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.

(more…)

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.

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).

(more…)

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.

(more…)

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.

(more…)

You Wait Thirty-Five Years…

In what will probably go down as the worst bit of release timetabling in the history of my musical endeavours, it looks like both Fusion Orchestra 2’s Casting Shadows and Broken Parachute’s Down is the New Up are going to be released on the same day. It seems that you can wait thirty-five years for a release and then two come along at the same time.

(more…)

Sketch of a Day, and FO2 updates

It’s been a long time since I’ve written anything in this blog, but today I have finally pronounced my instrumental track “Sketch of a Day” finished and so it seems like a good excuse to update things.

(more…)

Dband: Liar In Disguise

The result of my first recording session with Dband is now available. Liar In Disguise is actually something that we wrote on the first day I met up with the band in January. When I turned up James and Luke were warming up around chorused fingerstyle guitar riff and once I’d set up we jammed over it for a bit. I wondered whether it would work to stick a minor third key change in for a chorus, so we tried that and we also added a moody instrumental break in the middle to give the Hammond — new to Dband’s sound — a little chance to breathe. By the end of the session it felt like we had pretty finished the structure of the song.

Luke tweaked the lyrics over the coming months as we hunted for a rhythm section and I added a backing vocal emphasis to the chorus. Shemeck’s arrival on bass gave the middle section a new twist to the rhythm, and when the time came to book a recording studio this was first on our hit list.

(more…)