatum during assessment week where my attempts to discuss the matter in person were rebuked, I chose to leave.

The relief comes from closure. My life has hardly stopped since last June, with studies and more taking precedence now I can devote my better energies towards them. I will keep the Solstice section up on the website, as to minimise my involvement would be reductive, craven cowardice.

But also I look forward to the long-awaited next album, having played a part in its foundation. There is some magnificent music to come, whenever it comes, and I will eagerly listen with the same spirit as those in the front row who inspired me to continue.

Looking back to some cult 80s kino…

Partly autobiographical, sometimes farce, The Wizard of Speed and Time follows emerald-clad director, writer, and stop-motion effects wiz Mike Jittlov’s attempts to break into Hollywood in the 1970s.

It was different era of effects where everything was analogue. Film was shot by hand and tape reels spliced together, with effects themselves painted on the original frames. The process is explained and demonstrated clearly, with the film an instruction guide for others to create as much as a showcase of Jittlov’s skill. The effects themselves, although clearly unreal, still hold up today.

This raw creativity is contrasted with the bureaucracy and betrayals of Hollywood culture, with the cynicism of the system present in even the opening song. One scene that always comes to mind juxtaposes Hollywood’s budget-busting use of the ‘latest’ digital technology with shots of Jittlov joyfully working in his garage.

Although playing to the schmaltzy, overly sentimental style of 1980s movies, (with a few blasts of humour that probably wouldn’t be accepted today), the film has a sincere heart. More than anything, it shows how individual determination and ingenuity can manifest movie magic – with the right kind of support.

It inspired me to dream beyond merely consuming cinema, and to find my own path towards creating it.

I don’t know if it ever formally made it to the streaming services, but an upscaled version of the Laserdisc edition is available to watch in good old 4:3 on YouTube:

https://youtu.be/5lRL85V7oD4

I’ve been spending some laptop time in one of our louder studios of late. Since switching to Linux for philosophical reasons, the challenge emerged to integrate this sometimes under-supported operating system into the workflow expected of an audio professional. This article will be updated on the go as I plough through the pitfalls, while sharing tips and workarounds I’ve discovered along the way to make the music flow. It will evolve as I learn.

Although many Linux distributions exist, some specialised for creatives, my explorations have been using stock Linux Mint 22.3. Often using base packages provided by the Software Manager for maintenance and stability, rather than the latest and greatest. With that in mind, the journey can begin.

Caution: The command line lurks ahead…

Not only Pulses and Pipes, but ALSA

Although the “Plug and Play”-ability of Linux hardware has improved dramatically over the years, use of audio hardware demands a deeper understanding of the different layers that come together to control sound output.

At the base level, there is ALSA, the Advanced Linux Sound Architecture. This is a kernel-level device layer that connects to the hardware directly. Offering the basics for sound capture and playback, but nothing much more than that. Software-based Virtual Devices can also be configured at this level, which I’ll touch on later.

Historically, PulseAudio was implemented as a user-level layer on top of ALSA, allowing the mixing of multiple audio streams. Individual volume levels could be set for each application, and sound routing could also be switched on the fly, such as when headphones were plugged in. Applications would use the PulseAudio API to connect to this sound server instead of hitting the hardware directly, with the complexities abstracted away.

Another audio server, JACK (JACK Audio Connection Kit. Gotta love a recursive acronym!) was used at a professional level, also abstracting ALSA. Designed for low-latency studio applications, it would allow for accurate synchronisation and explicit audio routing. However, this server was incompatible with PulseAudio, as only one or the other could connect to ALSA at a time. Systems running both required a lot of workarounds and bridging.

PipeWire is a modern evolution and replacement of both PulseAudio and JACK, revised to handle the needs of both audio and video processing as well as MIDI transfer. Able to emulate both the API and toolset of its predecessors, this layer is low-latency by design.

Modern audio implementations mostly use PipeWire, although some applications may hit ALSA directly. A few caveats remain when switching between the two.

The DAW is the Law

Although I’ve limped along with GarageBand on other devices, the job demands a Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) with a bit more control.

