Afternoon all.

Okay as slack as ever it's been a month since our last post. We do try, honestly and have been hammering twitter regularly (see post below).

09 has actually started pretty well, been busy with assorted monthly sample commissions for both FM and CM and have so far covered MOR singer-songwriter toolbox, trance and just finished a load of bassline/4x4 garage. I'm not going to get into any 'one genre of dance music is better than another' but it is true to say after significant podcast/mix listening there seems to be some great stuff being made and also some pretty unimaginative/lazy stuff - like always I guess.

On the gear front we've laid off our nerdy collecting urges in order to concentrate on working with,what is all being said, quite a sonic armoury as it is. I wonder if the new found joys of Mariokart wii have anything to do with this? Probably not.

In other news our good mate Spoons has upped and left for the snowy highs of Switzerland, which put us in a bit of a sulk for a while (but we're over it now) and we're glad he's settling in well and has decided to pick up those sticks again. Oh and Mr Hoodee had his 3* (censored you b#stards - Mr Hoodee) birthday, the old, funky git!

Coming up for us here at GCHQ is more of the same for CM/FM, a couple of projects for some sample CD companies and maybe some stuff to do with an Iphone/Ipod touch app....

All in all not too bad......

Birdy tweet tweet

Anyone out there with a Twitter account who wants to keep up with strange, mundane, trainspotter and occasional zen single line updates from us here at GCHQ, check us out at

http://twitter.com/groovecriminals

Deep thought and tummy aches

Wotcha.

Hope you had a stress-free and enjoyable xmas and that the new year isn't looking to bleak in these tight times.

As the new year starts to kick in, we find ourselves doing the very British thing of introspection and looking backwards, instead of looking forward to things to come as 08 clicks over to 09.

Once again the urge to make some noize for ourselves has reared it's head, only to be battered back into its lair by a hefty slab of regular work. Regular work that is extremely welcome, don't get us wrong on that score.

But never the less it does seem that we've not put anything together for ourselves (or for our own pleasure come to that) in quite a while. As grateful as we are to be able to make music (or loops, beats, riffs, samples - however you want to quantify this stuff) for a living, the thought of sitting down and making some tunes for ourselves seems quite a hazy event and we're not quite sure how (or when ) to pin down when it last actually happened. In fact we're not even sure it's that important any more, although I'll admit as gut feelings go, mines grumbling like a git, which suggests this issue isn't going to go away in a hurry. Like most topics including life, art, music or beer, this whole situation seems to throw up more questions than it provides answers for, so we'll just have to wait and see what happens i guess.

808

We've just finished an electro sample set for next months FM and decided to hire in that ultimate electro machine a TR 808.

Now we've wanted one of these funky beasts since being into early hiphop in the 80's and it was great to get our grubby mitts on it, even if it was only for a couple of days.

First impressions? Well it's funny how it didn't really sound like what we expected an 808 to sound like - just shows how many heavily processed or just plain fake sample sets/beats are out there. Don't get us wrong once you get a beat going it sounds chunky and warm, the (in)famous rimshot sound made us smile when ever we used it, which was a lot.

But here's the thing, would we pay up to a grand (looks like the going rate second hand) for one?

The answer is no.

Yep it's a great machine, and a real joy to use but it didn't totally blow some of our other drum machines out of the water and £800-£1000 seems too expensive to us. That said tho, it's still a wrench to give it back.

Here's a quick video of us mucking about with it.

Ho Ho Ho

We'd like to throw out a huge well done to Mr Hoodee for completing this years Bury ST Edmunds 2 km Santa run for the East Anglia Children's Hospice charity.

We're hoping this out of character burst of exercise will make him lay off the drum kit for a few days!

The Good

Finally got our collective butts around to getting a full electronic drum kit installed in GCHQv2.0. Many thanks (as ever) to Simon Edgoose, from our percussive squadron, for making a custom rack to attach it all to (only had a limited space to squeeze it into) and helping us set it all up.

This means a fond farewell to our Drum Kat which is on it's way to another drummer contact and plenty of reasonably quiet practicing of our rather meagre drum chops.

The bad

Mood is a wee bit sour around GCHQv2.0 at the mo due to losing over half a months worth of work because of a single lousy email that never arrived at it's destination. Mr Hoodee was so furious that water was condensing around him from the air giving him his own cloud of steam.

As a team that makes it's collective living from the joys of technology, it can still be a bastard some times and perhaps not something to be totally relied on blindly all the time.