Been putting together the artwork for a physical release of Safernoc. I was originally planning on getting a full CD manufactured but, financially, that’s just a very silly idea at the moment, so instead I’m having some artwork professional printed, and Andy of A Frame Media (and The Glimmer Room) is making the discs. I’m largely doing this so I have a ‘proper’ physical version myself – always important for me – but also it’s something to sell at shows when people are interested in buying ‘on the spot’ (it’ll also give me something more recent than Vacuum Road Songs to sell!). Due to the small numbers being made, I’m not sure if it’ll go on ‘general release’, but it’s the final page of the Safernoc chapter and it’s nearly finished, which is of course very nice to know!
Category: journal
12th February 2011
Thank you to everybody who’s bought Safernoc – or tried to! The FSOLDigital store has thrown up a couple of glitches, but please do use the contact form if you have problems. The reaction to the album reminds me of when I released Purlieu, and it’s great to know that people are interested and willing to fork out a few pounds for the record. A reminder of how decent people are.
Now, I make no apologies for moving on from this record very quickly as I’ve been talking about it for over a year (“Safernoc news very soon” was promised in November 2009!). There are more updates regarding the album coming in the future, but that’s very much additional stuff rather than the album itself and aren’t too important. What’s important to me at the moment is the next album, but I’m not here to talk about that just yet. Before that comes out, I need to clear the vaults of other things that were completed before then – i.e. the remix collection and live EP which have just been added to the discography. The remix collection harks back, originally, to 2004 when I asked people to remix tracks from Vacuum Road Songs for the album’s accompanying remix collection, Songs of the Emptying Race. More recently, I asked artists and friends whose work I enjoy to remix more tracks, and a double disc collection has come together. It’ll just be an mp3 release, but formatted so it fits onto two CDs for anyone who wants to burn the album to disc. The album has retained the title Songs of the Emptying Race. I’m currently finalising the track order and release details, which will be up in the discography soon – in the meantime, a tiny thumbnail of the cover is there. A million points to the person who can say what it is. After the success of my Awakenings performance, I’ve decided I want to release more of my live work, so following on from the Awakenings 2005 mp3 release, a live, in-studio performance from last December will be out on Jerky Oats, with artwork to match that former release. When I was rehearsing for last week’s performance, I initially drew up ideas for a 40 minute synth-based set, which I then scrapped due to finding it less enjoyable to play than the more rythmic set I eventually decided on. I did one final performance of the piece via the internet to a few friends, and that you will find on the EP. It’s mostly synth stuff, largely from 60° South, with a 60° South-esque interpretation of Fences, and a more faithful version of Aqueduct to the one performed at Awakenings. The version of Degrees seemed particularly icy to me and, being so utterly different to the album version, eventually became Part 2 of the Christmas EP.
These are planned for a March release. Then all of that’s behind me and I can steam on with album #4 – I’ll reveal more news about that in a coming entry.
10th February 2011
It is with the greatest pleasure and pride that I find myself happy to announce, finally, the release of my third album, Safernoc, on FSOLDigital, the label run by none other than The Future Sound of London. After letting the cat out of the bag with the Syophonic promotion, I am properly able to talk about it after keeping things secret for the last nigh on twelve months. To say it’s an honour to be released by my all-time favourite band and biggest influence doesn’t come close, so I won’t gush too much, but it really is the highlight of my musical life so far!
The album was composed between February and September 2009 in Leeds and Manchester, at the time when I re-appeared making music after such a long time away, and was influenced by my then rediscovered interest in techno, and several avant-garde and modern classical composers. The album is very loosely ‘set’ in a village, around which are witnessed various myths, legends and stories, all of which go back hundreds if not thousands of years into British folkelore and mythology, again refencing what I was reading at the time of recording. The album moves away from the gritty rhythms and noises of the previous album, Vacuum Road Songs, and back to a more pastoral sound. Techno and breaks feature occasionally, along with a heavier use of synthesisers than the previous two records, and many tracks feature piano and strings (a sound which will be expanded upon in the future).
Anyway, enough prattling on – the 12 track album, complete with digital artwork booklet, can be purchased from FSOLDigital for the incredibly cheap sum of five English pounds by clicking here. Thank you so much to everybody who buys a copy. 🙂
It’s quite a relief to have it released – it’s been sitting around for sixteen months now so it’s good to be able to properly move on to the next album… but that’s a blog for another day.
