Hard Art

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It’s past midnight again… I’m a sucker for punishment.  Ha ha!

So, have you checked out the new Eleventh Hour site?  www.eleventhhourinitiative.com

The new site has allowed me to push Bill a little more to the forefront when it comes to talking about the Eleventh Hour material.  I can now publish pieces from him and I think he’s quite enjoying it.  I’ve told him to wax lyrical about his involvement with the project and he has taken up the challenge admirably!!!  So… seriously, check it out.  He has been writing about the concepts that have influenced his contribution to the début Eleventh Hour Initiative album.  I will likely post some articles on the site about my musical influences and the importance of the album in the context of my musical life at a later date.  I shall let Bill take centre stage for the time being!

But… I will always be posting here.  And I do have things to say.  I set this site up as a place where I could share ideas about music and let people into what it takes to actually write an album.  A kind of ‘behind the scenes’.  That’s the thing you see… “writing an album”.  I don’t like to do things by halves!  I like to set myself a challenge and see if I can run with it!

I finished All Monsters and Dust.  I am working on the finishing touches for the whole ‘package’ of Eleventh Hour material (and I don’t say that lightly – there is a whole lot to do!!!).  But importantly… I am already a quarter of the way through the next Confession of the Whole School album.

The next Confession of the Whole School album will be an interesting affair.  For you see, in the past I have spent so much time refining my music. Refining my words.  Seriously, when I look back on past albums I can physically see the sheer hard work.  I have a box in the attic with papers from my time of writing the Alexi in Winter album. ( Hmmm…. Note to self, link to that album below now! )

I have pages of endless drafts of lyrics for songs such as Salt Cellars.  I had so much to say, and with such a narrow scope at that time.  The songs were focussed and the album was all the better for it.  But those songs were art.  And they were hard art.  And they were unrewarded art. But they document a time of my life and I am thankful that if I wanted to, I could play that album and hear a specific period of my life.  Those songs were so thought out.  They were complex and deep.  And most importantly, they were ‘proper’ songs.  They could have been on the Bends or on a Travis album or something.  You know what I mean?  Proper songs.  Acoustic guitar songs!!!  Singer songwriter songs.  They were of an age of fragmented Brit-pop.  The end of an era really.

There is a slight crossover with some of the early songs of what eventually became my first entirely solo album All Monsters and Dust.  You can hear it in a comparison between songs such as Love is Blind and Legend, Icon, God.  On the Eleventh Hour site I will likely, in the future, talk about similar ‘cross-over’s.  I talk about the Alexi in Winter period as being a distinct sound and a focussed set of songs.  Well… I feel similarly about the Eleventh Hour album.  It is an extremely specific, focussed set of songs.  But there is a genuine reference back to my Alexi in Winter period and, although I haven’t yet done it, I reckon listening to both albums back to back would be interesting.  But, as I say, I hope to go into detail about this on the other site.

This site is for my personal ramblings!  You may have noticed I like to ramble!  Big time!!!

So, Alexi in Winter was a very specific set of songs.  A collection of songs rooted in a particular set of emotions.  Rejection, anger, sorrow… mixed with a little bravado.  A very intimate collection of songs in a way.

All Monsters and Dust on the other hand was more scattershot.  This randomness was primarily due to the length of time it took to put together!  I went through a lot in those ten years.  The track listing takes you on a journey through my life.  The Comedy is Over dealt with similar issues to Alexi in Winter.  Fall dealt with anger and death.  ’50s Teen Flick dealt with yet another rejection.  The newer songs dealt with the aftermath.  Finally, Perhaps I’ll Kill You paved the way for a new album.  A new album with new rules…

And so, here I sit at 0039 hours.  Eyes stinging.  I know I ramble on about the same topics again and again but you must understand – this is like therapy for me!!!  And if my albums are diaries then this blog is the diary of a diary!

