Enable Original Sound

 I was asked to take part in an art series by Sam Walton: 'portraits of musicians performing, silently and internally, music of particular significance to them.' You can watch the resulting bizarreness here.

It also got me thinking about this piece Pensiero by Frank Bridge that I learnt as part of one of my viola grades aaaaaaaaaaaages ago. It was the first piece I had to learn that I didn't view as a bit of a drudge, something to get through to pass an exam, the piece was far removed from the  maths-precision cardboard of Bach, I actually felt something playing it; so cheers Frank for making me not ditch the viola.

Shattercones hit the studio

After a few failed attempts due to lockdown regulations and rubbish employers we finally made it into the studio to do some new recordings, more on that later but there are some photos of the back of my head over on Instagram. Felt good to be back at it making an unholy racket. 

Plague song (for Médecins Sans Frontières)

 So, a short while into lockdown Nick asked me if I'd finally purchased that audio interface to do some home recording with because he'd written a graphical score and wanted me to record my interpretation. After some typicallly epic indecissiveness due to wrongbrain I finally picked one up (Native Instruments) and today my version of Nick's Plaguesong score has been released into the world along with all the other excellent artists, with all proceds to Médecins Sans Frontières.

My piece was recorded just with the viola and a couple of Electro Harmonix pedals (HOG & Holy Stain) and I'm really pleased with how it came out; its the first self recorded solo piece I've ever released, hope you like it.

Balcony Online Festival, 18th July

Balcony festival is back on the 18th July in aid of Carers UK and the deft delights of Gris-de-lin will be playing our stage. 

Line-up (so far):

Vincent Bugozi - Benumu Stage
Nervous Twitch - Reckless Yes Stage
Mouse - LOUD WOMEN Stage
Gris-de-Lin - Sonic Tonic Stage
+ Many more to be announced soon

Donate to Carers UK: https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/balconyfestival7

Watch from 6pm on Saturday 18th July at: https://tinyurl.com/balcony7

Love on Repeat

I made another Shattercones video, this time mostly using footage of South America shot by Arran Goodchild (Shattercones' drummer/synth lord/drum machine operator / all round lovely man) along with a few bits of heavily treated stock footage and again editing it on the trusty but fiddly app YouCut, it's only fiddly cos I have rubbish thumbs. I actually paid for a couple of add-on 'pro' effects too just to ensure the stock footage looked like it belonged in the same room as the other footage, effectively scuffing it up a bit, sorry horsey. Love on Repeat, a copy of a copy, seeing double, with a horse, not my lovely horse...

The video has already been featured in many corners of the earth, including Canada, The Netherlands and Australia... does the earth even have corners? ...ask the flatearthers.

Oppenheimer video

I made this video using footage I filmed whilst in Cambodia on a Google Pixel 3 using YouCut video maker. We'd just received the final mix for the EP before I went away and the more I started filming short clips of landscapes (just for posterity) the more I could hear the song behind the images and I started shooting specifically with it in mind, it made thematic sense, if I was a twat I'd say the video made itself.  I'm pretty pleased with how it came out though considering it's the first music video I've ever made and I pretty much put it all together on the long arse flight on the way home. For someone as overly critical with everything they do to be 'pretty pleased' must mean something ...I should probably give a credit to Jason Powdrill as it was his seed of an idea that I expanded on, he's probably forgotten about that though. 

Balcony Online Festival

Neiltones

I've added a number of new songs to my playlist on Spotify including the new Shattercones EP of course and a couple of tracks by this great new solo artist from Kent, Daniel McDonagh, where I contributed some suitably creaky viola.

Shattercones - Oppenheimer EP

Oppenheimer, the debut EP by new outfit Shattercones is out now! 

Available for streaming and to purchase on Bandcamp.

Artwork by Serge Najjar.