New Music Strategies

After watching the livestream for New Music Strategies (#ampnms) I feel inspired to have a rant.

The Record Label
The "music industry" is working overtime to try and keep its stronghold on consumers money. The reason why? The industry focus way too much on stuff like piracy, and not nearly enough on satisfying their customers' needs.

For instance, not that long ago, it was almost impossible to buy a digital copy of music without it being riddled with some kind of DRM, rendering it useless and annoying to the end user. Why? Why would the music industry insist on its precious music being distributed in such a way as to make it more irritating to its intended audience?

And even now, they are still trying to impose silly restrictions to the customer - you can't buy a song on its own, you have to take the whole album. Or if you can buy a single song we'll make you pay the same price as an album. People don't like being ripped off - we're not stupid. If you say the CD costs £5 then a digital copy should cost maximum £3.50, otherwise we'll know you're trying to extort us.

And then there is the other end of the scale...

The Real Indy Musicians
These guys and girls and the lifeforce of music today, they are constantly battling the stereotypes of what music is and how it should be enjoyed. Employing such tactics as social media, twitter, facebook, blogs, soundcloud, bandcamp and others, to keep their fans up to date, and bypass the middlemen in distribution, marketing and the like, going directly to the consumer.

Whilst this is an excellent idea, it puts a lot of the workload on the artist to maintain their social media updates, working very hard with not a great deal of visibility to their intended audience.

And also on the consumer, who has to work out how to use proprietary websites and payment schemes, sign up to lots of different websites, and really work quite hard to "discover" new music.

The Missing Cog

I personally think there is a massive niche in the audio market at the moment. A tool that can deliver content as effectively as Spotify, that can recommend music in the same way as Amazon, and is as free as free can be to use, with no adverts, DRM or other stuff to drive the consumer crazy. It must be easier to gain music through it than torrents, and there must be no disadvantages to using it, over Usenet, or whatever the current flavour of "illegal" downloads happens to be.

We must accept that the pirates will always be ahead of the game, and so trying to stop them is a waste of time. Its the consumers we want to win the hearts of. The ones who are downloading music from ThePirateBay, simply because its the easiest (or only!) way to get music onto their Android phone, using their Gentoo Linux based system.

A distributed peer-to-peer system, where once paid for, a tune can be downloaded as MP3 locally as many times as needed, but can be listened to online easily too. Where the 100% of the money goes straight to the owner, not through the tool.

burfdaaay!

Saturday 06/11/2010

Today marks the birthday of a legendary* drummer (*May not be legendary in all corners of the globe. Hey wait, do globes even have corners...?). To celebrate such a momentous occasion, a rather unusual activity had been chosen: Paintballing...because nothing says happy birthday like being shot in the ass with paint.

You really couldn't have picked a better day in the midst of autumn for running around in the woods, armed to the teeth with rifles and smoke grenades, as the sun was beaming merrily down upon us, and the chill in the air was barely noticeable with the adrenaline pumping through my veins. 500 tiny spheres of pain were handed out, along with some very fetching jump suits that looked like they had been washed a few too many times to qualify as camouflage.



2 teams, us vs "them"... the other team was composed mainly of kids, one was even on crutches, but this didn't lessen the satisfaction of tearing through their ranks to destroy them. I was willing to show some mercy at the beginning, and offer a painless surrender to any close-up encounters, but after one of the little rodents shot me multiple times in the butt after I had already been eliminated, my compassion evaporated as quickly as a cluster of stinging bruises appeared.

Paintball came to end and only a few injuries had been sustained. I'd been shot in the neck, directly between my mask, and clothing, which was quite unfortunate, being the only bit of exposed skin, but what hurt more were my feelings when I saw that the origin of the shot had come from a rogue teammate.



After freshening up a bit, we went to see the bonfire and fireworks, which was a nice surprise - I'd almost forgotten about celebrating people trying to blow up the parliament buildings.









Next up on the agenda was Sabai Sabai, a Thai restaurant where I had some very tasty Thai Green Curry, with rice, but not before a pint in Voodoo. After coming to terms with the impressive half a grand bill, we headed straight for somewhere slightly easier on the wallets. Satchwells was as cheap and cheerful as ever, more so because of the beer festival, where I got an interesting pint of vanilla flavoured beer.







Finally, we ended up in a random house party, hosted by Jim, Motorcade's front man, where we met people from all over globe, including drunk French people, Spanish people, crazy swedes (actually he was with us...!). I ended up watching Motorcade play into the early hours of the morning, which rounded off the evening very nicely.



