‘Tom Slatter is a quintessentially British eccentric with a quirky imagination who has produced some of the most innovative progressive music in recent years.’ – Prog Magazine
We Sprang into Motion, When they told us the news
Half a herd snared by the beast of the air
Propellers a-whirring, we took to the sky
Off to ensnare the Kraken
And as we rose higher, our engines a-blur
A strange copper tang, filled up our lungs
The scent of the kraken, afloat on the breeze
Grew stronger the closer we flew
The beast of the air wails a song
Wails a song to keep us dreaming
An eye through the clouds
Tentacles reaching
An eye through the clouds
Tentacles bewitching
The beast of the air wails a song
Wails a song to keep us dreaming
They say history changed that day
When they tried to switch the lights on
Half a thousand dead
When the tried to switch the lights on
Maybe bad luck, maybe poor design
But they changed the law that day
Now we’ll never switch the lights on
A century of mining
Of oil spills, and gas explosions puncturing the earth
A century of digging
Gave us blackened skies and ruined fields and cities filled with smog
And from this balloon we see
The world encased in iron
And from this balloon we see
The world we used to have
And from this balloon we see
The world encased in iron
And from this balloon we see
The world we used to live upon
before we turned her sour
My first is in steam, but not in engine
My second is in engine but not in trial
My third is in love but not in trust
My fourth is my second come around again
My fifth is in never and not in freedom
My whole is a number to enter in here
Solve the puzzle, figure out the password and you get to hear a new demo song. Fun Eh?
I can’t deny the Radiohead influence on this one, particularly in the subject matter, but also in the composition – building up to a climax, in this case the pitch-shifted harmony vocals, is quite a Radioheadesque thing to do. The slow build-up of layers and the high pitched vocals are quite Radiohead as well I suppose.
Do I ever write anything original?
I have all the time you need
I have all you want
My arms are always here
To make you feel complete
Even when you’re crying, I still smile.
My face is fixed in a permanent grin
My latex skin never frowns
You bought me, to make you feel complete
And I’ll always be here
Even when you’re crying, I still smile.
And your last touch of real skin hurt too much.
But I have all the time you need
My love never dies
I thought it might be fun to do a blog post about each of the songs on Spinning the Compass
This song is a little naughty. It began life as a song about the antikythera mechanism but as so many things do, eventually ended up about sex.
This mechanism it’s driving us apart,
It shines a prism on the kind of love we share
This mechanism is making passion spoil
It tastes of something the cloying tang of wine and oil
Our love relies on clockwork
The careful use of gears and wheels
More specifically, it’s about a love affair that has been corrupted by toys, cogs and machinery, to the point where genuine human contact seems impossible.
Of course, such despairing and bleak lyrics have to be set to a jaunty tune.
You and me in the gaslight with our machinery
Our artificial steam powered hearts will never set us free
This mecanism isn’t you or me
The song was written for February Album Writing Month, and began as a couple of largely wordless improvisations (Warning, what follows are very rough demo recordings of a work in progress).
This is the first improvisation I recorded. At this point I had one line of lyrics, some chords, a vague idea of the groove/bass line and little else.
You can hear me trying out ideas, and playing little bits of melody on the guitar to make clear to myself what I was singing.
This is how I usually improvise – guitar and voice at the same time and little idea of what the eventual lyrics will be – though I usually do have at least one line to give me an idea of mood.
Here you can hear me improvising to try and figure out a chorus – some of the original chords from this survived, as did the ‘way you get to me’ arpeggio.
One difference you can hear is that I’ve a much clearer idea of how the verses will sound. In between these improvs I wrote a few lines down.
Both of these sound files, as rough and ready as they are, illustrate how the song began to develop. Here’s the demo I posted for FAWM09 – the finished song, albeit not recorded as well as the version on Spinning the Compass.
The full lyrics are:
This mechanism it’s driving us apart,
It shines a prism on the kind of love we share
This mechanism is making passion spoil
It tastes of something the cloying tang of wine and oil
Our love relies on clockwork
The careful use of gears and wheel
This mechanism it isn’t how we feel
You and me in the gaslight with our machinery
Our artificial steam powered hearts will never set us free
This mecanism isn’t you or me
The games we’re playing type writers for our hearts
The rules and rhythms
The limits of a steam powered love
It started somewhere lighter
Somehow we got lost somewhre
This mechanism won’t get us anywhere
You and me in the gaslight with our machinery
Our artificial steam powered hearts will never set us free
This mechanism isn’t you or me
Oil is the wine
Roses in the chains
Burning a pilot light
Isn’t carrying a flame
You and me in the gaslight with our machinery
Our artificial steam powered hearts will never set us free
This mechanism isn’t you or me
It was easily the most fun I’ve had at a gig for ages, especially because of all the silliness in the ustream chatroom.
The sound and vision were pretty good, though listening back I would have liked the guitar quieter. Rather than ripping the audio straight from here, I’m thinking of doing another seperate acoustic recording of some of these songs today. Because I can.
Thanks to all those who listened, and if you didn’t the video above will show you what you missed.
vast turbulent structures of glass move through the global atmosphere, posing a dire threat to machinery and drifting across whole continents in a kind of low-intensity storm of aerosolized crystal… The speculative climatology of alien worlds.
I loved the notion, and tried to take inspiration by downloading a load of pretty glass pictures from flickr, renaming them WAV files, opening them up in an audio editor and seeing what weird noises I could get out of them.
Mostly I got static, but slowing it down enough and adding some effects produced some interesting sounds.
With that as a background I set to work with a few notes from D minor (Initially D E F A Bb). A brief sojourn into the relative major and the music was complete.
The lyrics of course are about something completely different. I’m not entirely sure what:
Had enough of floating crystals, want to smash them all to shards
Had enough of all your miracles, your shiny house cards
Couldn’t just for once a brighter light be shone into the sky
couldn’t just for once an ugly truth come along to wipe away your smile
Had enough of all this beauty, had enough of all this gold
had enough of all this freedom, the best parts already sold
Couldn’t just for once a brighter light be shone into the sky
couldn’t just for once an ugly truth come along to wipe away your smile
These structures of glass
Were dazzling me
A light from our past
A fixed geometry
But the slightest hammer blow
could take it all apart
The slightest hammer blow
Could take it all apart
These structures of glass
PS totally unrelated, by don’t forget to watch my Ustream gig Wednesday 2nd June 8pm BST (or later on the archive). Click Here!
The fan page isn’t much to look at yet, but it does contain a lot of music. Here’s the text from that page:
This page will contain all the content that only mailing list subscribers can get their hands on. At the moment, that means my album Spinning the Compass, the bonus track The Man Who Learnt To Fly and the singles Last Sunlight, DeadPuppyRecycling, Papercut, Ratcatcher, Lines in the Dirt, Seven Curses and Structures of Glass
To get the password, join the mailing list by putting your email in the box over to the right.
Seven Curses and Lines in the Dirt are two new songs that share a steampunky/Victorian Explorer/ancient civilizations theme. They will be emailed free to members of my mailing list in the next week or so, but they’re are available now to listen to and download for any price you want (including free). Just click the buttons above.
