Western Culture (2016-17; 2018)
Sole studio recording of the second ('Dispatch') group, and only album in F(I)S made in a studio. The second of two LPs made at Low Four in Salford w/ Brendan and Jamie. Released by Moshi Moshi; Kelly did the artwork again, and Jamie and Brendan mixed and mastered the record with Max. I think the record is good but a bit rushed and overblown. You shouldn't stuff too many leaden opinions into songs else they sink. I wrote a pamphlet of essays (never released) to expand on what I thought the record was about; the fact I thought that was necessary at all should have set alarm bells off. It's good though I think and changed the way I write and work a lot for the better.
The Universe Out There Knows No Smile
Paralysed Force
Working People
An Easel
Legacy of Neglect
Now Then
Unreflective Life
Shuddering Instance
Exactitude and Science
Suspension
Dan Bridgwood-Hill - electric guitar, piano, synthesiser
Andrew Cheetham - drums, percussion
Dave Rowe - bass guitar
Jon Collin - electric guitar (3)
Jenny Hollingworth - voice (5)
Laurie Hulme - voice (1, 2, 5)
Greg Morton - cello (2, 4, 5, 9)
Kath Ord - viola (2, 4, 5, 9)
Prabjote Osahn - violin (2, 4, 5, 9)
Leo Robinson - voice (1, 5, 6, 9)
Elin Rossiter - voice (1, 5, 6, 9)
Rosa Walton - voice (5)
Real Home (2022; 2024)
Fourth and probably final F(I)S record -- culmination of the totalism that defines this series -- and culmination of / reflection on my first half decade in the big smoke, trying to write still as life increasingly takes over and diverts. Lots of very good friends played on this to whom I am very grateful!
Pass Between Houses
Theatre for Change
Real Home
Treat Me a Stranger
Utopia of Bog
Void Attentive
My Love, Let's Take the Stage Tonight
the Kiss
He Had Always Led
Matilda Agace – voice (1); electronic percussion (4)
Lauren Auder – voice (1, 8)
Maelin Brown – voice (4); ppooooll (5)
Oliver Hamilton – violin (1, 6-8)
Tom Hardwick-Allan – bass harmonica (1, 8); trombone (8)
Jasper Llewellyn – cello (1); voice (8)
Ted Mair – clarinet (1, 2, 8)
Magdalena McLean – voice (2, 8); violin (6-8)
Alex McKenzie – voice (1, 8)
Margo Munro Kerr – voice (4, 7)
Nathan Pigott – soprano saxophone (1, 2, 8)
Isabelle Thorn – voice (1, 5, 8)
Otto Willberg – double bass (3, 6, 8)
Mix, master and additional production by Maelin Brown
Tin sculpture and back cover photograph by Matilda Agace
Sleeve design by Joseph Bradley-Hill and Hannah Machover
Memorials of Distinction MMXXIV
listen
Fixed (Commission) Strand
These are records which were developed as the result of commissions from other people -- i.e., their production was instigated by someone else and they followed creative and practical parameters separate from the F(I) strand. For this reason, they ended up having free-standing conceptual frameworks and don't follow on directly from other things:
Derevaun Seraun (2014; 2016-17)
Commissioned by Everything Everything during their 2014 Chaos to Order residency, which took place in Manchester Central Library to commemorate its reopening after some years of refurbishment. Five songs for voice, piano and string trio recorded at Low Four Studio in August 2016 by Brendan Williams and released in September 2017 on LP and CD by Moshi Moshi. The songs are about books I like and their thematic relevance to the library as a social resource.
Could She Still Draw Back?
Living With Your Ailments
A Particle of Flesh Refuses the Consummation of Death
The Mute Wide-Open Eye of All Things
The Cure for Pneumothorax
Prabjote Osahn - violin
Adam Robinson - viola
Greg Morton - cello
listen
Monarchs of the Crescent Pail (2017-18)
An invitation to make a solo guitar record from Very Bon, co-released on cassette with Comfortable on a Tightrope. Improvised tunings & a couple of songs for acoustic guitars. Recorded in Oxford and Greater Manchester. Sold out.
Other F(C)S records (unreleased):
-Song of the Husband (commissioned by the Lye Planet Research Unit; for two voices, two acoustic guitars, clarinet, cello, violin, percussion; 2017; rev. & rec. 2019, abandoned; re-rev. & re-rec. 2020-21)
Fifth (Fixed and Unfixed) Strand
I don't know what this strand is yet. There is just one record in it so far. Themes which will probably develop within it: home recording; clear, subtractive textures (where the F(I)S records are usually additive, overwrought); more involved electronics; simpler songs, or greater abstraction or both.
Trespass on Foot (2016-19; 2021)
A mostly 'fixed' record in two halves -- the First part is me alone (electric guitars, voice, sound collage), and second part is mostly acoustic and has other singers, violins, cellos and double basses, clarinets. Began as a U(S)S record and then grew in size (full album is just shy of two hours). Mixed and mastered by Maelin Brown; self-released on double cassette and double CD with help from Ina Tatarko.