The point of this post was to say that the new album, (remember, I mentioned it a while ago!) is a departure from the Alexi in Winter days.  The lyrics are stream of consciousness. There are no pages and pages of corrected ideas.  I stand by what I now create… but I am unsure whether it is better or worse for its lack of discipline – for its lack of considered thought.  What I will say though is that this album will be my most adventurous.  It will not be a hit.  It can’t be.  It is too personal and too bold.  But it will be cohesive.  In its own way it will be just as cohesive as the Eleventh Hour Initiative album.  This next Confession of the Whole School album will be this current era of my life set to music.  I am so lucky in that I can be adventurous musically and commercially with the Eleventh Hour, and yet still hit you smack in the face with my solo material.  Bill wrote on our site about the importance to him that the general public ‘like’ our music.  I agree to a certain extent.  I… have  to agree.  It is important that people like my music.  And it is especially important that people love the Eleventh Hour Initiative.  It is a special project.  I would go so far as to say it is a magical project born of a magical situation.  While Bill is more modest, I am certainly the loud-mouth, and I say that my mix of ‘epic music’ with his ‘poetic genius lyrics’ stand head and shoulders above most music out there today.  I want the Eleventh Hour Initiative to succeed and I sincerely believe it deserves to succeed.  But… deep down, (and I will point this at my own music rather than the Eleventh Hour) – although I appreciate it is important that people like my music, I do not really care whether anyone likes my music.  ‘Important’ is one thing.  I mean, obviously some people have to like the music or serious questions would be surfacing.  Questions such as “Is it any good or am I just living a fantasy life like all the other people out there that think they have a voice and think that owning a music creation game on their computer makes them a “musician”?”.  I have had people adore my songs in the past.  Adore I say.  Ha ha!  Adoration does not change the spin of the Earth.  I’ll be honest… It changes very little.  I hold the majority of the general public in contempt.  They do not represent me and I do not represent them.  If you truly like my music – if you truly enjoy my music.. then you are a King.  Or a Queen if you prefer (you never know… there may be some women reading this.  Funny things happen at sea).  If you have enjoyed what has come before then you are going to love my next album.  I am making an album of white noise.  I am filtering the noise into music.  I am decimating the sound of 500 million explosions and picking out fragments of tone.  Pitch?  Ha ha!  I’m aiming for disorganised cacophony!  But with a strong narrative.  I will not be in character.  I will be talking directly to you.  TO YOU.  And if you don’t like what I have to say then you are going to despise the album!  Ha ha!  And, I know you should never begin a sentence with ‘and’.

Oh, and remember… always take my words with a pinch of salt.  ‘Cause you can never be sure when I have a wry smile on my face and a twinkle in my eyes. 😉

Goodnight.

p.s. have another listen to the only song currently ‘out in the open’ from my next album.  Think of it as a sneak preview! I present, again, ACTION HERO!

The other side

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So… Eurovision is on the TV.  Signals another year over.  An eventful year all round really.  For me personally, musically it has been a ball.

I need to make an announcement.  You should all by now be aware of my Eleventh Hour project with Bill Ryan.  Well, we are nearing completion of the album, and therefore a release date is fast approaching.  I have therefore made the decision to separate Eleventh Hour related information to a dedicated website.

The website is www.eleventhhourinitiative.com .  I hope you will all take the time to check out both sites.  The Eleventh Hour site takes an interesting twist as I am now able to publish the thoughts of Bill Ryan too.  We decided that having Eleventh Hour material on this site complicated things and made it unclear as to what Confession of the Whole School and the Eleventh Hour actually are.

Simply put… Confession of the Whole School remains my sole project.  My sole means of expression and a doorway into my life.  Confession of the Whole School is increasingly providing me with an outlet to air my views and push forward the boundaries of music.  I make these bold statements a lot, and I concede that I may come across as arrogant and/or pretentious.  This is not the case.  I am just confident in my ability and certain that I can give the music world something truly different.  If you have not yet heard my debut album then consider giving it a listen.  In any case, the past is gone.  I am now working on new things.  I don’t want to spill too many beans… but I’m working on an idea at the moment that will be so different it will probably split opinion in a devastating fashion.  It may be my Dark Side of the Moon… or it may be my Rudebox.  Too early to know right now.  But I am excited and that is perhaps the most important thing.  I am fed up of music for music’s sake.  And that is what I hear more than anything these days.  My next Confession of the Whole School work will blow away the cobwebs.  It is a project SO personal that it will be a difficult listen.  But I hope that it will also be so fresh that it will make an impact.  For you see… although I am proud of what I achieved with the collection of songs that became All Monsters and Dust, at the end of the day a collection of songs is all it was.  There were consistent themes in the newer songs – songs such as Perhaps I’ll Kill You and The Last Gasp.  But on the whole it was the summing up of an era of my life.  This next project (which I shall keep under wraps for now) is a set of songs written in the here and now.  A number of songs that are thematically consistent and tell a story.  Most importantly they are the most straight from the soul lyrics I have written.

