enter the spook haus: (psychic) adventures in electro
Ceredigion, October ’23
Exciting developments: been working on new, electronics-based tracks with producer Gethin Pearson (Bloc Party/The Enemy/Tankus The Henge/Charli XCX, among many others) at the Institute of Sonic Architecture in Wales, with a co-writing assist from Paul Hopton. It went beautifully well, and I aim to share the results quite soon…
Meantime, got a couple more gigs in a few days:
Thur 19 Oct at The Prince Albert w/ The Last Vinci, Nil By Habit & Ahsoka
Sun 22 Oct at The Brunswick (Cellar Bar) w/ Grunt Work, Be Kind Cadaver & Fae As Folk
more faces, Aug-Sept ’23
angst, neck chains & pulsing veins… a drummer, 2 stages, a narcissist in the toilet:
photos by Leroy Brown, Rob Trendy, Chris Hibberd &c
Barelife / MF / Nancy Cancer: the faces, June ’23
photos by Chris Hibberd (The Pipeline, Brighton, 29 June)
That was a phenomenal night – maybe one of the best ever. A superb gig with lovely people – oh the atmosphere! Thanks to Nancy Cancer for a terrific debut performance and Barelife for a throbbing industrial climax. Grunge, post punk, techno: all the good stuff. It’s gigs like these that make it worthwhile. More to come!
one life to live…
So it’s been a while, and so what – we’re all busy. Anyway, not been idle: recorded 12 new songs at Third Circle, did some gigs… it’s a good life.
The guy who runs the studio worked with Steve Albini for a couple of years and has a similar live energy ethos – very happy with the results. Hope to have something for you soon x
Safe House 7
played so obnoxious on this. It felt great
Safe House Brighton returns with a seventh LP of improvised music – I’m on three tracks, 7), 8) & 16), playing treated recordings, rockist guitar (listen above) & ambient doom riffs, respectively. Full LP here.
I’ve been on several of these now, a project that began in the solitary madness of lockdown and was too powerful to die. This will probably be my last go-round – but I haven’t decided yet.
Here’s the blurb:
A system of 18 trios were created, whereby no one player could play with the same person more than once. Cards with the 18 players names on were shuffled and depending on the order they were drawn, each player was given a number. These 18 musicians sent in a recording of themselves playing, between 4 and 6 minutes long. This solo performance/recording was sent to the player “below” them to play along with. This recorded duet was then sent to the player “below” them to play along with.
Players were invited to record whatever they wanted, whilst listening to and accompanying the track “above”.
The final trio of each unique group is what you are listening to here!
Previous LPs:
Digest, discuss, disgust
xx
cadavers, monkeys & agony: the evidence
Some photos from Thursday’s gig at The Pipeline, courtesy Chris Hibberd: pic 3) Be Kind Cadaver, pic 6) The Organ Grinder’s Monkey, pic 8) by Mik Hanscomb.
x
gig or 50’s Communist jazz club rally? YOU decide
Thanks to Leroy Brown Photography for these noirish shots of last week’s gig with Austerity (fig. 5) & Blue Spectre (6)… Here you see me modelling the “epicene villain” look… Was a great night, very intense, and these capture some of that dark energy. Behold!
Eight Miles High, Sept ’22: pixxx
action shots by Charlotte Horton – Eight Miles High Club, Brighton, 30 Sept ’22
Here are some photos from last week’s Eight Miles High gig at the Prince Albert… Also features Barney on drums, Be Kind Cadaver getting all up in yr bizness & 2/5 of Codex Serafini being incredible. It was a very nice night – if you weren’t there I pity you, I really do x
nice & friendly: a festival
We’re on at 6pm on Saturday 17th, between Maz Clarke + Sister Wendy and Blue Spectre (doors at 2:45, curfew 11pm). We’re in the Brunswick’s classy upstairs room on the bigger stage for a change – although I like the cellar bar scum dungeon too. Some ticketing info:
Full access weekend ticket: £15 (online) £16 (OTD)
Full access Saturday ticket: £12 (online) 13 (OTD)
Friday Night only: £6 (online) £7 (OTD)
Saturday upstairs only: £8 (online) £9 (OTD)
Saturday downstairs only: £6 (online) £7 (OTD)
…All correct at time of writing – as is the line-up. Thanks to Come On Rock Music for a titan organisational effort: will be a blast x
bleeding for my art – which I hope not to do all over that nice, classy stage
Safehouse 6 – an improv epic
There’s a 6th installment of the ongoing Safehouse album project (and I’m on it). This is another free improv epic, part of a vast unfolding tale that started in lockdown… Here’s what I wrote about the first one I played on, shortly after the world changed. Track above features some gleefully horrible guitar from me, pitted against two other musicians, while the entire album can be heard on Bandcamp, here.
