some snippets from the recent past and immediate future....
1. the fourth page album is out. we'll be finishing another at the end of the month, for release on leo records (warning - this site will offend anyone with delicate graphic designer type sensibilities) in october.
2. simon hopkins (former collaborator) has put out a lovely bit of work on bandcamp. 'tis really really good. how to describe it? dark, creepy ambient improv soundscaping? that'll do. worth a listen.
3. in other news, i'm now playing with this lot. not an obvious choice you may think, but i'm rather enjoying myself. this weekend we're at the penn festival in buckinghamshire as part of an entirely baffling line-up. i am looking forward to being a long way from the stage when Dr and the Medics are on.
here we are at the Bedford last month (scroll through to 49 mins or so if you can be arsed)
4. two new-ish projects are rumbling along - one is a quartet with saxophonist julie kjaer, trombonist ian mclaughlin and drummer paul may. this is currently my favourite band in the world. or at least, my favourite one with me in. the other is a trio with paul and the stupidly talented phil somervell; we'll be playing barely recognisable standards in interesting ways every monday at the Grosvenor in SW9, starting in august. be there, or be somewhere else.
5. there's other stuff, but i'm bored writing this now. god knows how anyone reading it may feel.
activity
time to write a bit about what i've been up to and what i may get up to in the next few montha assuming i don't get run over by a bus or something.
Forwind seems to have become the hub for much of my musical activity. i'm slightly embarrassed by the fact that i seem to be on every release in the catalogue. the Clang Sayne album is getting a digital issue, and the Fourth Page album will emerge there soon. also it's likely it'll be the home for the fruits of a recording session last weekend for a new trio of myself, James O' Sullivan and Paul May. this group was a long time coming, but seems to have been worth the wait. we worked at onecat with the excellent Jon Clayton engineering; an 8 hour session enabled us to record 70 minutes of material and mix it too at a leisurely pace. the results are pretty strong and sometimes dark as pitch. James and Paul were on top form; both of them get so much variation out of bits of metal and wood by purely physical (and sometimes magnetic) means. there was little we came up with didn't work at some level, and we're shaping it into some kind of form at the moment. james described the final piece we recorded as a 'fucking beast'. more on that later.
Sonnamble are gearing up for more action too. Conor has a few mixes on the go of stuff recorded last year, just before our Dublin gig. but a more recent session yielded some delicious results - just double bass and live processing. lots of space and some lovely interaction. not using loops makes things a lot harder work and riskier. it's easy to generate structure with loops for one thing. but without them you get much more of a sense of the relationship between what we're both doing, which is essentially playing the same instrument. ooh er.
a few home sessions with mr Chris Jones have come up with some nice stuff too., some entirely unplugged, and others entirely, er, plugged. there's an unplugged one here. also Chris has taken on the sisyphean task of going through all the material the quartet with Andy and Conor. there's a lot of it.
yikes.
also there's been a few (sometimes choice) gigs with Neptune Is Mars, Lucy and more, but i'm starting to bore myself now so i'll leave it there...
