our parents, often and mistakes, grace denton

Weirdly, just after I wrote on here that I wouldn't be making much work for the foreseeable future, I found out that something I wrote about eighteen months ago had just been published in the anthology about parents by Often and Mistakes. The anthology was compiled by Grace Denton and so much work and care has gone into it. You can purchase this digital anthology at a price of your choosing and the proceeds will all be donated to Simon on the Streets, a West Yorkshire homeless charity. So anyway, Grace does so many ace things I thought it would be good to list a few of them below. This is by no means everything, but some of the things I know about. Grace has been involved in, and initiated so many wonderful projects and she is also an incredible artist. The things she does are always made with great care and sensitivity. But as well as this, they are always worthwhile and positive.

Grace (left) & Rose (right) I don't know who took the photo, please tell me and I'll credit you

Often and Mistakes is Rose Robbins and Grace Denton, based in Bristol. They showcase new work by writers and artists through print publications and videos. We also run comic-drawing and animation workshops. 

Judy Works, again if you made this great logo, let me know and I'll credit you!

Judy Works is a girl gang, support network and commissioner set up by Grace, Camille Rearden and Rosa Martyn to support and represent the creative endeavours of people who are non-male identified. The rest of the world is set up to support men. Judy Works is redressing the balance.

Anna (left) & Grace 9right) photo by Tom Copps

The Middle Ones are a band who write and play wonderful songs. They formed in Norwhich and have done so many great and exciting things like touring all over and making records and playing music for plays and doing a year-long residency at Cafe Kino in Bristol. I swapped Anna a Middle Ones 10" for the Tiger + Panda 10" when we went to Norwich. It has my favourite song on it, 'young explorer'. For a while, The Middle Ones were the only band I made an effort to see.

Expensive photo by Tom Copps

Grace sings and plays in EXPENSIVE with Matthew Cheney and Pete Shadbolt, an electronic pop band of 'non-performers'. The songs are dreamy and danceable and remind me of the music of Arctic Circle, which is not surprising because they are/were another project of Matthew Cheney, all round good-guy.

As I said, there's loads more and I haven't really written very well but I just think Grace is a great artist and a positive force in the world.

polite podcast no.6

This is the second episode of a second series ('series') of polite podcasts. Things are as they were. There will be four shows, this time in the summer months and I will be publishing them in the mornings, not the evenings.

This episode was published on 21st June at 4.43AM, which is sunrise on the year's longest day. the next episode will be ay 8AM on the 16th of July. No special occasion this time, but it will be the last day that we are on tour.

credits

from Polite Podcasts, released 30 September 2013
We're Doing it - Ace Bushy Striptease acebushystriptease.com
Mao's Dynasty www.handidiom.co.uk/mao'sdynasty.html
Dirty White Van - King of Cats kingofcats.tumblr.com
The Girls of Summer - Hugh John Noble hughjohnnoble.bandcamp.com

Interviews - Gef Lucena (Saydisc Records: www.saydisc.com ); Nicol Parkinson

fan art

I got an envelope of nice stuff in the post today from Stef Purenins and Sarah Graley. Among the many great creative things that they do separately and together, Stef and Sarah are also a band called Sonic the Comic. I totally love their songs. they are making a new album right now and I only just started listening to their last one, Pixel!



And if that wasn't enough, they made this cover song of Gravestone by The Nervy Betters!

i work all day with talented women

I'm not one of your fancy types. I go to work to pay my rent and so on. Because of the casual nature of my job, a lot of the people who I work with are creative people like me. Moreover, the majority of them are women. I've been gradually getting to know everyone and their work and I have been consistently blown away by their talent.

I think that most of them would define what they do as 'fine art', which is not a world that I have much formal knowledge of, but I am (sadly) not surprised to learn that it is still a fairly sexist and retrograde industry. 

My personal experience of who is making the best culture right now is not what I see in the majority of galleries and is certainly not what is making the big money. No doubt things are better than they were. But there is still a way to go. 

so here is a list of some of the talented young women who I have the privilege of working with. I hope they don't mind my posting these images. I found them legitimately on the internet. I hope it doesn't come across as patronising either. I can honestly say that all of the people listed have made at least one piece of work that has stopped me in my tracks. 

