Many artists had lockdown projects, though few were as prolific in their endeavours as Bulbils, the musical alter-ego of Richard Dawson and Sally Pilkington, who in March 2020 began recording an album's worth of music in their home studio each day and releasing it on a pay what you like basis via their Bandcamp page the next. I'll let them explain. 'We started Bulbils as a way to deal with coronavirus / lockdown. We aimed to record most days and upload it all here, though we've slowed down the last year or so. It's been a big comfort for us, we hope it can be of some use to you too.' To date there are 74 Bulbils albums over on their Bandcamp page (here), generally containing long instrumental pieces. If that sounds daunting, don't be put off, dive in. Aside from a couple of limited cassette only releases, the duo have largely steered clear of physical product until 'Map', a 33 track 4 CDR compilation, issued a few days ago, featuring colourful handprinted artwork by Jake Blanchard (here). The initial run sold out in a jiffy and I was very chuffed to have been quick enough off the mark to bag a copy. A second, monochrome printed edition, is up for pre-order now.
'Friends Calling Dust Falling' was recorded on April 2nd 2020 and originally appeared on the tenth Bulbils album, 'Limbo', the very next day.
In mid-November, right at the point where the busyness level at work changed gear from simply hectic to full-on pre-Christmas panic, I started to feel a bit under the weather. Not Covid under the weather, but unusually fatigued and retreating to bed at 6 in the evening under the weather. I couldn't fathom it and soldiered on feeling grotty for four weeks until one evening when I removed my shirt and it all became clear. A vivid rash had appeared across my chest, which by the following morning snuck under my armpit and around onto my back - shingles. With the rash came searing pain to add to the fatigue. My doctor prescribed a course of 5 huge tablets a day on top of the regular painkillers I was consuming every four hours just to obtain some level of comfort. The long and the short of it is that I've been off work now for by far the longest period since catching mumps from a record shop customer in 1980! I'm well on the mend though and only mention all this to explain the tumbleweed that's been blowing around the corridors of this blog for some time. I return with a brief look at some of the music that has kept me going throughout 2021. Links to further information/listening in red.
A monthly EP project, which picked up where the 2020 album of the same name left off. A total of 48 tracks written, recorded and released across the past 12 months, featuring words and music inspired by feral animal sounds, ancient stories and personal folklore. I'm already dreading the empty space where an EP should be come the end of January.
The second LP of avant-mutant-disco from Glasgow's AMOR (this time made in conjunction with Norway's LEMUR) appeared way back in January. Since then Richard Youngs has released his usual steady stream of solo records throughout the year. I've managed to pick up up about half a dozen of them, but I'm sure I've missed many more.
In February Kungens Män put out a limited edition box set ('Innanför Boxen') containing four LPs previously only available digitally plus 'Den Nya Skivan', which helpfully translates as 'The New Record'. Providing we're all still here to tell the tale, the band are due back for some UK dates in April. Go see them, they will change your life.
As many of my oft-postponed concerts of the past 18 months finally started taking place this year, I found myself picking and choosing what to actually attend, passing on several and masking up for just a precious few. One of the essential shows was by the phenomenal Richard Dawson. There really is no-one like him on stage or on record and his recent collaboration with the Finnish group Circle sits easily amongst the best things I've heard in 2021.
With every successive release, Jack Cooper sheds a little more of his previous musical skins and now 'Island of Noise' finds almost all traces of Mazes and Ultimate Painting erased. A completely analogue project, 'Island of Noise' was record onto 2" tape, is available only on vinyl and is housed within a box with an accompanying booklet all of which were manufactured using recycled and sustainable materials. Admirable though these details are, they'd mean little if the music itself wasn't so rich and rewarding.
An absolutely majestic debut duo album from Christina and Alex, who also play in a trio with steel guitarist Noel Dashwood. 'Hunter' is only the first of two lockdown projects from Alden & Patterson to arrive, the second, their first child, is due in February.
This brief overview of standout records released over the past twelve months is not in any order of personal preference, though if I had decided to reveal its contents in a TOTP chart countdown format, 'Descension (Out of Our Constrictions)' would unquestionably be my No.1 album. Recorded live, it's a single, hypnotic, 75 minute piece, spread across four sides of vinyl. Genre defying.
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I'll leave you with Beak's wonderfully sinister festive offering from back in 2017, 'Merry Xmas (Face the Future)'. Compliments of the season everyone - here's to better times ahead.
Howdy one and all. I hope I find everyone in good health in these strange and uncertain times. My recent (and probably ongoing) low profile round these parts is due to the current unparalleled day to day demands of life in the supermarket aisles. It's been an eye-opening period that's for sure. I won't go into graphic detail, but this situation seems to be simultaneously bringing out the very best and very worst of behaviours in the human race. I've not experienced anything like it in all my years in retail. I can only hope some of our customers take a long hard look at themselves when all this is over.
