2018 Update

March 23, 2018 ~ Clicky Steve ~ Leave a comment

I feel like I’ve been a bit quiet online lately – partly because my last release was back in August of 2017. Before that, I had been on a bit of a consistent streak, so 7 months feels like an age in comparison. I have been plugging away since the gig in January though, and thought I’d note down some things I’ve been plugging away at.

Cow Tongue Taco: I’ve deliberately slowed down the pace of releases on my DIY cassette tape label this year, to focus on promoting the existing artists. That said, we have one upcoming from donotrunwithpixels, and recently put out the digital only ‘The Radio-Friendly Noises of Sandbite‘ for free.
Live Shows: Working to confirm another live appearance in Glasgow for June. Watch this space.
Studio: I’ve spent a lot of time sorting out the chaos that was my cupboard studio, to get it to a place where I can easily sit down and make music, rather than fighting to find the right cables. Organisation can be helpful at times.
DJ Sets: I’ve dipped my toe into the world of DJing – to add another feather to my bow. Or something. I inflicted my music taste in a debut set at the Cathouse a couple of weeks ago. You can find the playlist here. It’s an interesting contrast to playing live, or producing music.
Music: I’ve been writing new music every week. Rather than concentrating on getting albums together for release, I am taking the approach of writing as much as possible, and seeing what tracks naturally float to the top. A slower process, but hopefully a bit more rewarding in the long run.

13th Note Gig – January 2017

January 7, 2018 ~ Clicky Steve ~ Leave a comment

Last night I put on a chip gig in Glasgow, and had some rather wonderful fellow musicians play: Joe Bleeps, Galaxy Wolf, King Keytan, and Myths and Monsters.

Here’s some pictures from the event:

New album: liberal exodus LP

August 30, 2017 ~ Clicky Steve ~ Leave a comment

Today I’m releasing my sixth full-length album as unexpected bowtie, a ten track LP named ‘liberal exodus’.

Composed entirely using a single DMG, I deliberately stuck closer to the LSDJ heart of the tracks than in previous releases – only adding extra instrumentation to complement the core sound. As a result, liberal exodus feels like a more straight-forward and mature electronic album than 2016’s TOKYO.

You can listen to/download the album over on Bandcamp. If you prefer to stream via Spotify, it should be appearing there within the next week or so.

There is also a very limited set of just five hand painted cassette tapes available via my Cow Tongue Taco Records label. At £2.50 more than the digital download, I think they’re a pretty decent deal, so head over there if you want to grab one before they are gone forever.

Artwork by the wonderful Sanditio Bayu.

New Gig: Gleeetch Chipwrecked Fundraiser, London

April 20, 2017 ~ Clicky Steve ~ Leave a comment

Some pretty cool news to share… unexpected bowtie have just been confirmed to play one of the legendary Gleeetch chip shows in London on the 26th of May.

The gig itself is a fundraiser for the Chipwrecked festival to be held later this summer in Denmark, and is being hosted by Gleeetch, and Hyperwave Records, in collaboration with EV TV. There are a whole bunch of great artists on the bill, and it should be an awesome night. Myself and hype-man Radiomoths will be there to blast out some noisy Game Boy music… so if you are in the area, grab your tickets for under a fiver from the event Kickstarter page here, and come say hello.

More info over on the Facebook event page here:

https://www.facebook.com/events/130167450851498/

The Workout Ruse

January 23, 2017 ~ Clicky Steve ~ Leave a comment

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:

Playing in Glasgow

December 8, 2016 ~ Clicky Steve ~ 2 Comments

Last night I played as unexpected bowtie at Stereo in Glasgow, closing out the charity gig that I mentioned in the last post.

After years of recording in the studio, 2016 has been the year for getting out and playing live – first in Osaka, and now in my home city. This time around, I expanded my setup slightly from having just two Game Boys, to make things a bit more interesting.

I also roped in Lee aka radiomoths to come along and lend a hand by controlling visuals to spice things up. When the screen broke, he managed to grab some pictures as well. How multi-talented. All pictures from here out are thanks to him…

Thanks a lot to the Uncovered Artistry folks for having us!

Check out the video below for a look at a bit of the gig…

Glasgow Gig – 7th December 2016

November 25, 2016November 25, 2016 ~ Clicky Steve ~ 1 Comment

Some pretty cool news to share… Fresh from playing in Osaka last month, I’ll be closing out the Uncovered Artistry charity gig at Stereo on the 7th of December.

