Here’s a mix of old mushy grey-day records. Most of them are pretty old and a little bit spooky.
It’s about 40 minutes long and I can’t remember all the songs on it tracklist in the comments. Stream it above or right-click the link.
Just right for this kind of afternoon.
Andrew Zuckerman’s latest is amazing. There are films too.
Bristol show Saturday 14th November
I’m playing at the Arnolfini on Saturday 14th November, supporting Lukas Ligeti.
It’s £7/£6 concs and it’s part of the All Around You season of stuff - “a season of sound performances, installations, talks, workshops and film events, featuring artists and musicians who utilise and respond to space and surroundings”. Which is what I do.
There is more information at the Arnolfini site, where you can hang out by clicking here.
3 weeks ago
I’ve been waiting for this album to be released for a long time - in fact, many years ago me and a pal talked about trying to secure the rights ourselves. We went as far as getting in touch with the composer (Edward Williams), who is local, but then realised we had no idea what we were doing.
Anyhow, Trunk Records have been releasing forgotten gems like this for ages, so I guess it was only a matter of time before it surfaced. Click on the image above and check out the press release for full info. It’s a beautiful, haunting record.
Jonny (Trunk’s head honcho) spoke to Edward Williams about the album, and was told that the original pressing (which had a different cover) was limited to less than 100 and was given to members of the orchestra who played on the record. It’s apparently very rare and hard to get hold of now.
The odd thing is, both me and my pal who wanted to release it both found mint copies in different Bristol charity shops. Back then, we weren’t even looking for it.
I guess the orchestra that played on the record may have been based in Bristol (what with both the composer and the Natural History Unit being based round here), and may not have been too happy with the result. If you are used to hearing your session work recorded ‘as is’, you may be a bit perturbed to find that all the strings have been stuck through a synthesizer.
Anyhow, I can’t recommend the album enough.
I’m playing at the Homelights Festival in Dublin on 29th November. Also playing over the course of the four days are Vashti Bunyan, James Yorkston, Alisdair Roberts, Adem and a bunch of others. Fancy it?
Been in London working with Gold Panda this week. We did a fair bit of improvisation, which is something I’ve never really bothered with. I’ve always thought it was more fun to be involved in the improvising than in the listening/watching. Which is still true, but it was so much fun to make that now I’m into it.
I’ve also wondered for years how electronic duos work - especially since most of the acts I grew up listening to were duos. It seemed alien to me, I was so used to making electronic music alone and taking time to perfect a beat that adding anyone else into the mix was weird. How can you tweak stuff for hours if someone else is there?
So anyway, we did some live laptop stuff: generating sounds, trying to stay in time and sampling each other’s noises and the telly to create something new. I haven’t listened to the results other than a little blast when we finished. I’m kinda thinking maybe I won’t. But it felt and sounded good at the time.
We also spent some time at The Roundhouse working in the studio there with some sound engineering students. That was pretty great, and the fact that a lot of time was spent teaching the students mic techniques made us feel less bad about not really having any songs for them to record. Still, we recorded some drums and had time to record another long improvised track - this time with me on drums and Panda working the MPC. This was again, pretty enjoyable (in a different way to improvising in a traditional band).
All in all, I kinda realised how electronic collaboration works, and that improvisation is no longer a strange idea that I cannot be bothered with. It’s still probably more fun to make than to listen to, but still, I think I’ve been missing out.
Swn festival coming up...
Good evening. The Swn festival in Cardiff is just around the corner (assuming, of course, that time is not a straight line).
I’m playing on Saturday 24th October at the Toucan Club. Check out the full line-up here, it’s looking pretty great. You can find out about tickets here.
Hope some of you can make it. If not, then don’t worry because I’m sure we can work something out involving non-linear time which will enable some kind of time travel portal business.
1 month agoThe Making Of Lady Came From Baltic Wharf.
Check this out – back in May, a guy called Giuseppe from Costa Rica Guatemala contacted me via the Minotaur Facebook page and said he wanted to make a video. As it wasn’t going to cost me anything, I’m like “cool, go for it”.
So a coupla months later and the video’s finished – not something I imagined would fit with the song, but I can’t help admire the way Giuseppe has got it together and made something that is very true to the absolutely crazy treatment/story he originally emailed me. There’s even a Making Of documentary on YouTube.
Big thanks to Giuseppe and everyone involved in making the film.
The track Lady Came From Baltic Wharf was released on a 2003 album called Rinse which is available from the gorgeous Melodic records.
