Rest Peaceful Corey.

New comic inked and ready for colour. I shall do it in the morning, am sleepy now.

BLAP!

Behold, poster number 1 for that Superhero Music, coming atcha at the speed of AWESOME this month.

POW!

You can watch me drawing it here.

Now, don’t get it twisted – that’s not the cover. That’s just the first advert. A big ass version of that will going out to preorderers tomorrow. Preorderers can also expect their first exclusive video content early next week. Music will start leaking soon too.

Drum roll…

SUPERHERO MUSIC!

An audiovisual event of Galactean proportions from Akira The Don! March 29th 2010!

PREORDER MP3 & T!

PREORDER MP3!

Yeeeeeeeah baby.

So, Kidproskate sent me an email just now. He (or mayhap she) writes:

I just want to say that you inspired me to make music and I wanted to know what software did you use when you first started out?

Well, firstly, I thank you for a your email, succinct and sweet as it is! And thank you for your question. It is an excellent one, that I can’t believe I haven’t answered properly before….

SO!

I started producing my own songs back in 2004 2003. I messed around with Fruity Loops, which my old pal Kool Kid Fresh from Crack Village had shown me, using the keyboard I type with instead of a proper one, and my girlfriend at the time Liz’s copy of Acid, all on a super-crappy oatmeal grey PC. I think it was Acid 4. I chopped drum sounds out of old vinyl in Soundforge.

Soon after that Fruity Loops turned into FL Studio - because the previous name was putting sexually insecure rap producers off using it (true story!) – and I started getting into VSTs and software synthesisters like Absynth. I had a cheap ass microphone I got from Dixons. Around that time also another important thing happened – my friend Mothboy introduced me to compression. This was all I needed to make tunes that sounded so great that Interscope gave me a record deal, and I spent a whole gang of their money on getting a souped up PC, an excellent audio interface and microphone and proper, legal copies of all the software I used. I also invested in some brilliant, if pricey softsynths, like Spectrasonics’ Atmosphere and Trilogy. I also got a Roland Juno-D Synthesizer which is ace for writing songs on even if the PC’s switched off. I use for its internal sounds and as a midi device.

Nowadays I still use ACID Pro (which is up to version 7) and Sound Forge, both of which have been bought by Sony since I started using them, but I don’t use FL Studio anymore. I use Fxpansion’s Guru (another suggestion of Mothboy’s!) running through Acid for banging out beats with my Akai MPD 16, which is basically the pads from an MPC connected via midi to the computer. My favourite synths are still Spectrasonics’ as well. Atmosphere has upgraded to Spectrasonics Omnisphere, which is an a amazing, hugely powerful synthesiser cable of almost anything I could wish for from a synth, and Trilogy just turned into Trilian, a shockingly versatile bass module. I still chop drum sounds off of old vinyl.

I should probably do a video about all this, huh? Back in the day me and Birddog were talking about doing an instructional series teaching people who to sample and make tunes in Fruity and Acid. I should get back on that. Each one teach one, right? Spread wisdom!

Right. Speaking of which, Matt Hall, AKA normannumneric emailed me the following:

This has mysteriously appeared in my local Norwich underpass. Gives me a smile on my way to work in morning!

BELIIIIIIIIIEVE THAT!

DOWNLOAD: Akira The Don – The All New Weekly Doncast # 7! (Right Click and Save As)

Click here to subscribe with your iTunes thingy.

So, I had all sorts of stuff planned – well, songs planned, that is – then poor Corey Haim went and got merked, and I had to dedicate this podcast to him and his kind – children up and cannibalised by Hollywood. Sweet dreams Corey. No longer will false dreams foul your vision.

So, we had great songs from Lou Gramm, Andrew W.K., Yelawolf, Doom, Damina Marley, The Kleptones, White Witches, dead prez, Billy Joel, Hot Chip, Gerard McMann, Phil Oakey & Georgio Moroder, ME, Marvin The Martian, Johnny Cash, The Pogues, Nas… and so on!

Elsewhere on the show, Tess sent me a beautiful letter to read out for her boyfriend Optimax in the Doncast Dedication, and I read a story from my favourite Charles Bukowski collection, Hot Water Music. I also did some rapping, and got excited about Superhero Music (which you can now preorder without the T shirt if you so wish).

Oh, and I tell some stories from times of old about things like the time Pink Grease molested Crack Village in Manchester.

Thanks again to everyone that tuned in live – truly, it would be boring without you. Next week I might start the show an hour later – that way British people can catch it when they get in from work. What think ye of this idea?

POW!

IN YOUR FACE!

YES!

Akira The Dan – Superhero Music
CD Quality MP3 Bundle + Luxury T-Shirt
PREORDER NOW!

All I can say about this, RIGHT, is it’s ATD22. It’s called Superhero Music.

