New album update…

So, as you may know by now, I’m in the middle (at the beginning? near the end? There’s no way of knowing!) of recording a new solo album at the moment. Hours and hours of playing, recording, experimenting, listening happening every day. Which is all sorts of wonderous fun. It’s not an exercise I’ve indulged in to this degree since I recorded 11 Reasons Why 3 Is Greater Than Everything back in 2011.

So what’s new? The biggest new thing is the addition of the Keith McMillen Quneo to my set-up. What on earth is that? you ask… Well, the Quneo is a MIDI controller, that can be used for pretty much anything that can be controlled via MIDI. In my case, that’s drums and synth sounds. I’m not – at all – interested in triggering loops, in having pre-recorded stuff that I bring in, but I am having a great time experimenting with playing parts in on it, and looping them in the Looperlative along with all the layers of bass.

Naturally, with there now being a straight up percussive element to what I’m doing, rhythm is occupying a very different part of the music that it usually does in my solo work. But I’m also digging really deep into some really broken, screwed up rhythmic ideas, so am fascinated – and a little trepidacious – how people will react… We’ll see I guess.

What’s REALLY exciting is that in the process of getting ideas together, I inadvertently finished a solo album. Closing In was started as a way to feed new tracks to my Subscribers as the project went along, but ended up being a complete solo album. It’s not THE solo album that’s going to be launched/released/whatever in September, but it IS one that I’m really proud of. I’ve been listening to it a lot, and have had really positive feedback from the subscribers about it. If you want it, you’ll need to subscribe (and get the other 14 releases that you get for your £20) – more subscription details here.

The rhythmic side of things does feel really natural, given the nature of so many of my recent collaborations – starting with Daniel Berkman and progressing through the duos and trios with Andy Edwards, through the nascent projects with Beardyman (including the quartet with Andy Gangadeen on drums) on up to the duo with Divinity, I’ve been blessed by the deep grooves and rhythmic wisdom of so many of my collaborators of late. Daniel was the first person I heard play music on the Quneo – though his main percussive instrument is the Roland Handsonic. Andy and I have spent the last 2 or so years exploring how both his electronic and acoustic kits interface with my looping set up, and have built quite an amazing musical language between us. And Divinity was the one that tipped me over the edge – in the week we spent working on duo ideas, she was playing electronic drums on an M-Audio keyboard, AND beatboxing into her Roland RC300, and it worked so well. She’s such a fearless experimenter, and has an approach to throwing ideas together and letting them find their own space that really fits well with my own experimental, exploratory approach. Three musical soul mates all bringing a new rhythmic focus and – crucially – new *processes* into my musical world.

So the experiments continue, hopefully some of the drummy-stuff will be up on Soundcloud soon for y’all to hear (and maybe another little preliminary EP for subscribers – I need to watch out that I don’t become SO prolific it just gets confusing 😉 ) and I’m really hoping to get a day in the studio with Andy Edwards soon – that could easily end up just being THE album, such is the consistency of the ideas we seem to be generating together of late.

Til then, the single best thing you can do to make sure you don’t miss any of the new music, is join the subscribers over on Bandcamp – you’ll get every new thing I do immediately available in the Bandcamp app, and downloadable from your Bandcamp collection, plus everything I release in the coming 12 months (which includes the impending release of the first two duo tracks with Divinity!)

Here’s one of the tracks from Closing In, that’s also on Soundcloud. Enjoy!