Live broadcast for Richard Niles’ show on Radio 3 about 4 years ago. Me and Steve Hamilton on piano. Chart for the guitar part on this site somewhere. Here, in fact.
Same session. An old Lammas tune of mine (named for the horse) arranged for duo, with a little backing track thrown together in Reason for the occasion. Very cheap cello sample, which sounds like a fat old bee. Rough chart here.
Pirietta
Drums too loud. Yay! Some Finnish birdsong in there too. It’s in 31/16, i.e. I lost a semiquaver somewhere and only noticed much later.
The Temptations of St Cyrus
Well, there’s the St Cyrus Tearooms and the opportunity to dance on the grave of the worst maths teacher in the history of Baldragon Academy, but otherwise they’re pretty limited. My Dad’s from there.
Thirst of the First
Vague attempt to ‘do a Royksopp’. Not sure about those tickled baby samples; seemed cute at the time.
Welcome to my Beautiful Country
Wrote this for Radio 3, some programme where Kathleen Jamie and Tim Dee went to Foula, off Shetland. I was supposed to go with them. The flight to Foula is, I believe, the shortest commercial flight in the UK, but there’s no way you’re getting me on that thing. This was programmed one sweaty summer in Milan, I recall, and I was much happier there. The whole thing came out like a theme for something hosted by Judith Chambers. The Bonxie samples were from their field recordings: it’s the most foul-tempered bird in the universe.
Your Girlfriend
Sort of trompe l’oreille exercise in programming from scratch a bad desk-recording of a jazz quartet in a small club in hell. In the end I was laying in the dinner-fork samples by hand, and it was all getting a bit obsessive and Borgesian. ERII from a wartime broadcast. Very weird old tune I played live once or twice.
Played this one live quite a bit, but never recorded it. This was initially made as a guide, but it sounded quite nice so I did some work on it. The synth solo was played on an Arp emulator. Drowned in breathy women by the end. Rough piano+guitar chart here.
Earl Bullion Installer
Bit of fun. Tried to play the bass part, failed, programmed it. Moog. Me speaking.
Atalanta
Written, recorded and programmed over a couple of days spent in the Atalanta hotel in Rotterdam a few years ago during the poetry festival. It was for something on the radio, I forget what. My guitar’s Dutch, made by Bert Kwakkel, and it was nice to bring it back home for a bit.
See Angus By Rail
Which you can’t, of course. Sort of a travelling song for massed strings. Autoharps, ukeleles, bass, banjos, mandolins. Hundreds of ‘em.
EnSofia
Touch of Venetian Snares at the start and then god alone knows what happens. Trumpets. Ambulances. Sir Ian McKellen. Then it goes all bring-out-your-dead.