Don’t get me wrong – I have certainly written songs that are from my heart before.  In fact I have only ever written from the heart – I’m not really a story song writer.  But those songs have been traditional.  Songs like Salt Cellars and Out of the Low Times… in fact all the Alexi in Winter material, were intensely personal.  The thing is… they were definitely what you would call standard songs.  They didn’t break many rules.  They conformed and in some ways they were all the better for it.  Those songs still make me cry.  They remind of a time when things seemed broken.  I still hear it in those lyrics.  But they are poetic.  I made an effort to make the lyrics conform to the flowered up norm.  The effort to hide the emotion behind layers of rhyme.

I’ve been there and done that.  My next Confession of the Whole School project discards the traditional.  It abandons the norm.  Think Perhaps I’ll Kill You upped a thousand times.  Action Hero is probably going to be part of the next project.  If you are in any doubt about how different I’m intending to be then just give that song another listen.  … and imagine a whole collection of songs in that vein.  See?  Interesting isn’t it?

The Eleventh Hour Initiative on the other hand has become much more than a side project.  Where Confession lets me spill my soul, the Eleventh Hour allows me to concentrate on the art of music.  On the craft.  On the togetherness.  On the solid spirit of the concept of the album.  Most importantly it lets me work with a singer who has a great take on the classic lyric.  In many ways he embodies the opposite idea of lyric writing than I do with my current Confession material.  I think Bill still has that classic poetry along with an intelligence that catapults the words to new heights.  While the Eleventh Hour is me… it is so different from Confession of the Whole School that it HAS to have a separate website.

Anyway… I kind of got waylaid there.  I think I drifted into other subjects and lost sight of what I was supposed to be saying.  But that’s not important.  I just like talking to you all.  Goodnight.

The Eleventh Hour Initiative

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First of all… Remember to buy my album All Monsters and Dust!!! – http://confessionofthewholeschool.bandcamp.com/

I am taking a little break from music for a few days.  Things to do you see.  There’s the Royal Wedding to watch:

Hmmm.  Let’s hope the weather stays stunning.  I’ve read that it’s due to turn.  Fingers crossed!  Ha ha!

It has been a full-on few months.  I completed that first solo album and I’ve nearly finished the Eleventh Hour album.  I thought I’d just talk a little bit about a few changes Bill and I have made with our collaborative project.  Well… what started as the Eleventh Hour has now become THE ELEVENTH HOUR INITIATIVE.  I will write more about the reasons for the change closer to the time of the album release… but basically this new band name is a better summation of what Bill and I are all about.  It’s a closer fit to the scope of the album.  It is a mission statement in itself.  We have a band name that sets an agenda.

The album title will still be Escapism.  I will probably ask Bill to write a little piece on the theme of the album and the thinking behind the songs.  At this stage I will say that the title of the album genuinely fits the motivation and emotion of the songs.  So, the Eleventh Hour Initiative‘s debut album, Escapism is so very nearly complete.

I am having a ball with music at the moment.  I have produced songs at a phenomenal (for me!!!) rate and I am SO pleased with the results.  I listened to All Monsters and Dust through and I was knocked out by some of the inventiveness and catchiness of the tunes.  Obviously I am hugely biased… but it is an album that was so long in the making that any sense of cohesion could have been lost.  But on the contrary, I think the songs hang together well as a track listing and exhibit the essence of a ten year struggle with music.

On the other hand, the forthcoming Eleventh Hour Initiative album is a different Beast altogether.  This will be no long drawn out affair.  This will be no distillation of years of effort.  This album… Escapism… will be the most concise album I have yet produced.  It will be on a par with my Alexi in Winter work in that it will showcase a defined period of my life.  The music has flowed and actually been ‘easy’ to capture on ‘tape’.  This is a complete, rounded album – musically speaking.  With regards to the lyrics the album is also resolutely concise.  Razor sharp in fact.  Bill’s words have encompassed many topics and taken us on many roads and pathways and many peaks and troughs.  Yet throughout there has been the consistent theme of escape.  The fit with the music has been total.  This is total music.  This will eventually be a total album.  This album will rank mightily fine alongside the best of anything I have ever done.  In some ways, because of the speed of its inception and the scope of its endeavour it may just be the pinnacle of my artistic life so far.  Until its release you can still play the music by clicking on the album below.  We want to wet your appetite and we are sure that you will be the first to download the album when it does become available.  Remember… until then you really are the select few.  In years to come others will trawl this website to see what we were talking about before the album’s release.  But my friends… you are here now.  The select few.

