Cosmic Thoughts Rides

I've wanted to stay relatively quiet about the latest incarnation of mine and Bones' adventures into what we think is acceptable to play for longer than a month.

We invited Steve to come jam with us on some quite raucous ideas we had. We wanted to chill, as Centaurs as a project is just not coming together in the way we wanted. This was to be more about playing loud again. After NCF went down, Id grown tired of playing hardcore, but in the two years since our last show, I have become a fan again.

I'd been obsessing over Suicide File and some more chaotic, older 31G type stuff too. A song came. Practice was good. But as with every thing we'd tried since 2007, we got bored. Quick.

I went back to the drawing board. Leah was staying with me over Summer, working, which meant travel alone, or stay, sunbathe and write. So I did that. I wrote and demo'd maybe 8 tracks, and offered them as almost a final chance to create a decent body of work with Bones and Ruari.

since then, we've been playing, scrapping back the layers, the chords, the riffs, and finding what it really is to write a pop song that challenges us as players and listeners. The need for Loud and clean tone has dwindled since every band on the universe seems to have jumped on that bandwagon(not that i mind a decent bandwagon)....

I'm now armed with a dodgy old Boss DD3, a Boss Metalizer from the 80s, with awesome built in Chorus, and hopefully my fucked up old Morely Pro Flanger once it's been fixed. We've begun mixing real pop convention with pushing the limits of noise with the tools at hand. Both Bones and Ruari are stripping it back, too. Steve is making me very happy with some awesome, relevant and poetic lyrics, and our plans for expanding the sound should come to fruition in the next month or so.

With all of this change, some of the scores of demo's from Jealous Again and Centaurs projects respectively, somehow now seem to make sense. We never wanted to be a rock band with synth, or an electro band with guitars....

WE MAY HAVE CRACKED IT

Take your time. The World Can Wait.

Honest Zanzibar

This weekend, I worked with Great Ancestors. My best friend, Alex has been working with these guys for the last few months, and now they're ready to take on the world. After Alex's Like Hurricane, and the others guys previous Trial of Fifty, this is a more, scrappy, stripped down, punky noise. They reminded me of early Constantines, JR Ewing, Drive Like Jehu and maybe Cloak/Dagger.... really exciting stuff, full of energy and TONE!!!!

We did the whole thing in 8hrs, and it's the first time i think I've been able to achieve what I set out to do with this recording venture; Spontaneous, Live, Raw and imperfect recording of bands interested in capturing the true essence of what they are about, when thrown in a room and told to play.

its been interesting that other bands I have worked with have not been able to stare themselves in mirror in such a stark way. The onslaught of nerves, perfection etc etc set in, and the process starts to draw out, which has been disappointing to me no end, I feel the goals we began with wane in favour of some intangible, perfect recording.

Which is why Great Ancestors are what you need right now... they're not faking. They're a punk band in the truest sense of the word. Loud, Spontaneous, Fun, and full of the need to be swept up in their own performances, soak up the moment that they are playing.

Go have a listen, buy their stuff, watch them live, book them, sign them. Now.

http://www.myspace.com/greatancestors

HIStory

One of my earliest and favourite memories is listening to 'Beat It' on my dads record player. The tone and quality of that track on wax is something else. It's that excitement and anticipation of the crackle of a record leading into the intro of any banger thats carried my love of music through to today. Thriller was the first record I used a record player with.

Bad was the first CD in our house when i was five..... Dangerous was the first album i owned for myself.... 

Thanks Dad, and thanks MJ.

Holy Roar Batman, its a free compilation!!!!

www.holyroarrecords.com

The wicked nice people over at Holy Roar have put together a compilation to celebrate the coming of spring, with the freshest acts on their roster, as well as rare NCF cut 'Return of the Black Dog' from our split seven inch with the galactic Gallows. 

Its a treat, featuring Rolo Tomassi, Throats, Holy State, Brontide, Jealous and a bunch more exciting stuff. Its an honour to still be in the running with these young bucks and a lovely gesture from Alex and Ellen to boot.

Love

Holy Late..... Be my valentine?

SO, after turning up in the middle of the night, making me get up real early the next day to go record them and then scream my flat down all day Sunday so my Landlady wants to now kill me... I think we cut a face smasher this Valentines weekend.... 

Rob, Victor, Dan and Max care soooooooooooooooo much about amps I cant believe it, but its that, that might have tipped it. We ripped two tele's through a JMP and a Selmer TnB 100W respectively, the bass through this rare ass Orange 140 they brought with them... FIT. The new material is already exhibiting real signs of maturity in their composition, I'm mad into it.

Editing is underway, expect to see these tracks going places soon, there seems to be no stopping the happiest band on the planet this year.

Love x

Forward

Jealous Again, now Centaurs moves forward a step this week, with the possible addition of a 6th member. Alex, Ross and Ruari have been putting up with Bones and I flicking around music and inspiration for the last 6 month or more, and around four weeks ago, i decided I'm really not the man for the job of vocalizing our work. I found thats its been a drain on my thoughts, and really not allowing me to be as sonically immersed as I want to be.

More news as this progresses.

More interesting things that have cropped up in the last few weeks;

Obama... woo.

In a rare fit of all things London, On the day I had tickets to see the formidable Les Savy Fav and Shellac crush my skull with their frankly electric sets at All Tomorrows Parties' Release The Bats on Thurs 30th Oct, I also attended the new Rothko Exhibition at the Tate Modern. The girl at the box office let me in for student price without me even asking for it! I haven't lost my youthful charm just yet it seems! Just as well, as I thought £12.50 was a tad on the pricey side, but i think the amount the work has made me consider since experiencing it has been surprising. I had been a fan in the laymen sense of the word for a couple of years, so the chance to see the later 'series era' of his work was a thrill. 

