Author Archive

I try to buy a new album release every week. Some weeks it doesn’t happen simply because there’s nothing new that interests me, but some weeks when that happens, I just plump for something anyway. Some times it’s because I like the cover art, or I’m intrigued by that little write-up that Fopp do beside the new releases, or some times it’s because I’ve heard of the band at some stage, maybe years ago in some magazine review that I can barely recall, or maybe plastered all over advertising posters in the underground.

I’ve discovered some good albums this way (Twin Atlantic – Free) and I’ve also come across some stinkers (The Blackout – Hope). But either way, I enjoy finding new bands and hunting down new music. In a way I prefer doing this in physical, actual, 3-dimensional record stores (they still exist, just about), possibly because the sheer choice and volume of new music on the internet is impossible to even comprehend.

But regardless, the internet is the way to find, listen to and share new music for this and all foreseeable generations, and that’s the way it is. How you choose to find the new music you listen to is down to you. But increasingly in this day and age it’s on the taste-making music blogs (of which there are hundreds) that hold massive sway over which of the ‘hot’ new bands you’ll be gushing over on your Facebook wall. The debates rage across the hipster, scencster, whatever-er blogs and forums that position themselves at the bleeding edge of all that is new and worthwhile in music, and I tend to stay firmly out of it, occasionally looking on from afar like a rubbernecker on the far side of the road to a 10-car pile up, but never getting out to go examine the gory details. And I’m completely happy with that. I’m set in my ways.

So this brings me onto Lana Del Rey. I’m going to assume that you, dear reader, are aware of Lana Del Rey, and if not, here’s a link to her breakout, viral video hit from 2011, Video Games.

A nice song. So nice in fact that the Guardian declared it their song of the 2011, a perfectly understandable choice, and who am I to judge? You should hear some of the shit that made my list.

So anyway, I was mostly oblivious to Ms Del Rey and her viral hit. I say ‘mostly’ because I noticed the name on the Guardian list, but like most of what their music section prints, I took little notice of it. I caught little flashes of her name appearing on various Twitter streams, but again, paid no heed to those either. Who listen to anyone on Twitter??…

Then the posters for her debut album started appearing – everywhere. Now usually I would ignore any new album that’s thrust this aggressively down my throat by major record labels, especially if they are by a new female vocalist complete with a run down of hyberbolic press review snippets declaring them to be the new, new, new, new,new (ad nauseum) Voice of the Year!!!!. see Adele, Florence + The Machine, Little Bird, etc etc.

But I was feeling adventurous, fancied trying something a little different to what I would naturally go for, and I quite liked the album title. I’d had a quick Spotify listen to the 4 songs they made available before the album release and thought they sounded interesting enough. She had quite a timeless, deep, sultry voice at times, one that has a vintage crooning quality to it. Some of the tracks had an almost trip hop feel to them, and for the most part, I thought it was pretty good. So on New Album Monday, I picked it up in Fopp for 10 of my finest pounds.

I’ve listened to it a few times and it’s not bad, if not completely my cup of tea. It has some great songs, some lovely moments, some lush and sophisticated string arrangements, some of those Portishead-trip hop touches I like, and a subject matter that, while I can’t neccesarily relate to wholeheartedly, is painted in vivid and compelling enough strokes to draw me in. It also has some clunkers on there. All in all, it probably wont feature in my favouirtes of the year come December time, but still, I don’t regret buying it, and I consider that a success.

But it was only after all this did I pick up on the massive internet furore around this girl, and this is what has compelled me to write this rambling post.

She is lambasted, quite viciously by an online music press/blog/mob that once held her aloft as their new darling. Her crime? She used to have a different stage name and a different image, and a failed first album. Lana Del Rey is a reinvention and thus fake, manufactured, ‘not indie’, and all the rest of that bollocks. The obvious idiocy of discrediting a pop album due to a disingenuous claim to indie authenticity is there for all right-minded individuals to see, and it’s really too tedious to go into.

But what bugs me so much is this whole online culture that perpetuates this nonsense, this music blog/tastemaker/entertainment news cyclone of bullshit that must comment and judge on absolutely everything in music, apart from of course, the music itself.

As a completely failed and unsuccessful musican that continues to make music, (yes that probably makes me somewhat bitter, but I digress) it is so depressing to see any new artist achieve even a modicum of success, only to get hauled over the coals for something that is a million miles away from what actually matters – ie. what the fucking song sounds like.

I don’t give a shit who you are, what your name is, or how many botox lip injections you’ve had, if I like your song, if it’s a good song, everything else is completely irrelevant. Obviously there are caveats to this, Joseph Fritzl could write the catchiest pop song of all time, and I almost certainly wouldnt buy it, but hopefully you get my point.

