Category: Music News

Not one, but two new tunes! How exciting.

During the time the Julie was here at the start of April, she and Andy and I managed a gig, that was recorded, and a recording session at Kidderminster College, where we also gave a bass/improv/Julie-stuff masterclass.

We’ve got HOURS of stuff recorded, which I’m sorting though. My guess is that the first ‘official’ release will be some bass duets, but here’s one duet from the Kiddy sessions, and the first thing we played as a trio at our gig at Tour Of Song – both are rough mixes, but are just about there. Enjoy!

It’s been a wonderful week of music-making with Julie Slick and Andy Edwards. First our show at Tower Of Song in Birmingham on Sunday night, then a day at Kidderminster College, giving an improvisation masterclass, and then recording some more music and a photo shoot.

All of that will be forthcoming ASAP, but for now, here are some pictures from Sunday’s gig, taken by Rob Groucutt:

Also, if you haven’t heard/bought Julie’s most recent solo album yet, it’s here. You need it:

This is the first in a new pile of videos I’m going to be doing, introducing a few of the effects pedals that I use. I’ve taken the 5 that are in my current live set up, and gone through them. Not just ‘reviewing’ them, but looking at how they interact. That seems a bit more useful 🙂

Oh, and there’s a lil’ improv thingie at the end putting them all to good use.

Enjoy, and if you dig it, feel free to share it around!

Finally, my new album, What The Mind Thinks, The Heart Transmits, is out.

You can download it here, paying whatever you think it’s worth, from Bandcamp:

music.stevelawson.net/album/what-the-mind-thinks-the-heart-transmits

How It Came To Be:

The album was recorded live as part of a guided meditation on a retreat led by Jo Sumner – Lobelia and I had played a house concert for Jo a while back, and she mooted the idea of me providing live music for a meditation on one of her retreats last year. I loved the idea, especially given how many people already seem to use my music as an accompaniment to yoga/meditation/massage/therapy/etc.

There seems to be a certain kind of person who goes for my music in that setting – people who are REALLY annoyed by shitty 80s keyboard sounds and panpipes, who want music that the like, first and foremost, and THEN music that fits the setting.

But for years I’ve had emails from those people expressing some frustration that my music so often has weird spikey, dissonant, freaky bits that properly break the moment… Those bits of music aren’t about to stop happening within my usual ‘story telling’ approach to music creation, as they’re a vital part of the bigger story, but having the chance to make music in context meant that this piece ended up fitting that role perfectly, without any of the freakiness.

It’s a SLOW journey. 45 minutes of it. A single live track, with the only editing being post-processing (adding some spatial effects to the ambient layers, to make it sound amazing on headphones!)

The Title?

The title is the English translation of the Japanese idiom, Ishin Denshin. From the wikipedia entry ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ishin-denshin ) ::

Ishin-denshin (以心伝心?) originally comes from a Chinese proverb and is a Japanese idiom which denotes the traditional concept of interpersonal communication through unspoken mutual understanding. This four-character compound, known as a yojijukugo, literally translates as “what the mind thinks, the heart transmits.” Sometimes explained in English in terms of “telepathy” or “sympathy”, ishin-denshin is also commonly rendered as “heart-to-heart communication” or “tacit understanding.”

The reaction so far has suggested that for many, it’s just what they were looking for. It’s very obviously my music, but in a format that fits a new context. I hope you enjoy it too!

(photos taken by Neil Sumner, at the retreat where the album was recorded.)

Right, so an interesting thing started happening as soon as I put the ‘Entire Solo Works for £10‘ offer online – people who already had *most* of the albums started buying the set, and then offering the rest of the download codes as gifts to friends who didn’t have those albums or had never heard my music.

I really like this idea – £10 is still way cheaper than buying even two of the albums on iTunes would be, and you can get them as 24Bit FLAC files if you’re a lossless HD audio buff…

So, please, feel free to buy the whole set, keep the ones you need, and either send the rest to people you want to introduce to my music, or offer them up on Twitter/Facebook etc. to people who might want them.

The download codes are single-use – so prob best to  get people to email you and then send them, rather than posting the codes publicly and just annoying anyone who fails to get the album from a code they think is going to work 😉

Next week, my brand new solo album comes out. It’s called ‘What The Mind Thinks, The Heart Transmits’, and is a single 45 minute piece, recorded live as accompaniment to a guided meditation on a retreat.

I’ll write more about the album itself next week when it comes out, but for now, as a pre-release option, I’m doing my second ’10 albums for £10′ offer, and making my entire solo back catalogue available via Bandcamp for £10. That’s 14 years of solo bass playing, for  a crisp tenner (or paypal’s impersonation of one).

[CLICK HERE TO BUY ALL 10 ALBUMS FOR £10]

The album list is: 

What The Mind Thinks, The Heart Transmits (2014)
Believe In Peace (2012)
11 Reasons Why 3 Is Greater Than Everything (2011 – Remastered 2012)
Ten Years On: Live In London (2010)
Behind Every Word (2006)
Grace And Gratitude (2004)
Not Dancing For Chicken (2002 – Remastered 2012)
And Nothing But The Bass (2000)
Lessons Learnt From An Aged Feline (Pt 1) (2002)
Lessons Learned From An Aged Feline (Pt 2) (2004)

Those of you who’ve been around for a while will note the absence of Lessons Learned Pt III – the reason for that is that I’ve no idea where the master recordings are, and as such only have a fairly low res MP3 copy. I’ve rummaged through old hard drives and haven’t yet found anything labeled as that, though there’s a fair chance it’s in amongst some other sessions… When it crops up, I’ll stick it on bandcamp 🙂

If you want to listen before you buy, 9 of the 10 albums are available at music.stevelawson.net

When you buy it, you’ll get Believe In Peace as an immediate download, and the rest will arrive ASAP in the form of download codes – I’ll email you all 10 download codes, and the link to redeem them.

I’ll also be writing extensive PDF sleeve notes over the next week or so, and you’ll get those sent to you as soon as they’re finished 🙂

BARGAIN!

Here’s the 6th album to be decoupled from the FingerPainting: Complete set. The title feels like a fittingly optimistic meditation with which to enter the new year, hoping for the greatness of possibility to be realised.

There are so many things that can make us despair, but holding onto some kind of shred of optimism that we can rise above the misery and find a path to a better future for all of us… that’s why I play music, why I teach, why I continue to wrestle with the questions of how to make art sustainable in the face of the pressures of capitalism to measure all value in monetary terms…

As Bruce Cockburn sang “Nothing worth having comes without some kind of fight, got to kick at the darkness til it bleeds daylight”. And we do it because of the possibility that things will get better, that we can do it for those who are powerless to kick their own darkness.

Here’s to a justice and peace-filled 2014, friends 🙂