10 days ago, while I was working at an ad agency in Soho, my laptop suddenly died and refused to come back to life. All my latest projects were on the computer and I hadn’t backed anything up (since my external hard drive also died on me just a few weeks earlier!). I won’t go into detail about this now, but it’s been a catastrophy: I lost the REBELRAVE project that I had been working on for the past two months. I had practically finished the video and just needed to export it to web format so that it could go live!

There may be a chance of me being able to recover my hard drive, but the guys at the data-recovery lab have been working on this for the past week without much success.

Anyway, that’s not really the point of this post. The point is that because of all of this I just couldn’t do any work last week, so I came very close to having some time away from the computer to enjoy some thumb twiddling. I wasn’t too comfortable with this prospect, in fact I decided to learn Processing (watch this and this to see what it can do if you’re not familiar with it).
But I got interrupted after a day by an email about Radiohead’s remix contest. I immediately dropped my Processing project and got onto the case, using my friend’s laptop and his Ableton Live (thanks James).

So my remix is now up on radioheadremix.com. Have a listen below, and if you like it please vote!
I’ve titled it “Reckoner (Ripples mix)” as it focuses on the verse of the original song:
“Because we separate like ripples on a blank shore”

Just hit the vote button here:

And if you feel like taking part in this promotional stunt of mine, just copy and paste the following code into your own myspace/forum/blog!

update 29.09.08 15:01: I’ve just learned that the voting system blocks out multiple hits from a single IP, so if you’re in an office you probably won’t be able to vote if someone else in your office has already.

update 30.09.08 19:16: Over the last 10 days I have been receiving regular phone calls from the chap at the lab that were fairly negative about the recovery’s progress, however this morning’s phone call from him was the best news I’ve had in a long time. The data was saved!

The thing I love about all of this is that this whole story has taken me from one extreme to another, from total life crumbling desperation to a massive sense of achievement. But without the initial loss of my computer, I would have never been able to make the track, and instead would have had to work on my ongoing design and video projects. This track might seem like a small thing for most people, but those who are closest to me know how little time I’ve had to make music, and how frustrated I’ve been as it’s ultimately the thing I love doing the most.

update 31.09.08 13:53: I have my beloved laptop back, many thanks to Ian and Mark at Mac 1 - Spitalfields who spent many days fighting to recover the data.

Playing around with WordPress for my own blog gave me enough confidence to tell Smokin Jo that I could do the same for her, building her not only a blog but a website that she could update and manage using the WordPress admin system.

When I first met Jo two years ago I was fairly new to the club scene and I didn’t really know that she was a world-class/award-winning DJ! Over these two years however I have learned much about Jo, and compiling her About page with her was a really nice way to learn about her past and how she got to where she is now.

Lately she’s been producing some extremely hot tracks with Pete Gleadall under the name of TRNSSTR. Their latest release on “As you like it” is one of my favourites yet!

Find out more about Smokin Jo by checking out her new website here: smokinjo.com