As if it wasn’t hard enough for new musicians in the internet age, when you are lost amongst literally millions of bands competing for the same bandwidth, you now have a ready-made, judge, jury and executioner in the form of all these music blogs and commentators waiting to discredit you for some bullshit reason that doesn’t actually change how your album sounds.

Is this some underhand way of providing a filter for people to decide what to buy? When the internet music fan is searching for the next album to steal from a torrent site, how do they know which of the millions of albums to get? You can’t download them all after all, you can’t listen to everything and whittle them down to what you actually like. So what do you do? Go to the indie blogs, full of idiots having variations of the following exchange:  ”Hey, all this shit sounds the same”, “yeah, but this dude has tattoos that he got when he was 11, he’s the real deal, let’s push him over that dude with the barely dried ink on his arm”, “sweet”.

What makes it even more frustrating is that you can sample everything now before you buy it, or even if you don’t buy it. The internet allows you to listen to pretty much anything via Spotify, Grooveshark and Youtube et al, and setting aside my personal gripes with those services for one second, that’s a great thing! Why? Because you can decide for yourself! It’s there! Listen to it!

Do you like it? “Yes” Then who cares what anyone else says.

Do you like it? “No” Then who cares what anyone else says.

I know I’m stating the obvious here, but I really was completely taken aback by the whole deluge of opinion around this Del Rey lady and her history, and even by the histrionic vocabularly used to spew their rhetoric across the soiled music pages of the blogosphere.  It saddens and amazes me that people who claim to love music can be so knuckledraggingly thick about this stuff.

Musicians who write good songs, sing good songs, or perform good songs should be supported (if you agree with the ‘good’ part).  If you don’t like who they were a year ago in a past life, just go and go listen to something else, it’s not like there’s a lack of alternatives.

Anyway, rant over. I am aware of the irony in me writing this and thus making myself part of the stinky cloud of keyboard-opinion blustering around Lana Del Rey as well, but oh well, I at least hope there’s a sliver of sense in there somewhere. It’s always about the song. Nothing else.

Next post will be a cheery new Down In Autumn music update as usual no doubt, so do check back.

Til then.

Blog music: I wrote this post listening to Green Day’s Insomniac album

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Time for the first full update of 2012..

There’s a few things to address in this post, but first off, following its ‘release’ in December, I’ve now added the latest album, Hesitance, to this site. It’s now available to download from the discography section, and you can get there by clicking this handy link right here. Or if you want, you can download the album, for free, by right-clicking and saving the album cover or this link. There’s a few details about the album in the previous post on this site, so you can check that out if you want a bit more info on the album and its production.

So there’s a few things I have in the pipeline for the upcoming weeks and months. Firstly, you may or may not have noticed the new design of this site. I like it when bands reimagine their website with every new release, and I’d love to do the same, but lack of time and creativity usually gets in the way and I tend to get very lazy with the webpage layout. But I found a bit of time to tinker with the layout. The old black and red design was growing old to me and I want something a little more bright, although that’s ‘bright’ in purely relative terms..

In terms of new music, there’s currently a demo of an old song streaming on the Facebook Page for Boys From County Hell, which is a short film about vampires in rural Ireland by a good friend of mine; Chris Baugh. The song is called When I’m Dead and I wrote it after reading an early draft of the film script a few years ago now. The song was never finished how I wanted it and the version that’s available was only really intended as a present to my friend Chris. The plan at the miniute is to complete the song and put it out in conjunction with the final film, maybe in the springtime. Of course it depends on how much people like the demo version. I might just have to leave it as it is..  You can check it out and have a listen here.

The whole ‘song-for-horror-movie’ thing is not that far removed from what I’m planning as my next main project for this year. After the slog of 2011 and really struggling with the last album in pretty much all aspects of its production, it feels time for a bit of a change. I’m so used to working in a certain way for so long, repeating the same routines for creating and producing music, that I feel a bit jaded by it. It becomes a bit too comfortable to fall back on the usual practices and proceedures and I’m thinking about snapping out of that cycle and challenging myself a little bit. So I still hope to stick to my self-imposed deadline of an album every year, but I have a different type of album in mind this time. I shouldnt commit anything more to type, as no doubt I will fail miserably in my endeavours, much like the instrumental album I’ve been meaning to finish for nearly 5 years now, but it will definitely be more story based in its approach, and taking inspiration from places I don’t usually seek it.

In the meantime I am planning to put out a short 3-song ep of covers that I recorded around the Christmas holidays. I spent 2 full weeks at home back in Ireland this year, and planned to spend a sizable chunk of that time playing music with my youngest brother Niall like we used to back in the day. We ended up playing a lot, but the whole recording thing seemed too much like hardwork for the most part. In the end, I had one day left at home and we decided to see what we could get done in the space of an afternoon. So there’s currently a scrappily recorded framework of two songs on my laptop that we recorded in the space of an afternoon/evening. The idea was to do something much more collaborative than I usually do, and we split the playing and performing mostly down the middle, both singing vocals, both playing drums, guitars etc. I need to now go and mix them and add a few bits here and there, which may be tricky as I think the piano is possibly out of tune.. On top of that, there’s another simple little cover tune that I’m waiting to get additional vocals on from Ghostlight’s very own Al White. So all in all, hopefully those 3 songs will be available sometime in late February.