6th February 2011
So, last night was my second ever gig, and also my second Awakenings performance – some five and a half years after my previous show. I was a little worried as to how well the set would be received, given that, although Jez keeps a broad, varied and interesting selection of performers on the Awakenings line-ups, there are usually a fair few more traditional/retro electronic musicians (and probably fans!) than modern and contemporary sounding artists. Despite all this, I got a lot of very positive responses from the show and I think it went rather well. Most of the set was quite rhythmic – I prefer working with loops and rhythms when doing live performances – and consisted largely of drastically altered versions of album tracks. “Hilariously”, not one note of released music was actually performed, with music from the imminent Safernoc appearing alongside some tracks I’ve worked on since then which will appear, in one form or another, over the next year. I was also lucky enough to play alongside Nick Robinson again, whose guitar loop-based set was possibly even better than last time, and Endgame who improvised an hour of otherworldly experimental sound which words won’t do a good job of describing. The variation and quality on show is a testament to Jez’s organisational skills and the Awakenings series as a whole. My setlist, for those interested:
Send More Bees
Night Train
Constructing Destruction
Enofa
May
Memories of Sharnford and Sapcote
Aqueduct
The whole experience was lovely, and I had a nice time with Jez and Ben in the evening and this morning. Great stuff. Videos to come soon! I’m waiting on confirmation of Safernoc right now so the next few days should see it out – finally!
5th January 2011
Been working on a few tracks recently, in an attempt to align my Berlin School influences with my more contemporary sounds. It worked on Aqueduct, but the Berlin style pieces I’ve worked on since have been much more in an attempt to recreate that sound rather than incorporate it into other things. Most of these should turn up on Awakenings compilations over the next year. Anyway, this week I’ve worked on a sequence-based piece with lots of modern sounding pads on top, and something which sounds a bit like Biosphere with mellotron, which works a lot better than that sounds.
These will probably end up on the album due at the beginning of next year (album #5, number fans), which is heading towards completion at quite an alarming rate. However, this has given me the opportunity to plan a little time off from music making over the spring and summer, which might do me some good as I really do need to spend time away from the computer – difficult when I have a half-finished album just dying to be completed. I might focus my attention on listening to music for a while rather than writing it! Anyway, we shall see…
1st January 2011
Re-arrival. Second Thought is back! I thought it would be fitting to open this entry with the same words I chose nearly two years ago, upon commencing work on Safernoc, as not so long ago I mentioned this year would pick up where 2009 left off.
In November 2009 I decided I wanted Second Thought to be a more productive project which wasn’t constrained by the ‘writing and recording an album every two years’ format, and embarked on what became known as the experimental series, released throughout 2010. Of course, being me, I overdid it and realised that I didn’t actually enjoy working in that way at all, so comfortably sectioned off the year’s releases as side-projects. Moreso, I’ll be using compositional and production ideas discovered last year to full effect on coming albums. With that said, chances are you won’t really hear about the experimental series from now on. Now it’s back to albums.
It’s time to reveal the sounds of Safernoc to everyone – a 6 minute teaser video containing clips of each track can be found here. I’m still incredibly proud of this album, it’s light years ahead of the first two in terms of composition and production. I find it very evocative myself. Hopefully this will be out in the next three to four weeks. Before then I’ll be posting a mix of inspirations for the album, and the Syophonic EP will be out as a free download, both to help promote the record. I’m kind of sick of the whole promotional campaign thing in some ways, but I’d already planned all of this so I thought I’d go along with it. It’s quite nice in a way, reminds me of when I released Purlieu.
Ignoring the Safernoc follow-up, which I’ve already mentioned is nearly complete and ready for the end of the year, I’ve been working on tracks for what will follow that, and decided to revisit the score I wrote for my friend’s film, Glacial Art, last autumn. It’s compositionally very strong, so I’ve been working some of that into ‘full’ tracks. All rather fun. I’ve also been playing with some algorithmic composition software and generative music software to help add sounds and samples to that record, they’re very good for between-track sections. Work there is coming along nicely and that album will hopefully be finished by the summer, in time to start sending off demos around the time the Safernoc follow-up comes out. So I’m slowly regaining a more sensible momentum. Hopefully when I have a job, it’ll all fall into place again, as I’ll have less time to sit around making music!
I hope everybody had a lovely festive period. A rest in Hinckley did me the world of good and I feel utterly refreshed and alive again, for the first time since… as long as I can remember, actually. Things are looking up and I’m hoping the future will be as bright as it seems at the moment!
