Another productive Friday evening in lockdown. Singing about bacon through a vocoder.
Bacon Bacon Sizzle Sizzle
free music
New Music: you really think the rain will stop me?
Another track that I’ve been working on over the past few days, to wave goodbye to the year that was. A glitchy festival of AY3, SID, and other pish.
New Music: bomb the hospitals
A new tune I’ve been working on. Dark and glitchy. Melodies from 2x Game Boy DMGs.
New Music: Fame from Lockdown
Saturday nights in lockdown result in electronica.
New Track with Al Roney
Last week, my friend Al came round for a couple of beers, and brought with him some of his beautiful synths: a Korg Arp Odyssey, and a Dave Smith OB-6.
We played about with them for a while, and then hooked our setups together for a wee jam.
The result came out pretty well, and we ended up recording a couple of tracks. The first – Ikebukuro – is below, filled with big swirling synthy sounds right out of the 80s.
Here’s a direct link for posterity, incase Soundcloud goes bust like they are threatening to.
The Workout Ruse
Hello.
January has been a bit less productive in terms of finished tracks than I had expected or would have liked, but I’ve still been doing a fair bit. I’ve re-organised and upgraded the studio so that I have far more simultaneous inputs for recording, and better access to my hardware effects, which is good. Just a matter of the final bit of cabling and it’ll be good to go.
Anyway, here’s a new track, that may or may not be on the next Cup Fungus album:
wolf sanctuary
This week hasn’t been the easiest. This track felt like an appropriate reflection.
Recorded with some Commodore 64 SID chips, a bunch of Eurorack, drones, some guitar, and far too many effects pedals.
Osaka Gig and New Track
I’m going to be in Japan in the next couple of weeks, and have confirmed my first live outing as unexpected bowtie, at Space Station in Osaka, which is apparently in the ‘Top 30 Recommended Sights of Japan as Chosen by Foreign Visitors‘. The set will be stripped down to a single Game Boy only, given that we are travelling, so should be something a little different. If you happen to be in the area, it’d be awesome to see you there!
To mark the occasion, I’ve written a new track that’s up now on Soundcloud. Composition wise, it’s just a single Game Boy, with a tiny little added bit of Commodore 64, and extra drums. Enjoy!
drouth (reprise)
Writing vocals for electronic tracks is a totally different ball game to other kinds of music, and can be particularly daunting if you come from a more traditional style of songwriting. Because of that, back when I was writing drouth, I found myself hitting a wall fairly frequently, and I wondered what it would be like to ask some other artists I know to give their own take on the tracks if they had free reign to do whatever they wanted to them vocally.
I pulled together a few talented folk who were up for giving it a bash, and despite some initial protests (‘wtf am I going to do with this!?’), they have re-imagined the tracks in some amazing ways… to the extent that the new versions are even better than the originals.
Here’s a bit more info on who is on there…
Andrew Howie is a Scottish singer-songwriter with an incredible voice who has been making music on a whole variety of different instruments for as long as I can remember. For this release, he turned his hand to ‘bottle neck’, which resulted in the seriously cool ‘bottle neck heart attack’. You’d think he had been doing this electronic stuff all along.
You can find more from Andrew on his bandcamp.
Christy Scott is an old young friend and tcheuchter upstart from the true North-East of Scotland. Usually found foraging in the more traditional music world, she brought some impressive soul to new versions of both ‘mex’ and ‘bottle neck’.
Follow along with her inevitable successes on her Facebook page.
Carly Stambaugh is a fellow Automattician, from across the pond in San Francisco. She wants to be Cyndi Lauper when she grows up, and lended her vocal stylings to a new take on ‘obsolete by design’. Photo credit: Marcus Kazmierczak
Pulco aka Ash Cooke is a Welsh madman who lives in the middle of nowhere, and a long term collaborator and friend. He is one of the most prolific musicians I know, with a huge back catalogue up on Bandcamp – well worth checking out. He brought his unique brand of spoken word beauty to two tracks: ‘wealth sprouts wings’, and ‘Mr. K’.
As for the music itself, you can download it for free over on Bandcamp, stream it below, or check out Spotify in a couple of weeks when it appears. If you like any of the tracks in particular, give the folk above a shout. I know they’d appreciate the support, and they definitely deserve it!
cup fungus – 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.
unexpectedbowtie 