Argh. August is OVER!

We're sitting here, writing caps on, but have just been thinking back over the last couple of months' gigs. Great stuff, and gets our feets itching to get back on stage with some new material! We have to be patient, and complete all this new stuff we're working on so we can come back live with a 'POW' - we want to do everything at once, but we'll be able to once these recordings are done. There's very exciting stuff to anounce about the recording soon (there's a lot going on behind the closed curtains!), but in the meantime we'll keep writing, editing, and generally making mischief in any way we can.

Still, the summer has been good - from getting people on passing busses to dance at the Lavender Hill Festival (and watching people gloriously sunbathe on the far side of the street from our vantage point on the stage) to wading through rain at an experimental electro-3-piece set at the Hackney Wicked Festival (that was an amazing sound system!), to being dragged through fields by puppies 10 minutes before we're meant to be in a wedding (wearing spangly shoes, and white suits)... It's been fun!

But to work. We must go and complete our missions. Check out the latest tracks on our media page - we've only just added some new music - the latest - be there ;). Some are totally new, some are reworkings of some of our favourite older tracks. Do tell us what you think!

EDIT: - Managed to get a player to embed here. Love Technology :)

Lavender Hill Festival

And what a lovely way to start the Summer!

An absolutely beautiful day in South West London, thousands of people milling around down Lavender Hill, amazing food stalls, Steel Bands, and us. Actually, the plan originally was to close Lavender Hill completely, but even when they kept it open, people just milled out into the road in front of the stage, and claimed large parts of it for themselves.

So there we were, on a stage in front of a beautiful (abandoned) bar, covered in gorgeous sunshine, playing to a stack of people, some up close and personal, some chilling on the far side of the road, lying out on the street to soak up the rays. The response for all the bands was amazing, from dancing children (that was a real eye-opener) to people on the top decks of passing buses getting involved.

It was quite a day :). A BIG shout out to all the guys from Drumshack & Ocean Studios who were there doing technical things all day, and gave us a chance to play at an amazing gig. Lots of charity money raised too for the Trinity Hospice.

In the meantime, we're back to the grindstone, and looking forward to the next gig - the Childwickbury Arts Show, St. Albans on July the 5th. Come!

Photo Copyright 2009 Russ Anderson

Tweet. Meet. Give. Twestival.

Today is going to be a good day!

People in over 175 cities worldwide are getting together for a charity 'Twestival' (in honour of the fact we're all Twitter users) for Charity:Water - aiming to get fresh, clean water to the roughly 1 billion people in the world who have no access to it. The ultimate aim is to raise more that $20,000 for the charity (a previous effort raised in excess of $15,000) - but they don't want you to give away your money for nothing!

Hundreds of artists, Riddler included, have donated tracks to the cause. We've give away an 'EP Preview' of Lipstick Blonde - to clear up what the hell that is, it's the version we're using as the 'model' to record all the individual parts for the final song - so it's way down the line from any of the versions on MySpace, or even here on our own site.

But it's even better than that! (How is that possible, we hear you cry). You can also download tracks donated by bands and artists including Bloc Party, Imogen Heap, Erol Alkan, The Young Punx and many, many more. All that is requested in return is, if you like the music, please donate $5 to the cause. It's easily done, and every penny goes to the charity. Please, please, check out the Twestival website and Twestival.FM (for your music!)

And now, we have our spankiest clothes on, tickets in hand, and we're off to Shoreditch for @LDNTwestival. Gonna be a riot, And if you're in the area, and you see lots of people staring into iPhones, talking about Tweeting, d, @ing and the such. Please forgive us. It is for Charidee, innit.

We're back!

A New Year, and we're back at the grindstone :). Many apologies for the lack of updates - cross between dead computers, being away, and actually getting some work done; which is of course what we're meant to be doing.

So what are we doing? Mostly writing, recording and Twittering actually. We've written and sketched up (in a half-audio-kinda-complete-kinda-way) four of five new songs in the last month or so, and more on their way soon. They have strange names like 'World in a Bag', 'Killing Beats' & 'Screams' - not that there's a link between them. We've also got some interesting meetings coming up, larger recording sessions to arrange, and general bits & bobs to be getting on with :).

So we're not gigging for a little while. We're looking for the right place to book that first one of the year, though there may be a little surprise one to check out some of the material we're working on. We're also waiting on the masters from our Roundhouse session, and trying to dig out the photos as well.

In the meantime, enjoy some Celebrity Meat we found in Anneliese's local shop...