Then of course there’s the issue of live shows. With a lot of downtime from Ghostlight proceedings the last few months, the itch to get back on a stage is niggling me consistently and it may be time to get my acoustic guitar restrung and hit a few pokey clubs around dingy London backstreets to sit on a stool in the corner and play these misersable songs to strangers. My preference for playing with a full band is even further away in coming to fruition so I may have to bite the bullet and go solo. I’m a world champion procrastinator though, so any words, emails, tweets, comments or text messages of ‘boot-up-the-arse’ encouragement would be very welcome.

Any developments on any front will be reported here, and in the mean time, you’ll get occasional musings from me on the Tumblr page, plentiful moaning on my Twitter page, and the occasional tasty morsel on my Facebook page. Check back soon for more updates, oh, and if you haven’t already, go download my new album, it’s free! And you may find the odd bar of music in it that you might actually quite like. Stranger things have happened..

Thanks for reading,

Thomas

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So finally, after months and months of deliberating, and faffing about, and predicting its release; I’ve finally finished the new album. I’ve been pushing hard to try and make my yearly deadline, as for the first time in years I haven’t managed to put up an albums’ worth of songs yet this year. So here, with 2 weeks to spare, is album number 6: Hesitance.

I’m doing things slightly different this time round, the album won’t be available from this site, not just yet anyway, for now you will be able to download it from this link. As always it can be downloaded completely for free, although this time there is the option to pay as much, or as little as you want to for it, kinda like Radiohead did a few years ago, only I’m neither as good, nor rich as them. So in other words – it’s free. Oh and it can also be listened to and downloaded from Facebook by clicking here.

I always say that I’m not going to talk/write too much about a new release and then more often than not I invariably end up doing so, but I will do my best to keep this brief..

As to why the whole thing has taken so long, I can’t really pinpoint it other than for the first time, real-life work really got in the way. It’s been very difficult to try and stay creative at the end of long days, and with so little spare free time, the tendency is to spend any I do get, basically sitting around and doing nothing. I can actually get quite disheartened thinking of all the many half-started songs that could maybe have come to something in the last year had I not given up after a few minutes due to tiredness and general malaise. But yet, some still managed to make it through, fighting against my lethargy, and made it to become fully finished, recorded songs. And here are 11 of them.

The songs on this new album range a span of about 14 months, all were recorded in my room in South London and in that time I broke a laptop, along with my long term audio interface, a 2^nd audio interface, several guitar strings, lost most of my audio software and almost completely gave up many, many times.

As for the theme, well the title song was probably the first one written, and I always liked that as an album title, so the rest of the songs kind of fit into that theme and what it conjures up in my head. It’s about the state of being hesitant in general, or ‘in-between’, holding back, caught in a spiral of indecisiveness. It’s about hesitance in the sense of being at a stand still, unsure of where to go next, and afraid of making a choice that changes too much. It’s about the good and the bad, the past and the future, the pros and the cons…. or something along those lines anyway. The main thing is that I always try to make sure that the songs all fit stylistically and thematically together, and I think they more or less do. It’s easily the most stripped-back of all the Down In Autumn albums when it comes to production, and the songs were kept pretty simple both in terms of the arrangement and the production, hopefully it works.

And I’ll leave it there. Another one down. There’s another EP I currently have in mind that may surface early next year, and beyond that, who knows? I’d be ‘hesitant’ to presume anything beyond that..

Thanks for listening

Thomas

I woke up on Saturday morning feeling as bad as I’ve felt in a long time. I woke up on a sofa. There was a shattered glass table on the floor beside me, mixed with pieces of a shattered Guinness pint glass and a shattered coaster for good measure.

My head was pounding, my eyes were red and my stomach was in knots. Thankfully I’d removed my white-out contact lenses, and fangs before having passed out a few hours earlier, and I was grateful to see that the fake blood all over my face had been removed by a face cloth lying limply on the floor, as opposed to the cushion I was currently trying to peel my tongue off.

After I composed myself, got down to the local café, ate some food, and reassured myself that I hadn’t done anything overly stupid at the previous night’s Halloween party, I fell onto a bus home and promptly fell into my own bed.

I was absolutely wrecked. But laying around I was completely unable to sleep. My brain being so frazzled that it was sparking off random and ridiculous thoughts about all manner of things, when all I wanted it to do was shut down, shut up, and let me get some precious hours of peace and quiet and sleep and nothingness.

