Category: music

The weather is sweet

Posted on Posted in Film, music, the eleventh hourTagged , , , , , Leave a comment

Sitting here on a Sunday morning.   Flexing the fingers in anticipation of writing a piece of text that is going to inspire you for the week ahead.  … no such luck!  Ha ha!  I have been taking a break from music – just a handful of days.  It has been fulfilling in its own way.  I have been producing tracks like a machine and it is always wise to take a step back and survey the accomplishments.

I am currently awaiting vocal files from Bill for what will likely be the final track of the Eleventh Hour album.  It is a track which may well take you by surprise – especially considering the two we have just worked on.  But I hope it will be a pleasant surprise.  Apple pie and custard on a spring day.

2011 will be a year of getting things into order.  Getting the Eleventh Hour album “escapism” into a shape where we can pin down a release date.  And I do of course still plan to make the Confession album “all monsters and dust” available too!  These plans won’t stop me working on new material in the meantime… but it is certainly important to note that 2011 will be a year of “attempting achievements”.

I’ve been soaking in some great films recently.  I feel that great art brings about great art.  In the past, certain films have inspired me to write great songs.  More in the Alexi in Winter period to be fair… but it does also creep into my more recent work.  My current desire is to achieve what I have always stated is my aim in music – cinematic pieces.  As I have said before… I’m not talking about film soundtrack work – I’m talking about pieces of music that put flesh on the bone.  Music that aspires to more than a 3 minute blast of pop.

So… I watched Raging Bull three times this last week.  What a guttural punch of a film.  Beautifully shot and disturbingly realised.  Tremendous acting, direction and cinematography.  Absolutely epic.  It is certainly not a film for everyone.  It is not a film about boxing.  It is a film about jealously and obsession.  Pretty hard to watch at times.  But like I said… it’s all there to be ‘soaked in’.  Better to flow a Raging Bull than a Transformers! Ha ha!  Then I watched A Matter of Life and Death.  Wow… I’m ashamed to admit that I’d never seen it before.  But what a film.  Deep.  And very, very sweet.  Another film to absorb and digest.

I have some crazy ideas for new music.  But I’m putting it all on hold.  It’s a nice day and there’s gardening to do!  Ha ha!

The Epic

Posted on Posted in music, song discussionTagged , , , , , , Leave a comment

The last few songs I have recorded have taken me on a journey of discovery.  I so often in the past banged on about how the perfect song should be short, sharp and sweet to the ear.  But recently I have been on a mission to create long epic works with the aim of putting the essence of a stage musical into the boundaries of an indie rock song.

This new direction has taken me via landmarks such as Perhaps I’ll Kill You, The Calm and the Storm and Life Will Be the Death of Me.  And I’ve enjoyed every minute of those songs… and we’re talking about 19 minutes with just those three songs.

My youth in music was built upon the desire to write that perfect pop song.  That perfect rock song.  That perfect punk rock song.  Although perfect is probably too extreme a word, I do believe that I have on more than one occasion produced songs of true worth in that ballpark.  Songs that could have been written by Blur… or the Buzzcocks… or etc etc… but were actually written by me.

I now unveil ACTION HERO! .  This song is the beginning of a new phase in my time as Confession of the Whole School.  It is the start of something new… something that may throw even those of you who have listened to everything up to this point.  I am still yet to officially release All Monsters and Dust, but I wanted to keep you up to date with exactly what I have been doing.  It is after all only fair that I keep you guys involved every step of the way.  It is you that are staying the course by logging into this site and reading my drivel!!!

This new song is going to be on the next Confession of the Whole School album.  Believe me, this next album’s scope is going to be far beyond anything I’ve ever attempted before!  The new song ACTION HERO! has already been compared to Bohemian Rhapsody, Paranoid Android and various other epic works of music.  These compliments do of course make me over the moon, and while I accept that, for me, the song is nothing but another of my songs… flattery will always get you somewhere.   Who wouldn’t want comparisons with greatness!  Ha ha!  This song is setting the stage beautifully for everything I have to come.  You see, I just can’t stop.  I know I should be concentrating on promoting All  Monsters and Dust… but I just can’t stop writing at the moment.  I feel that when I’m like this (which I haven’t been for ten years!) I really shouldn’t stop.  I should just exhale.  Let the music spill out.  So that when the time comes that I have no music left to give I can look back and realise that I accidentally recorded a hundred albums along the way.  Okay… a hundred would be unachievable and an exaggeration… but it’s the spirit that counts.  I believe I have so far recorded three albums of genuine worth.

1) Alexi in Winter – Out of the Low Times

2) Confession of the Whole School – All Monsters and Dust

2) The Eleventh Hour – Escapism

(I am ignoring countless demos and obscure singles)

I believe that in amongst those albums are songs of value.  Complete artistic merit.  Complete cohesion (unlike this post which is veering wildly through the years and the subjects).

