A Year Of Songs

Albums of 2015, then? Too many to leave out, too many left unheared. And so it goes. But these ones were pretty brill. No prizes for guessing what's at the top.

30. <insert album here>

Because I'll always miss one brilliant album.

29. Malted Milk And Toni Green - Milk And Green

Fab and bouncy rhythm and soul blues.

28. Godsticks - Emergence

HEAVY, man! Like a concrete boot to the groin.

27. Mew - + -

Blissful euphoric rock from Denmark.

26. Modest Mouse - Strangers To Ourselves

More great tunage from the other Mouse, featuring the greatest song title of the year in God Is An Indian And You're An Asshole. Get on your horse and ride!

25. Blur - The Magic Whip

New Blur is better than good - it's decidedly odd and great.

24. Leon Bridges - Coming Home

Vintage soul to make you bop along.

23. The Decemberists - What A Terrible World, What A Beautiful World

Americana-rama!

22. Troyka - Ornithophobia

Weird funk jazz from the suburbs as people turn into animals.

21. Ozric Tentacles - Technicians Of The Sacred

Space Ibiza is a blast by the sounds of it.

20. Steven Wilson - Hand. Cannot. Erase.

The strongest album of his career so far.

19. Snowapple - Illusion

Bohemian trippy folk vocals. Beautiful and strange.

18. Lianne La Havas - Blood

A properly soulful voice meets trip-hop sounds. Funky.

17. Legendary Shack Shakers - The Southern Surreal

YEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH

16. Wilco - Star Wars

And the awards for most surprising release, nonsensical title choice, and terrible artwork go to...

15. Punch Brothers - The Phosphorescent Blues

The Beach Boys sing in an acoustic bluegrass band conducted by Robert Fripp. Or so.

14. Public Service Broadcasting - The Race For Space

Smell the tweed and corduroy. Two of the group's best songs materialised in Gagarin and Go!.

13. Caravan Palace - <|*_*|>

If The Avalanches remixed 1940s New Orleans. Brilliant.

12. Jaga Jazzist - Starfire

Someone weaponised the music from the Quest channel and it is awesome.

11. Dutch Uncles - O Shudder

Creamy sounds and odd compositions. Like a new wave Oreo.

10. Slug - Ripe

Field Music's bassist let loose. Enough said.

9. Bill Laurance - Swift

Snarky Puppy allumni eclipses actual Snarky Puppy with beaty piano tunes.

8. Benjamine Clementine - At Least For Now

The winner of the Mercury Prize weaves a tapestry of intrigue and compelling piano-based threads. Sounds like London.

7. Destroyer - Poison Season

Beautiful songs, beautiful strings and horns, beautiful.

6. Laura Marling - Short Movie

The best acoustic sounds of the year behind a voice of pure character.

5. Father John Misty - I Love You, Honeybear

Frighteningly personal, heartbreaking, and darkly humorous.

4. Susanne Sundfor - Ten Love Songs

Exquisite and intelligent electro carry magnificent melodies. I'm in love.

3. Guy Garvey - Courting The Squall

The greatest lyricist of our time invites you in.

2. Sweet Billy Pilgrim - Motorcade Amnesiacs

Magnificent shape-shifting works of brilliance.

1. David Gilmour - Rattle That Lock

Gilmour.

Moving Pictures

Source: Google

It's Mouse's favourite films of 2015! Ooh, the excitement builds! I'll bet you're positively quivering with anticipation... or maybe food poisoning. Either way, here's a list. And everybody loves a list.

10. Inside Out

Pixar prise open your conciousness and dissect what it is to be human and to live life with love and loss, all the while showcasing incredibly complex psychological principles with brightly coloured balls.

9. Ex Machina

A computer programmer stays with a Zuckerberg-esque engineer and his breakthrough in artificial intelligence, taking the form of a robotic woman. Disturbing, manipulative hijinks ensue.

8. It Follows

The most original horror film of recent times, it's beautifully directed with patience and enjoyable suspense. And then there's the soundtrack... oh, the soundtrack...

