New Music update

After a lull off activity on the music front for me – it has picked up again with a bang.. And I mean a bang!

Owning to PC problems – everything has being on hold for over two months but it looks likely that everything is back to normal now, so over the week-end just gone – I had a play around.

First off all, Andy my voice in M.A.N. sent me over some new vocals which are not suitable for the forthcoming ‘From a Boy’ CD but could well make a great EP, so I did most off that over the week-end which I jokingly called it’ One Week-end Stand’ EP.

Also managed to squeeze in a few new Grey Ear, White Noise tracks which takes up tracks for the forthcoming album for them to about five or six tracks now. Need to let Pete, my voice in that band hear them.

Rehearsals are also going good for my new band ‘Words and Music’ – this is completely different from anything else I have done, and dare I say it reasonably commercial! We’ve done two gigs already despite the fact we had only wrote 4 songs by that point (We now have a working set list off 8 songs with another few to follow).

No plans for an album yet, as this is going to be mostly a touring band I reckon although I do have some good live rehearsal recording ). Will keep you advised of course.

Have being doing loads off poetry readings, but I’ll tell you more about next time.

Matt Dalby: Tare & Matt Dalby: Fight (CD Reviews)

I first became aware off Matt Dalby through his
interaction at one of Manchester’s open mike poetry nights last
year called Freed Up.

I forget the night in question, but I always remember Dom
One of the co-hosts of the night describing it as ‘Sound Poetry’
And I can always remember thinking to myself – it’ll probably
Be something experimenting with the language of poetry a little
But it wouldn’t be anything too different.

I was totally wrong.

I’d never forget when he came on stage with his own little amp
And effects pedals and spent the next four minutes blasting the
Heck out of the audience’s eardrums with some good old fashioned
White noise and looped vocals and surprised more than a few people.

I’ve done this over the years with a lot of my studio projects (and also
rarely in the live circuit) and when I heard it, it made perfect
sense to me.

Since then, I’ve seen Matt appear at a number of other events
and he has guested on both of my ‘Poets and..’ nights (and
most memorably had Gary’s brother asking him ‘is that Poetry?’)
and he has never ceased to surprise me.

So of course, releasing CDs is now a progression step
for him after spending a year or so on the open mike poetry
circuit. What is surprising however is the plan
for him to release one CD for every month in 2008
And sell them for the sum off £3 (Sterling).

The first one ‘Tare’ released in January 2009 is a
seven track mini album all with short title tracks
such as ‘hum’, ‘tier’, ‘tare’ to name but three but
each track even if there were 6 minutes each or 2 minutes
carrying layer after layer which in some cases took me five
or six go’s to get my head around, which is as good a
recommendation as you can get.

The second one ‘Fight’ released in February 2009 is
quite a different beast altogether with it being just
four tracks – the longest ‘House of Violence’
clocking at nearly 17 and a half minutes. I’d got tracks
like that most memorably pieces by Flying Saucer Attack
who go on like that, but I know they were mostly done with
guitars laced with feedback – this however was very different
considering I know from a conversation with him how he did,
and certainly listening to it is a challenge, but a
challenge I enjoyed listening to – how the hell it would
go down on a poetry open mike night is a different
question altogether.

I know Matt describes this as ‘Sound poetry’ and
this is perhaps something he needs to think about for himself
as certainly at the moment it is not really poetry in the
sense of Ted Hughes but not really experimental music as it goes
off in a completely different direction, which is my
eyes is always a good sign, or as I like to think
‘21st century poetry’

I recommend it and certainly advise you to pop over to
http://www.myspace.com/sonicobnox just don’t expect it
to sound like Ted Hughes.