Live sets

As you might be aware, I've not actually played live as a solo outfit yet. That seems mad, considering the band's been me since mid way through 2019. Anyway, I'm not one to complain about venues shutting for over a year, as a lot more musicians have had it way harder than I have.

That said, I do miss playing live a lot. even the boring stuff, like loading in, or getting a Premier Inn at 1am and cracking a Red Stripe in the room, eating a hastily put together Toby Carvery, etc. So I did my best to try and replicate the live set I was going to debut at ArcTanGent this year, before it was sadly postponed. I've been working on this set for a long time, and I've added little gadgets and gizmos to it over time, and it's become something I'm really, really proud of, and so desperately wanted to show it off to you all.

I thought to myself 'fuck it, I'm not letting this go to waste', as I didn't have anything else in the diary, and would prefer others to get back on their feet first, whilst I could get to grips with touring on my own. I still might book one or two shows for this year, who knows, but for now it'll most likely be next year. Anyway, I rigged up two cameras and recorded an out from my snazzy new mixing desk, so you can see me in glorious HD and listen to me crystal clear too. 

I ran through the whole live set, which at the moment is 5 tracks long, but clocks in at just under an hour. Oops. I'll be putting up a new track each monday over at the satan youtube channel (hit that subscribe button!) so here's the first one, a rendition of Skylon (from the album Revenant)

Circles I

A lot of you will think "two albums in one month? Are you mental? And the answer to that is probably 'yes'.

But, you have to believe me when I say that I actually never intended for so many records to all come out at once. Circles I is only happening now, because Providence has already been and gone - that was already delayed anyway, so everything has been squished into this mad pile of stuff that will be chipped away at during the course of 2021. 

Anyway, Circles I.

First off, here it is for pre-order (or regular order if you're reading this after Friday)

I feel I should write something about it, as it's quite a strange record. It all started back in the glorious summer of 2020 *Scooby Doo style flashback* - I'd just moved house (for the second time in about 6 months - not recommended), to where I am now - a little terrace in Saltaire. It's really nice here, and the weather was also really nice, so I sat down and thought about making some new stuff. I played around with a few bits, and before long I had two sort of sounds going: loop station guitar ambience, and jittery electronica stuff, aided by the purchase of several sample packs. Now, if you don't know what sample packs are, they're sort of a cheat code for anyone who doesn't have thousands of pounds (or dollars if you want to get American about this) to throw at vintage gear - why pay for the machine, when you can pay considerably less for some wav files of someone playing the machine? I opted for the latter, as the former would've broken my bank, but the upshot is I was playing around with all these samples - slashing them up, pitching them all over the place, speeding them up, slowing them down, y'know, just generally fucking with them. It was great fun, and inspired me to keep making more and more stuff.

After a few months, I had so much new material (I blame the football season being delayed - you'd be lucky to get a two track single out of me if it hadn't), I aimed for a double album. I sequenced them, and then had a brainwave. Why do just a regular album, when you can be really difficult and do a sort of mixtape/ unskippable album, like that weird dEUS thing! 

I'm a bit enthusiastic when it comes to doing weird things, especially with music. I like the idea of resurrecting older technologies and techniques, as nothing really matters anymore in terms of music biz stuff. Certainly not at my level anyway - it's quite liberating to be able to do any mad thing you like. Although I suppose the trade off is you never get big or make any money, but that's by the by for now.

Anyway, one of my favourite bands, dEUS, did this album back in 1994 called 'My Sister = My Clock' - it was a stop-gap release, especially for fans signed up to their mailing list, to tide them over until their second album proper 'In A Bar Under The Sea' came out the following year. For some reason, they decided to sequence it all as one track, so you couldn't skip anything and had to listen to the whole thing if you wanted to get the full experience. It reminded me of those CDs you'd get back in the day, where you rewound the first track and got a secret song. So I thought, sod it - I'm gonna copy dEUS and do this thing as one big mixed song, one big track, and see what happens. It might be stupid, it might not work, or it might be a cool bit of fun. I guess you'll decide that, but I liked the idea, and so sequenced two albums worth of material like this. Circles II will appear at some point in the year, but for now, enjoy Circles I. 

Oh, and those field recordings interspersed between songs on the album are made by me - I walked around Roberts Park and recorded it on my phone. I thought if I was taking you on a little journey with this one big track, I could also try and take you somewhere by recording the sounds on my doorstep.

ENJOY!