Many professional options are available, with Ableton Live, Avid Pro Tools, and Apple Logic Pro coming highly regarded for Windows and MacOS. Linux options are somewhat more limited, but Reaper offers a native version. All these options come with a price-tag, often shifting to a subscription licence instead of owning outright.

Ever the zealot, I went with Ardour – which has the advantage of being free-as-in-speech Open Source software. Donations to the developers are welcome for a ready-to-run supported binary version, but the source code is available for anyone who wishes to build their own.

As for me, I grabbed the pre-built version 8.4 package from the Linux Mint Software Manager. It’s a few versions behind, but sufficient to the task.

(Using a DAW effectively is beyond the scope of this article, mostly because I’m still learning the intricacies itself!)

One thing I did notice when connecting straight to ALSA is my Dock audio only permits a 48 kHz sample rate, which made importing CD-rate 44.1 kHz stems (individual audio tracks) a little troublesome, with clicks and pops aplenty. As expected, ALSA also takes sole control of the device, removing it from the available list in Sound Settings.

Switching to the PulseAudio system (running through Pipewire as explained earlier) enabled sample rates from 8 kHz to 192 kHz through the ‘Default Playback’ device, which outputted onto the Laptop’s speakers instead of through the dock. Switching the default through the Sound Settings panel soon got things coming out of the expected speakers at the right rate, without stealing control.

Pull the Plug-in

Ardour comes with a bevy of workable LV2 ACE plugins to handle the basics of Compression, Gating, et al. But most of these rely a little too much on sliders and numbers than the familiar knobs and blinkies of a real mixing desk. Downloading the pre-built binary improves the look, but nonetheless the effects chain is easy to navigate, allowing drag and drop visualisation of where everything clicks together.

It is also compatible with industry-standard plugin formats such as Virtual Studio Technology (VST), offering a more familiar interface, but here is where Linux users hit a snag. The underlying format of these plugins has been designed for Windows, and thus incompatible.

Undismayed, I found yabridge able to convert the plugins so that they work just fine, with full custom interface intact. Utilising the Windows compatibility layer offered by Wine, yabridge relinks the VSTs to the equivalent native libraries, allowing them to be added to Ardour. The Software Manager has an older version of wine, but again it does the job:

Once wine has installed, grab a prebuilt yabridge release, (current version 5.1.1), as a tarball, then extract it to ~/.local/share. (‘~’ being the home directory.)

Copy your .vst files into ~/.vst3, then just run the following from ~/.local/share/yabridge:

After a little churning, a bunch of new directories will be created under ~/.vst3, storing .so files for each of the plugins. The original files can be deleted if need be, (they’ll just show up as Errors), but ultimately the working versions are easy to find in Ardour’s Plugin Manager, where they can be enabled and added to the chain:

Donning my Electric AXE

Now we’re mixing it up, the next challenge is to get audio in and out.

I’ve been using the IK Multimedia AXE I/O One as external soundcard of choice for a few years now. An ideal device that can receive 1/4″ jack and balanced XLR input, sending the post-DAW signal to headphones, amp, and line-out. Connecting via USB-C, it works with just about everything. Although IK does not formally support Linux, a little tweaking can coax it into life.

When first plugging it in, the first surprise is that nothing happens. Checking sound settings reveals a new analogue input source, but nothing else. Time to troubleshoot.

First thing I tried was listing the USB devices to make sure it had been picked up properly.

So at least it exists. Next I checked the ALSA hardware layer.

So it’s there as a playback device. Next comes the USB Audio kernel module, just to make sure that’s working:

At this point I was able to see the card as an ALSA device in Ardour, but it still wasn’t available elsewhere. So, I needed to go higher up to Pipewire:

So, looking at this, it seems the card IS visible to Pipewire, with an audio sink (output), but the pro-audio active profile doesn’t play nice with desktop.

Investigating the Pipewire sinks further:

Now I know it’s visible, I can set it as the default sink and send a test signal to the PulseAudio device exposed by PipeWire:

(I could also have sent it to the plughw:2,0 PipeWire device which wraps the raw hardware.)