All Monsters and Dust is released!!!

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Click this link to buy!   http://confessionofthewholeschool.bandcamp.com/

Okay fellow Confessioners… the day has finally come.  The day I have banged on about for a long, long time.  I have released All Monsters and Dust.  You can click on the music link at the top of the screen and buy it.  Go on, you know you want to.  Wouldn’t the sound of ten years of effort go down well on your Ipod?  The answer, in case you’re struggling, is yes.  Ha ha!

I know I’m like a broken record when it comes to this ‘record’ but it is the end of an era of my life.  When I started recording All Monsters and Dust I was in a completely different studio.  Many of the earlier songs such as The Comedy is Over and Double Click … Delete document a totally different time of my life.  I was a different person back then.   I had just disbanded Alexi in Winter and I was starting a journey as a solo artist.  Now, although many of my projects up to that point had in reality been solo works, I was still surrounded by talented musicians and producers to help me realise my imagination.  With Confession of the Whole School I chose to take on the all-encompassing role.  To write, play and produce all my own music.  Not only that but also to create the artwork and all marketing material.

As the recording of the album progressed I then changed studio environment as I moved into a flat.  ’50s Teen Flick is the main product of that time.  I like the sound I achieved on that song and the lyrics are very much a diary entry of that ‘middle period’ of the album.  I was quite disillusioned and although I still believed that music was my outlet I also felt that no-one would ever want to listen.  For that reason ’50s Teen Flick will always have a place in my heart.

The final period of the recording of the album took place in my current studio.  My dad and I built this studio.  You can see pictures of it on this very site on the top menu somewhere.  The latter era songs, for me, are summed up by the song which I actually decided to make the opener of the album.  The Last Gasp.  It is an important song for it allows me to escape the baggage of ten years.  I came to the realisation that a lot of the things that once made me angry are no longer of any concern to me.  I am a free spirit and no one has held me back.  No one has stopped me accomplishing anything.  For you see everything is still out there for the taking.  The lyrics of The Last Gasp reflect this.  In fact, the Last Gasp and Perhaps I’ll Kill You are a neat little double act as they represent both a ruled line under the past and an indication of what I can achieve in the future.  Both songs map out a plan of action for forthcoming material.  They point a direction.  Yes… they point a direction.  A direction I have since expanded upon with Action Hero… but All Monsters and Dust laid the foundations.  A move from strict indie pop to ‘no boundaries’ flight of fancy.  Listen to the album as a whole and you will hopefully get an appreciation for the decade it took to make.

Oh… and I promise the next album won’t take 10 years!!!  🙂

The weather is sweet

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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!

Zombieland

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I pretty much finished the music for what may very well be the final track of the Eleventh Hour‘s debut album – Escapism.  I feel I’ve created a special, upbeat track and I eagerly wait to hear what Bill comes up with in terms of vocals for this one.  For better or for worse it is a song that has taken the journey to its limits.  Epics, through pop songs, through epics and full circle to a pop song.  This has probably been the most productive era of my career.  Seriously… take a look at the album in its incomplete glory.  Isn’t it a wonder to behold?!?

Anyway… as I say, there is a little way to go yet.  The final song may well push one of the current tracks off the album – we are still determined to produce a 12 track album.  Also, bear in mind no-one else has heard this album at all yet.  Just you, the readers of this site, and the few on Soundcloud.   Soundcloud is the site that I use to ‘host’ the music.  It enables me to get a quick snapshot of whether a song has what it takes.  To be honest, all the songs have gone down very well.  The Eleventh Hour, so far, has been a success.  The next step of the process will be to make the rest of the world aware of it!!!

I had another spare moment last night so I watched the film “Zombieland“.  It had been recommended to me by my cousin so I gave it a go.  Now, again, with any review of a film I feel it’s important to give certain caveats.  I am a Zombie fan.  Plain and simple.  The original Dawn of the Dead is one of my favourite films.  So obviously this review is skewed due to that fact.  Also, bear in mind that, unlike the majority of the world, I didn’t find Shaun of the Dead all that funny!

