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I post updates and new music every few days.
'Work With This' out now
Work With This
Zeppelin
This Is A Calling
Hove Beach And Eggshells
Luck Is Cruelty On The Wind
You Remain My North
Good Night
An album of seven new songs is now available for everyone here on my site, my Patreon and over at Bandcamp.
As a thank you to all Patrons it’s available to download to everyone subscribing, including all at the €3 tier. Please consider signing up over there to support me directly.
I suppose here is the place to share some words about the making of this one.
My last album ‘The Ghost Is The Only One That Beats My Drum’ came out in December and whilst I might usually go and play some concerts or get out of the house for some weeks that hasn’t really been an option recently, so I just carried on working on songs. Some of the ways I was working whilst making that album didn’t really change and often things that were started back then just kept bubbling away over time. Slow cooking. I think that’s apparent on a few of the songs here - the ones based on a rhythm and with more percussive stuff in particular. There’s a link, as always, between the albums, but here it’s like I didn’t stop. I suppose I didn’t stop.
This time there’s no one else playing on the thing and it’s generally a little tighter written and structured I think. I cut a lot away, despite there still being a couple of longer songs there. I’ve never been as brave or ruthless an editor as I should be.
‘Zeppelin’ was a song called ‘Four’ that I started about 15 years ago and was originally based around a Neil Young guitar feedback sample. I don’t think I ever played it live but it’s likely that the recording was released ages ago, perhaps on an edition of the ‘Church Boat’ CD or something around 2005. I don’t think anyone will recognise it but if you do please let me know.
Likewise, ‘Hove Beach And Eggshells’ isn’t an old song but is somehow about events that happened around that time when I lived on the south coast of England. Recently I found myself trying to care for a young crow and I think it brought back sentimental memories of nesting gulls.
I’m playing concerts again, starting this week.. No idea if I’ll get to try any of these out but let’s see.
Thanks everyone, have a lovely week.
Stephen
'This Is A Calling' new single now available
A new, 8 minute song is out today to listen and download here on my site, on my Bandcamp page and to everyone subscribing to my Patreon.
'This Is A Calling' was written and recorded last month and appears on the forthcoming album, 'Work With This' which I hope to release next month. It feels like a companion piece to the last album and in fact I'm not sure the process of writing and recording has stopped since I started with that one last Autumn. They've run into each other, here we are.
I made a simple video a few weeks ago, inspired by and including old news footage of pilgrims at Croagh Patrick in the west of Ireland. Here it is:
All my Patreon and Bandcamp subscribers automatically receive this as a full quality download. Subscribe for as little as €3:
'This Is A Calling'
I’ve been writing and recording a lot the last few weeks and next month I’ll be ready to share some of the new music I’ve been making. I thought the album was done and just needed mixing and then a few days ago one of the very new songs I had started writing kind of expanded and overnight grew into something that surprised me so it meant that I had to rethink the sequencing and the structure of the whole album. It had felt almost done and then two more things came out and now I have to juggle it about a bit and perhaps do some more editing. Felt like a delay but fine, good for the work to be flexible and malleable, that’s when it’s exciting.
