Some more live shows...
Dec 5th Illectricity Fesitval @ Jedinstvo, Zagreb, Croatia
Dec 12th State X Newforms Festival, The Hague, Netherlands
Jan 11th 2010 King's Place, London
Jan 23rd 2010 Shhh @ Cecil Sharp House, London
March 5th 2010 Hate-Love @ Bogota, Colombia
My new EP
Seven Gulps Of Air is out now on Domino / Double Six. You can buy it at iTunes, Emusic etc, or direct from the record label
here.
This EP is based around two new tracks -
Seven Gulps Of Air and
A Drifting Down. The former came into being a few weeks ago. I was asked by clothing designer Christopher Kelly, of the label
Theatre De La Mode, to compose something for a fashion video showcasing his new collection, which was then to be shown as part of London Fashion Week. The idea came for us to ask our mutual friend Mike Lindsay, the production and songwriting genius behind
Tunng, to come up with a rhythmic template for the song. The collection has a strong African influence, and given Tunng's recent live collaborations Mike was perfect for this.
He got started by making some percussive loops based around himself clapping, and a vocal recording he had made with the legendary Malinese singer and guitarist
Abdallah Ag Housseyni. He then put down a rough structure, and sent over the parts for me to take over. I was interested in trying something I hadn't done before - restricting myself only to rhythmic sounds, and avoiding tonal elements completely. Creating a heavy, hypnotic bass riff around Mike's original template led the track down an almost industrial route, but set over this kind of weird, lurching groove instead of anything too regular or machine-like.
It was originally intended that this tune was only to appear on the Theatre De La Mode fashion video, but when I sent it into Domino they were into it, and the idea to put it out came up. Mike came up with the name
Seven Gulps Of Air, and I started thinking of tracks to put with it.
After writing something so heavy, I wanted to create something the exact opposite to go alongside it. This appeared in the form of a new piece called
A Drifting Down, which is a kind of sequel to
A Drifting Up, one of the closing tracks on
Insides. The original track A Drifting Up was written in bursts over a two-year period and is made up of a huge amount of different layers and sounds, some of which are only audible when listening on headphones. I felt there was more in the soundworld of this track than is instantly audible on the original and had always planned to do an alternative version. This one would focus more on the more "hidden" elements - King Creosote's hummed improvisations, Emma Smith's 12 layers of violins, loops made out of me rubbing a microphone on the carpet, some submerged talking, some rain, and some weird lonely piano recorded on a dictaphone for the ending.
To back up these tracks we have some amazing and eclectic remixes, by some of my favourite artists. Firstly there's Tunng's psychedelic re-working of
Small Memory, which sets the original piano lines against some joyous tribal tom-bashing drum loops, clashing guitars, and swirling vortexes of feedback. Following this is the Geese remix of
The Low Places - an entirely new and beautiful performance of the song created by various uses and abuses of the violin and viola. Between them both members of Geese, Emma Smith and Vince Sipprell, are responsible for all the main strings on Insides.
Finally there's Tom Middleton's euphoric remix of
Light Through The Veins. Tom finished this track after we had finalised the original 12" single, and has been playing it solidly in DJ sets since, getting amazing reactions.
Sleeve design by
Simon Wild.