no sleep till…
Peer Hat – w/ Good Boy Nikko & Kodak Kid
Pipeline – w/ Nil By Habit & The Wondering Weskits
Paradiddles – w/ Jenny Hallam & Sam Cooper
Yuck Club – w/ Astoria, Pest, The Mooches & Elliot Cook
…Someone call an ambulance. Actually, no – that’s not a rigorous schedule at all, not really. It is pretty cool, though. Nice to get out of town; nice to get back to town. Nice to play anywhere. Nice to be alive!
same room, different nights (plus tour news)
purple = pix by Mike Hackett * blue/green = Mik Hanscomb
It was fun to lose our minds in a small, packed room – photos from two gigs at The Pipeline in Brighton.
Back there again in August, plus some out-of-town dates:
Wed 10 Aug – Peer Hat (Manchester) – w/ Kodak Kid & Good Boy Niko
Thu 11 Aug – Pipeline (Brighton) 8pm, £5 – w/ Nil By Habit & The Wondering Weskits
Fri 12 Aug – Paradiddles (Worcester)
Sat 20 Aug – Yuck Club @ Trinity Bar (Harrow) 8pm, £5/4 – w/Astoria, Pest Band & Elliot Cook
…Might be a few more to add, we’ll see. Onwards into the airless, sweaty void xx
Graham Duff’s Mixtape & random pixxx
My new track Eerie World got a play on Graham Duff’s Mixtape (Totally Radio) for 13 April – listen to the programme here – good company I’m in.
And here, just because, are some recent live pix – they have that blurry nightmare feel I so enjoy:
live vid! (London, Feb ’22)
A rough & ready phone vid of the recent gig at Biddle Bros in London, courtesy Sad House Daddy. It captures the atmosphere – my guitar’s out of tune, the lunatics are slamdancing, the music’s very loud: it’s the full set. Enjoy!
Can’t Cheat Karma! Washing Up Time! (2 new releases)
I’ve got 2 new pieces of music on 2 different releases:
There’s Can’t Cheat Karma’s benefit album for Brighton Unemployed Centre Families Project:
“BUCFP provides practical support, education, advice and much more to the unemployed and those in poor living conditions, benefit claimants, the unwaged, pensioners, families and those on low incomes.
Download it, tell all yr friends, send us money. All profits go to BUCFP.”
&
Washing Up Time, released by Spirit of Gravity:
– The first features shitloads of punk & punk-adjacent bands like Austerity, Idle Bones, Ferox Fucking Ferox, Mules & others, plus a new track of mine.
– The second’s a compilation from Brighton’s foremost experimental electronic collective (SoG, celebrating 21 years of promoting gigs). There’s 36 tracks of foaming noise terror, including an instrumental from me, all based around a recording of Nil By Nose washing up.
I urge you to check them out on the links above, buy them & play them obsessively – both are out now.
