experimental

cup fungus – defame the dead

~ Clicky Steve ~ 1 Comment

defame the dead

Following on from the release of drouth, I found a new project quickly formed and gathered steam. Rather than use Game Boys to compose, I started exploring different electronic instruments. The result was a much more unpredictable, experimental, and far noisier sound than I’ve had before. That shift meant that it didn’t quite feel like an unexpected bowtie album, and so I’ve chosen to release it under a different name: ‘cup fungus’.

Today is the official release date where it crashes angrily into the world.

You can download the album for free on Bandcamp, or stream it via Spotify as of right now (search ‘cup fungus’). If you are interested in something a bit more physical, there are also an extremely limited number (only five!) of hand painted cassette tapes available from my label – cow tongue taco records.

cup fungus cassette.jpg

mexxed again

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When I was recording drouth, there were a bunch of tracks that I wish had vocals, but that I couldn’t quite come up with something on my own. In the end, it worked out for the album that they remained largely instrumental… but I thought it would be cool to get some different folks to do their own take on vocals.

As part of that, musician pal Christy Scott lent me her voice for a couple of tracks. Ultimately, the idea is to release all of them as a collection. For now though, here’s a new version of ‘mex’, with Christy on vocals. I think it sounds pretty great…

You can download it here. (right click > save as).

Mr. K

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It’s been a while since I got pished on a Saturday night and just recorded some music. Well, I ended up recording after an hour of fighting with my mixer to work out why the stereo output was only producing mono…

There’s always the risk that it could have been my crappy soldering, which meant testing out every possible step. So many variables. Surprisingly, it wasn’t actually any of the Gameboys, but the mixer.

I’m pretty pleased with the result, and it should give a hint as to what the next album will sound like. Listen to and download it below:

To finish off, here’s a picture of my tidied up workspace.

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Collaboration Preview – Track 3 – ‘marks for effort’

with Burning Buildings

This track is a much softer, less grizzly track than the last one that involved Pulco. It comes with a piano melody courtesy of Manchester’s Burning Buildings. They’re awfully nice chaps, and probably slightly unhinged… but the end product is one that I’m really personally pleased with. Sometimes there are melodies that just fit your vocal-style to a tee, and for me this is one of them. Hopefully you might like it too.

You can find some of their tracks for free over at Bandcamp, tweets on Twitter, and a review over at Artrocker.

marks for effort by unexpectedbowtie

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It was only a week or two ago that we posted introducing Ash Cooke aka Pulco, with the news that he’d be contributing some specially recorded samples to be mashed up (i.e. destroyed) in the name of art… and contribute he did, with a whole stash of bizarre loops and rumblings. In true Pulco style, the ‘misery poet’ utilised everyday objects like a wheelbarrow, and chucked rocks at it till it became aurally pleasing.

You can preview the product below; it’s a dark, grungey affair.

For more info on Pulco, check out the interview from Artrocker that went online today.

pre-medication by unexpectedbowtie

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It has been a day of difficulty, but not for the reasons I first envisaged this morning.

Instead of the possible social awkwardness that may have unfolded, (and how I wish it had!) I was instead granted the scenario of losing my keys on public transport.

Well, I assume it was on public transport.

Who knows.

Maybe some nice person will hand them in and I won’t need to fork out some ridiculous amount to some car sales-people.. or I could always learn to hot wire?

The best way to deal with such situations is to have a chippy, a large glass of single malt, and throw a ton of instruments into the one song.

’emanations of the state’