It’ll be the first time I’ve played under the bowtie guise in Glasgow, and Stereo is a pretty cool venue, so it should be an interesting night! There’s a bunch of other local artists on the bill as well, who are worth checking out. Have a swatch at the event page below for details.

Details:

18+
Tickets: £5 at door, £4 online, £4 students
Puchase here: http://www.uncoveredartistry.com/tickets
Facebook Event Page: HERE

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Secondly, you can now find my latest album TOKYO on Spotify, Apple Music, and the likes. Get in about it.

Osaka Gig and New Track

October 3, 2016 ~ Clicky Steve ~ Leave a comment

unexpected bowtie live Osaka poster

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!

Whoahoahoah what’s going on

September 28, 2016 ~ Clicky Steve ~ Leave a comment

I haven’t posted in a while, but that isn’t as a result of a lack of activity… quite the opposite. It’s been a fairly busy couple of months. I head over to Japan for 3 weeks shortly, so before we go on a short hiatus, here’s an update on what’s been going on… complete with lots of pictures.

Closet Organ – 5318008

My grunge pish band released our debut album, which was recorded in just three days in a cottage in the middle of nowhere. It got partly funded via Kickstarter, and we have vinyl on the way, which is pretty exciting. You can order a digital/tape/vinyl copy by clicking on the artwork below…

and if you are supremely lazy, then you can stream below… right from this page:

We have our album launch gig on Saturday in Glasgow at the 13th Note, with the awesome Ex Wives. Come along if you happen to be in the area… it should be a good one. Click through on the poster for the Facebook event.

The stage will look something like this… but smaller.

Eurorack

I was always totally confused and intimidated by the world of Eurorack, but I suppose it was inevitable that I would end up getting involved at some point. I started out by getting a single 3u row skiff case, and a few modules…

and ended up progressing to a wooden 6u rack cabinet…

Current_state_of_affairs.__homestudio__synthporn__dreadbox__erebus__modular__eurorack__modularsynth__beatsteppro.jpg

and eh, this is the current state of affairs…

The whole thing is helping me understand synthesis and signal flow a lot better, which is definitely a good thing. I am still investigating how best to incorporate the wonderful sounds that the various modules create in my music… but it’s just a matter of taking the time. I suspect it will form part of a cup fungus release in future, though the possibilities are (dangerously) endless. The lights and… tactility of the whole thing is irresistible, and I’m looking forward to devoting some attention to it after the Japan trip.

One cool module worth mentioning is the SID Guts. It uses a C64 chip for producing sounds, which of course is something I had to try out. I ordered a chip from some ‘specialist’ seller on eBay, and it was so badly packed that it turned up like this…

This_is_what_happens_when_you_don_t_package__commodore64__sid_chips_properly._I_m_furious_at_the_eBay_seller_who_did_this.__chiptune__chipmusic.jpg

Needless to say, I was not happy. I sent it back, and took the opportunity to get an 8580 SID from elsewhere. I’ve got 6581 chips in both my TherapSID and the actual C64, so good to try out a bit of variation.

Despite all of my Eurorack desires, I’ll be stopping at two rows for now. I have a third row all planned out, but it’s probably wise to take a step back and release something based on the gear that I already have before plowing ahead any further.

Moar GameBoys

Because you can never have too many. I finally got my act together and finished up a project that I’d had on the back burner for a while – an all ‘white’ DMG, complete with white backlight, frosted white case, white case LEDs, and glow in the dark buttons. I even used white wire on the inside. It looks pretty awesome…

So what’s next?

Once I come back from scowering the various second hand electronics shops in Japan, I have a bunch of different projects that I want to pull together:

A new, full length unexpected bowtie album, written on LSDJ.
A mini album, written entirely on Houston Tracker 2 – using a calculator.
A compilation of remixes and b-sides.
A new cup fungus release.

So plenty of things in the works.

mexxed again

April 28, 2016April 28, 2016 ~ Clicky Steve ~ Leave a comment

When I was recording drouth, there were a bunch of tracks that I wish had vocals, but that I couldn’t quite come up with something on my own. In the end, it worked out for the album that they remained largely instrumental… but I thought it would be cool to get some different folks to do their own take on vocals.

As part of that, musician pal Christy Scott lent me her voice for a couple of tracks. Ultimately, the idea is to release all of them as a collection. For now though, here’s a new version of ‘mex’, with Christy on vocals. I think it sounds pretty great…

You can download it here. (right click > save as).

unexpectedbowtie

experimental music from Glasgow with Gameboys, saws and other pish

unexpected bowtie