I went in with a reasonably bad headache, and all i can say is, the gravity of the pieces, especially viewed in some slightly more wide context than the small room already at the Tate, didn't help my head one bit. My perception of Rothko's work went from that of a sense of overwhelming darkness to something a little bit darker.... i felt that work wouldn't let me interpret it, its too big, too.... monolithic for me to even comprehend. He was relentless, almost arrogant in his delivery. How can I even begin to enjoy such satire? As he got more playful, the message seems more bleak.... he seemed to give up on his ideals, adding accurate white frames in his later work; almost giving in to his view of human kind putting everything in little boxes to collect, label and own. 

This wasn't helped by the fact, when we arrived the other side, available for purchase, were mugs, bags, cups and even T Shirts blazoned with out of scale, out of context 'pictures' of his work. It was a dark story that seeme dot get more tragic as we moved forward, his defiance and strength, gradually weened out of him, until all thats left is a shop. 

I've been swooning over the new record from Helms Alee, the new band from Ben Verellen(guitarist/vocals Harkonen), one of my heroes of the last few years. Sine the release of records such as No Age's Nouns and the resurgence of the genius of My Bloody Valentine, its great to see such an underrated performer back, and on the cutting edge of modern music. The record veers between Massive AmRep style rock a la Harkonen, but with quite beautiful passages that have almost captured the blurry, unfocussed dream state of bands such like MBV or Jesus and Mary Chain.... and it works! don't sleep on this band, I await their arrival on these shores with baited breath.

Helms Alee Myspace

Also, In celebration of progression and weary reminder of the dark days just passed in US Politics, Thom York has posted a DARRRRRK remix of the amazing Harrowdown Hill on the Radiohead blog DeadAirSpace.. go check it out immediately, its fantastic.

Dead Air Space

Thats all for now i think.... 

The Solution?

After my rants regarding the world creative, independent artists have to be in if they play music, i have been thinking, and thinking about how I could possibly move forward.

With NCF, i felt the pressure of admirers not to disappoint, the pressure from myself to show an amount of continuity in aesthetic, quality, genre and more, and not just from release to release but from song to song. There is too, the issue of 'dropping the ball' with regards to being in the public eye. If you are out of action for twelve months writing, the press and 'the kids' will probably have moved on. 

I've never been one to flog my wares for two or three years on end... touring one release until you force the issue on the masses, record labels etc. My creative attention span seems to be a a lot shorter than this trend. Modern answers to this? Side projects, singles versus albums etc. But it still exists in this environment which is controlled by scenesters, PR people, booking agents, labels, 'journalists,' and more bullshit people NOT actually doing the creative bit. If you are out of favour with some of these people, things can be very difficult. I'd also like to make the point, not all people that move in the mentioned professions are evil, some are the loveliest, most genuine and hard working people on earth ;-).

AAAAnnnny way.. I have decided that in future, I want as little to do with this world as possible. There must be another way right? The guys and gals which I live with have all got similar sentiments to me, we're all at the beginning of one career or another, but we're all still punk rockers... and we've been trying to work out a way of forging a creative outlet for ourselves in this age of blogs, internet socialness and a press in the UK that is as bullshit as it is today.

I don't want to be touring one EP in one band for two years... MAYBE getting some interest from a large UK indie.. supporting some lame US bands on some badly organised tours.... like I said, my attention span has already grown weary of this routine. I want to do my new band Jealous Again, I want to release some new NCF songs, I want to follow up the two or three other projects I have started in this last twelve months, And I want them all realised in way that justifies the creative work I put in... Recorded presentations, Collaborations with Artists for aesthetics, possible Live presentation of the material, where, when, with whom, how often, and most importantly, WHY?

I don't want to be tied to a 'Band,' I want to begin and finish projects, in much the same way an artist would. Writing, Recording, Ideas, Design, Production, Realization, Limited amounts of final product, to be sold as a piece art. Not a disposable download, not something thats here today, gone tomorrow... musicians put SO much time and effort in to writing and recording, the finished product should be EXACTLY how we want it, down to the paper the sleeves are printed on, the weight of the vinyl, and the price that is charged for the piece. Does this means paying more? probably yes. Does it means the customer is getting ripped off? FUCK no... people buy Screen Prints at ATP with band names on for upwards of £60 but don't want to pay a fair price for the music itself? weird. 

I understand it though, who cares about mass produced, cheap CDs you can get in tesco, HMV or downloads for free?? But music projects, created, recorded, printed, limited, collaborative works with artists, limited and numbered... thats a different kettle of fish altogether right?

The Don't Look Back projects from ATP have inspired me no end... I saw Sonic Youth's Daydream Nation at the Roundhouse in Camden last year, and i thought, why didnt NCF just do that from the beginning? We forced ourselves into playing a set made up from parts of Dungeness and Black Ballads because we were in an environment where we had to entertain people. What I want to do is present my new work to people, not perform like a monkey while they get fucked and couldn't give a shit until we play Transgression. Bands at our level dont have choice over environment in which they perform, how much it is to see it, and to some extent have pressure on them to use content in which will keep 'customers' entertained as opposed to people seeing a creative presentation.

These ideas, along with ideas about visual arts, exhibitions, and all sorts of creative projects are starting to take shape in my mind, and about a few of us might be able to execute accomplished projects from all different creative avenues. Keep an ear to the ground!