I’d been thinking recently about a music video I was planning to make, it involved some footage I’d taken on my phone a few months ago on a night bus home, and having recently rediscovered this footage (that I had minimum recollection of taking), a video idea had started to ferment in my head. I was thinking about this idea lying hungover in a heap and about how it was something that would probably take a lot of time to put together. And I then started to think about how it’s been almost a year since I made any new videos, and then I started to think about how I should probably do something productive with my day, and then I started to think about a video id seen recently that used paper cut-outs to make crude but effective little music video characters and then I started to think about coffee, and then I started thinking about the various bits of crap lying about my house I could use as little characters and then I started thinking about the more than adequate equipment I had at my disposal to make something decent, and then I slept for a bit.

When I woke up I set about making a new music video. It’s for a song I recently finished and posted online. It’s a song from a imminent forthcoming album of new songs, and it worked with the ideas I had in my head for the music video I was going to attempt to make.

So I used my phone and a little kidrobot purple ghost I have and spent a few hours on Saturday and Sunday shooting lots of little scenes that I would attempt to piece together into some sort of shape. I had no storyboards, and a handful of images I thought would work with various parts of the song, the rest I more or less made up as I went along.

You can watch the results here now. It’s a bit scrappy and no doubt I could’ve tinkered with it for weeks on end had I wanted to, but it’s done now and I’m more or less happy with it.

It’s essentially about a depressed ghost toy, who wanders around my house, mostly disinterested in everything, and there’s various little references and hints in there about some other stuff.

Anyway, I wont explain the video or the song anymore than that, it’s all fairly straightforward I think. It’s was fun to make though, and it was the first time I’ve done any animating in a very long time, having studied it for 3 years back in University. I’ve a bunch of other ideas of the back of it, and hopefully I’ll be making several more videos to go with songs off the new album. The priority now though, shifts back to trying to get the bloody thing finished. So that will be my focus for the nest few weeks

In the meantime, thanks for watching, reading, listening, etc. and I’ll post an update on here shortly…probably about the new Twilight movie or something..

Thomas.

Today is the anniversary of the passing of the late, great Elliott Smith. Anyone who is reading this and has listened to any of the music I’ve ever recorded will probably be able to guess that he was, and is, a huge inspiration for me and the music I make. I was quite a late-comer to Elliott Smith’s music, I was aware of him when he was alive, but ignored him mainly due to the fact that I didn’t then, and don’t even really now, like acoustic singer-songwriters, my loss obviously. And I’m also aware of the irony of this statement given the ‘genre’ of music you’ll find on this site… I think anyone who knows me will know that I’m really just a frustrated punk/’emo’/metal guitar player at heart, channeled through an acoustic guitar and a small bedroom.

Anyway, no doubt today the web and blogosphere will be awash with Elliott tributes, from fans and friends alike, and they’ll do a much better job than I probably could, so instead of going on at length about the man himself, I’m going to go on at length about my top 5 favourite Elliott Smith songs as my own little tribute to my all-time favourite male recording artist, a hero of mine, and someone I genuinely find great inspiration from so often. Rest in peace Elliott Smith.

5. Going Nowhere

“The clock moved a quarter of a turn,
The time it took her cigarette to burn,
She said you got a lot of things to learn.
Going nowhere.”

This is a song that was only released posthumously on the excellent New Moon double disc set. The album was made up of songs mainly from the Elliott Smith and Either/Or sessions. This is a song that didn’t immediately stand out for me from that collection, but came to mean a lot. When a song can be there to help you out when there’s nothing else that can, it becomes something very special. The story behind my affinity with this song could take up an entire blog article by itself, but suffice to say, I once listened to this song numerous times on repeat one night many years ago, wandering completely directionless through north London. Yes, it’s a pretty downbeat song, Elliott Smith can write ‘sad’ as well as any other artist I know, and sometimes it’s exactly what you need. This is a song I don’t listen to all that often for it’s specific attachment to a time and place; I pretty much have to stop whatever I’m doing if it ever comes on, but it’s always there when I need it, and for that I keep it very close.

4. Condor Avenue

“Sick shouting like you hear at the fairground,
Now i’m picking up to put away anything of yours that’s still around,
i don’t know what to do with your clothes or your letters
it’ll make a whisper out of you”

This is a song from Roman Candle, Elliott’s first solo release. I was never the biggest fan of that album, but this song became one of my most played Elliott songs, in fact I think it currently is the most played of his on my iPod. It’s a slightly strange, sad, dark little acoustic track that tells a story, at least that’s my interpretation of it anyway. It seems to be about a couple’s argument that results in one leaving, jumping in a car and leaving, then going onto be in a fatal car accident. The song is told from the point of view of the man stuck back in the apartment, reeling from the argument with anger and bitterness, oblivious to the news of the accident that will come later. It conjures a eerie atmosphere of regret and loss, yet anger and stubbornness, it’s a mix that makes it captivating to listen to every time I hear it. I find this a really powerful song.

