6 Portraits

"All persons, living and dead, are purely coincidental, and should not be construed." (Kurt Vonnegut)

What type of music do I make? Hard to say really; I sing, play guitar, percussion, I sample drums, electronics,voices, orchestras, "ethnic/world" music, random obscurities from my record collection etc etc...

Each song is a portrait of a different individual.... 

The Songs: 

"Albert Decides To Set Himself Free" - Well, I'll probably never write a dance anthem, but I have written a song about frustrated old Albert... Now just what is it he keeps in his special bag? All the guitar and bass sounds on this are acoustic guitar (the wonders of pitch shifting and distortion!). 

"Jaded Jemma's Cynical Words" - A modern take on The Gatherers early 70s roots reggae song "Words". There's a few lyrics similar to the original but the tone and theme are very different... 

"Misako, Who Laments The Triumph Of Bling Over Culture" - Misako is a character in a surreal 1967 Japanese thriller called "Branded To Kill", played by beautiful Indo-Japanese actress Annu Mari. The line "My dream is to die" comes from the film, but apart from that the story of the film and the story of the song are unrelated. The classical guitar on this track is played by Edina Balczó. 

"Hakim's Sonic Haiku" - Multilayered acoustic guitar, tar (a kind of Iranian lute) & violin with mulilingual voice samples floating about the mix. No vocals on this one - it says what I want it to say without any... 

"Kahleisha, She's Quite Strange - Half Angelic, Half Deranged" - A nice bouncy one done as a bit of a joke, but sometimes I like my jokey songs best... 

"Terry Teaches Jenny A Lesson" - Some of you out there may consider Terry's educational methods a little extreme.... Musically this is a kind of orchestral dubstep fusion I guess, though strangely enough when I was recording the vocals, memories of Roxy Music's "In Every Dream Home A Heartache" popped into my head despite not having heard it for years... .............................................................................................................................................................................