"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/).

 

"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.

"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.

"Broken Where it Counts" - by Buck Theorem

 A new single to pass the time... 

 "Broken Where it Counts": Failed father-figures, foolish longing on a summer afternoon street, parental responsibility, big furry luxurious beasties.

"Hard Times For Killing Machines" - Buck Theorem album

Hey, so I’ve made more music, This one is called 

 

“HARD TIMES FOR KILLING MACHINES”

 

which is from a hashtag I irreverently put on an Instagram post accompanying a picture of local shop dummies that looked like the T-1000 had taken up a modelling gig. The artist Found Object suggested it should be the name of my next album: and so it is.

 

Starting off with a sad lament of an assassin android being decommissioned, there’s a little fist-shaking at the gulf between those that have and those that have not, and then a little philosophical shrug at loss. Then we move on to a selection of romance scenarios, on beaches, in alleyways, and an couple of obvious declarations of neediness (including a cover of The Cars' "Drive"). Only interrupted by musings on the intent of dining implements and desserts, ending up with a credo that we should protect our nearest and dearest, if only by fantastical means.

 

This one is electrocynical and started life as an intended EP, but soon became LP length. -ish. It’s cheap (£1!) and should you download, you get a pdf of words and pictures too.

 

Why not give it a listen?

 

 

And here's the original picture and Instagram post as evidence of the T-1000s new fashionista career.

"The T-1000 has seemingly fallen on hard times and is modeling for my local superstore place. Shame."

"Homemade & Heartburnt" - new Buck Theorem EP

Here is my new EP, "Homemade & Heartburnt", written for and made to coincide with the session I wrote for the Homebrew Electronica podcast. It was very, very nice to be invited by Kev [the Homebrew host] to contribute a session, so I wrote some new stuff.

Rock-n-roll electro-horror. Some anxiety oversensitivity dancing. A Soma Pipe version of an older track, a fake soundtrack instrumental and a straight-up ambient track. Oh, and a Godley & Creme cover.

And here's the link to the whole Homebrew show (I start at around 40 minutes in). It's always stuffed with good and varied stuff, spanning the breadth of what electronic music is and can do.

I Am The Twister - "Death on a Virtual Pier"

Around 2007-ish, in the era of MySpace (remember that?) I was going through a period of unemployment and putting up some dodgy recordings of mine online. My friend Paul West said, “Hey I can play instruments now. Do you want to make music?” And so I Am The Twister was born. 

We recorded songs on a 4-Track I had somehow been given by acquaintances and our songs were loosely geographically set in a run-down English seaside town. Our friend James Eastwood (ref. Lunar Engine) played drums on the tack “Marie Hate Song”. It was called “Death on a Virtual Pier”. 

 Now it’s on Spotify (always been on Bandcamp). 

 We still have tracks recorded from then that no one has really heard. I Am The Twister is active again and shall release those past and other new tacks imminently.

"Years in Quicksand" - Buck Theorem mini-album

'Years in Quicksand' is the new mini-album I have released. It has the usual electrocrooning, a little soul rending, instrumental diversions, and some moog folk.

YEARS IN QUICKSAND

BUCK THEOREM

 

Panic on the Sofa

Daydream, and I’ll come to you

Chorus for Clones

Do Not Sail

Sword of the Nun

Through the Trees (reprise)

The Greatest Hits of The Big Dream

 

The furniture burn of insecurities, an invitationto escapism, a clone’s bid for independence, a landlocked lover’s cry for renuinion, a crazed love left landlocked on the shore, a virgin blade of vengeance, a return to an alien abduction, a rumination on lost ambitions.

 

“Years in Quicksand” made & played by Buck Theorem in 2021-22, during and after some lockdown or other. Except “Sword of the Nun”: developed from a 4track recording made sometime in the early 2000s.

linktree

Leave your panic at the door - album

My new long player, "Leave your panic at the door" is on Bandcamp now. It's an electronically-inclined effort with bits of electropop (sort of) to ambience. Made during this second year of lockdown, of course.

Fake thriller beats, upper class war on lower class animals, friendship promises, relationship abstractions, fake solar system beats and fake automaton beats, a swooning lady phenomenon, neediness in pieces, lifestyle genres, the last signals from a skull.

 

'50s Garden Rocket - music video

Here is a new video for an old song. "50s garden Rocket" was the first Buck Theorem song, made when I was in the band I Am The Twister. That's my Twister pal Paul West providing some drums and xylophone. It was made on an old 4-track in the early- or mid-Nineties and spruced up digitally decades later. It features on my first effort, "Waiting Firecrackers".

I promise to pick up everyone.

'Secondhand Xperiments' - Buck Theorem covers album

And here is my second lockdown release, although I started this a long time ago. It's a collection of cover versions called "Secondhand Xperiments", featuring covers of Siouxsie and the Banshees, Kate Bush, Kylie Minogue, Jerry Goldsmith, Depeche Mode and of my friends Poet and the Loops and Miodes. 

Made 2020-2021. These just caught my attention, although some are total favourites.

The 'Seconds' cover comes from my attempting to it in my teens, cribbing the dialogue undoubtedly with some dodgy drone from some eighties kid's keyboard. I have been disturbed and loved the Frankenheimer film since I was a kid, and recently read the James Ely novel, which is a great downer.

Wen I was at teenager, I remember my mum walking in and quietly smirking when she caught me singing along to 'Never Let Me Down Again'. These were the days when I would replay my 7-inch purchases over and over, in succession, and I am sure I did that to this. How annoying that must have been to others in the house.

Speaking of which: I am not a Kylie fan, necessarily, although I don't object, but 'I Believe in You' is one of those mainstream tracks that periodically get into me and I can't deny. A few times I played it too loud and had the neighbours knocking. How annoying that must have been for the neighbours. I seem to have re-imagined it through 'The Covenant, The Sword and the Arm of the Lord' era Cabaret Voltaire.

It included field recordings of my local park during my lockdown walks in the summertime.

Buck Theorem videos for songs

 Here are two videos I made to accompany my album "Breakfast in Exodus". They are both Covid compliant: masked up and no crowds. These are for "For You, I Go Ape,", and "Afterward, in the Afterlife".