We gave it to Geiger for his Birthday. Along with some Branston Pickle :).

Stuck...

Grr.

I hate weather like this. It's really horrible out there, & I'm stuck inside (due to loss of umbrella and possibly unhelpful lighting strikes). Some useful things can come of that; I've been back through the ton of little recorded ideas on the mobile, and there're definitely some that could be useful. Plus, there was the techy stuff that needed to be done in the Studio - a bit of re-wiring, updating my new sample library (which means trawling through old Future Music DVDs and copying everything over into sensible folders) and generally finishing a bit of a cleanup.

But best of all, there are the time-wasters - online Mah Jong, the demo for World of Goo (which looks awesome - buy it, buy it - it's about £13.59), and iPod Peggle (warning - naughty words from the awesome Zero Punctuation review - love Yahtzee) which we've decided is actually pure evil - how addictive?. But for pretty-automatic-quickness, I quite like Wordle.net.

So here are the Wordle outputs for this Blog, our Front Page (which I like the most) and our Twitter twits. Clicky Clicky.

Blog

Main Page

RiddlerMusic Twitter

Sometimes 'purdiness' is so quick and easy. Reading this on FACEBOOK? Pop over to the blog to see the piccies.

Anyway, back to doing something useful - remember - FREE GIG (& last gig of the year) on Sunday the 30th of November @ Proud Galleries, Stabels Market, Camden - shop and listen to music from 2pm (we're on 3pm) - previous blog actually tells all...

Mike

Nightly in November

Well, ok... maybe not 'nightly', but it's been a hectic (productive) little month :). The Ebony Bones gig was a hell of a laugh and a half (made much more pleasant by the opportunity to actually sit down @ the After Party and have a few drinks rather than the more-usual 'bang everything in the back of the bus and leg it before it gets too cold') - Ms Bones was (as expected) lively as anything, and there were more obscure costumes in the Rhythm Factory than you could shake a massive stick at. Great night!

We've also been doing some recording down at The Roundhouse, Camden - a very live version of Lipstick Blonde is currently awaiting another visit and a mix session after a really enjoyable time down there... If you can, we recommend their Scrambled Eggs, or Club Sandwich as food that's gorgeous and a fair tackle to get through :). Still, we have a few photos from the day which may well migrate onto the site fairly soon (after losing a few too many USB cables).

Alongside that - some new songs have wiggled into the Live set, and that time to sit down and write in October is starting to produce some rather nice little tunes that we'll be knuckling down to over the Winter. The Stables was awesome as ever (they really are lovely people there), and hopefully we'll get another chance to pop back there next year - incidentally, check out our stage-sharing-mates from the Stables, Jackdaw4 - we've played with them once before, and they just reminded us of how damn good they are - well worth a look. They were kind enough to give us a copy of their latest album, and very good it is too. Cheers guys!

Finally, we've got a FREE GIG this month - Sunday the 30th of November, Proud Galleries, Stables Market, Camden - and it's in the afternoon - we're on at 3pm. Bit of an odd story that - it all came about from a business card popped onto Mike's keyboard while we were on stage storming away to a tune down @ Nambucca earlier this year (think it was Stop the Clock, but can't be sure!). After a few impossible dates, we've got one of their rather rare slots. Word is, it's a great gig to do, lots of people milling about, and of course, Christmas Shopping ahoy!

Come. You must! It will, almost certainly, be our last gig for about 3 months while we get on with all this writing/recording we've started, and generally jive everything up.

Oh, and really finally, you can now follow us on Twitter as well - over at http://www.twitter.com/RiddlerMusic, or indeed at the top right hand side of this page. We'd love to get more talky with you. Clicky Clicky...

Hope you're having a lovely month...

RemembeR wish George W. 'Au Revoir' - get over that election fever...

Our wonderful friends RemembeR have been up to their old tricks again (no surprises there then ;)), and have released yet another spankingly great video to an unsuspecting world.

Number One Creation - Ian George feat. RemembeR is the perfect antidote to all that election fever, and is not only a wicked video (some of you might notice some similarities with New Shuuz, New Life) but a great song to boot.


Go, watch, enjoy, vote, rate, comment... - Number One Creation - Ian George feat. RemembeR

Meanwhile - we've been rumbling on in the studio - should have some new tunes to play at upcoming gigs - & there are two great ones coming up - we're lead support for Ebony Bones on the Saturday 8th of November down at Rhythm Factory, and a trip up to the amazing Stables on the 13th of November to play with Jackdaw4. Come! It would be lovely to see you :).