The Seven Bells John Saga – Part 1

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Seven Bells John is a character that has been haunting my songs for quite a while. In fact he’s obsessed me so much that he’s spilled out of songs and into short stories as well.

Through These Veins, my first release this year, included a short story and the new one, Black Water does as well.

Who is Seven Bells John?

He’s a criminal, a murderer. He first turned up by name in the perfectly sensible song The Steam Engine Murders and the Trial of Seven Bells John, but his first appearance was in Lines overheard at a Séance on my first solo album Spinning the Compass.

The songs haven’t been released in chronological order however so here’s the low-down on which songs fit where in the saga of Seven Bells John.

Nightfall

Smaller_nightfall_ryan_and_sarah_Deeds

Nightfall is chronologically the earliest song. It tells the story of Seven Bells John as he struggles with what Dr Margoyles and her husband did to him. Imagine running through a forest at dusk, craving meat and hating yourself for what you’ve become.


 

Moon the Water

Moon_in_the_water

Moon the Water is a song from Seven Bells John’s point of view. Several years have passed since he escaped from Margoyles.  He is once again forced to flee from his home, pursued by people who want him dead, but he does not care because he feels free. He has come to terms with what he is and knows what he must do – kill the doctor.

Lines Overheard at a Séance

 

Having exhausted the more orthodox methods available to him in his pursuit of Seven Bells John, Detective Coppertree turns to a medium. He and the parents of some of John’s victims ask the spirit world to help. When they ask for information on where the last bodies are buried this is what they hear in reply.

So that’s a guide to the first half of the story. Part two will turn up soon. Ish. 

 

A couple of reviews

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Interestingly, Through These Veins continues to split opinion. People seem to think it odd, or object to ‘Without my Medicine’. Or my voice. Or both.

(To be perfectly clear, I am more than happy for people to express any opinion on my work, and both of these reviews are positive. I’ve had bad ones too, which I always enjoy because they’re a great source of quotes!)

Here’s a great quote from Kev Rowland: This music should be very carefully labeled, as take it from me this is not something that will immediately make the listener think that it is essential, and will more likely elicit the “this is awful, what are you doing playing this?” response. Luckily for me my brain is used to me ignoring my ears and playing music more than once, and the more I played this the more I got inside Tom’s twisted, dark and surreal world.

And from Diego at Progshine: The title-track closes Through These Veins (2014) very well. Initially, it starts with a little piano and it follows with a weird sounding guitar in a waltz rhythm. A really good and different track!

And now for something completely different – Sid Smith’s String Quartets collaboration.

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Sid Smith has been taking photos of rain on his windows for years. This year he decided to put ’em up as graphic scores. This is what I came up with for two ‘movement’.

These are electroacoustic/acousmatic pieces, rather than my usual prog rock (Think Artikulation by Ligeti, a piece I loved when studying composition at Uni).

The only sound sources were a wine glass, my bathroom mirror and some water. These pieces are more inspired by the pictures than following them closely as a graphic score.

 

Black Water – New EP available to pre-order

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I’m not entirely sure what the difference between ‘pre-order’ and ‘order’ really is, but whichever is right you can now do it with my new EP.

Yup, that’s right, Black Water will be released on 15th July and you can now order yourself a copy. You can get the download, or the CD. You even get the first track straight away, rather than having to wait a month.

There will be extras with this, including a bonus track and a short story called ‘Ironbark’ (‘wait a minute Tom, wasn’t your second album called Ironbark?’ Yes it was. The title is no coincidence).

There will also be a pay what you want version available on release day if you’d rather that. No extras there though.

Here’s a third person press release thing I wrote about it:

Tom Slatter Releases ‘Black Water’, the second of 3 releases based on the same concept

In January 2014 Tom Slatter began work on his two EP, one album, steampunk-prog, concept project. 6 months later, and halfway through the project, Tom is keeping his head down and plowing forward in the hope that his creative vision is nearer to triumph than it is to madness.

‘Black Water’ is the second of his concept EPs, following on from ‘Through these Veins,’ an EP that contained songs about rogue surgeons, body horror and suspended animation. Realising that the first EP’s high concept, narrative songs might be a little too prog for some, Tom is trying a different tack with the new CD. He explains: ‘I tried writing some more confessional, singer-songwriter type songs. The idea was to focus on acoustic instruments and sing about my feelings. But I ended up singing about werewolves instead’.

‘Black Water’ is a collection of four acoustic songs detailing moments in the life of Seven Bells John, a character that first came to life Tom’s ten minute steamprog song ‘The Steam Engine Murders and the Trial of Seven Bells John’. The character was seen again in the songs and accompanying short story for Through These Veins, and has in fact been popping up in his songs for the last 5 years.

‘The fourth track on the new EP deliberately harks back to one on my first album and narratively speaking the title track from Black Water takes place in the middle of the title track from my second album, Ironbark. I’ve always been a fan of narrative music, like Operation Mindcrime by Queensryche, or Coheed and Cambria’s multi-album concept stuff, and these news songs really follow that tradition.’

Black Water can be pre-ordered from www.tomslatter.co.uk

Once the EP is released on 15th July, Tom will begin work on the full-length album that will conclude the series.

‘Blackwater’ will be released on Tuesday 15th July and will available in 3 forms:

The Pay-What-You-Want version

Tom Explains: Just the 4 tracks, no frills.