3. Color Bars

“Everyone wants me to ride into the sun,
But I ain’t gonna go down,
Laying low again, high on the sound”

The first Elliot Smith song I ever properly listened to, and I was hooked. I had gotten a copy of Figure 8 and was determined to see what all the indie fuss about Elliott Smith was, I picked this song to listen to first as it was one of the shortest songs on the record. It’s quite an odd song structurally, with a weird combination of music and lyrics. Lyrically it tows a similar line to a lot of Elliott’s work; obviously drug-inspired, dreamlike imagery, almost psychedelic at times, with military references. Musically it’s fantastic; the piano plinking away almost jauntily at the beginning before taking a darker turn half way through with low cello notes swaying into the mix, and there’s definitely tension there from the beginning, hiding in the background waiting to come out. The late string surge that follows help lend the song it’s amost triumphant crescendo. To me, the whole thing sounds like a defiant but brittle confidence, lost on a drug high, hanging by a thread on the verge of complete collapse. It’s beautiful.

2. Waltz #2 (XO)

“I’m never gonna know you now,
But I’m gonna love you anyhow.”

Starting as a lot of his songs did, with a strummed minor chord on acoustic guitar, I always liked the general air of wistful melancholy draped around this almost perky waltz, and the chord progressions are pure Elliott.  This was a song I recognised when I furst heard it; it sounded instantly familiar yet I didn’t know why, like so many songs back then, I probably just heard it on MTV at some point. Various images are brought to mind throughout the song, and although Elliott has apparently hinted that this song is in some ways about his mother, I’ve always had my own interpretation of it. But it’s the hook of the chorus that makes the song and stands out to me now as it ever did, tying together broad visual suggestive verses with a strong lyrical couplet that sticks with me no matter how many times I hear the song.

1. Say Yes

“Cricket spin can’t come to rest, I’m damaged bad at best,
She’ll decide what she wants.
I’ll probably be the last to know, no one says until it shows,
See how it is, they want you or they don’t,
Say yes.”

This is one of my favourite songs in the world. It sums up the beautiful simplicity of what millions of songs attempt to say, to express, to make less complex, but few do so with the simple and perfect eloquence of this song. Of all Elliott’s many many songs, this always sounded to me as him at some of his most open, honest, and almost contented moments. Contented in the sense that so much of his music could be deemed ‘sad’, lyrically speaking anyway, this song almost has an air of acceptance. It’s still not exactly upbeat in the traditional sense, but it has a quiet hopeful yearning behind a pessimist’s usual outlook. Knowing that “situations get fucked up” but for the minute, you can take some hope and happiness in the small things, or at least by the clarity of knowing what you want, even if you won’t get it. There’s really not much to say about this song, it’s all right there in the lyrics, so I should stop writing and just let you get one with listening to it for yourself. Enjoy.

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This is not a new album.

A new album is coming, I promise. It’s taken much longer than even my pessimistic predictions predicted, but it is hopefully not far away. I even posted a new song yesterday, but that’s not the subject of this post, if you want to hear the new song, called Horror Story, you can do so on my soundcloud page.

This post is a little retrospective piece.

In the wonderfully social Social Media internet age we live in, it has become possible to get much more people listening to music than it ever used to be. At least it is for small, unheard-of, nothing bands such as myself, and over the years I’ve picked up a handful of people who seem to enjoy my music and are nice enough to listen when I make new songs. This hasn’t been the case the whole time of course, it never is, but I’ve been putting up little musical recordings for years now, and a lot of the earlier stuff is some of my favourites even now today. But I know that people who read this blog, or follow me on Twitter or Facebook or Tumblr or Soundcloud (and let’s not forget MySpace) only ever hear the new stuff I put up, and sometimes, to me, it’s not as good as some of the earlier recordings.

So with that in mind, I plan to ‘re-release’ the occasional song/ep/album from years past, and by ‘re-release’ I basically just mean ‘write a blog about it’, so maybe some people can discover a few of the older songs they might like. That’s where this blog post comes in.

Up first is probably one of my personal favourites of any ep or album I’ve ever done; The One Way Conversation Ep.

In terms of being a complete piece of work, of ending up as close to how I originally had planned it, of representing what I wanted to do/say/express, in terms of songs, artwork, production – it’s the one I’m probably most happy with. It’s definitely the Ep I’m most happy with anyway.

It was written and recorded in 2009, back in the days when I could churn out an album and an ep every year quite easily, mainly because I was unemployed and writing music was much more of a preferable pastime than searching for jobs. I was living in Brixton at the time, in a small 2-bedroom flat I shared with my cousin. She was rarely there as she worked long and hard days at her job and spent most of the evenings with her boyfriend. Add to that the fact that we kept completely different hours; her coming home at 8 every night and me spending all day inside to the point that I needed to get out in the evenings, and we never saw each other. I spent more time alone that year than I ever have before or since, and it does tend to get to you after a while.