It was at this point I realised my headphone volume was maxed, and 4000 Hz really is an unpleasant frequency.

The card was working at the desktop level, and after a swift blast of ‘Procreation (Of the Wicked)’ to soothe my delicate ears, I went to see if I could use it this way in Ardour. After some starting and stopping of the DAW’s sound server, it worked!

However, the card was still not available in Sound Settings, probably due to the aforementioned pro-audio profile. So I just needed to map it into something Pipewire could use elsewhere:

(Note to the overwhelmed reader: THIS IS THE IMPORTANT BIT!!!!!)

And with that, the AXE popped up in the Sound Settings with a somewhat mangled name – but at least it works and I could test it from there.

Going back to Ardour, the default PulseAudio device could be changed from this control panel, and the audio switched seamlessly. Success!

Finally, all I had to do was add the remap to a script to run whenever I wanted to plug the card in. Automating this can be finessed later, but it’ll do for now.

Welcome to Helvum

Helvum is a great little tool to help visualise audio flow. Acting as a virtual patchbay, signals can be dragged from application to audio sink, with the remapped AXE sink appearing as both a Playback input and output.

The AXE itself appears with three playback_AUX channels. AUX0 and AUX1 are Left and Right headphone/line out respectively, and AUX2 the amp output.

If patches are lost for whatever reason, they can be remapped here. Counter-intuitively, patches are deleted by dragging the same link from node to node again, but this soon becomes second nature.

A Divine Comedy of Compatibility

Broadcasting beyond the confines of my laptop into a wider world of connectivity, the next step is to get it to speak the Dante protocol. Developed by Audinate, Dante is the media industry standard for synchronising and transmitting low-latency multi-track audio (and video) digital data across Ethernet, with bandwidth far in excess of the multicores of old. And of course, it isn’t supported on Linux.

Fortunately, a clean-room reverse-engineering of the protocol exists. Appropriately named Inferno, it is a software-only implementation thatis still very much experimental and not recommended for real-world productions. However, it should be sufficient for my goal of sending a ‘Band in a Box’ from my laptop to a mixing desk.

Like the author’s depiction of the afterlife, getting this working requires purgatorial levels of fault finding and configuration hacking. As of writing, I’m not quite there yet, but here’s what I have so far…

First, I needed to build everything. Following the instructions at the main code repository, I soon realised I needed to obtain a second package – statime – to allow for network clock synchronisation.

This got me all the code I needed. As both projects are written in the Rust language, I also had to install the latest version of the language via rustup, despite my reluctance to pipe random code from the Internet into the shell.

With the code in place, I built statime with cargo build, and edited the inferno-ptpv1.toml file to include my correct ethernet interface, enp4s0. Then I kicked everything off:

Lots of trace messages scrolled up, so I thought I’d better stop it for now to build the main virtual ALSA device. First I needed some extra development libraries:

And then I ran another cargo build from the alsa_pcm_inferno directory. This created a library which needed to be linked into the correct directory.

With the virtual device library in place, the next step was to get it to appear to ALSA. Taking hints from both the readme documentation and a useful set of forum posts, I created an .asoundrc file in my home directory, roughly containing the following:

This would create a raw ALSA device, as well as a plug for that device to allow it to be called from Pipewire. I knocked the available receive and transmit channels down to two apiece, just to make it easier to test by sending two-channel audio from the command line.

Happily, the virtual devices became visible to ALSA:

But not to aplay -l, which only lists physical hardware.

At this point I was ready for testing, so I chained my laptop’s Ethernet to a pre-existing ad-hoc Dante network consisting of a Midas M32, DigiCo Quantum 225, and a MacBook running Dante Controller and Reaper. Making sure to set my Ethernet’s IP to a similar range to the rest. The intent being to run some test sounds over the network to see if they work.

