"Tropic of Ghosts" ~ album by Buck Theorem

 "Tropic of Ghosts"

 Hot with longing, warnings and dreaming when laying in the heat of elegies.

This one is concept ambient with the diversion into occasional rhythm.  All about world worries, simple desire and ever-present grief. 

 It is fronted by a miniature "Ghost on a Tropical Island", made by Dimuth Fernando (@www.instagram.com/gallery4.20/).

 

Songs of Pals ~ seconds

 Firstly, a pal's track that has a video where I don a mask of Johnny Hallyday and dance to the beat poetry of contemporary confusion. Jimmy Andrex and the Bible of Dreams puts  a pin in the modern zeitgeist of unreliable facts and truths.

 

My pal Chimneyheart is about to change his name to Blazing Pebbles, so now seems a decent time to note this song that moreorless helped solidify our friendship a long, long time ago.

 

Manu Roig has released a mini-album of skittishly upbeat electronics - here's the lead track that just raises the serotonin the more it pops and claps along.

 

 And here's a favourite from Robert Sunday, steeped in a particularly English melancholy and wistfulness.

"The Wrong and Future Song " - a music video

 

 

This is a video for my track "The Wrong and Future Song" by Jimmy Andrex. It's from my album "Lawns of a Better Place".

Jimmy Andrex is a Northern Beat Poet of wit, insight and generosity. You should check him out.

Does the hand of fate prevent you from getting what you want?

 

The Wrong and Future Song

There’s a rock I thought I would throw, he said

There’s a whole mountain of shit I thought I would know

I expected a franchise that would never let go, he said

Then he played the wrong song.

 

There’s a piece-of-mind I thought I’d misplace

Tides of inspiration and ricochets of grace

Punching holes in the moon when I’m just fed up, he said

Then he played the wrong song.

 

“Where’s my Cornish cottage

By the edge of the sea?”

Living atop a magnum opus, by the sea

Daydreaming… daydreaming…

And then he played the wrong song.

You Only Live Twice - single by Buck Theorem

This Nancy Sinatra spin has always been a favourite of mine, by  John Barry with lyrics by Leslie Bricusse.It's true that I probably like John Barry's James Bond music more than the films themselves (except for 'Casino Royale' 2006, which I consider to be one of the very best action films). Music so thrilling.

 Anyway, here is my effort:

"Lawns of a Better Place" ~ a Buck Theorem album

 Lawns of a Better Place

a Buck Theorem album

Non-electronic: inspired more by folk and acoustic as well as the usual alternative and ambient. And Field Recordings. Started a long, long time ago (decades) when I first started to try and record etc.

So some of these started as 4-Track recordings. These people I knew but I now hardly remember lent me a 4-Track and then they disappeared and left it with me. I made very good use of it, recording the duos I was in. (There was the time my cat slept on it, pressed buttons and recorded over everything…) Then we were all digital. I think I gave it to a friend…

And then there was COVID, where I found that a year and a half was quite enough of being in my natural state of a hermit, thank you. “Lockdown in a Drowned House” is obviously about that time. As it happened, my first outing after lockdown was a gig where I was performing but my equipment wasn’t working. I didn’t care. I was happily amongst friends again, for I am as much a social animal as a hermit, it would seem.

“Buzz of the Lawn” features a recording of one of my lockdown walks through the park. I remember that was a great, Sunny English Summer where we mostly stayed indoors whilst others went defiantly bonkers.

I dabbled in a little horror here with “Witch Tree” and “In A Stone Asylum”. A little street corner doo-wop, a little beach harmonica.

“Dead Names on Chapel Walls” was inspired by the time when I was clearing out a chapel as I was a cleaner in what used to be an old Victorian school building. In the entrance, there were plaques of students that had died there, one at Snowden, if I remember correctly. Another on the cricket field when the ball hit his chest and knocked out his weak heart. If you want a glimpse of the place, watch ‘Monty Mython’s Meaning of Life’; I found slips of lyrics still in stacks of Bibles (“Oh Lord, please don’t roast me…”).

During lockdown, my only In Person contact was with Pete at the comic shop. I would go there and we would talk through our masks amongst the comics for ages. Here’s to you, Pete.

Songs of Pals

Here are some of my favourite tracks from pals & people I know. I am lucky enough to have many talented people to call friends, as I am sure we all do, but here are tunes by mine that I favour. You should follow them - I'm using BandCamp for this.

 

Here is a track that is just a gorgeous, gorgeous wave of guitars telling you to take it easy. James and I have worked for decades together and I am still a sucker for his guitar.

 

And here is a track that I consider to be the best Depeche Mode that Depeche Mode never wrote. The first couple of times I saw Leg Puppy, he was masked and I was scared. But behind the mask, he proved the bestest of electronic pals.

Here's a song describing political ignorance and deliberate deprivation of the arts. I have done a dance for Jimmy a few times and he is the best example of that spoken word political beat poetry heritage... or whatever. This one, I find unexpectedly moving.

 

Mortality made pretty. I have seen Miodes silence a whole pub with her intelligent and heartfelt lyrics & strumming.

 

 More musings on the mystery of living. This one by Martin Christie just cuts right through, and it's not the only track where he does this.

 

 And lastly, just a feel-good groover to dance to. The mysterious Manu may not do so much, but this one is pure retro-future joy.

"Signs of Radical Midnight" - album by Buck Theorem

 This one is ambient & instrumental. Designed for when your mind drifts with tales of animals and space, loss and snack-times. 

Recorded at The Hide-Out, finished February 2024.

Vinyl buying

Some Vinyl

 

Bought some vinyl at the London Film Fair.

 

I am a sucker for those odd Japanese 7-inch releases of film tie-ins that quite often don’t make sense. For example, in the James Bond section is the Nancy Sinatra single of ‘You Only Live Twice’ – a favourite song – with Sean Connery Bond emblazoned prominently on the cover. And the b-side is… ‘Jackson’, her duet with Lee Hazelwood? It's true that I am more an admirer of Bond Music than the films themselves (although 2006's 'Casino Royale' is the pinnacle for me) and I am a fan of the Sinatra/Hazelwood output, so it's all good.

 

 

 

And how about singles of the themes to coming-of-age classics ‘A Swedish Love Story’ of ‘Forbidden Games’? The latter especially gives 'The Third Man' competition in its jangliness.

 

 

 

And to ‘Melody’, which I have written about here. To repeat: I’m not a Bee Gees fan but can’t deny this song gets to me, where the orchestration swells and threatens to overwhelm with its longing; although it’s the Nina Simone live version that devastates. Must be one of the greatest songs of unrequited love ever written in an endless list. And it comes with a mini lyric sheet? When did we ever get that with our 7-inches?

 

 

 

And also Fumio Hayasaka’s score for ‘Seven Samurai’. This is the sound directly transferred from the film and put on vinyl (rather than taken from recordings), so plenty of dialogue clips. Reminds of when I used to record scores from VHS onto tape. The music ranges from percussive to choral to wind instruments.