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General

Three Great Albums from 2024

It’s hard keeping up with the youngsters, the older you get. I used to pride myself in being fairly up-to-date with music, but latterly I have found myself slipping behind. Nowadays, festival line-ups read like Thai restaurant menus. Fortunately, I have a couple of musical daughters in their twenties, and they drip feed me with suggestions. Occasionally, they are successful, and I reap the rewards of tapping into a rich seam of new music.

So Medieval (Blue Bendy)

First off, I finally got to hear the new debut album by one of my recent favourite bands Blue Bendy, who I saw playing in Bristol last year (supporting Squid — result!). I loved their Motorbike EP, and I was looking forward to more of the same.

That wasn’t what I got though. They have clearly moved onwards and upwards since Motorbike. Their Cloudy single from the previous year was more of an indication of where they went next, with a broader range of compositions, styles and dynamics. It’s an interesting album of 21st century progressive indie, and I guess that this is what you get from six creative people pulling in different directions and then pulling together. No one idea is over-used, no song is any longer than necessary.

Tangk (Idles)

I probably wouldn’t have liked Idles if it wan’t for a series of random events. I’d heard them a few years back and moved on quite quickly, dismissing them as a shouty racket band. I’d heard Pop Pop Pop early this year in a random playlist, and it got stuck in my subconscious. So, when I saw the music video for the single, I realised that there was something cool going on here, and got hold of the album called, strangely, Tangk.

Tangk was co-produced by Nigel Godrich, otherwise known as the 6th member of Radiohead, and you can clearly hear the influence. Idles have been pushed to a new level of creativity and performance. Vocalist front man Joe Talbot actually sings as well as shouts, the guitars’ sounds are richer and more complex, we hear atmospheric keyboards, rumbling off-kilter bass lines and the drums crack with almost inhuman power. I soon realised that Idles hit the same pleasure centre in my brain that was inhabited by Killing Joke in the 1980s.

You’ll Have to Lose Something (Spirit of the Beehive)

The last album by Spirit of the Beehive (Entertainment, Death) was one of my most played albums last year (late to the party again). I love the way their music morphs throughout a song, changing form from one minute to the next. When I heard that their new “sweeter” album You’ll Have to Lose Something was coming out, I was actually worried it wouldn’t be as good. On first play, I thought maybe they had tried to make a softer, more accessible album, but like most good records, I discovered there were more layers waiting to be uncovered.

Despite the romantic break up of the longest serving core members (Zack Schwartz and Rivka Ravede) almost ending the band a couple of years ago, they instead changed and embraced the drama, writing about love and relationships in a new band dynamic, which continues their taste for sampling, chaos, morphing grooves, and adds delicate passages of subtle electronica and even classical instruments. This band has been on fire since the addition of Corey Wichlin five years ago. Long may they burn!

Categories
Recording

ambassadors of doubt

After finishing work on the OPE Pirate Radio single, I stayed in touch with Richard Stockdill, my former Crimson Creatures bandmate, keyboardist and primary songwriter. He told me that he was collaborating with Steve Taylor, a veteran drummer, singer, guitarist and former bandmate. I was invited to join them in the same capacity as before — as guitarist, producer and backing singer.

Twice shy from my experience with Crimson Creatures, I accepted with the caveat of no late night dingy pub gigs to 20 people. I appreciate that this limited us somewhat in sleepy Dorset, where classic cover bands are the norm, but you’ve got to have standards!

In March, Richard recruited singer/guitarist Martin McKendrick, who, like me 5 years ago, had taken time out and wanted to get back into music. This proved to be the catalyst for movement, with Martin’s ideas complementing our own very well, and the demos progressed at a faster rate.

As we hit July, we’re pretty much on target to finish an album’s worth of songs, which we will no doubt release online later this year. Like with Crimson Creatures, the songs are pretty much grounded in Prog, but contain trace elements of pop, electro, folk and post-punk.

As always, you can occasionally get a glimpse of work in progress on the companion Facebook page.

Categories
Recording

Clearing the Decks

After leaving Crimson Creatures, I had an unused demo left over which I was keen to finish. The song had started off life as a solo recording, which I made in my teens, in the early 1980s. The original demo featured my old acoustic 12-string guitar, mock bass (played on guitar), lead guitar and vocals. The lyrics were about a guitar. Yes, really. I decided that my new version would have new lyrics, and I started to write something about joining the circus. Fortunately, this was a metaphor for something else completely.

I played the demo to Andy Bell. He liked it and suggested that he wrote and sang some lyrics, as part of a new batch of Lowly Man songs which he’d been working on. I was relieved that I wouldn’t have to sing it myself. We completed the song quite quickly, and I replicated the original lead guitar part exactly, warts and all.

