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I post updates and new music every few days.
New album 'Work With This'
My next album is called ‘Work With This’ and is a set of seven songs that continues the themes and recording methods of last December’s ‘The Ghost Is The Only One That Beats My Drum’. Since I finished with that album I have just continued writing and recording, having no concerts to fill the time that normally punctuates releases. At a loss as to what to do I’ve just carried on.
The single ‘This Is A Calling’ perhaps follows the last album closer than the rest of the new songs. Constructed around a geometric loop structure and with no thought about having to play the thing live - this and a couple of others came out through headphones and not acoustic sounds, lyrics being worked over and edited. Lines cut up and pasted down. I have been more concerned with rhythm and percussion and for following the threads.
But from time to time it’s brilliant to sit and play the guitar and write down story ideas without such backtracking. A few songs have come easily this way but they’re quieter and perhaps not so suited to whatever space I get to play concerts in later this year. The next days and weeks I’ll try to play more, something like practice is needed. The arms and the fingers feel a little stiff, parts of the guitar a bit unfamiliar and right now performing music isn’t so simple. I need some oil is all.
Perhaps I’ll have more to say about the album and the new songs nearer the time, perhaps that’s enough. It should be out on the 5th of July here and on my Bandcamp and Patreon sites. I’m making the physical edition these days.
Thanks everyone
S
'No Good Men' now available
The 15th release for those subscribed to my Bandcamp and Patreon is now available. ‘No Good Men’ is a set of 8 tracks recorded during the making of my 2015 album 'The Good Men', including an unreleased song 'Burden'. All versions are exclusive to this release.
Matthew And Robert
Burden
Keep The Flames From The Horses
I Was In The North Before The Fall
Amsterdam
So Long Song
Super Good Advice
Nowt
Available as a full quality digital download plus a hand stamped CD edition with a hand typed and personalised sleeve. The physical edition is available throughout June, digital anytime. €10 digital / €15 physical including postage anywhere.
When you sign up you get this one and downloads of all the previous 14 releases, plus anything I make going forward including the new album and all other work I’m making.
Please support me if you can, thanks everyone,
Stephen
Website changes
In between days waiting for people to get back to me and thought I’d go through the website and make some changes. I’m a little undecided as to what I think this place should be but it’s generally nice to have a kind of home on the internet.
I expect I’ve broken some things so please let me know if you find anything that doesn’t work as you’d like or might expect. I’d also appreciate suggestions, always.
S
'This Is A Calling' new single now available
A new, 8 minute song is out today to listen and download here on my site, on my Bandcamp page and to everyone subscribing to my Patreon.
'This Is A Calling' was written and recorded last month and appears on the forthcoming album, 'Work With This' which I hope to release next month. It feels like a companion piece to the last album and in fact I'm not sure the process of writing and recording has stopped since I started with that one last Autumn. They've run into each other, here we are.
I made a simple video a few weeks ago, inspired by and including old news footage of pilgrims at Croagh Patrick in the west of Ireland. Here it is:
All my Patreon and Bandcamp subscribers automatically receive this as a full quality download. Subscribe for as little as €3:
'Bad Roads Ahead' from Hjørring
Here’s ‘Bad Roads Ahead’ from ‘Hjørring’ available this weekend to all subscribers to my Patreon or Bandcamp pages.
I recorded this back in 2015 at Martin’s house in the north of Denmark and put it out shortly afterwards through Bandcamp. Recently I went back to the folder and found 4 songs that were left off, including a new idea for something that would later appear in a completely different form on an album the following year. I also mixed the whole thing again, using speakers instead of the headphones I was travelling with before. A 40 minute, super slow collection of mostly electric songs.
Hjørring track list:
Matthew And Robert
Bad Roads Ahead
Blackface
Keep The Flames From The Horses
Polly The Widow
The Witch (idea for a song)
The Rain Is A Kind Kind Of Love
What I Know About The Sea I Can Say In A Song
So Long Song
Kitchen Song
'This Is A Calling'
I’ve been writing and recording a lot the last few weeks and next month I’ll be ready to share some of the new music I’ve been making. I thought the album was done and just needed mixing and then a few days ago one of the very new songs I had started writing kind of expanded and overnight grew into something that surprised me so it meant that I had to rethink the sequencing and the structure of the whole album. It had felt almost done and then two more things came out and now I have to juggle it about a bit and perhaps do some more editing. Felt like a delay but fine, good for the work to be flexible and malleable, that’s when it’s exciting.
Making 'Second March'
The physical edition of my next release is finished and the first batch were sent out today. ‘Second March’ is available as hand stamped CD-r with a typed, personalised sleeve. €15 including postage anywhere through my Patreon and Bandcamp sites.
Full track list and details are here and also in the blog post below this one. It was a nice little recording to make and I hope people enjoy it.
'Lover O Lover' from last month out in the forest
The next in the subscription series of monthly releases is ‘Second March’ and will be available at the end of the month through my Patreon and Bandcamp sites. I recorded a bunch of music, including two new songs, outside in the forest at the same spot where I had previously made ‘March Wood’.
