Run Tentacles, Run

I’ve been dedicating some time to a new pursuit. Running. Very alien to me initially but I’ve become more and more attached to it. I put up a running page HERE a while ago but thought I’d put up a blog post related to any ‘significant’ runs I’ve done.

Two recent ones are the Stafford half marathon and the Radcliffe 10km multi-terrain.

I dedicated a lot of training time to the half and had an aim to complete in 1:50.  On the day I completely ignored all the good advice to stick to my plan and ended up with 1:41:28, a massive achievement for me. So either I didn’t initially aim high enough or somehow just managed to pull it out the bag.  Here’s the extract from my Nike Running page:

Second up is the Radcliffe 10km multi-terrain.  This was tough.  Living in the city centre its pretty flat so to suddenly have to face some short and sharp hills really zaps the energy.  I ended up with a new 10km PB of 47:05.

Here’s a picture from Radcliffe, I don’t run, I levitate!

Photo copyright – Steve Bateman http://www.runningpix.co.uk/

Streetwork

The title inspired by Morbid Angel’s Hatework, here is a very non metal track including samples of street performers around Manchester.

The geek details: I used a recording of the drunkards in The Unicorn in my last track, so I decided to do some more ‘field’ recording in the City.  I used my phone to record clips of various street performers, so not great quality. The core of the track uses a couple of short loops from a live drummer in Piccadilly Gardens and then some “phat” dubstep style beat boxing recorded on Market St for the breakdown.  The “radio” intro also features me, Hare Krishna chanting and buskers playing the piano and singing.

In the interests of throwing it all in, I’ve used sounds of bassoon, analogue synth (bass and lead), piano, koto, charang, organ, gang chanting plus some extra programmed drums.  The whole thing was a bit of an experiment and might be a bit erratic, but hey, that’s the way I like it!

Hopefully I’ll record a couple of classical piano pieces I’ve been learning soon!