If only every day was as fun as this one! Happy birthday tor :)

Cake in the Making

My next project is to master the art of cake. The particular cake I'm aiming for requires a whole new baking discipline that I've never really experimented with before - icing.

My first few attempts at icing have usually ended up with a slurry of sugary grease, but there are plenty of awesome cake chefs out there to show us that decorating a cake isn't impossible. I still thought I'd better get some advice of a real pro before starting though, and now, armed with some sugary wisdom, I'm preparing for Cake Mark II.

You may be wondering what happened to Mark I? Well, this particular cake adventure is a top secret project, for a good friend's birthday, and I thought I better not post my preliminary findings in the unlikely event that he somehow stumbles on the page and ruins the surprise! But here it is now!



Icing/Frosting
Here are some potential recipes I've found so far:
Rich Vanilla Frosting Not so keen on this one, as it uses soya milk powder, which is sold here at a whopping £10 minimum. Creamy White Frosting interesting looking recipe here - vinegar seems like an odd addition though...

In Other News
Other than cake, here's a few other things I've made in the last couple of weeks:


Coconut custard pie and tarts


Left over custard, decorated with one of my cute borage flowers from the back garden, dessicated coconut, and chocolate ganache

A Night In The Caribbean

"Carribean Food". That's what I promised for my next poker evening. So now I've got to work out exactly what that is, before I go to the supermarket in a few minutes, to inevitably realise that supermarkets don't have yukas, plantains or any other carribean items that my recipes call for!

So far my research is leading me to some kind of rice and beans combination as being a fairly traditional. Apparently the trick to this kind of dish is in the "sofrito", which is a sauce made from frying together finely chopped onions, garlic, pepper, corriander and oregano in olive oil, for around 15-30 minutes. Mix that with some precooked kidney/black beans, and serve mixed into some plain rice, and thats that. Dish #1.

Allspice seems like an essential flavour too, the spice of the carribean. So does rum. But how can I incorporate those things with the quinesential plantains and pineapples to create some kind of stew to go with the rice? Sounds more like a cocktail so far! (Well, that's certainly one way to make sure I win the poker!)

Merry Christmas!

As I have been extremely lazy with my poor blog in the past couple of months, I thought I'd wish the world a merry Christmas!

Hopefully in the new year, I'll be back to gourmet cuisine, rather than eating meals out of a can, as with any luck, the game I'm working on will be finished!

Soughdough Bread

So you've been feeding your sourdough bread for the past week, and are now wondering "what now?!" Well for a start, you can add some of your starter to any bread recipe, to make it more interesting. Every time you use it, make sure to replenish what you take, so you've got some for next time!



But for something special, look to the classic soughdough recipes. Pane All'olio is a tasty Italian bread, with its distincitive sour characteristics combining nicely with the olive oil. The secret to a great crust on your bread is to cook it in a very hot oven, on an unglazed terracotta tile, and make sure to mist the sides of the oven with water during the first 10 minutes of cooking. If you're lucky, your local tile shop may simply give you one of their tiles. To transport your dough onto the hot tile, its useful to have a "bakers peel" - a thin flat shovel, either wooden or metal. Also a large piece of unbleached linen cloth is a useful item to get hold of, for letting the dough rest in, to give it its shape. Dough tends not to stick to linen, if its well floured. (A tea towel would also work)



Down to business! Here's how to make another Italian favourite:

Ciabatta
¾ cups / 160ml / 6 fl oz Sourdough Starter
1 cup white flour
¾ cup water
325 g / 11½ oz / 3 cups white flour (I used "brown" for added nutriants. Probably half wholemeal/white would also work, but you may need slightly more water to compensate)
200 ml / 7 fl oz / 1 scant cup tepid water
¼ tsp active dry yeast
½ tsp sugar
30 ml / 2 tbsp soya milk
30 ml / 2 tbsp olive oil
1½ tsp salt

1. Put the ¾ cups soughdough starter into a large bowl, making sure to replenish your remaining starter with equal amounts of white flour and water.
2. To your bowl, add the 1 cup white flour and ¾ cup water, mix well for 10 minutes, folding the mixture using a spoon to try to capture as much air as possible.
3. Cover your bowl and leave overnight (at least 12 hours) at room temperature.
4. The next day, your soughdough should be healthy and bubbling a little, ready for some leavening action.
5. Add the remainder of the flour on top of the starter, and make a well in the centre. Add tepid water to the centre, and then the yeast and sugar, stirring a little to dissolve, and leave the yeast to activate and start to bubble, (15 mins)
6. Add the remainder of the ingrediants, and mix into a fairly wet dough. Continue to knead for 10 minutes, trying not to add too much more flour if its too sticky - the dough should be like this.
7. Leave in a warm area for 1 hour, until trippled in size.
8. Divide into 2 portions, and, trying not to expel too much air, tip dough onto a well floured piece of linen, and gently shape into loaves.
9. Preheat your oven, with the baking stone/tile, to 220 degrees celsius.
   