17th December 2010
Mike Skinner’s been uploading a few tracks for a hastily put together ‘new’ album online, as his fifth and final Streets album is nigh on a year old, and he was recording it around the time he released his last record. I can completely understand why, it’s a pain in the arse promoting something that’s old once it comes out. More of a pain is doing so when you’ve got other stuff backlogged as well. I’ve been wondering what, exactly, to do about new material. In my last entry I mentioned writing and recording up to the completion of my next-next album for a 2012 release, but I’m worried that I’ll be finished it way before then. This evening I’ve been working on drum loops as, inspired my live rehearsals, and producing tracks like Ice Haven, I’m looking forward to doing some improvised jams in Ableton to feature on future releases. In a way it’s quite nice as I’ve been productive and creative, but I’ve not actually composed any pieces of music, thus I don’t feel closer to finishing the album. I’m very tired of finishing an album and then it sitting around for months and months. Anyway, not much can be done about that other than push ahead with getting my music out.
On that note, I’m happy to announce that Safernoc should be out at the end of January. I’m keeping the exact release details hush-hush for the moment (exciting surprise), but can reveal that it will be accompanied by the Syophonic EP, which will tentatively be released on the Audiocast Productions netlabel on 31st January 2011. I’m hoping Safernoc will be out in time for my Awakenings gig.
To counter all of this ‘waiting around for a year to release music’ nonsense, I’ve decided that, instead of releasing Lemony Nougat 08 next Christmas (in a Christmas card, for novelty value), I’m bringing it forward by the full 12 months and releasing it as a download instead. So here’s a surprise for everyone and a Christmas present to everybody who’s supported me during a frankly ridiculous year of musical output. Second Thought – Christmas EP. Enjoy!
12th December 2010
Yesterday I scrapped the live set I was planning for Awakenings, on the grounds that it was so structured that, after ten or fifteen rehearsals, I was completely bored of it. Also, it was very ambient and drifty and lots of keyboard improv, and in all honesty I don’t enjoy playing that half as much as I do beats and stuff. The show will instead be more improvised, playing with sounds and loops and effects and building up things and taking them in whatever direction I feel at the time. I’ve given it a couple of vague runs through now and both times it’s started in the same place and ended very differently – which is nice! Expect drastically altered versions of familiar (and soon to be familiar) tracks.
Fittingly, some of my rehearsals in this manner a couple of months ago came up with some interesting results, the first of which is available to download on the new compilation from the Underworld ‘Born Dirty’ forums. Called Ice Haven, the track is loosely based on Ice Shelf from 60° South, but instead of that version’s bubbling synthscapes, I’ve moved it towards a fusion of breakbeat and techno. A lot of the music I worked on between last November and this September was incredibly ambient, so I found rehearsals and this return to a more contemporary, dance-infused style quite liberating. Jamming live is a much more enjoyable way to construct this kind of music, too, and the direction will feature heavily on (distant) future releases.
I try not to talk to much about the distant future as I’m a long way ahead of listeners in terms of release schedule. I’m just about done with the follow-up to Safernoc, typically. The recent trawl through cassettes began a reassessment of why I make music and where I gain pleasure in the whole process. Back in the day, I’d record a cassette because I really enjoyed recording it, then I’d label it up, complete the artwork and put it in my collection. It was nice having a collection, being who I am, and that’s all that mattered. It all started getting a bit serious (unsurprisingly) around the time my music became releasable to some extent. For a while it seemed almost quite corporate, doing album + single, then waiting a couple of years and recording a ‘follow-up’. I suppose the scrapped series of themed concept albums played into that a little too. I did massive promotional campaigns, set up my website to represent the artwork for each album (three bloody times in Vacuum Road Songs’s case), and most importantly, made sure the albums sold and got as MANY FANS AS POSSIBLE. At what point did me owning the only copy of an album, with occasional tapes compiled for my auntie stop being enough? Now, I’m not saying I don’t want people to listen to my music, or I don’t appreciate the fans I do have, of course. The genuine passion a few people have for some of my music is touching and is one of the few things that makes me feel worthwhile, at times.
A lot of the reason behind it comes from timing: I released music at the end of a period when smaller and independent artists could still pretend they were big and famous, when I was the only musician on forums I posted on, when having a CD out was a big thing. Luckily I was fairly established when Purlieu came out; by the time of Vacuum Road Songs, it was no longer such a big deal. Despite a number of netlabel releases this year, for a while I still had a sense in the back of my mind that these are smaller releases, experiments, EPs, side-projects… when the ‘proper’ albums come out, I’ll still do promo campaigns, and release one album every year or two, maybe with a single/EP (the accompanying Syophonic EP for Safernoc is a great example). There’s still an element of sucking the joy from it all in this, and a focus on ‘product’. The joy I got from having a tape in my own collection, to listen to whenever I like, that’s not present in trying to work out when an album should be released to benefit from as many sales as possible.