The main issue in all of this was the clock. My Ethernet port has no hardware timing, so I also experimented with setting up a software clock with ptp4l:

Eventually, I was able to get a positive response from playing audio into the virtual device, showing that the clock was eventually found and stabilised. However, the device still wasn’t appearing in Ardour, despite my trying other ways to access the plug.

At this point the studio session was over so I had to continue at home, where the clock didn’t work at all. After subsequent digging, I conclude a physical Dante hardware device must be available to provide a reliable clock signal, even when the software clock is acting as master, so my investigations have paused for now.

Hopefully I’ll be able to get these last few tweaks working when I’ve got access to a Dante-compatible desk again.

The journey continues

Although I’m a lot closer than I was when I started, there are still a few things that could be better to ensure Linux has its place in a professional audio environment. More research and experimentation is essential, and this article will be expanded accordingly as I go.

This is probably the first, last, and only time I’ll ever mention the former “Bad Boy” of “Pop”.

A common motif scattered around the Academy campus is the visage of Robbie Williams. Site-based stage innovators TAIT have built scenery for his prior productions, with the larger than life result donated afterwards to make an effective fire assembly point. In wintry weather I observe it’s not the first time he’s had snow on his nose.

On a smaller scale, a 3D-fabricated sculpture of his face provided a challenging projection mapped surface as my Visuals module heads toward end-of-term assessment. Indulging a desire to integrate facial projection into future projects, this was the ideal static subject to try things out over a few hours of experimental studio time.

Despite any knowledge of his career purely culled by cultural osmosis (really!), I was able to piece together a collage of clips to represent the journey. With a simian base layer invoking the Better Man biopic, I swiftly incorporated his more recent cartoon appearance on a certain cat food commercial. Going back to the KISS-inspired makeup from “Let Me Entertain You”, the montage was topped off with the skin-stripping coda to the “Rock DJ” video. Looping that segment through the projector’s tinny speaker was sufficient to get everyone’s toes tapping – whether they wanted to or not.

Sourcing the elements in short notice was a challenge within itself, necessitating some quick thinking across many resources and creating new ones on the fly. But for a dabble it did the job nicely – despite a few imperfect keystone masks and off-centre aspects.

Although my studies and assessment focus on mastering Green Hippo media servers, I took the opportunity to try something different. Cracking open the case for the first time on our prized Troikatronix Isadora server, I soon found myself a quick learner.

Green Hippo has a warm, organic user interface that sometimes seems counter-intuitive despite its obvious power. Isadora presents a more familiar building-block style of boxes and properties, allowing links to be dragged between outputs and inputs to visualise how everything is hooked up.

My familiarity with node-based workflows such as DaVinci Resolve Fusion, combined with my coding background, made getting to grips with Isadora a cinch. Although I can understand how the blank starting screen can seem intimidating to non-techies.

Although there are likely far more efficient ways to structure my little throw-together, I was able to coax the effect I wanted by combining smaller known sub-processes. This combination of nodes and lines offered mathematical means to make it work where I may have floundered with an artier interface…

… so I guess I’m loving angles instead.

Let's remind everyone what a safe internet actually means. 🌐🌍

Share this & Spread the word!

#SaferInternetDay26 #SID

Although I haven’t specifically used Facebook since I detached from that scrollslop-sodden mess, I still kept it around as another site to syndicate my blog posts. Occasionally dropping in to check up on friends, but otherwise resigning it to the dregs of enshittification.

Then, a few days back, I was denied access to the site due to Meta’s interpretation of UK Law. As part of increased governmental crackdown on SocMed’s influence over here, users can now choose to pay a monthly subscription. One to avoid having their personal data harvested and sent to advertisers and not an immediately terrible idea in theory. However, the option was presented in a most user-hostile form of malicious compliance.

UK users logging into Facebook this week were presented with a forced interstitial screen, demanding they choose between this new option or keep things apparently just as they were. Slowly, and then all at once, my remaining trust was effectively squandered.

Business as usual should not require the user to confirm it as such – especially when adding a new option. Denying access to the site until the choice is made only adds greater weight to perceived wrongdoing. The red flags have risen.