7. Crimson Peak

Victorian business ideals collide with Edgar Allen Poe as Guillermo Del Toro makes every shot a perfect thing of beauty. Also, Tom Hiddleston's bum.

6. The Peanuts Movie

Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful.

5. Star Wars (Episode VII: The Force Awakens)

NEW STAR WARS IS GREAT!

4. Mad Max: Fury Road

Insane on vast levels of ecstasy. Features the best original character of the last decade of cinema in Furiosa. SHINY AND CHROME!

3. Nightcrawler

A thoroughly gripping, reckless swipe at modern mainstream media's borderline inhuman obsession with disaster, fear, and death.

2. Whiplash

When jazz attacks! The snarling hatred between old and new guards shot with the furious pace of a machine gun. Relentless.

1. Birdman Or (The Unexpected Virtue Of Ignorance)

Like watching exceptionally beautiful machinery perform as clockwork. Technically perfect, mesmerising, and so much fun.

Oogie Boogie's Song

Haverbrook attempt Christmas! Hope you all had a wonderful time. I work in retail, so I'm still working.

In other news, every track for the album has now been demoed. Work shall begin in earnest (now that we know what the hell we're doing) once the festive season stops being so damn festive.

The Cham Cham

Source: Google

Today is the 50th Anniversary of Thunderbirds. Happy Anniverstime, Birds! When I was a wee little thing being about 30cm tall, it was my favourite programme to watch. When you're that age, massive rockets and big explosions are the most exciting thing ever. ...Wait a minute, they still are. And a bald puppet with eyes that lit up when he was angry was the scariest thing in the world. And he was always angry.

To a lot of people, it will forever be that show where the puppets couldn't walk properly and you could see the strings. For a great many others, though, it was inspiration to become designers, engineers, rocketeers, and scientists. Someone even became an astronaut. The special effects crew went on to work in Hollywood, bringing the craft they developed in a studio in Slough to a worldwide industry. For me, one of its biggest influences was the music. Barry Gray's score commands character and evokes drama in a way no-one else managed in television at the time. The short themes, ranging from sombre, melodramatic, energetic, and humorous, taught me very early on how to use music to identify elements of continuity, story, and character within a piece.

I so want that fast music to be the North Haverbrook live intro tape...

One of the things that I find fascinating now is that Thunderbirds portrays a dystopian future, where a world, albeit united internationally, is plagued by constant terrorist actions, natural resources have surrendered to industry and development, everyone carries weapons, and a car park is manned by a watchtower armed with submachine guns to shoot whoever doesn't pay upon leaving. It's a cold view of the 1960s' technological ambition, wreckless and gutsy, knowing that the risks of human endeavour can come at the cost of great disaster.

It's a brilliant concept, proven by its successful return in two forms this year, with a new series combining the traditional model works with CGI animation, and three episodes being made in the original 1965 style. Its legacy has been assured and it's still bloody good fun, whether you appreciate the technical details and style, or just giggle at the wobbly heads. Also, Team America - 'nuff said.

And if Richard Branson isn't establishing International Rescue with his spaceships and his private islands and millions of wealth, I'm going to be a very disappointed boy indeed.

English Electric

Moray and I attended the Sunday afternoon performance by Big Big Train, a band rarely seen in the wild, on the 16th. Well, Moray did. Muggins here was stationed strategically behind tables full of lovely, lovely merchandise, not only so people could not get close enough to experience his horrifying ugliness, but as additional retail whirligig of The Merch Desk. But I'd been there all weekend, so nyah.

Yeah, so the gigs themselves were excellent, but we hijacked the occassion for our first, official photoshoot!

...OK, so we were enthusiastic. A second attempt was slightly more respectable...

Makes you think we should get a move on and make some more crazy-ass music., eh.

Release, Release

 

Subject To Availability and Diatryma And The Terror Birds are released! Sort of. While we wait to figure out a deal with someone, we figured you might as well hear what these two at least sound like. So, they are streaming over on beloved Bandcamp. Stay tuned for actual release info!

Happy Birthtime, North Haversham! What In The Hell!

