Steve and Lobelia Live In Nebraska EP now on Bandcamp!

Yay! Finally, thanks to the great help of Kevin Quickle, I've managed to get the Live In Nebraska EP up to bandcamp for proper magic high res download. 

This is very exciting - every time we've pressed CDs of this, they've sold out in just 2 or 3 gigs - so much so that we didn't even have a copy to rip to put up on Bandcamp (Bandcamp requires CD-quality WAVs, not the high-res MP3s I had that were for sale in my old online shop...) 

So here it is - it's one of the musical things I'm most proud of that I've done, and captures just how well we were playing on that US tour really well. It's a great recording, thanks to us actually playing the show in a recording studio - Power Base Studios in Wisner, Nebraska. Great job done by Dan Kane on sound. 

Here it is - listen, share it, embed any of the tracks that you particularly like in your own blog posts if you wish, and if you want to download it, pay whatever you think it's worth. 

Waiting For Flapjack - the soundtrack

Finally recorded something I like! Yay!

It's a pretty low res recording, cos I did it on my Nokia N97, just using the voice recorder, but given that, it's actually pretty good :)

The loop was recorded and I was playing over it, then decided to record it, so I stopped it, hit record and re-triggered the loop. Everything else is as I played it...

Enjoy - this is the sound of waiting. :)

Collecting together this year's musical experiments Pt 1

This year, I haven't put out any 'official' music. No album, no EP - nothing. End of last year was the Lawson/Dodds/Wood album, which I'm hugely proud of. 

But I have been documenting some of my experiments along the way, most notably with Audioboo and Vimeo, but also and a Youtube video or two. 

So here are some of the Audioboos, for you and I to both recap as I think about recording a new solo album in the near future. I'll add the Video stuff to a later post. 

Playing fretted bass for the first time in AGES!

Haven't had some moderate musical successes over the last few days on fretless bass, I thought today I'd have a play with my 6 string fretted bass - it's an awesome instrument, sounding and feeling unlike any bass I've ever played (it is a one-off...) 

I hadn't played it for quite a few months, given that I usually only take one bass to gigs these days and it's the fretless, hence I practice on it too... 

But it was fun to have a play around (despite the bass really needing a set-up). 

Here's a little snippet of what I was playing, recorded to audioboo. 3 loops - the first one a rhythm track, second one some chords, third one gnarly distorted tremolo sound. 

Enjoy :) 

The Things That House Concerts Allow That Other Gigs Don't

Thanks to just getting a comment on the video, I've been watching this video of me playing Jimmy James, from a house concert in north London last year. 

Apart from the slight weirdness of me sitting watching myself on Youtube (I was watching to see what sounds I used in order to answer the question in the comment), I was struck by the really slow build on the loops. Then realised that the reason it sounded unfamiliar is that it's only at house concerts where I can get away with playing that slow, that measured, where I can give each layer and musical idea the room to grow that it deserves. 

The reason is this - for music to work, the silence in the room needs to sound good. If what happens when you're not playing is nasty background noise - whether it's traffic or coffee-machines or people talking, or air-con units... whatever it is, the music can't have holes because it's primary purpose becomes covering up that other noise. After that, you get to be good, interesting or whatever... 

Have a listen, tell me what you think - I love the pacing of this, and it's inspiring me to want to get some new music written, with lots of holes in it. Swiss Cheese music. :) 

Lobelia and I got lucky...

Every now and again music and opportunity line up. Doesn't happen often - live albums are rarely of the best night on the tour, unless the band is recording every night. Often, the tech and the tunes are on different calendars.

However, for Lobelia and I, the planets aligned when we played a house concert in Nebraska a couple of years ago - it wasn't actually in a 'house', it was in a recording studio, doubling up as a venue.

We played the best we'd ever played and got an awesome recording of it.

It's not on bandcamp yet, sadly, but will be soon - til then, here's one of the tracks on last.fm:

via last.fm

I've got a broken bass u-huh ooooo

...to miss-quote the Pixies.

Actually, I haven't. I've got a fixed bass. Fixed because it was smashed up by British Airways, who paid for it to be fixed. But it sounds different. I love the sound of the bass as it is now, but just occasionally I go back and watch vids like this recorded before the accident, and miss the sound. There was something pretty miraculous about the bass as it was...

Maybe I'll grow to love the sound now as much, especially as I start recording a new album soon.

Till then I'll just have to remember to not stop Believin' ;)

Lessons Learnt From An Aged Feline

This was an album that came free with the first 100 CD orders of Not Dancing For Chicken, 7 years ago... it's been available on Last.fm for a while, but at pretty low resolution...

here's the high res version, for streaming or download - enjoy!