The Paid-For download version

Tom explains: You get the four tracks, plus a bonus remix of ‘Lines Overheard at a Séance’ from my first album and a short story that fits in with the EP.

The Physical version

Tom explains: This is the CD, plus the download, extra tracks and short story.

Confession – I’m not much of a music fan.

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It might be heresy, it might be a dangerous thing to admit, but I am not much of a music fan.

There are acts I like. I’m always going to want to hear the new King Crimson, or Iron Maiden, or whoever. If concert tickets for acts like that were still sensibly priced I’d go see them as well, but I don’t regret missing them.

I also don’t feel the need to own every CD, or DVD. I don’t own any band t-shirts.The CDs I do have are poorly treated, the vast majority still in boxes since I moved house more than a year ago.

I have no desire to collect artefacts related to my favourite acts. I don’t care about their biographies or whether I’ve got everything they ever released.

(The exception is those independent musicians who I follow. I have the latest Matt Stevens, Simon Godfrey, Mike Kershaw albums, to name a few, but that’s me supporting an indie artist and it feels different to being a ‘fan’ – though I’m not sure why or how)

So do I not listen to music? I listen to it all the time, and I try to make it music I don’t know as often as it is work I’m familiar with. But I listen like a musician. What works and why? How can I take these ideas and incorporate them into my own work?

When I see a live act, it makes me itch to get on stage myself, and so can be a frustrating experience at the same time as entertaining.

There’s no such thing as background music – if I can hear music it becomes the foreground. There’s always a tune in my head,and it’s usually a tune I’m halfway through composing. Music isn’t something you collect, or listen to, or watch, or write about, or discuss.

Music isn’t something I listen to. Music is something I do.

Olddroid/5.L.Droid

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oldroid

So my brother Joe ‘The Dark Power’ Slatter makes models.

He makes them very well. This is the little chappie who is on the front cover of my first solo album, Spinning the Compass.

 

He was also the inspiration, kinda, for my song Ingenious Devices, from Spinning the Compass.

 

Here’s a video that uses this model, and another similar one, as well as couple of my songs:

The Third Annual Surrey Steampunk Convivial

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Yesterday I played a solo set at the Third Annual Surrey Steampunk Convivial – and it were bloody good fun.

The event was organised by the lovely, quite mad Ben Henderson, of the band Moth. It included a Hat Stacking world record attempt, shadow puppets, corset limbo, a recreation of the battle of Waterloo and, of course, snail races.

Lots of fun, well worth attending if you’re in Surrey next February.

I played the whole of the Miser’s Will, something I’ve done live only a couple of times – material I am rather proud of. Even more pleasantly, there were actually people in the audience who knew some of my songs. Not many, but some.

Probably the last solo gig or a while, as I’m busy elsewhere for much of the year. However, there will be plenty of recorded music over the next year, and hopefully some online gigs.

 

 

Through These Veins – First Reviews

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The first couple of reviews of the new EP are in:

The closing title track, begins as a Rhodes lullaby for the first 28 seconds before going into the style of Camille Saint-Saens heavy inspirations of the Danse Macabre in the sinister waltz time signature and not to mention the string section, keeps the tension going in this jazzy-classical-rock sound. And it is really terrifying and menacing, but the lyrics that Tom wrote are staggering and mind-boggling.

Zachary Nathanson – Music from the Other Side of the Room

 

Steampunk is a genre of fiction and style that takes many forms, from a joyful celebration of Victoriana to disturbingly bio-dysmorphic body-horror; Tom Slatter’s interests tend towards the murky darkness of the latter, and his music is largely directed at articulating unsettling character-driven narratives in such a setting. Through These Veins continues his efforts in this… vein, with dramatic, cinematic songs telling stories of scientific hubris, unhealthy creative obsession and personal tragedy.

Oliver Arditi

Through These Veins – The New EP

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I have a new EP. I’ve written about it in the third person:

Tom Slatter Releases ‘Through These Veins’, the first of 3 releases based on the same conceptcoversmall

What could be more prog rock than a concept album? ‘Two concept EPs and a concept album,’ is Tom Slatter’s answer. In his continuing effort to jump on the prog rock bandwagon, Tom has made the commercially savvy decision to dedicate the next twelve months to composing and recording two EPs and one album about the same story, including a twenty minute epic to crown the whole project off sometime in the Autumn.

The first step in this cynical, conceptual sell out is Through These Veins, an EP that tells the story of a rogue surgeon who starts turning her patients into macabre living sculptures.

‘My songs are usually driven by narrative, and this is no exception. In particular I was thinking about albums like Outside by David Bowie, or Operation Mindcrime by Queensryche.

‘Plus, I saw all these English prog rock guys coining it in with their long songs and concept albums and I thought – I need a piece of that. Matt Stevens drives a limousine you know. Alan Reed takes a private jet to the studio every single day,’ said Tom

Through these Veins will be available in 3 forms:

The Pay-What-You-Want version

Tom Explains: Just the 4 tracks, no frills. You’ve got to do pay what you want these days, ever since Radiohead. I hate Radiohead.

The Paid-For download version

Tom explains: This is the one I actually want people to get. You get the four tracks, plus extra artwork and a 2000 word short story that fits in with the EP.

The Physical version

Tom explains: You get a CD with this too, plus all the download stuff. This is the best one, obviously, cos it has the higher profit margin.