I’d spent the first part of my time in that flat writing and recording the majority of an album’s worth of songs called ‘Time To Change’. It was an collection of songs that I had started writing whilst spending a year back home in Ireland, and it was quite dark and a little ‘heavy’. But it was something I needed to get off my chest, and with that out of the way, I remember feeling a little bit more relaxed about putting together a next ep/album.

So the days in Brixton were long and lonely, and it was at a time when I was trying to restart a life in London. It wasn’t really going very well, what with being unemployed, completely broke and seemingly unhireable.  I was trying to kick start something new from scratch, as London Life version 1.0 had ended with me losing touch with a lot of my closest friends. It was quite hard to spend those Brixton days on my own and not think a lot about the former friends I had had, somewhere, out there in the city, probably all still hanging out, getting on with the lives I had removed myself from, and probably exactly the same people I had spent years with. In that situation you tend to find yourself having lots of imaginary dialogue with people you’ve lost. You think about the time that has passed and whether things could ever go back. You wonder what you would say to them, and they would say to you if you ever met again. The thing with London is that it’s always possible. The city is huge but several times I’ve met old uni friends down random streets in random parts of town. So it’s always there in the back of your head, and I would go over and over potential conversations in my head as if I was preparing for the inevitable chance encounter. Or of course, if I decided to get back in touch, which was a possibility always teetering on the brink of inevitability. I never did.

So I wrote this ep instead. It’s mostly about those conversations I had in my head with memories of people I used to know. It’s about regret and loss, a little bit of anger, and a little bit of hope.

I’m not in Brixton any more, and I’m not unemployed any more, but I still have those one-way conversations occasionally, when they’re not blocked out by the rat-race, mind-numbing slog of day-to-day London, or made irrelevant by new friends and new opportunities.

And besides, the conversation is only ever one-way until somebody else speaks.

You can listen to the ep below, or listen and download on my Soundcloud page. Or download from the Discography page above. Or you could just click this little word right here.

The One Way Conversation Ep by DownInAutumn

Thomas

Back in high school, I made the mistake of choosing to study Maths at A-level. This was a mistake for the simple reason that I wasn’t very good at it. I had previously achieved a respectable-enough ‘B’ in my maths GCSE, which isn’t too bad, but I failed to realise the step-up that would be required to achieve a similar grade after a 2-year A-level course.

The other problem, was that A-level Maths was split into two, you had the ‘Pure Maths’ bits, eg straightforward maths problems like ’2+2 = ‘ , but on the other hand, you had the ‘Statistics’ part which is basically 2 years of maths problems based around ‘probability’. The problem was that I was ok with the pure maths stuff, but the statistics half? Probability? I was awful at it. I couldn’t get my head around it at all. This is somewhat ironic given that I’ve spent the best part of 10 years working in a betting office, where odds and probability are the order of the day, well, that, and ignorant, aggressive customers, horses, dogs, and endless cups of tea and crosswords.

Working out the probability of things, of problems, scenarios, situations, isn’t something I’m very good at. If the answers to all those old statistics problems were simply the most pessimistic outcome, i.e. “the probability of ‘x’ being equal to y-(X + 2x) is 7% because 7 is x’s least favourite number”, then I wouldve excelled. But I didnt excel, I bombed. I ended up getting an E. An E for ‘Excellent’, or ‘Exemplary’, or ‘Extraordinary’, etc. etc.

Anyway, for some reason I failed to see the probability being quite high that I would fail the Maths A-level, decided to take it on anyway, and two years later, fucked it up. I like to fool myself that if you think logically, rationally, mathematically, things can, usually, make sense. Of course the reality is, the probability is, that they won’t, can’t and never will. I guess things would be pretty boring if everything could be predicted, rationalised and quantified. Yet a strictly mathmatical logical world is one I think I’d enjoy living in. I could rationally predict everything, designs would be all symettrical (I like symmetry, big fan) and the most bizarre scenarios would make sense, like people who dont look where they’re going on busy pavements for example. When things go wrong at least you would be able to analyse the problem and discover a satisfying set of reasons why it did, that would offer an opportunity to rectify things, and offer peace of mind. The peace of mind of the mathmatical problem solved, perfect, neat, with no remainders. There’s always too many remainders in real life.

On a (dubiously) similar note, I recorded a quick cover song at the weekend. It’s called ‘Simple Math’ and it’s by the band Manchester Orchestra from their latest album of the same name. I had a couple of days in an empty house at the weekend, and while most of that recording time was spent fruitlessly trying to finish a new album, I also found some time to record a cover version of a song suggested by some nice people on Twitter and Facebook, I did honestly try to do all of them, but in the end got sucked into working on this one. It’s not a patch on the original of course, but it’s attached to this post if you fancy having a listen.

