Neil McDougall

It's my tele. On my livejournal. Straight off my phone. W00t!

Heard about this on a couple of podcasts I subscribe to, so I thought I'd pass it on to my Livejournal friends.

A rather talented chap by the name of Kevin Reeves is giving away his first album for free on his website. all you need to do is sign up for his mailing list and you'll get the link in your inbox. Stylistically, it reminds me a lot of Queen, but a bit more...hmm...American. Production's really good, songs are catchy, well constructed and well performed. For a freebie, it's fabulous.

If anyone's skeptical, keep an eye on my podcast - I'll be doing a Kevin Reeves Artist Focus episode next, and I'll spin three or four tracks off the album.

Clapton - http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=nCzUMjCykn8

'Tallica - http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=ttaqVd0rOjA

Vai - http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=_s3Sk8o3xaU

The Vai one is great, and the Clappo one is made of win.

'Tis a cover of Machines by Biffy Clyro, and 'tis here. I did it as something of a tribute to my online pal Keith Kitchens, who passed away on Monday. :-/

http://musicattack.libsyn.com - Episode 4 is four random and cool bands from Garageband.com and its user-reviewing system. Tell thy friends!

http://musicattack.libsyn.com - featuring music from Gamble, Gamble & Drever, Paul Simpson, The Pax Cecilia and Haken. Yet another prog-tinged episode (apart from Paul's stuff). I really need to knuckle down and find some really good unsigned metal bands for the show.

Due to mypodcast.com re-encoding all of its files to 96kbps, I've bit the bullet and signed up to Libsyn. As a result, NeiloMac's Music Attack can now be found at http://musicattack.libsyn.com/. Stick that feed in yer iTunes and what have yer - I doubt I'll do anything with the Mypodcast page.

Not that Mypodcast is a *bad* service - it'd be fine for an all-talk podcast, like an audio blog or a roundtable discussion/talk radio type thing, but for music you need higher quality.

So, yeah, Libsyn it, and I'll get me some more fresh tunes up for a new show in the next few days.

A new podcast - I has it.

And it's here. NeiloMac's Music Attack - basically my lame attempt to fill the gap left by the ending of tartanpodcast and the hiatus of the Home Made Hit Show podcast.

Episode 2 of the show is publishing to the site as I speak- featuring excellent music from Gamble, Gamble and Drever, Liam Gaughan, Illuminumb, and Disfunction.

If anyone wants to recommend good unsigned underground stuff to play on the show (Clive, Paul, et al, mind if I give some of your stuff a spin? ;-) ), send me the info to neilomac@gmail.com.

...to the Mac side. Posting this from my swanky new Macbook. 1.83Ghz Core 2 Duo, 512mb RAM, 60GB HD, the usual, all for £580 off the Apple refurb store. I'm pretty chuffed with it so far. :-)

I'm not abandoning my PC, but being able to use different computers for different things will definitely help ease the load off my big black XP box.

However, later that day I hear about pro wrestler Chris Benoit, whose ring work I absolutely love, allegedly killing his wife and son before committing suicide. Gah.

What I did was, basically, an excersise in spontenaeity - a solo electric guitar improvision based on the use of delays to create textures. Sounds like a somewhat haphazard cross between Brian May, Robert Fripp, and bits of a Tool kinda vibe. It was all one take, first take and continuous for 20 minutes, all performed with a Line 6 Variax through a Pod XT Live.

Anyway, it's called Jovian Motorbike, and you can download it in all of its spontaneous goodness here.