New Muses
I Was Honest With Myself
Mark Rushton’s Abundant Spare Time is a weekly email on Substack where I talk about my ongoing work as a recording artist and visual artist. This is my 167th weekly email.
This week’s topics:
New Muses
Soundtrack Progress
A Year With Abundant Spare Time
There’s Talk - “Head in Reverse”
New Muses
Recently, I was on a tour of an old home in the area, and there was a photo of younger people around a pool in the late 1920s or early 1930s.
I was allowed to take photos, so I got one of the pool scene. Here’s a crop:
There’s numerous people around the pool but one is all smiles and waving her arm while everybody else is posing and serious.
The whole scene will be cut up, processed in my “thermal ribbon and ink” style, and everybody will be my “new muses” for now.
I processed the “serious gal” first, but I’ll do “Miss Fun” eventually.
Soundtrack Progress
The “soundtrack” I mentioned in last week’s Post is coming along.
12 of the 24 pieces composed. The FM mono transmitter arrived.
I downloaded some freeware broadcast software and the database it works with, and got it to recognize each other. It should be fairly easy to use, but you never know.
The whole thing won’t be operational at The Fitch Building until around Christmas to New Year’s. I have no idea how far it will broadcast. If it reaches 15th and Locust, I’ll be thrilled. It doesn’t need to go beyond that point. Most people watch the clock on 15th between Locust and the alley to the south, towards Walnut.
What a crazy thing to do, but that’s the fun point of having an art studio.
For Kim, the studio is a place to paint and display. For me, it’s a display gallery. It’s a place to exhibit my visual art. And a place to exhibit the audio art. Via FM radio!
A Year With Abundant Spare Time
I am working on a book of my 2025 weekly Posts. Writing only.
Sure, you can read them here for free. There’s images. There’s links. But I want to put them into a book. For me.
“Here’s the book I wrote…”
A few Posts will be edited to be geared towards writing-only, but not much.
What I’m aiming for is something like Brian Eno’s mid 1990s diary, A Year With Swollen Appendices.
There’s Talk - “Head in Reverse”
This past week, I was trying to find the early EPs and albums by the band Curve, but they appear to be “out of print” and not distributed. Bummer.
The next best thing was a 2024 track “Flood the Harbour” by Kai Tak (featuring Tamaryn and There’s Time)
I was familiar with some of Tamaryn’s work about a decade ago. She has a bit of a Toni Halliday voice but her guitars then weren’t as noisy as Curve used to be.
I was unfamiliar with Kai Tak, which seems like indie electronic pop/rock.
Then I checked out the band There’s Time, which is out of the San Francisco area.
They released an EP in 2020 and some scattered singles after. All in a kind of restrained shoegaze/electronic style with good singing.
After hearing “Head in Reverse”, from the EP, I thought it was their best track. It’s a slow builder that hints at bigger things before getting there in the final 80 seconds.
What a discovery. It’s nice to stumble across something new and previous unheard that really captures my attention.