It’s the 5th Anniversary of my first solo album Spinning the Compass, so I am giving it away for free.
I Still Smile is the 7th track from the album. It’s about a latex and metal substitute friend who will never judge you or leave you or hurt you. Which is what we all want really, isn’t it?
It’s the 5th Anniversary of my first solo album Spinning the Compass, so I am giving it away for free.
Two is the 6th track from the album. It’s an instrumental duet between guitar and synth and is one of three such pieces I wrote at uni. I really like it. You can hear Three if you join my mailing list and get the password to the fan page. I might record One at some point. Or I might not.
It’s the 5th Anniversary of my first solo album Spinning the Compass, so I am giving it away for free.
Bad Dreams is the 5th track from the album. It is about bad dreams! I really like the broken fuzzy loops and weird solos. One of my favourite of my songs.
It’s the 5th Anniversary of my first solo album Spinning the Compass, so I am giving it away for free.
Lines Overheard at a Séance is the fourth song from the album. It is about ..er.. what someone overhears at a séance. Who’s overhearing it? The same person who’s POV the song Ironbark is mostly from, and who is the subject of the short stories that came with my last two EPs. Yes, my work can be quite involved. And silly. I like the chords in this.
It’s the 5th Anniversary of my first solo album Spinning the Compass, so I am giving it away for free.
Meet me in Gaslight is the third song from the album. It’s a love song in a standard 32 bar song form. I deliberately covered it in fuzz and static cos I wanted something that sounded like it might have been recorded in a steampunky world.
It’s the 5th Anniversary of my first solo album Spinning the Compass, so I am giving it away for free.
Mechanism is the first song from the album. It is about machines getting in the way of love affairs and features a synth melody in the middle and some chord voicings that I am very proud of.
I had not planned on ‘going solo’ at the time. I was still doing silly things with Comrade Robot, and at the time that was my main musical undertaking. But as part of FAWM 2009 I had written a few songs that seemed to fit into a steampunk theme, so on and off over that year I put things together.
It just so happened that independently at the same time, Joe was also doing some steampunk models, particularly his ‘Oldroid’ models, so there was a ready made set of photos and ideas to use as artwork.
Spinning the Compass is about body horror, bad dreams and machines that get in the way or substitute for real love. Mechanism talks about love gone wrong, I Still Smile about latex and rubber alternatives to human contact, the title track is about being lost in a contracting world that doesn’t make sense and threatens to disappear.
Nevertheless, it is to me a happy album. It was recorded cheap mics and even cheaper software, and I didn’t really know what I was doing. It received my first bad review in which it was referred to as ‘an experiment too far’ (and a few good reviews too) and I learnt a hell of a lot from making it.
It is also where the Seven Bells John saga started. One of the songs from my next album was written at the same time as Spinning the Compass, and Lines Overheard at a Séance is most definitely part of that narrative. Indeed if you’ve heard my most recent EP, Black Water you will have heard the musical echoes of this in ‘Ghosts in my Dreams’ .
Five years ago it was released, accidentally kicking off a solo ‘career’ that so far has encompassed three albums, a few EPs and lots of fun.
Over the next 9 days I’m going to do a little daily post about each of the songs on the album.
You can get it for free here, if you’d like a digital copy.
(Just inspired and influenced. I haven’t stolen anything in a way that would stand up in court!)
1. Rhapsody in Blue by Gershwin (The big sweeping melody from the end)
2. Rhapsody on a theme by Paganini (The big sweeping melody from the middle)
3. Red by King Crimson
4. Epiphany from Sweeney Todd (What? I like this musical!)
5. Tarkus by ELP
6. Random bits from Phantom of the Opera (Yeah, I like that musical too. Stop judging me! I bet you enjoyed some 80s synth pop or BackStreet boys or something.)
7. Can-Utility and the Coastliners by Genesis
8. Scenes from a Memory by Dream Theater (Is this more embarrassing than the musicals? DT are a bit of a Marmite band aren’t they?)
1. The entire outside world is infected
2. Murderer, murderer, you’re going to hell where you belong
3. I wet my gills and slip away
4. You can find you gods in alleyways, or in the river mud.
5. Have the mermaid’s come? Do they sing to us, with their sweet and rotting, fishy lullabies?
6. Three shots fired and one shot struck, a pistol to the head
7. Where the devilfish roll in the boiling waves
8. I believe the man in the burned ragged clothing who choked out the story before he died
9. The spores of the creatures that broke through the locks…
(I think we’re nearly mixed. Artwork, maybe a video to do. Release around February perhaps. Whoop)