7th November 2013

So, my split tape with Tranzmit is out on Arachnidiscs Recordings on December 16th. My side, of course, is Terra Incognita, which is many months old now. A few months down the line will be The Last Swifts of Summer, which will be my first proper album in almost a year once it comes out – currently looking like early spring on Crash Symbols tapes. You can hear three pieces from that – Mutterfly, Windswept and Continuous, and The Ephemeral Beauty of Living Things – on my Soundcloud.

I’ve been doing some work on new stuff, but seem to be continually falling into the trap of focusing concepts, rather than simply making some quality tracks. Found Autechre’s question & answer session on WATMM this last week quite inspiring, especially them talking about how they just love jamming tracks. Something I’m often guilty of is not really enjoying the process of making music. So I’ve been back on that, just playing around, seeing what I can come up with. Thrown out a fair few interesting bits, everything from a dark ambient/noise piece you can hear on my Soundcloud, to some IDM-ish beats and a rather intense drone piece. I can’t wait to find out where it’s all going over the course of the next few months. Who knows what the next album will sound like.

Currently reading Skagboys by Irvine Welsh. What a book. After trudging through a heap of books which have been good but not amazing, this has been so refreshing. The one thing that makes a book ‘unputdownable’ (ugh) for me is believable characters – feeling like I know these people. Not enough books have that. George R. R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire series is another great example, and almost anything by Kate Atkinson. Anyway, I’m going to re-read Trainspotting and Porno after I’ve finished.

Recently been listening to a lot of Chvrches, Cocteau Twins, Zola Jesus, Warpaint, XTC and FSOL. Think I’ve finally got to the point where I prefer female singers to male singers, particularly in ethereal sounding stuff. Gaz’s Liz Fraser and Lisa Gerrard obsession seems to run throughout FSOL’s catalogue, even their early acid stuff seems to have ethereal female vocals caked all over it. Good stuff.

18th October 2013

As it currently stands, we’re still hoping for the Babel/Ross Baker split to be out in November – that’s Terra Incognita on my side, which is somewhat old now – finished that a few months ago. So that’ll be good to get out. We’re just sorting out the artwork (or at least trying to).

I have tentatively begun work on my next album now. Something I realised when looking back over older releases was a certain element of individuality. Lately I’ve had a perspective of finding music that sounds like my music/creating stuff directly inspired by other music, yet this seems completely at odds with how I created my earlier work. I actually remember when I was doing Purlieu, my attitude was literally “well if nobody else is going to make this album, I’m going to have to”. So that’s something I’m returning to, I think, trying to create a sonic world which currently doesn’t exist. It’s actually quite exciting to be starting on a fresh new project like this – particularly as my 2012/2013 output will all slot together as a series of related works with an overall sound/theme. The WIP piece I’ve begun work on is quite different from the last few records – quite noisy and dark. A welcome change of pace.

In other news, Dimitris and I have completed the Middlemarch album, which is to be titled Wolf Hall, and will be released on Time Released Sound in the new year. Needless to say we’re very excited about this as we’re both big fans of the label. We’re just finalising details about that right now. This is probably the most beautiful selection of tracks I’ve ever worked on, and it’s been a real honour to work with both Dimitris and Colin at TRS in putting it together.

And there should be a couple of net-releases coming soon of debut records from two other collaborative projects: Merganser and Winter of the World. More on those soon.

I’ve been collecting a nice number of LPs at the minute, and getting rid of my CD copies of said albums. Over the past few years I’ve definitely become a convert to analogue over digital. You should buy some of the CDs & tapes I’m selling on Discogs so I can buy more vinyl.

5th August 2013

Over the past couple of weeks I have been recording all sorts of things with the four track. I have three more tracks to complete from these sessions. It’s quite stripped back so far, sort of Revolution 2 meets Photographic Reflection. I’m attempting to make an album without any computer whatsoever. This will be the first time since 1999.

27th June 2013

I’ve been working more on Terra Incognita, restructuring and reimagining the piece. I’ve probably done more versions of this album than anything I’ve done before. There’s about 90 minutes of material recorded, although I think I’ve finally pieced together the best 30 minutes into a nice piece. Discussing release options with a couple of labels at the moment. I’ve also worked on a couple of mixtapes to fit the theme, which will be aired later in the year.

I recently returned to the ‘Where Will We Go When the Roads Have All Cracked?’ record I was working on a few years ago, and finished it off to a standard it needed. Going to start sorting out release details for that soon. It will feature reworkings of previously released tracks ‘The Slow Decay of Concrete and Glass’ and ‘Oxygen, Tanks and Gas Masks’, and an album release, finally, of ‘Closed Loops of a Train’ – for those of you who’ve heard those, that will give an idea of the mood. I’m describing it as anti-ruralism, although in its portrait of the bleak, hopelessness of urban decay, I suppose it comes around to the same sort of thinking as ruralism itself: a return to the tranquility of nature and the land as a refuge from the 21st century.

Anyway, after the anti-ruralism and exploring the psychedelic headspaces of Terra Incognita and its associated mixtapes, I feel comfortable returning to the ruralist world for future recordings. I have no real plans at the moment, other than getting some gear and setting up a mini-studio (sick of my laptop). I’ve been listening to Eno’s ‘Another Green World’ lately, and would love to do something with a similar pastoral feel. So who knows!

30th May 2013

Something I just posted on the Modulator ESP forum about the first record that changed my life.

I suppose the defining moments for me…

Christmas 1994 – dad bought Another String of Hot Hits and More by The Shadows to play on the CD player my parents had bought. Before that I had no real interest in music at all, but I quickly became obsessed with this. Solely responsible for me being interested in instrumental music.