Meta has historically pushed too far too often, and denying access is leverage against the user. Although the “current experience” claims to keep things as they were, there is an implication that users who choose this may inadvertently authorise further data-harvesting beyond expectations. It simply doesn’t sit right with me.

My suspicions may seem a small barely-warranted grievance, but they come after a sustained succession of other small grievances. Thankfully a third option – to delete or disable one’s account – was still available without further compliance. I was also able to kick off a full data export, although I doubt I’ll see it anytime soon. This post shall constrain the only ‘drama’ of departure.

Instagram remains usable under these terms for now, as the interstitial there can be skipped by reloading the app or manually mangling the URL. I don’t believe this will be an option for long, and fully expect to be closing that down as well. WhatsApp so far has not succumbed, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that goes the same way – especially given recent rumours that end-to-end encryption is still snoopable.

These anti-user blocks follow a similar pattern that’s emerged over here, where sites that have been used without issue for many years suddenly require personal identification to access. Often in the form of video authentication or demanding access to government ID to prove the user is “of age”. Beyond smut, these restrictions have nigh-immediately been weaponized to restrict access way beyond their remit, including basic account management, with personal details and documentation farmed off to barely-vetted third parties who have already proved their lax security.

In the name of safety, online existence isn’t as “safe” as it used to be.

In the spirit of “Global Switch Day”, I prepare my presence on other services, some of which are self-hosted yet federate further. This movement takes a stand to reduce the impact of Big Tech on our digital lives and, more presently, to limit the influence of US companies across the global stage. Conveniently, it may also counter the authoritarian overreach occurring closer to home.

A change of perspective, but taking control has never been more vital.

A few weeks back, I crossed the sky to a snow-stricken Hamburg, honouring one of my favourite bands, The Ruins of Beverast, as they launched new album Tempelschlaf. Although the rigmarole of the journey is another story altogether, there remains much to be said about the gig itself.

No stranger to shows in and around the city, it was a delight to discover Bahnhof Pauli – a reasonably new venue in the middle of the Reeperbahn. Themed as a U-Bahn station, the intimate size offered a cosy platform for the evening’s entertainment.

German three-piece Ultima Necat delivered the first kill of the night, countering the shy sobriety of the crowd with swathes of incense and an unrelenting Black Metal assault. Their short opening set drew from debut cassette “Fragments of Pain” with primal urgency, shaking off any shivers and leaving folk eager for more.

The stage soon swelled with five-piece Rană, unleashing an uncompromising wall of sound to fill the venue. Evoking the blackened crust of fellow countrymen Downfall of Gaia, I soon found myself swept away. Captivating, compelling, and utterly crushing.

Moving up to centre-stage for the visceral intensity of Imha Tarikat, things got bloody. With frontman Ruhsuz enduring cut fingers from previous nights of the tour, he lasted as long as he could before setting guitar aside to belt out the rest of the set by lungs alone. Absolute dedication to the art, compelling fury from the front row. My apologies to bassist Ricardo (doing double duty from The Night Eternal) for pulling out his cables as things got a little rambunctious on my stumble to the floor.

Finally, the headliners. For all the times I’ve seen The Ruins of Beverast, I cannot honestly say I recall the intricate details of their performance. Not that they don’t have my full and absolute attention when they play, but rather aural architect Alex von Meilenwald‘s compositions have an uncanny capacity to transcend the immediate. Demanding to be absorbed on an emotional, ephemeral level where mere foot-tapping and note-taking could not suffice.

With this set mostly culled from the new album, which I had barely familiarised myself with on the flight over, I had no choice, along with friends around me, but to dissolve into the moment. Giving my all in appreciation, intensity surging at every beat, and losing all earthly bonds in the experience.

A phenomenal introduction to Tempelschlaf, an album that reveals deeper dimensions in every play.

With Bölzer sadly cancelling their imminent Europe-wide Rex Revenant tour for medical reasons, TRoB’s release celebrations are curtailed until festival dates later in the year. I wish the very best of health to all affected, and remain grateful for braving the elements to open the Temple in person.