unexpected bowtie

~ Clicky Steve ~ Leave a comment

HELLO.

The track that I posted up the other day has been picked up by Central Station – a ‘creative social network’ who are featuring an artist for the first 50 days of their re-launch. Their site is a fairly involved, gritty little community that highlights stuff that would slide under the radar otherwise… both opportunities for collaboration as well as unusual exhibitions and projects.

It’s a bit of a shock, as I had absentmindedly subscribed to their channel over on Soundcloud, and didn’t really expect anything of it. The funny thing is that unexpected bowtie isn’t something that I’ve ever actively pushed in any way, or really something that I speak much about outside of these four virtual walls; it’s more of a personal experimentation with random sounds (which are often chaotic and messy). If people pick up on it and like it then that’s cool, but I’m not going to chase it in anyway… It’s for that reason alone that I’m quite chuffed/flattered/stunned that CenSta have deemed it worthy of including…

You can check out the page here, as well as all the other awesome artists that will be appearing. There’s still time to submit your own things too, so fire them in…

~ Clicky Steve ~ Leave a comment

Calamateur

When I was about 16 I went on a rather screwed up weekend that I had at the Greenbelt Festival in Cheltenham, as I travelled along with a band called Poor Old Ben.

Out of the several vivid memories I have from those few days, seeing an acoustic guitarist with a particularly amazing voice by the name of Andy Howie aka Calamateur play in a wee room up the top of the racecourse stands out on its own. I even remember the way he slung his guitar carelessly over his back and disappeared down the stairs in front of us afterwards.

Calamateur takes a whole host of strange sounds and bits and pieces and moulds them into some haunting, beautiful tracks. He’s been good enough to record some things for me to butcher apart, and has detailed exactly what over on his blog.

You can check out the rest of his stuff (most, if not all of it for free) via that link too, but I’d suggest starting with the ‘Son of Everyone EP’, as that’s the one I remember from that weekend at Greenbelt.

Life has crashed in and taken over just now… slowing everything down to an almost complete stop, but hopefully we’ll have something to show in the new year.

~ Clicky Steve ~ Leave a comment

Hello.

Over a year after I embarked on this musical project, with two albums, a collaborative EP and a few terrible covers under the belt, it’s come time to attempt to play some of this stuff live.

Given the schizophrenic nature of the tracks, it’s going to take a bit of time to work out exactly how they will sound in person. As much as I’d love to play the guitar, musical saw, banjo, keyboard, gameboy…. etc all at once and by myself, it poses a bit of a logistical challenge, as I’m sure you can imagine.

Either way, February looks most likely.

Be warned.

~ Clicky Steve ~ Leave a comment

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

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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.

~ Clicky Steve ~ Leave a comment

zeit·geber (tsīt′gā′bər, zīt′-) – noun
(from German for “time giver,” or “synchroniser”)

a stimulus, esp. light or heat, that affects an organism’s biological clock.

also a chilled out collaboration with recoveryUnit.

check out zeitgeber (cogs).