1995 – my dad, realising that it was good for me to be open minded to music from the word go, played me ‘Revolution 9’ by The Beatles. I was 10. Boundaries such as ‘structure’ and ‘melody’ never had chance to form after this, thus my continued interest in experimental and electronic music.

April 1996 – I saw ‘The Box’ by Orbital on Top of the Pops. Instrumental music in the charts! My first CD purchase.

February 1997 – I’d seen ‘My Kingdom’ by FSOL on Top of the Pops (seems completely insane now!) the previous November and bought the single, but it was upon purchasing Lifeforms that I became an obsessive fan. It’s been my favourite album ever since, and I still don’t feel I’ve completely got to grips with it. It’s so dense.

Basically my entire taste was formed by the age of 12, it’s all been diminishing returns since then.

20th May 2013 – Shopping list //

Zoom n2 (or n4), ideally with some kind of wind blocker.

At least one hardware synth.

A really nice reverb pedal (I’m probably going to go with Boss unless anybody has any other recommendations)

A loop pedal of some sort – need to do homework here.

Boss DC-2 (thanks to JML for the recommendation)

An 8 track mixer, or possibly just getting the power cable for mine fixed and having it dusted off and cleaned up.

A nice electro-acoustic guitar.

And some sort of way of carrying my amp halfway across the UK, ideally one that avoids the tube.

Who wants to give me some money? Jez of Modulator ESP is about to sell of some gear so if you ever fancied donating on Bandcamp, now would be a wonderful time!

tl;dr – I’m getting really fucking bored of my laptop.

19th May 2013

It’s interesting, as I look for the right label to release Terra Incognita, to discover just how many tape labels are slowing down their output at the moment, whilst there’s quite a surge of new ones starting up at the moment.

The difficult thing, I’m finding, is the ever-changing popularity of certain styles and approaches – Berlin School-type synth stuff is definitely becoming more sparse, and… am I noticing an increased interest in stuff with a techno influence these days? Either way, more often than not, the labels who are the most open to really strange stuff (for the record, TI goes from synthpop to solo piano to spoken word + field recordings in less than ten minutes – no, I don’t make it easy for myself) are often those, like Hooker Vision, Chemical Tapes &c., who are more established and tend to pick artists who they already like. Which is far enough, as that’s how I’ve done Second Thought / Jerky Oats / Bullfinch in the past. I’ve never released a demo I’ve received. As always, the best way in is getting a bit of a live following – sadly, I live in Maidstone.

Anyway, I’ve been in touch with a couple of labels who do seem pretty open and interesting, hopefully somebody will be able to appreciate where I’m coming from and enjoy the strangeness.

3rd April 2013

Like many of my best records – Safernoc and Photographic Reflection, for example – Eyebrook was recorded in a burst of inspiration over a short period of time, without concession to genre or worrying about promotion. It contains elements of almost all the types of music I enjoy mixed into one glorious whole.

It’s my most electronic record since Aeolian Landform a couple of years ago, although there are acoustic guitars and piano present, and a lot of it retains the rural warmth of my last few records. It’s loosely themed around lakes and reservoirs, inspired by the sounds of waterfowl and wading birds that go so nicely with synths and piano. It was just a soundscape I really wanted to create, something that seems very visual to me. It’s quite nice returning to that style of composing.

The album should be out on Bump Foot on 14th April. I hope you enjoy it!

13th February 2013

All of my past music that’s available has now been added to my main Bandcamp. This basically brings together past work as Second Thought and The Curse of Kevin Carter under one banner, which is certainly not how I originally imagined things, but I’m now happy to just say ‘this is me’. I have included a wealth of bonus material in here, too. First off, Purlieu has been rounded off with a 30 minute collage collecting various related unreleased material of similar style, from the Purlieu, Leaf Pass and East of Evening sessions. Since Every Hour is Too Late has been expanded to include a selection of synth pieces from the same sessions, and closes with ‘May Revisited’. There are also bonus remixes and live takes included in the downloads of Vacuum Road Songs and Safernoc. Finally, the lost Second Thought album Aeolian Landform is available in its original format, after a short appearance under my Obliquity monker a couple of years ago, in its rightful place amongst my other records. This now gives the whole page a rather strange feel, collecting together ambient techno, modern classical, lo-fi acoustics and various other genres, but why should genres matter, really?

All of the albums (except East of Evening, of which there are still a few tape copies available) are available as name-your-price downloads, so there is potentially eleven hours of free music to grab there, although I am saving towards some new gear which I’ll be needing to work on my next album, so all donations are very gratefully received. Enjoy!

30th December 2012

In the past I’ve done a ‘top 10 albums of the year’ at the end of each year, but there have been too many for me to comfortably leave some of them out, so I’m stretching to a top 20…

01. The Future Sound of London – Environments 4
02. The Glimmer Room – The Wind Blows Summer from the Trees
03. Max Richter – Vivaldi Recomposed: The Four Seasons
04. Pietro Riarbelli – Three Days of Silence
05. Porya Hatami – The Black Woodpecker
06. The Future Sound of London – From the Archives vol. 7
07. Burial – Street Halo/Kindred
08. Darren McClure – The Black Kite
09. Wolf Maps – Landforms
10. Orbital – Wonky
11. Valiska & MHVA – Music on Hold
12. Good Weather for an Airstrike – Lights
13. Taken by Trees – Other Worlds
14. Daniel Pemberton – Space Dive
15. Deison – Quiet Rooms
16. David Newlyn – Deterioration
17. Joao Castro Pinto – Panaural
18. Off Land – Circadian
19. Off Land – Overlook
20. Mothlite – Dark Age

A really strong year for music.