I quite fancied prancing about pretending to be a composer so I asked a bunch of people to send me recordings in either C Minor or Eb Major. Then I stitched together a bit of this and a bit of that and made this lovely monster: Once Were Strangers. I knew some of the people very well, others were friends of friends, and the task felt heavy with responsibility towards all the contributions that people had trusted me with. I set a rule for myself that I would use something from everyone who contributed but in the end I didn’t really need that rule because this thing emerged with each contributor taking a little space together. I would like to do more stuff like this.
Released August 25, 2014
Category: Case Files
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Once Were Strangers
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Is There Life on Neptune?
Listening to WFMU improves my quality of life by at least 17% which doesn’t sound like all that much but look here I’m not saying that it’s 17% great I’m saying that it makes everything else about 17% better and that’s really quite a big deal when you think about it.
Every year WFMU holds a fundraiser wherein many of the DJs put together special compilations CDs to give away to supporters. I made this to support Sammantha’s 2018 compilation on the theme of glass.
It doesn’t really sound like anything else I’ve ever made. It’s kind of proggy, wantonly surfing rhythms and styles.
That’s Jowe Head joining me on vocals, doing really a rather spectacular job and nailing the whole thing in one take.
Check out wfmu. Sometimes terrible, always brilliant.
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The Nightwatchman Sings
Growing up in the 90s I listened to a lot of mix tapes. My favourite tape was one that had been recorded over so many times it had become warped. Between songs were glimpses of whatever had been recorded before, esoteric phantoms that couldn’t be traced. I liked to put that tape on low at night before I went to sleep and lie in the darkness listening out for my favourite part, when ghostly horns and strings emerged from a heavy guitar drone and just before the tape clicked off the warm tones of a radio 3 late night DJ announced “that was Miles Davis and Gil-”.
Thus began my obsession with interzones: the moments before sleep, long walks through London, surfing through radio waves, transcendence, Tangier, leaving, arriving, moving through. The Nightwatchman Sings is a collection of such moments without beginnings or endings: songs emerge and give way to the next moment; seasick recollections of troubled dreams; a fevered mind grasping in the dark for connections.
released September 28, 2017
rotten bliss 