scottish

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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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This is an exciting moment, as we get to release the first track from the tentatively titled ‘unexpected bowtie and friends’ collaborative album.

So this is how it’s going to work: to make the most of each track, every so often one will be put online for streaming with a bit of explanation of who’s involved, with the final collection being brought together as a full release later on in the year.

Pictured is Steven Marino, aka Moor Hound. He comes from sunny Orlando, Florida, and plays music after our heart. You can see the banjo, so need I say more?

Moor Hound contributed some wonderfully laid-back guitar parts, and one of them is used on this track. You can read more about him in an interview on Artrocker, find his blog here, Bandcamp here, and Soundcloud tracks here.

Keith needs no introduction really. He’s been making music alongside me almost since I started, and he lent me his percussive hands for a few hours to give this track the structure it badly needed and that I just couldn’t provide. The Keith Appreciation Society page is on Facebook here, and Closet Organ (in which I also sing and play guitar) can be found on Tumblr.

The track is called let’s crash planes when we’re leaving, and is below.

let’s crash planes when we’re leaving by unexpectedbowtie

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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 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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It is with great excitement that I can divulge a new unexpected project on the horizon. We have assembled a gaggle of talented musicians who are going to record, scrimp and gather up loose riffs, vocals and other noises to put them towards a rather unique collaboration.

You’ll almost certainly have heard of some of those involved, and the ones you haven’t are just as wonderful, having been hand-picked from the alternative music world by yours truly. We’re not going to name names yet, but all shall be revealed in due course. It’s all rather delightful.