Dark Matter: Wood Lane

A quick (belated) post to say that Dark Matter, a duo comprised of Gandalf’s Fist drummer Stefan Hepe and Dave Gilbert (guitars, bass, vocals) have released their second album, Wood Lane.

Dark Matter’s sound is reminscent of early Sabbath in their more laid-back guise, but still featuring some crunchy riffing and Stefan’s muscular drumming.

And as it happens, I snuck in a piano line on the moody, atmospheric title track.

Patchwork Cacophony: Five of Cups

And so here we finally are: Patchwork Cacophony‘s second album, Five of Cups, will be released on November 7th.

The album is recognisably related to 2014’s self-titled debut, but where as that release had pieces with noticeably different character and was clearly  divided into an instrumental and vocal half, Five of Cups has a much more consistent feel and a musical arc which spans the full length of the album.

There are eight tracks on the album with the first one, Fairytale, divided into four sub-parts. Of these tracks, three are around or above the ten minute mark and the rest come in around the longish normal song mark. Instrumentally, most of the major elements from Patchwork Cacophony make a return — Hammond Organ, piano, analogue synths, the multi-layered vocals and of course various guitars, bass, drums and percussion — but the album also features two guest guitarists. Marcus Taylor, my long-term musical collaborator from Broken Parachute amongst other things, steals the show on Maybe, and Tim Hall puts his stamp on the electric guitar parts on Brand New Day, culminating in the final solo of the album.

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Joining Gandalf’s Fist for HRH Prog Festival

Well this blog has been silent for quite a while, but there’s been a lot going on behind the scenes.

The first piece of news is that I will be joining the might Gandalf’s Fist for their set at the HRH Prog Festival on 19th March 2017.

Following on from their monumental release earlier this year, The Clockwork Fable, they were invited to headline the second stage on the Saturday night. They’ve asked me to help out on keyboards and seeing as I was planning to go anyway it seems like a good way to guarantee a decent view of the band. Secretly, I was also truly honoured to be asked to be part of this event.

To complete the live line-up they’ve also enlisted the help of Keri Farish to handle the female vocal parts.

Marcus Taylor’s “Kashgar” now available

Marcus Taylor’s Kashgar album has now been released. I’ve contributed keyboard parts and was even inspired to join in on some of the konokol (Indian scat vocals).

Born from the restless vision of guitarist-composer Marcus Taylor, Kashgar is a unique musical statement. Eleven closely crafted tracks weave together jazz sensibilities, a classic rock edge and an exciting range of world influences to create an encompassing and innovative album. From dramatic Indian rhythmic passages that invoke the Mahavishnu Orchestra to fiery guitar-Hammond exchanges that would fit comfortably in the mainstream of progressive rock, Kashgar presents a refreshingly innovative take on the future of jazz-fusion.

The album is available digitally on iTunes, Spotify, Amazon and the usual online retailers and physical copies will soon be available from Patchwork Studios.

Marcus Taylor’s Kashgar

There hasn’t been much activity on this blog for a while which for the most part has been a reflection of a lack of musical activity of note in my world. However, I have been contributing some parts to Marcus Taylor’s new album, “Kashgar”.

It’s primarily an instrumental album of guitar and percussion work with strong influences from Indian and other “world” music. I’m probably not the best placed person to categorise or pigeon-hole it. All I can say is that it’s been great fun to work on and a breath of fresh air musically.

No word on the release date yet but it’s currently going through the final stages of mixing.

Interviews and Reviews

Justin Case Prog Radio ran a “Prog Week” special on Patchwork Cacophony at the start of February. As part of that they reviewed the album and interviewed me. The interview is long and ranges over loads of topics so make a mug of tea to drink while you’re waiting for the words to finish streaming out at you.

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Crosswinds – Meet The Sky

Marcus Taylor and I seem to have managed a repeat of last year’s unintentional trick of releasing two albums in sync. Last year it was Fusion Orchestra 2’s Casting Shadows and Broken Parachute’s Down Is The New Up. This year while I’ve been getting Patchwork Cacophony out the door, Marcus and long-term musical partner Joe Wee have released an album under the name Crosswinds.

Meet The Sky is a folky, funky, jazzy, singer-songwriter mix of tracks featuring Joe on vocals and acoustic guitar and Marcus on electric guitar and production. I snuck in to deliver a few backing vocal parts here and there, along with David Boardman and Dave Leon, and drums are handled by Matt Snowden (who also played on DITNU).

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Patchwork Cacophony Released!

My solo album, Patchwork Cacophony was officially released on Monday, and should be available directly from my website and from amazon in various European countries. Wider distribution should follow shortly. It’s also digitally available through the usual channels but I’d strongly recommend that anyone interested gets a copy on CD. Some digital formats (notably mp3) cause gaps between tracks where there’s meant to be a smooth segue. I’m not sure how iTunes’s AAC handles it. If do you prefer digital, bandcamp will let you download it in FLAC format which properly supports gapless play back, but then you’d still be missing out on the artwork…

I feel like I have written more words about it than any other subject but looking at my blog seems to tell another story, so here’s the full story on the album.

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Patchwork Cacophony updates

After along, long wait, the release date is in sight for my debut album Patchwork Cacophony. All being well, it will be available to buy on the 8th December, though pre-orders will open before then. You can read the publicity material and blurb about the album elsewhere on the ‘net, but here I’m just going to talk a bit about it from a personal perspective as an experience.

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CDs available!

Exciting times. Both Casting Shadows (Fusion Orchestra 2) and Down Is The New Up (Broken Parachute) have arrived back from production and are looking and sounding great, even if I do say so myself.

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