EDIT: just heard my track from Washing Up got played on Lost Property‘s Totally Radio show, The Damping Wells – listen here…
new Safehouse album: MNO (plus gig pix)
Another improv album from Safehouse Brighton – I’m on tracks 1, 17 & 19. This is the fifth in a series of remote collaborations started over lockdown (am on every one except the first), so I’ll skip the blurb; enough to say it’s a big listen and a deep dive into freeform sound adventure. It’s also possibly the lightest, most accessible volume so far; who knows what’ll happen when we reach the end of the alphabet…
That’s one extreme, so here’s the reverse – from the Rossi Bar gig in November showing the other end of what I do:
1) MF – 2) La Pequena Em – 3) Austerity – 4) Austerity/Gulls (photos by Jimmy Guest)
It’s been a blast, somewhat against expectation given how bleak things looked in January – hope to do a lot more next year, and that everyone’s 2022 is utterly fucking fab.
x
visual riches, Oct ’21
A brief whizz of noise from Bar 42 the other week – song is Ugly Man.
Here’s the recent Eight Miles High Club gig in Brighton… had some good gigs lately, but this one had to be the most fun in a while – with 2) Fane 3) Melt Plastic Group & 4) the edge of an energetic crowd: all fantastic.
Eight Miles High Club on instagram
compilation album feature, plus GIGS
My track Envy The Birds (LP version) appears on this compilation from Aldora Britain Records, ‘King For A Day’.
In their own words of blurb, “AB Records is an e-zine and record label that promotes the music and work of authentic independent or underground artists from all around the world”, and – unlike some in this line – refreshingly legit and non-scammy… A shame that’s the exception rather than the norm… Anyway, there’s 25 tracks (mine’s 11th), including psych, fuzz, folk & coldwave; mine brings the art rock progressiveness, it says here.
It’s a song I’m proud of, and happy it’s getting a bit more exposure; incidentally, the slimmed-down radio edit just got a share on Point of View Promotions‘ Soundcloud, if you’d like to hear it with no second verse.
Gigs? Gigs:
(Looks a bit like I own shares in the Rossi Bar – sadly I don’t, it’s just the odd way these things work out sometimes.)
next gigs, Oct-Nov
The recent run of gigs went really well – as I may already have said, it’s so good to be doing this again and getting such an energized reception. The dream never rusted! There’s a few more to come over the next couple of months… situation permitting… in London (for Trust The Doc at the Amersham Arms), Worthing (Bar 42) & Brighton in November (Rossi Bar, electric line-up this time). Otherwise, am working on new material but that won’t see daylight for a while yet; working on life too, which… likewise, probably… x
So good to be back…
Bar 42, Worthing, 15 Aug
We did our first gig in about 18 months a couple of days ago.
It was hot, sweaty and loud – I’d almost forgotten how that feels. It went great, and I’m hyper-aware what a pleasure and privilege it is, after the shitty time we’ve all endured, to do this again. Personally, I dealt with the suspense by focusing on my recent album and working on a follow-up; but there was a point where many venues’ survival looked pretty shaky – as did the whole musical ecosystem where I occupy a marginal corner. And while the covid ordeal’s not over just yet, at least that part of it is. I’m very, very glad.
More to follow – something early September for Sad House Daddy in London first of all, then a couple of things closer to home. Details shortly! x
Belgium says I’m an extraordinary boy: album reviews & interview
Album review by The Viking in The Wilderness above – archived here, as it’s on facebook and therefore subject to be buried in the newsfeed.
Elsewhere in Europe, I’m “scandalously ignored” – Music in Belgium says so. (And who am I to argue?) A very nice review of the album in French.
Whisperin & Hollerin reckons “he keeps on churning ‘em out, and amazingly, without any dip in quality” – yes, well… when I have my next nervous breakdown that’ll be why. There are worse ways to spend a life, of course.
V13 kindly asked me to write about the 8 albums that changed my life – see me speak my brains here.
More words to follow, hopefully.
live at last: 22 Sept, Brighton
So I finally got the go-ahead for another gig in this our post-visitation yr 2021: I’m promoting this one, so you know it’ll be pharmaceutical quality.
After such a long lay-off it feels like a big deal, although the thing itself’s fairly low-key… Well I say that, but it features the immensely talented and fascinating Oli Spleen (with friends, in Gaslight Illuminati guise) & unique polymathic genius R Dyer.
Come see.