And I have a title already for the next album.  I won’t leak it yet! 😉  But I’ll let you into a little secret (which, okay, I may have mentioned in a previous post).   The next album is gonna be a concept album.  Not a twee, silly story concept album – but a concept album that ties in with the themes I have already explored on previous songs.  I’m just gonna step it up a gear.

Anyway… here’s ACTION HERO! .  Let me know what you think!

“All Monsters and Dust” is complete!!!

Posted on Posted in music, song discussionTagged , , , , Leave a comment

It has been an epic encounter.  Me vs This Album.  But, I think all’s well that ends well.  I have recorded the final track for my album All Monsters and Dust.  The track is titled Perhaps I’ll Kill You.  It’s not quite as nasty a title as you may at first think.  Hmmmmm… How best to describe?  I’ll tell the story…

A long time ago I started writing songs.  Once I hit my stride I never really looked back.  There was a period during the 2000s when I drifted away from music… but it has always been there or thereabouts in my life.  Anyway… when I was about 16 I wrote a song called Perhaps I’ll Kill You.  It was about the third ‘proper’ song I ever wrote.  It was primarily a punk song… but it started with a great guitar riff.  Now… this new song you are about to listen to has very little to do with that third song I wrote.  But that song was certainly the inspiration.  I took the guitar riff and played it on bells instead.  When you press play it’s pretty much the first thing you now hear.  None of the rest of the music or lyrics have anything to do with that original song… Just the riff on the chimes.  But what a riff that is!  So… you can see that already the song has a certain sentimental value.

The knowledge that this was to be the final song for my debut album as Confession of the Whole School meant the recording of the song was shrouded in excitement and unresolved angst!  I had a choice of directions to take.  Pop song, rock song etc etc.  Poetic lyrics etc etc.  Well… I abandoned those avenues and made a fresh decision.  Well, a couple of fresh decisions really.

1) Let’s take what has so recently interested me about music – my trip to see Les Miserables.  Let’s see if I can make a rock song that has the essence of musical theatre.  Let’s see if I can crush a whole stage show into the length of a single.  Let’s see if I can jettison the trappings of indie rock ‘formula’.  Let’s see if I can produce a song that sounds new.  A new genre.  High and mightily egotistical that thinking may be.  But can I do it?

2)  Let’s dispel the idea that indie rock should have ‘poetic’ lyrics.  Flowered up, art farty words that fit the song but are really like that mint you get at the end of a meal.  Yes… it’s there and everything… yes I suppose it’s quite nice… but I don’t really give a shit about it.  That feeling that everything is all surface.  Let’s write a set of lyrics that simply say what I want to say.  Closer to rap maybe.  Yes… that’s a better explanation.  Perhaps closer to the kind of thing Mike Skinner did as The Streets back when he was good.

So… bang those two points together and you get this final song.  Perhaps I’ll Kill You.  A speech set to music.  An agenda.  A song that finally rules a line under everything that has gone before and completes All Monsters and Dust – an album that has bled me dry.  Bled me dry.  A song that while ending the past also sets up the future.  A new direction for my music?  Maybe.

This song is called PERHAPS I’LL KILL YOU.  It may be a bit heavyweight.  It may not be the norm.  It may not be ‘good’.  But it is me.  Now and for the future.  Listen with open ears.  Live and let live! Press play.

The Calm and the Storm

Posted on Posted in music, song discussion, Songwriting documentary, the eleventh hourTagged , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

So… it’s been a while since I last wrote anything of any worth.  What have I been doing I hear you ask?  I have been completing the latest Eleventh Hour song.  You may recall that I have written a few times of wanting to produce an epic work of art.  A long song that showcases more than you can usually manage in a typical three and a half minute pop song.  Well… I believe I’ve done it.  I started working on a song which I had provisionally titled “Epicness”.  I gave it a theme and a structure.  Bill then grafted hard to come up with lyrics for a song which weighs in at seven and a half minutes.  Lyrics on that scale are some achievement and a cause for celebration.  The words are great, but I had never doubted it for a second.  The song is called THE CALM AND THE STORM.  Fasten your seatbelts and press play!

Future Nostalgia

Posted on Posted in music, song discussionTagged Leave a comment

I bought a DVD the other day.  I got a message from an old friend that a band we used to love had just re-released an old film of theirs.  I say re-released…. but really it was originally just a VHS tape that they sold to members of their fan club.  It has now finally been issued on DVD – I would say “warts and all”  but that really wouldn’t adequately describe the appalling quality.  Seriously, this is proper bad!!!  Ha ha!  In fact some of it looks worse than the studio videos I’ve been posting here recently.

