release

drouth (reprise)

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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

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.

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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.

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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

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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!

‘drouth’ up on Spotify

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Just saw that the latest album drouth has been approved for Spotify, so those of you fiends who don’t like Bandcamp can stream it to your heart’s content. It makes no difference to me where you get it!

 

The really something EP was already on there, but the oldie habeas corpus was not. I gave them a prod, and that’s available now too. It’s worth noting that the Spotify version is slightly different to the actual album version, as their licensing requirements precluded me from including a couple of bits in the distribution… so if you want the full, unadulterated thing, find it on Bandcamp.

 

New EP: ‘really something’

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After the last few posts concentrating largely on gear and production stuff, it’s good to be able to follow up with one centred on music.

I had planned to wait until I had an album together before releasing anything, but it became clear that a number of the earlier tracks had a sound that naturally branched off in a group. As a result, my first release in 4 years will be a 5 track EP titled ‘really something’. I can’t quite believe it’s been that long, but there we go.

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The tracks themselves are all fairly laid back, and stripped back a lot from my previous sample-heavy chiptune releases. The only time the pulse really increases a shade is on ‘Down Street’, a track which previously only ever featured on the ‘Relycs‘ collaborative release that was put out on cassette, and dedicated to abandoned tube stations.

It feels like a nice transition. Listen out for my pal Haigie’s laugh on track 5.

The whole thing is up to stream/download for free over on bandcamp.

 

Tracklist:

  1. more is less
  2. out of milk
  3. gender neutral robot
  4. Down Street
  5. more is more

Relycs EP – Songs for Abandoned Tube Stations

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Way back in April 2012, intrepid musical explorer Ash Cooke – aka Pulco – got in touch to ask if I’d be up for contributing to a collaboration inspired by some of the many desolate tube stations that lie under the City of London.

Having worked on a host of projects with Ash before, I knew how dedicated he was at coming up with really unique and experimental ideas, so agreed without much thought.

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Fast-forward to 2013, and the release is finally (almost) upon us – penned in for the 30th of September.

The format will be limited edition C30 magnetic cassette tapes, each with 3 full colour numbered postcards, a credit sheet, as well as the digital download (obviously). There will only be 30 copies available. Ever. Full stop.

Here’s what the official press release says:

‘Songs For Abandoned Tube Stations’ is an EP of 
songs by RELYCS (Ashley Cooke, Adam Leonard & 
Stephen McLeod Blythe) inspired by the sights, 
sounds and ghosts of the dozens of closed, 
unused, or only-travelled-through-at-speed 
Underground tube stations beneath the streets 
of London. The EP contains 3 tracks – ‘Aldwych 
Branch Line’, ‘Lord’s Station’ and ‘Down Street’, 
recorded by Ashley Cooke (AKA Pulco), Adam 
Leonard and Stephen McLeod Blythe (AKA 
Unexpected Bowtie) respectively. The music 
literally travels from Cooke’s complex and highly 
evocative subterranean soundscape, past 
Leonard’s dark, dripping platform of ominous 
organ music, terminating at Blythe’s wonderfully 
simple yet affective[sic] chip tune Nintendo Gameboy 
programming, like the music from some 
uncreated ‘Super Mario London Underground’ 
game. Mind the gap and enjoy your journey…

Aside from my burbling chiptune sounds, the other guys are great at what they do.

For more info on them, check out their respective sites:

Adam Leonard – www.themessagetapes.com
Ash Cooke – www.pulcomusic.com

The EP will be available from Monday 30th September at http://pethaugarw.tumblr.com/

unexpected bowtie (and friends)

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unexpected bowtie (and friends) is an album that started in 2011 as a means of collecting different sounds from some of the hardest working, most creative, and most pleasant people that I’d come to know in music. 

Taking everything from ambient guitar noises to crazed loops of a Welshman throwing rocks into a wheelbarrow – I pieced them together to produce this jaunty beast. 

Despite having been finished almost 2 years ago, and with most of the tracks previewed already, the whole thing has never been quite ready – partially because I still have some samples left over from one band that I’ve just not been able to work out what on earth to do with. (down to my musical incompetence, not theirs!). Hopefully these will make their way into something astounding sometime soon, but the time for this release to make its way into the world is well overdue.

Click on the accompanying artwork above to take you to the new shiny shiny unexpected bowtie bandcamp where you can download the whole thing for free for the first time.

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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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The next unexpected bowtie release has got a name, and this is the artwork that has (literally) just been finished – credit to Kaylie for her initial drawing.

There’s still some loose ends to tie up, so the overall progress is sitting at about 90% – with the full thing expected to be online in the next couple of weeks for your downloadable pleasures.

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So what started out as a tidy up of a few song tags has resulted in me staying up all night, bleary eyed, to finally get everything together and release an album properly.

I remember thinking out loud on here once about the difficulty of knowing where and when to draw the dividing line in a collection of tracks and separate them off as an individual package or collection. It turns out that that sometimes that realisation of when is appropriate creeps up on you and presents itself magician-like out of the blue, seemingly stating the obvious.

As a result, you can now download the resplendent debut ‘26 hour days‘ in its entirety, along with lyrics, printable artwork and all that by clicking through to the relevant page via the bowtie-man crested image above. If you’d rather just stream or download the tracks individually, you can do that too.

and with that, I leave it in your hands.