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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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You’re either really out of time there, or you’re doing something completely brilliant.

– Keith, as we recorded drums for some tracks today.

Okay, so we’ve learned that in future where I want percussion to be added in later I should record with a click track.

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As weird as it seems to be announcing the release of one record whilst having worked on a totally different one for the past few weeks, that’s the way it goes in the life-cycle of things.

This is an awesome split EP of the 8-bit inspired chiptune electronic variety, with The Wet Dreams taking the first half of the record; myself the second. We took a basic melody for one of the tracks, and wrote our own versions (tracks 3 and 4) which made it all the more interesting.

Click through to the music page for the relevant links and all that.

For those of you not so enamoured with the chiptune side of things, watch this space – there’s other creations in the works.

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Those times where you desperately don’t want to sleep even though your body’s crying out for it, and you simply want to create… to write or sing, or strum, or pluck, or do something… but you can’t cos everyone’s asleep. One of those times where you feel like you could just speak to a long lost friend and have all and every issue fixed without actually saying a word. One of those times where time and work and money and the past and present all seem to collide into one big nothingness. That’s just now.

I had a big interview a few weeks ago. They saw the music and photos and other stuff I do and after saying how it was a good thing, went on to ask what I saw my career as… when really it seems like the question was actually about dedication and commitment to a single purpose; to check you aren’t going to run away halfway through a lifetime deal for some other ‘fleeting’ dream. There seems to be no middle ground because nobody lets there be one.

More importantly, it’s amazing how a musical saw can sound so wonderful one minute, and so awful and out of tune when played with headphones on. Clearly there’s a dark art to be mastered.

Or maybe I just need to turn the volume up.

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The best kind of songs are the ones that you can still play with friends in the pitch black on a beach after too much alcohol.

One set of commitments has finished for the next few months, and another set have taken its place. There never seems to be the balance that lets you survive to a reasonable degree whilst leaving space and time for music, or other… stuff that’s done purely for the love of it.

Once things settle down, hopefully there’ll be some tangible progress on the whole collaborative-sample-thing. The wonderful FOE have agreed to send some bits and pieces over, which is incredibly brilliant. You should have a follow of them over on their site.

Infact, they’re so good that you should watch the video below. Hannah plays all of the instruments on the record herself…. parallels to the bowtie, although I can’t claim to be quite as good looking as she is.

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A collection of recordings and samples is building up nicely now for what will (hopefully) be a rather interesting semi-collaborative record. Even if that will take months…

On that point, if any musicians out there fancy submitting some recorded bits or samples or song structures or anything else for that purpose, you know where to send them to. They’ll definitely get used somehow.

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With habeas corpus all packaged up (digitally at least) and off of the workbench (literally with respect to the Amiga tracks), minds turn to what’s on the horizon.

The collab project, involving samples and sounds recorded/given specifically for the purpose by some rather wonderful artists is slowly trickling in. Does It Offend You Yeah?, Moor Hound, French For Cartridge, Shoes and Socks Off and Yer Beauties are some of those that have donated already. It could take months before anything’ll be ready, but it’ll be worth it.

That aside, there’s a few 8-bit tracks coming together that may be destined for some sort of compilation; everything else going a bit quiet till the summer months start proper and time gets freed up.