Soon there will be new Down In Autumn songs, soon! They’re all there, they’re just taking forever to cook properly.

So I will go off and continue trying to get that finished. I won’t say the probability of it being done by (insert future month/year here) is anything in particular, because I honestly dont know. I can’t predict what will happen in the meantime, in the days and weeks ahead. I cant work out if I’m choosing maths A-level again, because I’m dumb enough to keep trying to solve the same puzzles over and over again. It is definitely not simple.

Click the below link to hear the song

Simple Math

Right click, ‘save link as’ to download.

Click here to download Down In Autumn – 3 Covers

So here’s something I had no intention of doing a few days ago – posting new recordings for download. Admittedly these aren’t new songs, but rather 3 quick little cover songs of songs that I like. Think of it as a little bonus before any new actual Down In Autumn songs are ready.

You can click the link above or HERE to download for free, and the tracklisting is:

1. You Wouldn’t Like Me – by Tegan & Sara

2. Yer Feet – by Mojave 3 (via Jimmy Eat World)

3. True Love Will Find You In The End – by Daniel Johnston (via Beck)

Basically this all started last weekend when I got the random urge to record a version of one of my all-time favourite songs by one of my all-time favourite bands ‘You Wouldn’t Like Me’ by Tegan & Sara. I pretty much spent most of the afternoon recording my version, and it all came together very quickly, mainly because I know the song inside out, and also because it’s probably one of, if not the most direct cover I’ve ever recorded. I don’t do anything fancy or clever with the song, it’s pretty much just me replicating it in my bedroom on my battered equipment.

The other two songs are recordings I made on Saturday afternoon, just one mic, one take, acoustic guitar and vocals, recorded whilst I was taking a break from the new album recordings I was doing at the time. The microphone was on so I recorded these two versions of a couple of very simple acoustic tunes.

Yer Feet is originally by Mojave 3, but I first became acquainted with it by a live version Jimmy Eat World included on an old single. True Love Will Find You In The End is a song by Daniel Johnston, but again, I know it from the cover version Beck did of it a few years ago.

So overall these recordings were very much thrown together, and haven’t been subjected to rigorous, (if indeed any) mixing or mastering. They’re rough and ready, but thought I’d throw them up here regardless whilst work continues on a new Down In Autumn album.

On that note, very quickly, a new album is very much under way, and I hope to have it complete this side of the Summer, it will be about 9-10 tracks, it will be very quiet and acoustic, and I can reveal that it will most likely be called ‘Hesitence’.

It will also probably be the last album I record before this old laptop of mine finally gives up the ghost and explodes.

Hope you enjoy the covers, and as ever, thanks for reading.

Thomas

Last week I picked up the new album by American pop-punk band Yellowcard, it’s got a great title, (When You’re Through Thinking, Say Yes) but isn’t exactly setting my world on fire. It’s ok, but they really do make the same album over and over again. Anyway, despite this repetition, I like it, it’s got some catchy songs, in a poppy, glossy American kinda way, and it more or less does what I expected it to do. Listening to it made me go back and listen to their earlier songs from previous albums. I always liked the song One Year, Six Months (see video audio clip), as with a lot of their songs, it’s about memories. They write a lot of songs from this lovesick melancholy perspective, misty-eyed and all ‘emo’ about days gone by and all the regrets that go with them. This is partly why I like them, it’s easily-digestible, yet sincere (enough) sentiment.

Yellowcard – One Year, Six Months

Anyway, it’s got me in that nostalgic frame of mind recently, more so than usual you could say, and with that in mind, I’m reminded of last Saturday evening and an Italian girl called Nikki.

I was in a bar in Hammersmith. We (the crowd of about 10 friends and family I was with) had made our way there after a long and hazy afternoon in a function room in Pimlico. It was a riverside bar and was in fairly boisterous mood in the aftermath of the massive party that had taken place there, hours previously during the big Boat Race between Oxford and Cambridge. Caring not a single fleeting fig for the boat race, and a little unaware of the furore surrounding it, I was somewhat surprised by the scale of the party that was still in full swing. There was wall-to-wall people, beer spilt everywhere, a smouldering barbeque outside by the river and a long stretch of port-a-loos, none of which featured a light source, so they were somewhat…messy..

Anyway, it was fun. But to the point.

I found myself standing by the bar beginning to chat to a fiery young Italian lady who had just arrived. She was called Nikki. She was quite attractive, had long dark hair, thick-black glasses (but not the wanky ‘media-shoreditch’ kind), and deep, intense eyes that were almost black. She was quite drunk, and quite aggressive. She immediately reminded me of someone I used to know very well.

