scottish

New Track with Al Roney

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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.

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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.

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wolf sanctuary

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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.

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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FOE – The Black Lodge

Just to prove I am actually doing something. Here’s the current state of my recording studio bedroom.

I’m butchering  covering a track from the wonderful FOE called the Black Lodge. 

Have a listen to the original below.

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no more villagers

Here’s a spaced out new track which is made up primarily from bits sent through courtesy of Calamateur (pictured below), as well as some completely mashed up guitar from Reading’s Yer Beauties (pictured above), and some crazy distortion donated by Lee from Everyone an Army (not pictured).

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I don’t do covers very often. Infact, it’s probably one of the main reasons why my guitar playing is nowhere near as good as it should be given the length of time I’ve actually been doing it. Reproducing other people’s songs just isn’t something that comes naturally.

Anyway, sometimes these things just happen.

Back in another life and another band I shared a stage with these chaps, and it struck a chord tonight for a whole set of reasons, and I thought I’d have a bash.

Check out my massacre of ‘Moving to New York’ by the Wombats below.

moving to ny by unexpectedbowtie

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the economic benefits of individual contraction

So far there haven’t been too many elongated track titles on this collaborative jaunt, so the time is right; the time is now.

Delay Trees are a ‘dream-pop’ foursome from Helsinki, Finland. They have all the delicate nature and sing-songy delight of the rather good Iain Archer, and they provide the ambient background to the latest track. There’s an interesting mix of Gameboys, mandolin and other effects to be found. Drums come courtesy of Keith Grantham, who’s already been introduced.

You can find more of Delay Trees at their Soundcloud.

the economic benefits of individual contraction by unexpectedbowtie