Digital and physical, where the physical edition follows the previous ones - a hand stamped CD-r, typed personalised cover and only available for the month of April.
Also as a reminder - you just have until the end of March if you’d like to receive a copy of the double disc edition of ‘The Complete Simple Folk Radio Recordings’. Available at the €15 option through the Patreon or Bandcamp subscriptions.
More details and images in a week.
Reminder - the double disc 'The Complete Simple Folk Radio Recordings' is only available this month
Just to remind anyone interested in this that each physical edition of the monthly subscription releases is only available for the month I make it, so this 2 X CD version won’t be available in two weeks. The digital version will always be available to anyone signing up but as I make something new each month there will be something else in April.
'The Complete Simple Folk Radio Recordings' is 30 songs recorded between 2007 and 2013, including four tracks not broadcast and previously unavailable. It’s out as a digital download or the 2 X CD version - with a unique personalised cover and sent to you where ever you are. Sign up for my Patreon or Bandcamp subscriptions and it’s available there.
Each month I put together something like this (or usually make something completely new) as well as post single tracks, images and other things there. Massive thanks to everyone who subscribes - it means the world and keeps the enthusiasm levels for making new things nice and high.
Hannover, last September
Finally got to see some of the photographs made at this little show in September last year. Strange then and now to have so many people inside together and I able to play songs to them.
202102 Music Playlist
Thought I might start with posting some of what I’ve been listening to each month.
This mostly from a few car trips through the south of Germany the last couple of weeks and certainly lots missing and no full albums, which is what I usually listen to. Random then.
'The Complete Simple Folk Radio Recordings' out 01.03.21
Thirty tracks recorded over three sessions between 2007 and 2013, including 4 previously unreleased, ‘The Complete Simple Folk Radio Recordings’ is out 01.03.21 through my Patreon or Bandcamp subscriptions.
€10 - digital edition
€15 - digital + 2 x CD-r edition hand typed by me and sent to you wherever you are
All subscriptions enable downloads of all 11 previous monthly releases and a bunch of single tracks, image sets and posts I make between them.
These were always nice things to work on and I am grateful for having had the chance to know Dillon and his Simple Folk Radio show back in Brighton. The show is currently on hiatus but there are plenty of wonderful sessions archived and available to listen to over on the website.
This set collects everything I recorded for them and runs like this:
2007
The Weeping Well (with The Diamond Family Archive)
The Good Lord (with The Diamond Family Archive)
Paper Birds (with The Diamond Family Archive)
Not Yet Gone (with The Diamond Family Archive)
Blackwater (with The Diamond Family Archive)
Tender And True
2010
Annabel
You Are Better Than This
St Mary
Song For Fee
Song For A Coalman
Tom
Winter
The Royal Canal
If You Can Hold It You Can Throw It
Portugal
Bad Things Happen
2013
The Royal Canal
You Are Better Than This
Deserter
Barbara Allen
Rearranging
When I Was Away
Make A Dead One Of It
Paper Birds
Dear Leise
A Fair Mile (previously unreleased)
Deserter (previously unreleased)
The Burning Of Two (previously unreleased)
Good And Gone (previously unreleased
'Schloss' EP this weekend
As well as making a monthly full release each month, I’ve been going through recordings and images and posting a few times a week to my Patreon.
This weekend I’m making a simple EP ‘Schloss’ also available to download there. Four songs recorded live in front of a tiny audience in various rooms of the Schloss Hünegg in Thun, Switzerland on the 7th of September 2019.
Subscription to Patreon starts at just €3 a month and everyone will be able to download this as well as lots of other things I’m finding and making these days.
I also have a subscription over on my Bandcamp and anything posted to Patreon goes there too. Massive thanks to everyone already into all this, means the world these days.
Relics (I)
Lyrics for ‘We Could Have, We Should Have, We Didn’t’ carried about in my guitar case at every concert in case I forget the words whilst playing.
First in a series, more on my Patreon.
'Gostenhof' now available
The 11th in my series of monthly releases since the start of the lockdown is available now through my Patreon and Bandcamp subscriptions.
'Gostenhof' is a recording of an 8 song set played at the Gostner Hoftheater last February and is out now as a digital download and handmade CD edition to my Patreon and Bandcamp subscribers.
The track list for 'Gostenhof' runs like this:
It Don’t Stop The Bleeding
The Royal Canal
I Was In The North Before The Fall
Pure Black Coal
Lover O Lover
Winter (song by The Diamond Family Archive)
SUPER GOOD ADVICE
So Long Song
Here’s the first song of the night over on the Youtube:
‘Gostenhof’ is also available through my Bandcamp subscription, of course. Find details about that here:
New music through my Patreon and Bandcamp now
Just a short video with a couple of songs I released through my Patreon and Bandcamp subscriptions this month. The Patreon is new for me and allows me to upload single tracks very easily, as well as supporting Paypal payments for as little as €3 a month.
Please consider signing up and a massive thank you to everyone who’s already done so. You’re brilliant.