I also looked at two artists I know, Jack Anderton and John Sherwood (4m33s). Since 2005, Jack has recorded one or two albums a year, and until I put out The Moment on Jerky Oats this summer, he’d not really ‘released’ anything other than uploading mp3s to his MySpace. John releases his own music and all of his live shows on his own label, AmbientLive. Some of these are big conceptual statements, some aren’t even advertised on the label’s website. The albums are there completed and can be bought by anybody who’s interested if they wish. There are a lot of albums, two or three one year then none the next. I really, really admire this as it’s very honest towards the most important thing: the music.
So what does this mean? Well, it means that the initial plan to release Safernoc in early 2011 and its follow up in 2012 can bugger off, for a start. Why wait around when I have a nearly-finished album I’m proud of ready to go? Once Safernoc is out, I’m going to send off some demos and hopefully find a label who’ll be interested in putting it out. Unlike the highly unsuccessful VRS demos, I’m not going to aim at Warp and Rephlex (I mean seriously, what the fuck was I thinking?), but some smaller labels who might be interested in the sounds I’m working on. If all goes to plan, we’ll be looking at Safernoc in early 2011 and that in the second half of the year, which leaves me free to continue recording new material and put out another album in 2012, hopefully much nearer to its completion date! I think a couple of albums a year is a sensible rate to be working towards. Despite this, I’m definitely not going to do another ‘experimental series’ style barrage – that was a case of getting releases and showing musical progress rather than completing an album to be proud of, so quite counter-productive in this sense.
I won’t say much else about the Safernoc follow-up for a while now, other than to say it’s a stylstic continuation of the newer elements of that album, and takes a slightly different approach to previous records, and is something I’m very proud of.
In other news, Pete sent me the Cubus Lemony Nougat this week, and I’m fucking bowled over. It’s easily one of the most marvellous pieces of music I’ve ever heard. I am grateful to be releasing a real masterpiece.
I’ll shut up and go to bed now. Download that Dirty compilation!
8th December 2010
Well, the experimental series is complete! I haven’t been checking all the relevant websites lately, so I completely missed the fact that my stereo split with Absence.Insolution, Vaginal Tear, came out last Thursday. Whoops. 25 copies are available from Indestructible Object. And with that, normal service is resumed. This time last year I was looking at my entry on Discogs and realised how little music I’ve released. Instead of waiting for Safernoc to come out and then do another album two years later and keep it up like that, I decided instead to try and build a little momentum by continuing recording. It would have been possible to build an album (maybe even a double album) out of the year’s musical experiments, quite an abstract, ambient record, but instead I felt it would be more interesting to let listeners into the audio research I was carrying out. So not all of it’s “complete”, not all of it’s “essential”, and some of it is fairly self-indulgent (especially the surge of harsh noise at the end of the year). Themeatically, Safernoc needed to follow up Vacuum Road Songs, and the next album needs to follow Safernoc, so there was never a complete album to be made out of it all. But some of it I’m incredibly proud of, and ideas from every release will be expanded upon when recording music in the future, so it’s been a useful year. So, goodbye 2010, year of experimentation, drones, collages, lo-fi songs, harsh noise, strange packaging, DIY releases and free downloads. It’s been stressful but mostly fun.
Safernoc and Syophonic should be with us at the start of 2011, and then it’s looking towards the future properly.
7th December 2010
This evening I finished listening to all of my existing recordings between 1995 and 1999. After a lot of silly false popstardom, some terrible attempts at improvisation which ended up as little more than pressing a keyboard demo button and strumming a guitar randomly, and far too many songs written about my budgie, some genuinely interesting music appeared. Two tapes recorded in 1997 contain some interesting ideas which have a lot in common with Second Thought itself, whilst 1999’s only recording (I’d got a computer at this point and thus didn’t have time for, y’know, being creative and stuff) is compositionally head and shoulders above everything else. As a contrast, I’m going to listen to all of my 00s material – Second Thought, 2T, So Far So Good and some silliness – to complete the picture of how I got here. Despite the obvious improvement in quality, I have a feeling this will actually be a less enjoyable experience, interestingly. I wrote a huge long ramble about all the music I’ve been involved in from 1995, but for myself, as there’s no chance in hell anybody but me will even consider reading it.
I was featured on an mp3 album I released on Jerky Oats this morning, on synths on the title track of Random Proportions by Loose Link. It’s a lovely sound collage of strange sounds, beats, samples and allsorts, and well worth listening to. That can be downloaded here.
Once I’ve had a listen to these tracks from 2000 to now (just finishing 2001, in fact), I’m getting back to collating all the samples I’ve collected in recent months and maybe then I can continue with composition.
enofa 