Structures of Glass

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Structures of Glass

Structures of Glass is my contribution to The Big Calm (a collaborative piece written by members of Cafe Noodle).

It started life as a title borrowed from a post on BLDGBLOG that imagined:

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!

More on the Fan Page

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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

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<a href="http://tomslatter.bandcamp.com/album/seven-curses-lines-in-the-dirt">Seven Curses by Tom Slatter</a>

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.

Wednesday 2nd June – My First Online Gig

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On Wednesday 2nd June I will be performing some, all or none of the songs from my steampunk album (and others besides) live via the internet.

To be specific, it will be on Ustream.

More details to come, all you need to do is not make plans for that evening at about 8.pm.

In the meantime, here’s my first little experiment with Ustream:

Monsters, Whores and More

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Fledderjohn is the performing name of a gentleman named Michael Heath. A couple of years ago, back when my songwriting blog was trying to be a podcast, I made use of a wonderful song of his to illustrate some songwriting point or other. I lost the recording of that podcast when moving server a few months ago, so I can’t share that with you.

I can however, share his new album. Monsters, Whores and More is a wonderful set of songs. I don’t know if he had steampunk in mind when he created it, but with that airship on the cover, the gloriously fragile acoustic folk sound, lines like ‘Bumble bees and beagles, Mr Darwin help me please’ and songs about adventure on the high-seas, I’m going to declare it a steampunk(ish) masterpiece.

Particular favourites of mine are the opening track Tiny Boat, Fiddler’s Field and Evolution Song, but the whole album is a sublime slice of nautical songwriting that deserves to be on your music player of choice.

<a href="http://fledderjohn.bandcamp.com/album/monsters-whores-and-more">Tiny boat by Fledderjohn</a>

New songs

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Hello you!

A couple of new songs:

Ratcatcher

Ratcatcher – A steampunk song that makes use of Victorian slang to warn of a scary, inhuman steam-powered robot policeman.

Papercut – A song that happened by accident because of a loop I had from another piece. I think it’s about living in a police state, but just because I wrote the lyrics doesn’t mean I have to understand them.

Sepia Chord’s Song of the Day

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On Tuesday, Mechanism was Sepiachord’s Song of the Day.

Isn’t that nice?

PS. I’m currently working on a 9 minute long song with the working title of ‘The Trial of the Infamous Seven-Bells John’.

It’s about a murder on a steam locomotive and the subsequent trial of the titular rogue.

I am serious.