I’m rather chuffed to be a tiny part of this juggernaut of an album by the prolific Marcus H.
Marcus H
Music 2017
I’ve been listening to The Big Try, the new Dressed Like Wolves album, it’s a cracking album, well recommended. The band’s Bandcamp page describes the album as half an hour of acerbic lyricism, brazen guitar lines, oceans of organs and thunderous drumsets. I can’t disagree with that.
I haven’t been to as many gigs as I’d want to this year but I did manage to see a few local bands, the standouts being, Ten Foot Tom & the Leprosy Crooks, Mouses, The Magick Godmothers and Girl Sweat.
We’ve also had superb albums from Year of Birds, probably their best yet, and from Soiled/Marcus H, the marvellous, Phonic Grafts.
Amazingly, Pellethead celebrated their 25th birthday this year
Hopefully next year will be as good as this one, Shrug will be releasing their much awaited second album, it’s only taken them 30 years to get around to recording it.
Mayburgh Henge
Soiled – Phonic Grafts
Soiled is Marcus H, originally from Bristol he now inhabits the liminal zone between industrial Teesside and rural North Yorkshire. For me, his albums are psychogeographic explorations of the harsh beauty of steel mills, cooling towers and cracker columns pitched against the red in tooth and claw reality of rural East Cleveland. Phonic Grafts beautifully dances in and around these themes, melding together elements of his West Country origins and industrial electronica with contrasting shades of light and dark pastoral psychedelia.
Check out the album here
Happy New Year
I’d just like to wish all my readers a very Happy New Year and thank you for taking the time to visit my blog. 2016 has been a pretty fruitful year for me, I started the year curating The Black Path exhibition at the House of Blah Blah gallery and finished the year with the release of the music from the project.
I’d like to thank all the people who have helped and inspired me throughout the year and look forward to continuing in 2017 where we will see the start of a new project and hopefully an exhibition in 2018.
All the best for 2017
Gavin
I wish you a merry Christmas,
And a happy New year,
A pantry of roast beef,
And a barrel of beer
*
Trad – Cleveland
Source W. Henderson 1879
Tonight is the New Year’s night, tomorrow is the day,
And we are come for our right and for our ray,
As we used to do in old King Henry’s day.
Sing fellows, sing Hagman heigh!
*
If you go to the bacon fitch, cut me a good bit,
Cut, cut and low, beware of your man;
Cut and cut round, beware of your thumb,
That I and my merry men may have some.
Sing fellows, sing Hagman heigh!
*
If you go to the black ark, bring me ten mark,
Ten mark, ten pound, throw it down upon the ground,
That I and my merry men may have some.
Sing fellows, sing Hagman heigh!
*
Trad – North Yorkshire
Source W. Henderson 1879
Utterances
For the fourth year in a row, and rapidly becoming a Christmas tradition, Richard Sanderson has released a themed compilation of tracks on the wonderful Linear Obsessional label. The collection is described as The fourth of Linear Obsessional’s annual “Open Access” compilations of tracks exactly two minutes long. This time the theme was the human voice.
112 tracks from around the globe exploring all manner of approaches to the sounds of the “first instrument”
The collection is free to download and can be found here
The Smell of Water 