Radio Waves

There is nothing to make the bile rise more furiously up my gullet than the phrase 'Steve Wright In The Afternoon'. A DJ whose playlist consists of collections of Father's Day 'Dad Rocks' albums and 'Now That's What I Call Bobbins 11,003'. The dated vibe has all the dignity of a primary school disco hosted by the maths department. What kind of ego-fuelled cockswabble has canned audience applause in their own theme tune? And a horn melody that sounds like a weak fart in a jacuzzi.

Good God almighty, I hate Radio 2.

The Single Factor

A few wee changes! Where In The World as a digital EP is now no longer going ahead. Instead, that idea will be saved for a future release with more material and a limited physical run. Or something. Anyway, the three singles will still be put out separately, albeit Squonk will only be available to stream for a limited period because legals. Subject To Availability and Diatryma will be yours to keep, though, should you actually want such a thing. Mastering is proceeding at a slow, yet steady pace, and really has proved to be the massive ball-ache it has been known as since records began. Hopefully, they should be ready soon. Soon-ish. ...At some point. Certainly before the new Sherlock special.

Elsewhere, Moray is continuing to work on with Godsticks and Ghost Community, as well as having a proper life and such, and I'm on the cusp of starting work cleaning shit out of a shed. Literally.

Meanwhile, it is heartily recommended you read Ben Aaronovitch's PC Grant novels. Start with Rivers Of London, then you will proceed to gobble up the next four. And the soon-to-be released comic book series. I guarantee!

Heart Of The Sunrise

Source: Google

Those who know me, even those who have had the misfortune of happening to stand a short distance from me when the fuse gets lit, will know how I feel about Yes. This is not one of those posts.

Chris Squire was, I think inarguably, the most influential bass player of all time. Acknowledged as the first bass guitar player to completely disregard the standard manner of playing the instrument and reassembled the role of the bass player in music. And there's really not much more you can add to that.

Yes music in the 1970s was a constant competition between art and ego, pushing somewhat primitive recording technology to breaking point in order to achieve an exceptionally grand, multi-faceted vision. I was obsessed with it for many of my teenage years before something clicked in my head, and I realised that it wasn't just for me anymore. My views on the band are now somewhat vociferous, but there is no way of denying that myself, and every music-centric person I know, fell under the influence of the long shadow cast by Yes.

Squire was the first player who made me want to pick up a bass. Thinking about it now, his style is impossible to define beyond a shrug and simply saying 'Well... it's Chris Squire'. From the all-out frenzy of Heart Of The Sunrise, to the thunderous stomp of Parallels, to the snowfall-delicate Onward, to the growling Tempus Fugit - there were many, many sides to his shape and he excelled at all of them.

My father was always irritated that Squire didn't play the bass 'properly'. For me, not doing it properly was the blueprint on how to do music right. Thank you for that lesson, Chris.

"Onward through the night of my life."

Where In The World

Where In The World (Cover A)

Where In The World will be the first North Haverbrook release. It is an EP, which in this case, stands for 'evolving play'. We're going to have fun with the digital format and its lack of constraints, so it's going to become the host title for any odd tracks or singles that may appear over time. Right now, there are three tracks ready to go (we're just waiting for them to be mastered) and two more demos that will hopefully get completed somewhere down the line. The three tracks to kick off the EP (and, indeed, the band itself) will be:

1. Squonk
2. Subject To Availability
3. Diatryma And The Terror Birds

We don't know if we'll actually be legally allowed to let people have Squonk in some way as it's a good ol' cover version (and quite a different version at that), but we'll see. It was fun to record in any case! An early version of Subject To Availability can be heard here (we've reworked a few things since then) and as for Diatryma... Well, just you wait. Personally, I can't wait to unleash that one.

Live At The Hammersmith Odeon

Some thoughts from watching the old video of Kate Bush live at the Hammersmith Odeon in 1979 for the first time:

"I swear she's just done the Thriller dance before Thriller."

"There's a terrifying violinist on stage..."

"...And now Triffids."