But of course, there is a reason for the poor presentation.  We’re talking about a ‘for-the-fans’ tape assembled from hours of footage shot by the band themselves on VHS.  Come on… we’re talking a medium that some people reading this will never have heard of.  But anyway… I now have this band’s “larking about” on DVD – and also, I have it signed by every member of the band… in SILVER  PEN!!!  Ha ha!  It’s funny how silly little things like that take you back to the early days of falling for music.  The days of being a fanboy!  I’m saying to people… “Look, I’ve got Blaze’s signature!”… to shrugs of complete indifference.  Well, nevermind.. music is, after all, a very personal cause.  Always has been, always will be.

So I press play.  The PS3 chugs for a moment deciding in what aspect ratio to play these visuals that look like they’ve been scraped from a bucket in the depths of someone’s vision of hell.  Chug, whirl… click click click.

And then we have it.  Enthusiastic, but often childish, attempts at humour mixed with astoundingly powerful and gregarious heavy metal.  You see… this is what I would call a Rockumentary… but we’ve got a film here with all the finesse of a dismembered stoat.  However, it’s bullish, full of life, full of energy and most importantly, full of JOY!  …The video tapings of a band documenting their lives because they truly believe EVERYONE must want to watch just how COOL they are.  The video tapings of a band revelling in how ‘easy’ music is… how ‘fun’ music can be… and how ‘flippant’ the lifestyle should seem.  This is a DVD of a VHS tape made by a band before they were forced to realise just how TOUGH the real word is.  The faces of a band smiling in the moments before it is all torn apart.  We, as viewers now, know what is coming… and in a way that makes it better.  The joy seems more real.  I’m not saying that anything tragic happened in the aftermath of the footage on the DVD.  It was just the usual story of a band that split up… perhaps never fulfilling their promise.  The story of untold treasures and the allure of bright, Hollywood lights!  Ha ha!

I made similar videos at about the same time as the videos on this DVD.  I was in a band at the time myself.  We were no great shakes… in fact we were positively awful.  But nevertheless we likewise revelled in stupidity and gross-out humour.  We would film silly little comedy sketches and record silly little novelty songs.  And we were full of joy.  Watching my signed DVD brought the memories of those days flooding back.  The exuberance of youth.  The feeling that you could take on the world because not only did you know EVERYTHING, but you really were BETTER than EVERYONE!!!  Ha ha!  We were pioneers.  Rebels.  Bandits.  Our by-numbers cod rock songs were world beaters.  How could we not succeed?!?  We were young Gods!  Ha ha!

My band from those heady days never achieved anything.  It was just the first in a long line of stepping-stones that I had to precariously saunter across to become the ego I am today!  Ha ha!  And what an ego!!!  Every artist probably has a string of similar ‘failed’ bands in his closet.  That’s life.  Rarely are you the finished article on your first attempt!  The band on the DVD will have their own thoughts when they look back at their younger selves.  For them there will be a slightly different slant.  They played gigs with Alice Cooper – we’re not talking the Plymouth Cooperage here!  Ha ha. (although saying that they actually pretty much were the definition of a pub rock band.  Pints in the air!!!).  They will have nostalgia and the thoughts of what might have been “if things had worked out differently”.  I don’t have any of the videos I filmed at the same stage in my career. Maybe they’re in a box somewhere… maybe they’ve been burned by the credibility elves.  It doesn’t matter.  The point is that it is sometimes good to just bask in the feelings you had before you realised how depressing the real world can sometimes be.  The real world can often be such a savage place – full of incidents striding towards the ultimate purpose of making your dreams difficult to fulfill.

Well… that crappy DVD VHS BETA TAPE BLAH BLAH BLAH has, in its bluster and bravado, reminded me of what music can be.  It can be stupid.  It can be silly.  It can be extravagant and mind-blowing.  It can be epic.  And it is okay if it fails.  For every failure there is a shining, all singing glimmer of something special.  All those old adages of aiming high so that even if you don’t hit a star you may just hit the headlight of a Stealth bomber (or something like that… I forget how it goes).  Everything sounds cliché.  This post is a living breathing cliché.  And yet that is what we all need sometimes.  A cliché.

I am using this joy de vivre to fuel the next song I am working on.  I don’t know if any of you remember… but I once wrote about wanting to write an epic song.  A song of sheer gusto.  A song of contempt for rules.  A song of cinematic bombast.  Well my friends… this next song will hopefully be the explosion of sound that is needed to live up to those words.  I know how to play by the rules.  But I also understand that sometimes rules don’t matter.  It’s not even as if “rules are there to be broken”.  I just think sometimes you have to write from the heart.  And if a Bohemian Rhapsody is accidentally spilled forth then champagne glasses at the ready.  If all you get is Jive Bunny then so be it.  We can but try.

I end this garbled and unfocused post with one more sentence.  Thanks to the band that blew the hearing in my right ear!