29/11/2024
Since "Sailors On The Roiling Sea" has been out for a week I thought I'd take a track a day over the next 9 days, and post the notes I had prepared for the Album Listening Party. Thanks to everyone who came to that by the way, it was so much fun 🌊
Track 1: EARLY FORMATIONS
So here we go, the first track on the album is “Early Formations”. This is a sister song to “AI Trash” which was the first single, I wrote them both at the same time and they both share the same lyrical landscape. This vision of a roiling (not rolling!) sea which all humanity is perilously thrown around on is of course also depicted in the album artwork which was so amazingly brought to life by French illustrator Clémence Mira.
What I have in mind here is the more negative effects of AI, particularly in the wrong hands, which are very rapidly seeping into all areas of our lives - and creating a world where we can no longer tell fact from fiction. On the other hand I’m also a bit of a fan of some of the more out-there and very surreal AI videos. The movement of the rapid changes that occur in them, none of which make any sense but yet which seem so very real, kind of reminded me of waves in the sea so that’s another layer to the visual theme.
Speaking of the artwork, the album is available as a download of course, but also on Cassette and CD formats, both including sleeve notes and lyrics; feel free to place your orders here on Bandcamp! Clémence’s artwork looks great in these physical formats. If there is enough demand we’ll maybe do a run of vinyl in 2025.
Clémence was so great to work with. I met her first over 10 years ago at a gig I was doing in Nantes with my band Peepholes. I’ll always remember she was sat there taking notes during our set, including what synth I was playing. Well, that synth is included on the cover, along with various other symbols connected to the songs on the album as well as other cultural iconography. Over the years Clémence has become an amazingly cool illustrator, her work has been used in magazines and for posters etc. in France. Her zoomed out scenes of highly populated activity put me in mind of a modern day Bruegel - more from him later.
That’s Andy Pyne on drums, Julian Tardo on guitar, and me and Julian on bass guitar. This is Andy’s favourite song to play - we’ve been rehearsing for shows but so far haven’t played any haha. Hopefully in the new year. And of course the brass instrument, it’s a cornet, is played by Marcus Hamblett who gave some similarly jazzy performances on the last album Bloody Saturnalia last year.
Unsung Hunger Church Road Recording Company
from the album Sailors On The Roiling Sea