It’s an album.

It’s a mixtape.

It does what it says on the tin.

The artwork is gonna be CRAZED.

YOU KNOW THAT TO BE FACTUAL.

The T Shirt will be awesome. It’s printed on that amazing organic carbon neutral cotton that feels so damn good on your skin. It will be your favourite shirt this summer.

Preorderers get exclusive video content, artwork, and other dope stuff.

You know how I get down.

Superhero Music drops March 29th.

GET READY FOR AWESOME.

PREORDER MP3 & T!

PREORDER MP3!

Serious, I am FLIPPING excited about this. The stuff I’ve been working on this week is sounding amazing, and the ideas I am forming are filling me with a frenzied glee. I AM HYPED! ARE YOU HYPED?

HOOO GRAAAAAAAARGH!

I shall be announcing ways you can get involved in the creation over the coming days and weeks. All ideas welcome, as ever.

In other news, my Security T Shirt re-up just came in. L, XL and XXL are back in stock. If you’re waiting on your T you’ll be glad to know I’ve packaged it up and am taking it down the post office as soon as I press post.

POST!

Photo by Charlotte Whewell

OH YOU THOUGHT I’D DIED, RIGHT?!

Or you thought Maybe I got kidnapped by Bat Mite?

Right?

WRONG!

I am not dead!

Yeah!

I did, however, abandon my website for a full TWO DAYS, which was pretty harsh, I know. I hope you survived.

Me, I was rennovating my studio. Moved everything out of it, painted it, chopped furniture in half. My girl painted the bricks and wood that comprise my bookshelves. White. They look pretty awesome now. Hell, I even went through ALL MY VINYL, putting the right slabs of plastic back in their sleeves, and splitting the records into categories:

Rock & Pop
Hip-hop
Post 90s electronic
Compilations/Instrumental/Soundtracks

That totally messed up my back for some reason, but I feel like a new man, damnit. I am full of warm satisfaction, and FRESH POTENTIAL. All I need now’s an A1 clip frame for my Batman & Robin poster. And to trim and mount my Wire Wall. That’s gonna be hectic. Did I ever show you my wire wall? THAT IS A BEAST!

Speaking of which, when I moved in here, two years ago, I spent a full day and a night untangling a ball of wires the size of a stuffed bin liner, and hanging them all neatly on my new Wire Wall. I was listening to Stephen Fry reading Harry Potter. So it was fitting then, that as I finished off painting my studio this weekend, so too did I reach the end of Mr Fry’s rendition of the final Harry Potter book. It was enjoyable, I have to admit, even if it was predictable as politicians. Speaking of which, I also finished watching The Century of Self. That was brilliant, and I urge you all to make some time to watch it for yourselves.

Anyway, you’ll get to see my new studio, or at least the part that’s in shot on Wednesday at 5pm GMT during the All New Weekly Doncast! Speaking of which, one of the recipents of the last show’s Live Request Dedication (Werewolves!, in case you missed it), Miss Tabitha, age 11, sent me this awesome imagey poem thing:

Thank you Tabitha! Cool and Fool are pretty much my favourite words to rhyme. You have great taste! And you’re right, I should have heard you howling along! I might have to open up a phone line for that very purpose…

Right, back to the lab. Keep it peeled in this direction for futher REVEALAGE on Friday’s teasing…

March 29th, 2010.

IT IS GOING DOWN….

Meanwhile, in Stockholm…

DOWNLOAD: Akira The Don - The All New Weekly Doncast # 6! (Right Click and Save As)

Click here to subscribe with your iTunes thingy. 

Part 1

Part 2

Back once again with the ill behaviour! This is a nice LONG Doncast, cos at the time I thought I’d made some cock ups and would need to edit a good half an hour our of the audio. As it was the cock ups were minor AND charming, so I didn’t have to do any such thing. Have at ye them! 2 hours of live Doncasting! Awesome  music! Mildly amusing banter! Live rapping! Audience participation!

We’re almost there with the sound, by the way. it was MOSTLY great, apart from some peaking during the rapping. I will sort that next week.

Once again, I gotta give it up to those of you that tuned in live, for making it so very very real, and entertaining me with your wisdom and hilarity. Cheers you guys! Special shout out to Lisle, AKA Three_years, co-star of this week’s Doncast Dedication (good name dude, I’m keeping it!), who is leaving his love to go “running enourmous lengths of pipe into the coal seams of Australia”, which is mental.

OK. Back next week them, same Bat Time, same Bat Channel. IE, here, 5pm GMT, Wednesday March 11th. I’ll be previewing something from ATD22, the title of whihc I will be revealling later this week.

So, how’s the time working out for you guys any way? It’s a hard thing to schedule since you live ALL OVER THE GLOBE, dammit.