The Ship
Sights Past
Heartbeat (C. Cohen)
Two Lost Discoverers Only Boys
Transgression Without Strength
Third Day of February
Castell
Seam Song
Untitled
Old Threat Tale
Body of Worry
Abductor
Cast
Promontory of Unmoving Nights
Untitled
What Dust Is
Dan Bridgwood-Hill - violin (7, 10, 12, 15, 16)
Hannah Hever - bass clarinet (9, 10, 15, 16)
Jasper Llewellyn - voice (7, 12, 16)
Margo Munro Kerr - clarinet (9, 10, 15, 16); voice (7, 10, 12, 13, 16)
Jolliff Seville - voice (6, 10, 12, 13, 16)
Francesca Ter-Berg - cello (10, 12, 13, 16)
Isabelle Thorn - voice (7, 12, 16)
Otto Willberg - double bass (9, 13)
listen/buy tapes
Unfixed (Performed) Strand
Solo and group live recordings, or overdubbed recreations of live recordings, the dynamics of which were worked out during public live performance. I say this as opposed to F(I)S/F(C)S records which feature live groups, because in those instances the groups rehearsed arrangements together for the fixed purpose of a record. The arrangements of the material in this strand were intended for, and evolved through, live performance, and this process dictated the structures of the records rather than the other way round.
Spring Rounds (2014)
Tour-only CD-R of live recordings with second [Dispatch] group; re-arrangements of material from Bowler Hat Soup, recorded March-April 2014, mostly made on Zoom handheld portable recorders, and released in July of that year. Also some home recordings and turntable music. Sound quality preeetttyyy murky. There is a better recording of this group (see below). But if you are intrigued, you can download the mp3s or the wavs.
A Bit of Violence With These Old Engines (2016-18)
Improvisation & songs for acoustic and electric guitars, most of it done live. Recorded in Saddleworth, Oxford, Lisbon and Amposta, released by Boira Discos. Sold out
World Argument Live (2016; 2018; 2020)
Mostly taken from a 2018 set at the Hug & Pint in Glasgow, from this band's last tour, plus alternate versions of songs from Western Culture F(I)S LP. My personal favourite recordings of this line-up. The goal of the group from the beginning -- a more-or-less straightforward guitar/bass/drums quartet formed in 2014 to play music from Bowler Hat Soup, which regularly has a dozen or so instruments going on at once and hardly any electric guitar -- was to simplify the shambling chambery pretenses of the F(I)S records into something heavier and more coherent, and in the process reinvent and revive material that was nearly four old by the time it had got to be released and toured. That was always how it worked, which allowed the group to develop independently of what was going on in the F(I) strand. I loved playing in this group a lot; we were very good and I wish we had played more widely. Self-released (digital only) on Bandcamp.
GD/F
W/P
EAS (I)
EAS (II)
SHUD/INT
U/OUT (I)
U/OUT (II)
W/S
ÖN/GO
Dan Bridgwood-Hill - violin, electric guitar, synthesiser
Andrew Cheetham - drums
Dave Rowe - bass
listen
River Holds Peace, Some Live (2022-23)
Chamber group of three electric guitars (two of which were high-strung guitars), cittern and double bass (plus two voices), which played scored rearrangements mostly of material from Trespass on Foot. The group was an attempt to span the gap between the two halves of that long collage record -- the loud, amplified and myopic disc one versus the sparse, acoustic and collaborative disc two -- but instead of settling for a neither-one-nor-the-other midpoint the scoring tried to give the pieces a third aspect / adding a denseness you can draw on when each note can be positioned precisely. In fact there were points where it got a bit much (not to mention the nightmare of keeping 32 strings in tune in a humid basement) and I think both myself and the rest of the group developed a desire for more open-ended, loose style of arrangement/playing that I'm hoping to pursue in the next group. I collected as many deskboard recordings as I could of this group, but most of this album was tracked very minutely across different houses in the south of England, so we could preserve the parts as accurately as possible. Track 1 and the end of track 6 were recorded at Crofters Rights in Bristol. The group played 11 other times between Summer 2021 and late 2022.
TW/S
3/FE
LV/AI
O/TH
U/L
BO/W
Ben Beauvallet - cover photograph
Maelin Brown - stem mastering
Daniel S. Evans - high-strung electric guitar
Mike O'Malley - cittern
Callum Plowright - high-strung electric guitar (1, 6)
Isabelle Thorn - voice, high-strung electric guitar
Otto Willberg - bowed double bass
Released on cassette with a 7" lathe single of BO/W by Them There Records of Preston. Thank you Carl!
listen/buy
Unfixed (Subsequent) Strand
Compilations of loose tracks recorded between F(I)S records -- scrappy overdubbed recordings made mostly on my own. Originally, the songs in this strand were released on digital EPs or tour-only CD-Rs of variable quality, which I retconned into the two records here to act as minor deviations from, or small bridges between, the F(I)S records.
Adolescence of Prog (2011-14)
Experiments in song structure and computer music from between the making of Bowler Hat Soup and Grapefruit F(I)S LPs, and during the writing and recording of Grapefruit. Quality of the material is a bit fast and loose but I think it makes the jump between the two LPs more tangible. Compiled in 2019 after a Bandcamp clearout.
Huygens Probe
Hecataeus
Jenny Jenny
John Justice
Hoopla Reprise (Akrotiri Poacher Remix)
Inside
the End Times
listen
Abandoning Noble Goals (2015-16)
Originally a standalone EP of songs about honesty released in August 2015; retconned into a U(S)S album in 2022 to pick up other good material recorded a few months after, between the making of Grapefruit and Western Culture F(I)S LPs, and either not released at all or no longer available after (another) Bandcamp clearout. This is partly my Hank Williams album for my dad and partly for DJ and the genuine adolescents.
For HW, DJ and the genuine adolescents!
Second Year
Cracked Globe
Working People
Coyoacán
Os Dias do Hospedeiro
Visions of Worthless Shortcomings
After the Rain Came In
Eunuch
listen