10. Leave to rise for a further 30 mins, then tip each loaf in turn onto your peel, and into the very hot oven, onto your baking stone/tile.
11. Mist the sides of the oven with water, and again every 3 minutes for the next 10.
12. Bake for a total of 30 minutes, then remove from oven and leave to cool on a wire rack. The underside should sound hollow when tapped.
    

So, armed with a litter of freshly baked ciabatta loaves, I set off this afternoon to a friends house for a Sunday roast. My loaves were promptly cut into slices, and served up with some olive oil and balsamic vinegar, and didn't last long, as we waited for the main dish to be served.




Amy had done a fantastic job with the main course, and I was extremely well catered for. I had roast potatoes and parsnips, stuffed portabello mushrooms, with boiled carrots and french beans on the side, and applesauce on top. For dessert, I had a fruit salad all to myself, full of strawberries, kiwi, orange and apple. Simply delicious!




Cheers!

Loafing Around

Walking down the streets of London, a breath of fresh air is an unexpected pleasure, but as I wondered around, past Le Pain Quotidien, I was greeted by the most sensational aroma. Fresh sourdough bread being baked. Its just one of those things that instantly makes you feel warm and fuzzy inside.

For the past couple of months I've been trying to get into bread baking. I've learnt quite a few things, one being that it ain't easy. Baking bread seems to be more science than art, a long way off from my normal kitchen craft of throwing things together, and fixing the taste as you go.

To me, Sourdough bread is the cordon bleu of the breads, so I decided that if I was going to get into baking bread, I may as well aim for the best.

• It gives bread character - plenty of aroma and flavour
• It is essential when trying to make loaves with high percentages of rye flour, good for lower gluten recipes
• The bread last longer, being more resistant to other molds
• Soughdough bread is cheaper to make, as you can reduce, or even remove the amount of yeast the recipe calls for

Making The Sourdough Starter
The goal here is to make a batter from flour and water, which is full of yeast and a strain of good bacteria, which can live happily together for years to come, as long as you keep it active.
Start off with a bowl that can hold around 4 cups.

The Chef
0.6ml / 1/8 tsp dried yeast
50g / 2 oz / ½ cup organic white/rye flour
45ml 3 tbsp dechlorinated water

Flour natually contains microorganisms that can help create a good culture in your starter. To give it all the chance it needs, organic flour is best. Rye flour is also a good way of introducting good bacteria to the starter, so substuting in small amounts of rye at the start is a good idea. Tap water contains quite a lot of chlorine which can defeat our good bacteria, allowing bad ones to take hold later on, so either boiling, or leaving water in sunlight for a few hours will help (chloramine is unaffected by these methods, so if you live in one of those areas, it might be harder creating a good starter from scratch).

To make the "Chef": Mix the yeast and flour(s) together in your bowl. Gradually add the water with a metal spoon, and mix to a stiff dough. Cover with oiled cling film, and leave in a warm place for 2 - 3 days.

Break open the crust on the Chef. The middle should be aerated and sweet smelling. Add the "1st refreshment":

The 1st Refreshment
65ml / 4½ tbsp water
115g / 4 oz / 1 cup white flour

Mix in the water and flour to form a fairly stiff dough. Replace film and leave for 2 days in a warm place.

The Levain
115ml / 4 fl oz / ½ cup water
115g / 4 oz / 1 cup white flour

Add water and flour, and knead into a "basic dough". Leave for 8 hours with a damp dish towel to cover, at room temperature. The sourdough starter is now ready to be used in a loaf. Don't use all of it, mind! Whenever you use some (between ½ and ¾ of the starter), you should replenish what you take with equal parts flour and water (by weight)

Using The Starter
When its time to make some bread, take your starter out of the fridge and leave to warm up to room temperature (if storing in the fridge, which is a good idea if you don't make bread every other day or so). Take the quantity needed for the recipe (no more than ¾ of the total), and note the weight that you've removed. Replenish this with equal quantities of water and flour (by weight), and mix into a smooth batter. Leave the starter mixture until it starts to bubble, before returning to the fridge, anywhere between 3 - 8 hours should be fine.

Well, that should keep you busy for around a week, so I've got a bit of time to perfect the best sourdough loaf recipe ever! Stay tuned...