So… Zombieland.  Short review this one!  Great film.  Loved it.  Jesse Eisenberg plays a great nerd (no shit Sherlock) and Woody Harrelson plays a marvellous action hero.  Combine that with a cute girl and thousands of ‘zombie’ kills and you have a recipe for success in my eyes.

However, there are really no zombies in this film.  It conforms to the current trend for ‘zombie’ films of having a disease that ravages the world and turns people into flesh-lusting animals.  Not zombies.  The dead do not rise.  “When Hell is full the dead shall walk the Earth” – not here.

But this film is a thousand times better that Shaun of the Dead.  I may be being a bit hard on Shaun of the Dead but it just did nothing for me.  It had its moments of course.  I loved the “throwing the records at the zombies” sketch and I liked the quaint English slant on the zombie apocalypse .  But overall, Zombieland has more than the edge.  I love the idea of the rulebook.  Similar to Scream, or, you know, the current batch of ‘knowing’ horror films, this film also describes “the rules”.  The rules to follow if you’re trying to survive the zombie-led end of the world.  This theme is followed through to the very end and is well executed.  Clever and brilliant.  A really cool action/horror/comedy.  Not a patch on the original Romero zombie trilogy in terms of depth.  But purely judged on the game it’s playing, this film is a laugh.  A great spectacle for a “B-movie” and a great waste of an hour and a half.  Even my girlfriend liked it!

When You’re Strange

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I had a spare moment last night so I watched “When You’re Strange“, a new film about the Doors.  Well… about Jim Morrison (no matter how much it stresses it isn’t).

So, before I go any further, this one’s quite simple.   All fans of the Doors have to watch this film.  There you go… there’s your review.

For the rest of you it may not be quite such a straightforward decision. This is how it is… I’m a huge fan.  Being a huge fan means there’s stuff in this film that will astonish.  I had never seen Jim’s ‘movies’ before and much of this film is taken from the ‘road movies’.  Therefore you’re getting to see images of Jim Morrison that you may never have seen before.  It’s one of those instances where it’s actually quite strange seeing such an iconic figure actually ‘moving around’ – In footage that isn’t from the Hollywood Bowl etc. This is footage of him actually walking/driving around.  Doesn’t sound like much of a revelation?  Well, believe me, it actually is!

The film starts off brilliantly.  Beautifully you might say.  I won’t spoil it too much… but the way the very beginning has been edited is perfect.  Jim driving along, listening to the reports of his own death on the car stereo.  Just superb.  So I sit back and think “wow, this is really going to be something”… and, well, it kind of is and it kind of isn’t.

For those of you who are less aux-fait with the Doors you might very well be better off watching the much derided Oliver Stone film.  It is a far more enjoyable re-telling of the myth that became the Doors.  Val Kilmer was excellent in my humble opinion… and although it showed Jim Morrison in a pretty angelic light, it still hangs together better as an “all you need to know” account of the Doors.

So, why doesn’t this ‘documentary’ work quite as well as it should?  Mainly due to the horrendous script.  At times it is jarringly bad!  I can only hope that it is that way on purpose.  But I have the horrible feeling that it really is just plain bad.  A kind of antithesis of the Oliver Stone movie that I can only assume has been written that way to please the haters of that film.  To dispel a lot of the ‘mystical’ elements and try to show Jim Morrison as a human being – towards the end a shambling alcoholic who went off the rails.

And, just to give a little extra polish to the awful script comes one of the worst narrations I have ever heard.  Note to everyone – DO NOT GIVE JOHNNY DEPP A JOB AS NARRATOR EVER AGAIN!!!  I cannot stress this enough. Talk about taking the soul from a film.  He is a drag.  He sounds bored… he probably was bored.  I’m not even sure from watching the film whether Jonny Depp even likes the Doors?!?  It really is that bad!

Anyway… ha ha!  The good points!  Hmmmm… look, for everything I’ve just said there are actually many good points.  There’s the reminder of just how great the Doors were.  The (brief) reminder of how great each individual was within the Doors.  The footage of them behind the scenes and the carnage of some of those gigs.  A reminder that even though I view the Doors as a bit of an art house band… in their time they were actually pretty much a pop act.  And a reminder that Jim Morrison really was the most iconic rock singer of all time.  He built the image of ROCK STAR that we see today.  And… maybe most importantly… all by the age of 27.  That most unlucky of ages for a lot of the rock stars of the past.  27.

This film is one that I’m glad was made and I’m glad I watched.  It’s a piece of history.