So we got chatting, and from the off it was really more an argument/screaming match than what you could legitimately refer to as a ‘conversation’. It began with her declaring her undying allegiance to West London football team QPR (she’s lived there for 3 years), my football allegiances were of little concern to her the moment she realised I wasn’t a QPR fan. From there we then went on to talk/argue about London, Italy, Ireland, politics, art and probably a lot inbetween. She seemed to object to pretty much everything I said, and wasn’t shy in showing it. She slammed her drink down on the bar several times, shoved me once or twice, I remember an awful lot of finger pointing and raised voices, and her general level of profanity was excessive, even to me. She was quite possibly the most objectionable, stubborn and obnoxiously volatile person I’ve ever met, and yet I enjoyed chatting to her. Despite the obvious mental problems, she had an unhinged passion that I find very hard to resist, she really gave a shit about what she was saying, and I have a respect for that I guess.

“This woman hates me so much. I’m starting to like her.” – George Costanza

I gave her as much shit as she gave me, and this seemed to earn her respect. Before long, she was all smiles, congratulating me, like I’d passed some sort of psycho test, and with that, she promptly turned her attention to another unsuspecting male victim at the bar. He didnt do so well with her sociapathic test process and once she punched him in the face, the bouncers moved in swiftly and removed her. Bye bye Nikki, you absolute nutter.

Anyway, the thing that occurred to me at the time, and what is left with me now, is just how much she reminded me of an old friend. She was like an evil caricature version of course, but her Mediterranean ferocity was familiar to me in a way I hadn’t felt in a long time, and it was strangely, perversely ‘comforting’. I know I probably sound as crazed as she undoubtedly was in saying that, but that half an hour was almost like getting reacquainted with a personality I’ve missed for many many years.

I spend so much time thinking about the past. I know you’re not meant to, but sometimes it always seems so important and vital to hold on to. It can turn the most mundane, unexpetced moment into something you maybe haven’t felt or thought about in years. It can make a half-hour chat with a violent nutjob a comforting nostaglia trip, it can make a song you listen to, allow you to relive a moment you may never feel again, and it can also ruin your day.

But what it never seems to do, at least for me, is make me appreciate what happens as it’s happening. I feel all the time like I already miss what has just happened. Like everything’s going so fast so quickly and changing the very moment it flies by, and I’m desperately trying to grab hold of it. I miss that conversation I had on Saturday night, because I still miss my old friend, I miss moments and feelings I had last year, last week, last night, I miss the excellent red curry I just ate (though I know I can repeat that exact experience tomorrow night if I choose, though I may try the green). and I miss being able to write a blog post that didn’t waffle on for way too many paragraphs. (That’s never happened).

But this is nothing new. A million bands have written a million songs about this very subject. I’m pretty sure I have as well at some point. This could be something that comes through on the next cd I make, the one I’m currently putting together piece by tiny piece. Whatever the songs are about, they will function as they always do, little 3-4 minute tributes to memories

And now I’ve gone and missed my bedtime.
Goodnight

Thomas

I’ve been on a bit of a recording/writing blitz the last few days, the emphasis very much on the writing. I have been keeping little boring mundane notes about the writing/recording process and other random junk on my Tumblr page over the weeks, but as I sat down to write another Tumblr update, I figured I had enough to record it up on here instead.

The process continues to be one that moves very slowly, and there just doesn’t seem to be much I can do about that, but it’s starting to go somewhere. I’ve collected enough new songs now at least for an albums worth, though I’m still not sure I wont just trim it down to a 6-song Ep. I’ve got a title track in mind and a vague theme, but it’s still early days.

Especially as the songs I’m writing aren’t necessarily coming out the way I had planned. There’s definitely a little more ‘light’ in the mix of shades than I was expecting, or compared to the material that was previously written. The weekend was a blur of scrappy little song ideas here and there, nothing’s completely finished in terms of writing, but the bare bones are there. Last night’s song was folky and up-tempo and quite miserable in that folky kinda way, and then tonight, accidentally, right before I turned off my recording gear half an hour ago, a quick strum on a higher pitched capo-d guitar produced this weird little happy acoustic pop tune that came together pretty quickly. That’s maybe what’s surprised me most at what I’ve written; there’s a distinct undertone of ‘pop’, must be all the American pop-punk I’ve been listening to on repeat recently..

So the recording process is still in its infancy, all these new songs currently exist as scrappy one-take demos, and I’m still a little pessimistic that this trusty old laptop has any more multi-track recording left in her, but I’ll find out soon enough I suppose. I think I’ll continue to demo the songs even when I’m not recording, play them through every night if I can, get them as good as I can. Usually I record everything very quickly, but as is the mantra for this new project goes; ‘slowly but surely’, and there’s no point in rushing, even if I had the luxury of time in which to do so.

I’ll keep this relatively short and sign off. For more frequent updates on all this stuff see those tiny wee social media buttons up there on the top right of the page, they’ll take you where you need to go..

Thanks for reading

Thomas

“When you’re through thinking, say yes” – Yellowcard

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