The (Other) Romantic

Aww my little shiney Romantic lover.

'The Romantic' is a 'proper' record. I did the things you are supposed to do, namely:

Forget the 'theme' : choose your best dozen songs and record them as well as possible

Take your time: do a version, then do another version, then another

Take advice: you the artist are 'too close' to your record, get other peoples opinions before its finished and try and act on them

Polish it : don't think a 'charming' mistake is OK, if it sounds accidental, take it out

Use your best work: If an old song hasn't been heard by many people, put it on your new record...

I did all those things and low and behold, a lyrical theme bounced right back at me anyway and a musical theme came to the fore thanks to the excellent team who helped me build it. Lots of xylophone, lots of lady singers, lots of synths and processed sounds amongst the acoustic palate. It sounds BIGGER than my other records. Bolder, more cohesive and more... proper.

I love it of course but it could have been very different. The title track is now a Tom Waits-esque gently swinging ballad. Its great.  Prior to some utterly confused feedback form my inner circle, it sounded like this...


Also great I think but perhaps more of an acquired taste...

underneath aeroplanes

In 2007 I played a monthly residency at the Betsey Trotwood in Farringdon, East London. The twist was that every month I was joined by a different line up of musicians playing my music.

Tom the harp and Gav the drums where involved for almost all the shows and I spent a lot of time writing new arrangements for these one off gigs. We did a string quartet version, a brass version, a laptop version, a melodica chorus version and a little choir among other variations. It was great.

Here is a live re-working of 'Underneath Aeroplanes' from one of those gigs featuring :

Tom Moth on harp
Gav on percussion
Fiona Troon on bassoon
Katy Dent on violin
me on singing and concertina...



At the time the music at the Betsey was put on by Plum Promotions and so I met my excellent friend Sarah Thirtle  ( www.fantasticartistbooking.com ) as well as then sound engineer, now my fiddle/bass player Joe Peet there.

I still play at the Betsey the last Thursday of each month as part of The Village Green Preservation Society an excellent free for all night put on by Piney Gir ( www.pineygir.com ) and Emit Bloch (www.myspace.com/emitblochcountry )... come on down some time... 

Stars and Satellites

ALASTAIR BROWN (www.myspace.com/alastairbrown )  is an excellent finger picking folk guitarist I have been lucky enough to collaborate with a couple of times.

I had a strict 'No Guitars' rule for my first 4 albums, and technically I still haven't used any but these days the ukulele is put through so many pedals to make it sound like a guitar that the point is basically lost.

Besides meeting Al and hearing him play made me change my mind. They're alright really guitars aren't they?

We hope to do more in future but for now the only evidence that exists of our collaboration is this rough home demo of our song 'Stars and Satellites'. It's proper lovely.



awwwwww...

35

On my 35th birthday I wrote and recorded a song called 35 whereby myself and Johnny the engineer invented our own version of 'self sampling'.

An unused song from 'Fear' ('Good man turned bad') had a nice fiddle part and a good drum sound so we decided to pinch bits of it to build this new song, and then a bit of cello from an unused Moses song and some out take banjo from 'Then I woke up and it was all a dream' and so on.

we discovered that with a bit of working out, lots of parts in a related key, with a similar tempo or atmosphere to our new song seemed to work. For the sake of completing it all on the actual day of my 35th birthday we rushed it though and it may be a bit rough but it has its charm...



The song was played (3 times, nice) by Tom Robinson on his '...introducing' show on 6music.

We finessed this idea through the 'Monkeys, Pigs and Wolves' EPs and now its a solid staple of my sound, I love it.

And flute parts, it turns out, can be taken from any song and put on any other song and it always works. Always. Magic flute.

something good

I've never yet been recognizably featured in an advert, but I have tried lots of times.

The one I hoped would come off was an actual writing commission (rather than placing already existing songs) for match.com. Joe Peet and Eva Eden  (www.myspace.com/evaeden me and Eva pictured above) and I worked on it together.

The pitch: A boy and girl sing an impromptu duet in a music shop. The brief for the song was incredibly specific, so i was flattered to be asked to write one.

The song had to:

Outline the boy and girl characters
be 60" long at most
be played on guitar and wurlitzer
feature a riff that the instruments could 'call and response' play to each other
include a short deliberately out of time drum solo in the middle
be a 'quirky' love song
have the girl repeat the boys lines in the 1st verse (we disagreed with this idea but were told it had to stay)
have a chorus







I think we did all of those things,  the one they used didn't. I think ours is better but then, thats just me.

the lucky bitches

'It's a shit business' as the League of Gentlemen's Les McQueen repeatedly said. But the music world is brilliant and what makes it so is musicians like what I have met.

In real life Gav Fawcett drums up a heavy rock storm, but for me (and Moses) he tinkles and percusses and Ringos it up just the way I ask him to. And never complains about not playing, which is as excellent as it is rare. He used to be in Ruby, Leslie 'Silverfish' Rankins machine music experiment...

Tom Moth (harp) and Fiona Troon (bassoon) have their praises quite rightly sung elsewhere so take it as read that they are both incredible and I love them...

Joe Peet (www.myspace.com/joepeet) used to be in Cousteau ...

And now sings and plays bass, fiddle, mandolin, synths, piano, you name it with my lot. His excellent playing and production ideas are particularly notable on the 'Monkeys, Pigs and Wolves' album.

I met Georgina Trelour playing the drums for Plakka www.myspace.com/plakkagroup and found out later she is actually a concert xylophonist - how could I not beg her to get involved?  Her beautiful ability to play tuned percussion expressively is all over my album 'The Romantic'. Here she is with her very sexy Chilean/French/Australian band El Gran Chufle:

Johnny Winfield is an astonishing engineer...

Fast and ludicrously generous with his ideas and time. It is Johnny's way with a mixing desk that has allowed me to develop my 'self sampling' style, I wouldn't have a clue how to make it work without him. Johnny has produced countless bands, commercials, soundtracks and some major and serious artists. But I met him because he also puts on a tinsel wig and sings 70's covers in the Funking Barstewards with my (musical genius) Moses pal Colin Smith. 

He is part of Acid Jazz legends The Past Present Organization ...

Honorable mentions could go on for ever so thank you massively to everyone who has ever graced us with their presence, there's been a lot of you and you've all been wonderful. It's a shit business, but a brilliant world.

The Ventriloquist

It's all about Bad Communication...

'The Ventriloquist' is a very personal record and I always thought that sort of thing put people off, but it seemed to work this time and 'The Ventriloquist' is a lot of peoples favourite of my albums.

In order to replace Tom The Harp (Who was by now getting too busy with Florence and her machine) and Fiona the bassoon (who had just moved to Chile,  handy) I learned to play the ukulele and the bass clarinet.

So in theory I played every instrument myself, but that's a show-business lie;  really 'The Ventriloquist' is full of samples of parts from my other records; flutes and saws and drums, music boxes and percussion.

I was 3 parts mental during the making of this record and didn't get it together to release it very well, I actually failed to even mention it on my own website or make any physical copies.

Odd then that Marillion's marketing manager Erik Neilson should chose this time to advise me to make t shirts of the artwork for the album. I designed them but again, being somewhat lost at the time, I never printed any. I can though if anyone would like one, just e-mail me...