Dag 1092: Bithday Special

As usual, it was my birthday on 1st feb, and as usual I felt less bothered about it than the last one (apart from being bothered about the incremental effect it has on my age).

As we get older we have more idea of what life is about and what it has to offer, yet we also find that as we get older we have less chance of making dramatic changes to our lives.

Mr Hammill once said/sang "It's a hallmark of adulthood that our options diminish as our faculties for choice increase" and I think that sums it up pretty well.

My last post was written a couple of months ago, but since I got round to adding it to the blog I have been listening to pretty much nothing but This Mortal Coil, though I have been alternating this with Victorialand by The Cocteau Twins. I was an instant fan of the Cocteau Twins when I heard their first LP and have bought everything they released since. I can remember that when Victorialand was released I thought it was quite a change in direction for them and was leading towards the style of music that they would become so well known for. Like many LPs I bought back then I bought the pre-recorded tape version so I could play it in my car. My first car was a very battered and unreliable Renault 5 which had both rear side windows held in place with glue and masking tape. I remember driving to Leeds with Adrian one day and putting Victorialand onto the tape player. I remember him saying that it was probably the most depressing music he had ever listened to, but I can't remember what I put on instead. I hadn't thought of it in that way before. I realised that it could possibly be thought of as depressing, but I tended to find that if you are feeling a bit low listening to this sort of stuff can actually make you feel pretty uplifted. I find the music on Victorialand beautiful and something that one can get become completely lost in. I once went to a wedding where Victorialand was played as people entered the church and it seemed very fitting and appropriate.

When I first bought a CD player Victorialand was the first CD I bought to play on it. For some reason I never bought any This Mortal Coil on CD and my original copy of their first album It'll End In Tears was a pre-recorded cassette. The tape has long since worn away and I hadn't listened to it for years so I purchased it from iTunes last night as an extra birthday present and am listening to it as I write this.



As I mentioned in the last post, whenever I start listening to This Mortal Coil it makes me want to make music like that. However, making any sort of music at all is not really possible at the moment, partly due to lack of free time, but mainly due to the fact that all my equipment is stored away in the attic and various wardrobes. It is not really practical to get it out as by the time it was all set up I would need to put it away again. But all this listening to TMC and Cocteau Twins has made me really want some way of recording some music again. I also had the dilemma of what to get for my birthday. I always want more music equipment, but there is no point buying any if you have nowhere to put it. The answer was provided when I read through december's copy of Sound on Sound and I saw that Korg must have realised there is a market out there for people in the same boat as me. When I read about the Korg Micro X I felt it could have been made specially for me. It is small, but doesn't have small keys it has full size keys, just less of them. It also comes in a custom plastic hard case so it can easily be put away neatly, but best of all it contains sounds from their top of the range Triton synths. Editing small synths without many buttons is often a chore, but this one comes with a USB cable and some software to enable all that to be done from the computer. The SOS review mentioned that as well as the standard black case, the micro X also comes in a limited edition white case. Not only does it look far better in white, but as it is a limited edition, if I can get one I can feel all the better about the whole thing. However if I can't find one I will need to listen to even more TMC to cheer me up.

I spent the weeks leading up to my birthday trying to find a white micro X 50. It seemed that not only were the black ones pretty hard to get hold of due to their popularity, but the white ones were almost impossible to find. Digital Village advertised both on their website, but had neither in stock. Another site I had brought from before had the black one in stock, but no mention of the white one. Every day I looked on the Digital Villages website to see if they had got any, but they were always out of stock.

I began to worry that the limited edition white ones may have already sold out, but this just made me all the more determined to get one (I must me a marketing mans dream come true). The day before my birthday I emailed the other supplier to see if they had any plans to stock the white ones. They said they has spoken to Korg and they would be able to get some in 2 to 3 weeks time, and I should order one straight away to ensure I get one. I didn't really want to wait that long so after a few hours weighing it up I emailed and said I would like one of the ones they will get in. They said if I looked on their site I would see that the item was now listed and if I ordered it now I would get one when they got them in. I didn't like the idea of my card getting charged so many weeks before the item became available so I told them I would order it next week instead.

Before leaving work that day I had one more look on the digital village site and the status on the white micro X had changed to in Stock. It would have suited me better to have bought this after the weekend, so it would have appeared on march's statement, but I had the chance of getting one without waiting for another 2 or 3 weeks so I bought it. Once I had gone through the process I checked the item again and it was now showing up as out of stock again. The order has a clause saying the stock level on the web page may not be accurate so either they had just got 1 in that day and I had got it or there was an error and they didn't actually have one in stock. I wasn't likely to find out until the next day so I went home.

Next day I had an email to say the order was accepted and a few hours later another saying the item had shipped. There was also a tracking number. This morning I looked that up and my synth was officially out for delivery. Around 12:30 the status changed to delivered, so I have a brand new white limited edition Korg micro X waiting at home for me. I guess Strange Devotion will now be on hold (though in reality it has been since I left Scotland) and I am now looking forward to attempting some melancholic yet ultimately uplifting music inspired by TMC.

These birthdays may not be quite so bad after all.

There's ice in the cauldron, so look out now.