KILL YOUR DARLINGS

HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

It's not all deranged mutant insects and fancy mountains for me right now - sometimes I still do my creative THINGZ and here is one such thing...z.

It's music!

https://www.indabamusic.com/opportunities/little-india-the-hunt-remix-contest/submissions/0d2cd664-0e7b-11e7-bc99-0ee9d79f649d [I can't seem to get the embedded code to work so have a link instead] It's a jazzed-up rework of The Hunt by Little India, a recent indie band who aren't afraid to drop a ton of sax into their songs. Nice!


Every so often I do remixes, because they're a guaranteed way to get the ol' creative juices flowing like a fresh deep wound. Mmmm! With this one, I kept in mind that famous piece of writing advice 'kill your darlings' ie trim the fat, don't be afraid to lose stuff, don't be too attached, and so forth. I know with my own music I tend to be....I don't think 'self-indulgent' is quite the word (that always makes me think of ten minute widdly guitar solos), more over indulgent. I put sections in songs that sound pretty awesome but bloat the runtime, sometimes affect the flow, all that jazz. So with all the new stuff I'm working on I'm trying to cut down on this. Kill my darlings. This remix is an example, in that I chopped out two minutes of stuff to make it all kick in quicker and flow faster. I also resisted the urge to overly distort any of it, so it's actually pretty accessible, if I do say so myself. And I do!

GIVE ME BACK MY TAIL

There was this story I read as a kid, which some will know as 'Tailypo': a hunter snags the tail of some unknown creature and, over the following few nights, he hears insistent scratching and an inhuman voice say "Give me back my tail" as this thing works its way from right outside his door to, eventually, the foot of his bed. It gave me the willies then and still does now, because I live next to a bamboo forest. Almost every night I hear heavy footsteps crunching their way through the undergrowth just outside my room (I have a window door that opens onto a balcony, with the forest scant feet from the edge of this). Sometimes the neighbours' dog barks its head off at whatever is out there. Sometimes I hear definite scrabbling sounds right outside the door. Last night I heard something in the darkness crackling out a harsh, guttural sound not unlike a person saying "Mike!", which was super weird.

So in honour of being freaked the shit out almost every night by unknown things, here's a photo medley of some of the horrendous creatures that have actually managed to get inside my room (although some are pretty cool). HAVE AT YOU!

If this earwig got inside your brain it'd make Swiss cheese of it within thirty seconds

This one hitched a ride in on my bag the other day

Why hello there little Glowbutt Bugface

PSEUDO MOTH WANTS TO EAT YOU WITH ITS HELLISH FACE

This cicada was seriously GIGANTIC

Oh, you're cool, you can stay

This one is actually deadly. Oops!