A few weeks later, we hadn’t made any progress on any of Andy’s demos. We couldn’t agree on how to produce any of the recordings. We eventually decided to give up. Lowly Man was finished, at least for now. And we released Pine Walk (as it was now known) as a single.

Pirate Radio

Meanwhile, Richard Stockdill (Crimson Creatures’ composer and keyboardist) sent me a draft recording he was working on with his synth tutor and his Odd as Per Even drummer bandmate. It had a very eastern flavour, and it had been nicknamed Phyrigian Pirate.

I can’t remember if he was asking for advice on structure or an opinion on the composition, or just showing me what he was up to, but I ended up producing the track anyway, adding ethnic vocal samples, bass guitar and ebowed guitar. We chose to leave it as an instrumental, and release it as a one-off project, under the name OPE (Pirate Radio).

What Next?

As Richard and I work well together as a production team, he’s got me onboard with his next project: which is another Prog band, but more sophisticated, with more influences and more elaborate production. Richard has come up with some new compostitions, which are progressing nicely, and we are recycling some of the leftovers from Crimson Creatures. Waste not, want not.

We currently have 4 people working on the songs, with the sonic palette including: keyboards (3 of them!), guitars, bass, electronic drums, and 3 vocalists. Progress has been quick, so I hope to be able to preview some of our demos on my Yammer Music Facebook page in the not too distant future.

Categories
General

Performance

If a tree falls in in the forest and there’s no one around to hear it, does it make a sound? Despite the length of time I have spent on Earth, this philosophical question has only just become relevant to me. Let me explain…

When I joined what was to become known as Crimson Creatures in 2021, there was always the aspiration that the band would gig, if all went well. I was nervous about the prospect, not having played in front of an audience since the 1980s, but nerves are normal and, sure enough, just before our first gig, they left me, and I was raring to go.

3 gigs later, and I am no longer in the band. The gigs were successful, in that we played well and sounded good. Did I enjoy the experience? Hmm. Yes, and no. I mostly enjoyed the 45–60 minutes I was on stage, but the rest of it?

I was relieved that I wouldn’t have to do any more gigs. The lead up to each gig was filled with repetitive rehearsals, gear prep, and a nagging apprehension that something might go wrong on the night. The next gig was always lurking in the back of my mind.

The gigs involved lugging gear up and down stairs from badly parked cars, solving equipment problems, sound checks and fighting sound systems, playing to half empty rooms, and packing up late at night. I was sober in a room full of well-oiled people, before a long drive home, when I really could have done with relaxing. You can keep your Rock ‘n’ Roll lifestyle.

Now, when friends ask about my musical activity, I tell them that I’m concentrating on writing and recording. They will inevitably ask when I’m gigging again, to which I reply that I’m not keen, and it may not be for a long time, if ever. The reaction is always the same — total dumbfoundment. It’s as if there’s no point making music, unless I’m playing it live, probably in a bar near to them. This is where the philosophical falling tree comes in…

What is the point of making music, or being in a band, unless there are gigs and the performance? I’ve thought about this a lot recently.

Listening

I’ve been listening to and collecting music since the 1970s. I can’t usually remember what I ate for lunch, but I can tell you in what year Band X made their 2nd album and who played on it. There’s no feeling like discovering and going through the honeymoon listening phase of a great album.

Once I learned to play an instrument and how to record and mix, it was natural to want to make something vaguely resembling the amazing stuff I loved. So, by the age of 17, I’d made my first album and played in front of a big audience.

To be clear, those first gigs were playing covers of popular songs to crowds which were coming anyway. We were the entertainment, and we were appreciated. It was great. We later introduced our own songs, with limited success, and realised that the public wasn’t ready for our stuff. Still, a crowd is a crowd, and memories were made.

But, isn’t that what being a musician is all about? Well, no. Music isn’t made to get a round of applause and a pat on the back — though it’s nice when that happens. Many people make music because they they want to create something great sounding, thought-provoking and rousing, that they can listen to and can be proud of. If other people like it too, fabulous, so much the better. It’s a huge buzz to add another great recording to your collection, especially if it’s been made by you.

Of course, people like to play music in front of a crowd too, because they want to share, perform and entertain, and that’s fine. But not all musicians are entertainers. And not everyone makes music for entertainment.

Keep Music Live

When recording studios really took off in the 1960s, until piracy became widespread, popular music was consumed voraciously in its recorded form. But, as artists lost revenue from falling sales, they had to hit the road to make a living from music. And now streamed music is king, and all but the biggest recording artists get very little income from streaming, nothing is set to change.

Digital technology has enabled anyone to become a recording artist. This is a double-edged sword, and there are more recordings being released now than ever before. It’s difficult to get noticed amongst the sea of music, unless you have any marketing skills or staff at your disposal.

So, musicians are expected to perform, whether they like it or not. “Keep music live,” they said. Well, music wasn’t always live.