PS – I saw you took advantage of my ad space to declare your love for Canada using my cartoon mouth, Jack Paris! That was kinda genius, really. PROPS.

ARGH IT IS TRUE THEY ARE.

Bloody things.

I got a stack of keyboards like that. Similarly sinister. Why don’t I throw them away? What do I need with a box of broken old mice? What use could they possibly come in? (Interesting turn of phrase there Donovan (Why thank you very much (Interesting way of showing a schizophrenic inner monologue also (Thank you, isn’t it?)))

I have 6 Music on right now. What a sucker for marketing I am! Anyway, it’s not just landfill indie, as its detractors have it – there’s a lot of 80s geeky shmindie too. And Sac VS Pip. Do any other stations play Sac VS Pip? I can’t imagine Kiss does. Maybe Zane Lowe plays them on his Radio 1 show. Anyway, I don’t think The Powers That Be WILL get rid of 6 Music. The 6 Music demographic is very active in social media, which is where the big decisions are made these days.

I might bet on it. I could do with a win. Speaking of which, I hear The BBC has committed to spending at least 90% of the licence fee on “high-quality content and distribution” by 2013″. I am also interested in how they define “high-quality content”. Do those piss awful plays they have on Radio 4 in the afternoon fall into that category? Because I would beg to bloody differ. I would also like to know how they plan on spending the other 10. Presumably on biscuits. You can never have too many biscuits, and I should know. I haven’t got any.

AHAHAHA!

I just switched to Radio 4, and Tessa Jowell was talking about how well Gordon Brown is going to perform. She finished by declaring earnestly, “he will rise to the occasion.”

Now that’s ”high quality content”.

Speaking of which…

Tomorrow! (Or today, if you’re reading this on Wednesday)

5pm GMT!

THE ALL NEW WEEKLY DONCAST!

If you want me to read your sad/sweet/inspiring/etc story about your loved one with my excellent voice over emotional music, email me at akirathedon at googlemail.com.

Other suggestions welcome.

PAX!

Awesome photo by Charlotte Whewell

Hey you guuuuuys!

So, you know how I’ve been moaning for ages about how crap my keyboard and mouse are, and how clicking the left mouse button requires the strength of ten men and using the thing all day every day is crippling me, and how my keyboard is so loud it gives my long suffering but resiliently hot female companion migraines, and how getting it to communicate with you every day requires such force it sends shockwaves through my whole skeleton that reverberate for the following 8 hours at LEAST and give me crazy nightmares? Yeah?

Well.

I totally bought myself a new keyboard and mouse!

BOOYA!

Know what else?

They are wireless!

BLAMMO! IN YOUR FACE CRAPPY OLD KEYBOARD AND MOUSE! IN THE BIN WITH YOU! YOU ARE REPLACED! AHAHAHAHAHA! FIE!

Rah though. While typing on this new thing is a comparative JOY, I am a little confused as to why something that is WIRELESS is so prohibitively HEAVY – the keyboard is like a slab of GRANITE, and I practically have to DRAG the nouse around my DESK. It is RIDICULOUS, but it is an improvement regardless. So, yes.

WOO HOO!

Rah though. It is announcement time.

WE HAVE A WINNER! A WINNER OF OUR FUCK YEAH DE BURGH COMPETITION!

ARE YOU READY?

AAAARE YOUUUU REEEEADY?

POW!

Clear cut, in our judges’ opinion, was that victory. Congratulations Johnny! Not only was your winning entry REALLY FUNNY, it has also set in a motion a whole goddamn MOVIE in our minds, sort of like James Bond meets Lost Highway, in which the valiant de Burgh has his life stolen from him by an evil clone, who commits a series of increasingly terrible atrocities in his good name. Anyone got the number for Hollywood? IT IS A SMASH I TELL YOU! Obviously, Johnny, you forgo all rights to any ownership of what is now MY awesome idea by accepting your awesome prize.

Here is your awesome prize, which will be winging it’s way to you just as soon as you email me your address:

Congratulations then, Johnny. I think you’ll find that much greater reward than the BEEELIONS of dollars I am going to make flogging your amazing idea to those idiots in Hollywood. BWA HA HA HA HA!

Ahem.

Ew.

That was weird.

I don’t know what came over me there brothers and sisters. For a moment back there, I believe I must have been POSSESSED by the evil spirit of De Burgh’s Dastardly Double! Crap! What have I done? Gentle reader! Save yourself before it is too late! DON’T LOOK INTO HIS EYES!

Yes. Now, let’s hammer out this story together, and share in the spoils and the glory. THE GLOOOOOOOOOOORY! So, we have Good de Burgh, who is a lovely man, then his EVIL TWIN SHOWS UP, and, let’s say, shoots him with a  ray gun and locks him in a cage in a dirty basement wearing nothing but a nappy. WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?