"Two security guards from Nightmare Of Eden on stage. Where is she getting all these hats from?"

"Now she's in Black Narcissus and dancing with a gimp."

"Terrifying mime clown in long eared headgear trying to read a magazine, blown away by wind."

"Now there's an Nevada backdrop and she's doing provocative dancing with a gun."

"She's killed the scary clown mime."

"Graphic killing of a Mexican."

"And now she's dressed as Biggles."

It all makes sense if you've seen it. I insist it does.

Parklife

I was grumpy. Once again, the lack of decent sleep the previous night and the continuing popularity of Game Of Thrones was too much for my sunny disposition to bear. Fortunately, the day was rescued by a strip of sandpaper eroding the corrosion on the battery connectors in my field recorder, which jumped back to life with its tiny Game Boy green screen and total inability to deal with the wind, and we made for the park.

East Park is a park in east Hull. Not only home to that thrilling factoid, it also houses a lake, lots of pretty trees, evil geese, the Khyber Pass, and an exotic bird enclosure. It is the latter for which I set foot outside in the sunny June weather, lathered in suncream and glistening like some pale Turkish wrestler. I want to record them.

Diatryma And The Terror Birds is an instrumental track about gigantic prehistoric feathered predators. A shoe-in for the Top 40, obviously. I'm a big fan of found sounds in music creating an environment for the guitars, drums and such to happily inhabit in their riffing, and exotic birds chirruping away in their thankfully happy brainless song could evoke the vibe of a landscape stalked by dinosaurs, tiny mammals, and Bruce Forsyth. It's the closest I can get, anyway, and it's a day out to clear the misery fog out of my head, so there.

The thing folks don't seem to realise about microphones is that they record sound universally. So no matter if someone is sitting on a bench with a fuzzy silver box listening to a rather active parrot, you can wander right up to the cage and start saying aloud profound thoughts like "Ug" and, especially if you're with a tiny child, hold them up in front of the cage constantly barking out "LOOK AT THE BIRD" while the wee pink thing in a sunhat stares fascinated at a fencepost. So far, recordings so good. The park's enclosure has a number of beautiful creatures to amuse and crap on the public. The aforementioned parrot, a surefire crowd pleaser for those who think chanting "Who's a pretty boy?" hasn't been done enough in the last century, I am told later has learnt a number of profanities to repeat back to families once it's had enough of the attention. Only in Hull. The canaries, budgies, and various finches have a walkthrough built into their enclosure, so you can walk through a tiny forest as tiny brightly coloured wings flutter all around. There are also other exotic imports like emus (probably the closest thing the present day has to a terror bird), cockatiels, Australian things with bizarre plumage and names like boing-boing, chickens, and peacocks. OK, so some are more imported than others. The raccoon dog strictly isn't a bird, but there's one there anyway. The chickens and the peacocks give some great vocal performances, thankfully right in front of my mic and far enough away from small children trying to physically abuse the parrot (it seems 'sunny day in June' is a valid excuse for parents keeping them out of school these days). A park ranger approached to enquire about my activities. Apparently, people had reported to her "a strange man with a device".

"Strange, yes," I have to concede. You win this round, concerned public. We have a nice chat about recording the birds and I get some tips on the best times to pop by. The canaries go mad around closing time, and the emu shrieks if you talk to it. The parrot also mimics babies crying when it simply cannot. I reflect on the fact that a blobby ginger man with a microphone is more cause for concern to passers by than a small boy climbing up the cages and shouting at the inhabitants, but I guess people have different standards. The cock crows into the wind and it's time to go.

Meanwhile, in cyberspace, Moray has assembled a collection of keyboard tracks, terracotta plant pot percussion, and his own birdsong, all of which thrill and delight me out of any remaining stupor. It's good to know that there's someone else who is as bonkers with their music as I am. This is why we're working together. Diatryma is going to be included as part of North Haverbrook's debut EP called Where In The World, which will be out when it's finished. That'll be as soon as I can sing my own lyrics without wanting to punch myself in the throat. This year, definitely. Hopefully.