Other than podcasts, my main aural stimulation over the past few days has been the music of Bulbils, the electronic project of Richard Dawson and Sally Pilkington, who at the time of writing have recorded and released seven albums worth of music since March 22nd. They're all here as name your own price digital downloads and the duo show no signs of slowing down as long as the lockdown continues.
You may remember my somewhat frantic post back in August, concerning a mate who, on feeling a little under the weather, visited his doctor and was immediately rushed into to hospital, placed in a medically induced coma and had undergone major open heart surgery - all within the space of about 48 hours. We sat on tenterhooks for days, waiting for any updates from his wife. Slowly, miraculously, he recovered enough to be allowed home to convalesce, where I visited him towards the end of November. He was weak, tired and hoarse from the tubes he'd had down his throat for some weeks, but otherwise....like I say, the only word that comes to mind is miraculous. I felt like hugging him and simultaneously hugging the whole of the NHS.
Frail as he was, his sense of humour was completely intact and he had us all laughing out loud as he recalled being brought out of the coma soon after his surgery. He groggily found himself in bed in a virtually silent and completely white room, surrounded by a group of people dressed from head to toe in white. Confused, disorientated and in considerable pain, he managed to attract the attention of one of them and whispered, quite genuinely, 'Am I dead?' 'No dear,' said the nurse, '...you're in Basildon'.
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Richard Dawson's '2020' is a phenomenal stream of consciousness, state of the nation address - one of the truly great albums of 2019.
For a number of reasons, my head hasn't really been in the blogging game for some time now. Having said that, over at Before the Streets Were Aired (my other place), I'm just about to sail through the 1100 consecutive daily posts mark - where did that time go? Meanwhile, here on the good ship Unthought of Though Somehow, I'm doing my best to keep the blighter afloat by joining in with the weekly Monday Long Song fun, at the very least. Where to from here? I couldn't really say right at the moment.
I can say that it's been a very good year for music though. At the end of both 2016 and 2017 I bemoaned the fact that I'd spent the previous 12 months listening to more old music than new, but I'm pleased to report that that particular trend has reversed in 2018 and I ended up with a long-list of around 40 albums to choose from for selection in this year's round-up. Tomorrow I might pull a slightly different handful of records from the shelves, but for now, for today, (in alphabetical order) here are twelve of the many LPs that rocked my world in 2018. I've included a few tunes at the end, but click on the individual links to learn/hear more.
AMOR - Sinking Into a Miracle The first of two Richard Youngs related releases on this list, both issued within the past month. The Glasgow collective follow their incendiary pair of 2017 12" singles with a stonking debut LP. Mutant disco anyone?
The Coke Dares - Fake Lake 35 superbly crafted songs, bursting with more ideas than many bands can boast in the course of an entire career.
Kiki Pau - Hiisi From melancholic pastoral loveliness to full-on poly-rhythmic wigouts and beyond, interspersed with occasional soothing birdsong interludes - what's not to love?
Massage - Oh Boy Do you, like me, love bands like The Feelies, The Go-Betweens & The Clean and music released on labels like Sarah Records and Flying Nun? Of course you do, in which case you'll probably love 'Oh Boy' too.
Brigid Mae Power - The Two Worlds A remarkable album that creates and inhabits its own universe. Gothic, hymn-like, confessional and fairly harrowing in places.
Alasdair Roberts - What News Another year, another remarkable Alasdair Roberts LP. His first of solely traditional songs since 2010.
Richard Youngs - Memory Ain't No Decay Only issued last week, the 5th of Richard's eight 2018 releases I've picked up this year - and it's very possibly the best of the lot. I've already pre-ordered his next LP, due in January.
A couple of weeks ago, I dragged my tired old bones off to catch the great Richard Dawson in concert. Long suffering readers of this blog will know just how many years I've waited to witness Dawson treading the boards and I'm delighted to report that he not only lived up to, but exceeded all expectations. 'Peasant' is far and away my favourite new LP of 2017 and this was easily the best gig I've seen all year. Claustrophobic medieval avant-garde folk-noir never sounded so good.
As I've mentioned previously, heavy work commitments have left me with no time to knock out any kind of in depth year-end review - indeed, I'm actually typing this on Xmas Day, my first full day off for two weeks and my last until January 7th 2018! So here, off the top of my head and in no particular order, are a few of the other albums that have rocked my world in 2017.
