Supporter

Here’s a bit of acoustic guitar noodling over the top of a recording I made of a journey to Hull. This was taken just as the train was pulling into the station on the day of a match between Hull and Fulham or Millwall, whoever. I don’t know, I’m not a football fan.

Anyway, my girlfriend is at Hull and she’s a definite football fan so there’s probably some meaning behind the song there. Who knows, I just thought it sounded all right.

Download Supporter

I’m Trying Here But You’re Not Helping In The Slightest

This was an improvised piece that used a ridiculously slowly cut-up sample of some random guitar noodling that I’d used on another track (a little tribute to Neu!). I really like the feel of this piece and I learnt that you don’t need to have drum parts all that loud in order to still be effective. I kind of nicked this idea from Autechre after listening to their track “Overand” from Tri Repetae.

Yep. Taking inspiration from an electronic track  made twelve years previous. How’s that for keeping up with the times?

Download I’m Trying Here But You’re Not Helping In The Slightest

Warmth In The Walls (Shed)

This is a tiny little bit of improvised ambient plodding. It’s a really quiet track that doesn’t really do that much, but if you like Brian Eno-type ambient music then this one is probably up your street.

Download Warmth in the Walls (Shed)

Rollcage (Short Version)

This track is definitely up there in my top 10 or even top 5 favourite pieces. I don’t know what frame of mind I was in at the time of writing but whatever it was it definitely helped. Rollcage is about two and a half years old now and it still excites me when I hear it.

Sometimes when I revisit a particular track and try to recreate it a few years later it sometimes loses a bit of the magic. This track is different, the guitar progression is so simple that to me it still sounds as exciting now as it was when I was just teasing out the details of the guitar line and practising each take first time round.

I hope you enjoy this one, for all the chuff I post on this site this is one of the tracks that makes the whole thing worthwhile.

Download Rollcage (Short Version)

Dimension

There are some half-decent moments in this but I’ll warn you now, epic wankery ahead. I sat down and boshed out this thing while I was in Edinburgh performing the Silence in C Minor stage show. One day in the flat I decided I was bored of reading and wanted to make some music, so I made this thing up as I went along. I like the ending, with some editing and thoughtful production choices it could be quite good. It’s just a pity that I never saved the session file so I guess we’ll never know.

Download Dimension

Softbeam Acid

The bass part on this track is actually kind of an accident. I must have hummed a fourth or fifth below the tonic note and got it in my mind that that was the tonic, so in the end the bass part isn’t actually in the tonic.

The piece in general is in 7/4, have fun.

Download Softbeam Acid

First Ants of Summer

First Ants of Summer was one of the tracks I wrote in 7/4 but without the drum and bass tendencies. This one is more of a low-key acid track with the emphasis more on texture and harmony rather than off-kilter rhythms. It sounds pretty nice on headphones actually, thanks in part to some particular attention paid to the bass drum production.

Download First Ants Of Summer

Grass Fountain

Another track from the first experiments in ambience from early 2008, Grass Fountain is part ambient, part noise as it descends from sustained minor key plodding into some kind of rubble and debris effects.

Download Grass Fountain

Bridge

Not much too this track musically, it’s more of a rhythm piece using disparate noises rather than anything. It was written specifically for a live set that I did on the Battersea Barge so it sounds better loud, just don’t expect anything too interesting or thoughtful…

Download Bridge

The Cupboard (Saturday Night)

This piece was used in the Silence in C Minor stage show in Kentish Town as the incidental music for a cupboard. Apparently God was in the cupboard so they needed a piece of music to signify this. Fine.

It’s just one chord and so is essentially one of my first attempts at a proper drone track. The main idea is that beauty can be terrifying, a piece such as this should convey the magnitude of the idea of finding God living in a stationery cupboard and it shouldn’t necessarily be a happy and joyful piece.

Mmmm, theatre.

Download The Cupboard (Saturday Night)