Flotation Toy Warning - The Machine That Made Us
Sleaford Mods - English Tapas
Davy Kehoe - Short Passing Game
Alasdair Roberts - Pangs
Peter Perrett - How the West Was Won
Low Chimes - Illumine
Michael Head - Adiós Señor Pussycat Mark Lanegan - Gargoyle
Bonnie Prince Billy - Best Troubadour
Cz101 - 100 Bar Blues
Causa Sui - Vibraciones Doradas
Joshua Abrams - Simultonality
The Prophet Hens - The Wonderful Shapes of Back Door Keys (a 2016 LP, released in Europe this year)
The Myrrors - Hasta La Victoria
Hollow Everdaze - Cartoons
Brix & the Extricated - Part 2
The Granite Shore - Suspended Second
Sparks - Hippopotamus
Kamasi Washington - Harmony of Difference
Robert Plant - Carry Fire
Colter Wall - s/t
Girl Ray - Earl Grey
Pugwash - Silverlake
Four Tet - New Energy
Idles - Brutalism
Jane Weaver - Modern Kosmology
Jake Xerxes Fussell - What In The Natural World
Heron Oblivion - The Chapel
Moon Duo - Occult Architecture 1 & 2
Holly Macve - Golden Eagle
Sacred Paws - Strike a Match
Terry - Remember Terry
Big Blood - The Daughters Union (this would've been my favourite were it not for Richard Dawson)
Nadine Shah - Holiday Destination
Micah P Hinson - Presents the Holy Strangers
Omni - Multi-Task
This is the Kit - Moonshine Freeze
Several of these records (and no doubt some of the others I've forgotten to include) were introduced to me by one or more of my esteemed blogging chums, for which I can never thank you enough. Over the past couple of years I've noticed that I'm falling ever further behind when it comes to contemporary releases, as reissues and new-old discoveries take up more and more of my attention. In 2017, for instance, three of my most played albums have been 'Bright Phoebus' by Lal & Mike Waterson, the Bob Dylan 'Trouble No More' box set and the marvellous Tony Williams Lifetime 'Live in New York', recorded in 1969, but issued for the first time this year on Hi Hat Records. There just aren't enough hours in the day. 'Time....' to quote the great John Cooper Clarke, '....the old enemy on the wrist'.
I'm off to enjoy another festive glass of wine, so I'll stop waffling and take this opportunity to wish one and all a happy, safe and peaceful 2018.
Lord knows I've raved on enough about the astonishing Richard Dawson in the past (here and here), but I'm quite aware that, for the casual listener, his stuff can sometimes be a little difficult to get a firm handle on. The first taster from Richard's forthcoming new LP 'Peasant' is, in contrast to some of his previous work, positively catchy. 'Ogre' reaches back to the dark ages for its subject matter, while managing to capture a little of the spirit of both Polyphonic Spree and Sufjan Stevens, yet remains resolutely Dawsonesque. It's fantastic. Have a care, lest you find yourself singing along by the end.
I have an ongoing and ever-growing list of artists who I'd quite like to see live. I also have a much shorter list of
artists who I'm utterly desperate to see live. At the very top of this second list, surrounded by asterisks and underlined
several times, are two words. Richard Dawson. I featured a handful of Richard's tunes in a post earlier in the
year (here), a period when his profile was growing rapidly, but much of his back catalogue was nigh on impossible to track down.
A couple of weeks ago, Weird World Records went some way to rectifying this deplorable state of affairs, when they reissued 2011's
'The Magic Bridge' and 2013's devilishly tricky to find, 'The Glass Trunk'. If you want to dip your toe, try 'The Magic Bridge', but both are just jawdroppingly great. With nothing more than his voice and a
battered guitar, Richard Dawson can reduce you, sobbing, to your knees one minute and virtually pummel
you into submission the next. It's extraordinary music made by an extraordinary man.
Here's 'Wooden Bag' from 'The Magic Bridge' and 'A Parents Address To His Firstborn Son On The Day Of His Birth' from
'The Glass Trunk'. I've also included an absorbing new 20 minute documentary, made during Richard's 2015 tour. Watch it
and perhaps you'll appreciate why I'm so very anxious to see this man in concert.
The diary's been looking a bit threadbare
recently, but last Sunday, Stewart Lee's
latest stand-up show, 'Room With a Stew',
became my first gig of 2015. Lee is a master
of the demystification of live comedy. For example, when a laugh failed to arrive from the audience at an expected moment, he pressed pause on the performance, stepped out of character and walked us through the elaborate verbal scaffolding he'd erected to take us to that point, castigating us repeatedly for not sufficiently appreciating the quality of the humour. After reaching an apparent crescendo of rage, verging on a nervous breakdown, with the subtlest of movements he revealed that this too was all a device. The tension was released and a huge roar of laughter followed. The show really was a masterclass of a performance, thought provoking and very, very funny. I'm picking up the tour again in May.
When I briefly caught up with Stewart in the
foyer after the show, we took a moment to
share our mutual enthusiasm for the brilliant
Richard Dawson. Dawson's musical palette is
broad, from Faheyesque instrumentals, to
cacophonous drones via unaccompanied
traditional ballads. Sometimes there aren't
adequate words to do justice to such a prodigious talent, so here are three examples of his work,
I urge you to seek out more. This live show
(here) is a good place to start.