Critical Studies Presentation by hilde krohn huse

Eyes of Sand by hanne lillee

The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking, (Man Cave) by athena papadopoulos

from Games by karis clapperton

cecily tattersall

holly parmley

stars don't shine to noise

Headfall released Stars Don't Shine to Noise in November 2004, just short of ten years ago. The record has just recently been made available to order online, along with a free digital download of the whole album. It was one of the first records I ever owned and it is still one of my favourite and most prized possessions by far. 

Seriously, you should buy this album. It is a genuine undiscovered classic. The only reason this thing is not completely sold out is that for a long time, the only place you could purchase it was at Headfall shows, which only tend to happen once, maybe twice a year in pretty small venues.

George McKenzie (drums, guitar, violin, piano, humming, tape loops, clarinet.) once told me that this album was the only thing he's ever made that he is still proud of. He then went on to tell me where all of the mistakes were. But they don't sound like mistakes to me. This whole shuffling, brooding thing sounds so on purpose, grey as mist on the sea, broken glass, to sand, to salt water. A bunch of punk kids trying to make jazz, awkwardness exploding out of them. Everything is poetry, sung and played, 'a truth too teenage'. 


I don't want to keep describing how it sounds. You can find out for yourself, and you should. I just think that what it does sound like, what it wants to sound like, is captured perfectly, stylistically, aesthetically, framed in smokey static electricity, perfectly honed and curated, artfully presented. a jagged frenzy beneath a swelling surface, barely restrained, three yearning hearts.

shrieking violet issue 22

The Shrieking violet is a great free zine, edited and curated by Manchester-based writer Natalie Bradbury. I'm really lucky to have some of my dumb writing in this issue, among some great articles about art, architecture, philosophy, culture... Pretty much everything. I recommend this and all the previous issues, which are free to read online.

Natalie also has an essay on being vegan up on the food-chain blog, which will be included in the third and final food-chain zine, to be completed this year.

polite podcast no.4

Hello, this is the fourth and final polite podcast. It contains songs by different people, oral histories and field recordings. I will be releasing an episode in the last hour of every month until the end of this year. So that's four episodes in total, okay? Okay!

credits

from Polite Podcasts, track released 31 December 2013
ribbons (live): palomica palomica.bandcamp.com
untitled: headfall myspace.com/headfall
mackerel sky: the living end! thelivingend.bandcamp.com
sea air/five roses (live): palomica
eugene v. debbs: grizzly and the bears
in the winter: frozy frozy.bandcamp.com
the snowfall which promised so much (yet gave so little): unecdotesoundcloud.com/unecdote
untitled: roxy brennan; steve brett; henry ireland; nicol parkinson
ferris wheel (live): palomica
coffee machines (live): palomica

interviews: Florence Carson; Mike Lollipop; Karis Clapperton; Jack Horton

sounds and recordings sourced by Henry Ireland and Nicol Parkinson

polite podcast no.3

from Polite Podcasts, released 30 September 2013

impossible walls: fontaine 
inclosure: moscow rules 
i found you: the dream is over
middling good boy: damh

interviews: marion ireland; mark dillon; philip dodd; elisa lloyd; james cabaniuk

polite podcast no.1

Hello, so this is the first polite podcast. It contains songs by different people, oral histories and field recordings. I will be releasing an episode in the last hour of every month until the end of this year. So that's four episodes in total, okay? Okay!

coffee machines: palomica
the whole town watching: here is the river (liz melia; blake gifford; ben meschko)
the river: two white cranes
glimmer: we wanted to be lions

interviews: marion ireland; maggie willans
field recordings: henry ireland; nicol parkinson
edited: henry ireland 

a drawing of me

This is a nice drawing by Joff Winterhart of my face wearing a My Two Toms hat at the Shhh festival a couple of weeks ago. There are other drawings of the day by Rosie Faragher.

oliver watson: loosestrife: press release

Polite Records are proud to present Loosestrife by Oliver Watson...

cat no.: pcd015
format: CDR/download
artwork: recycled brown envelope, handwriting and water colour
price: £5 (CDR) £2 (download)
 
How many songs has Olly Watson written in the last ten years? I doubt that he knows. When I knew him in school he was recording one song a day, onto a minidisc player, after school and his job washing dishes at the bakery down the road. We recently rescued over 100 of his recordings from a laptop that crashed in 2007. 

He's made a shit-tonne of recordings. 

And he has made every one of them in the same punk-rock-as-hell way. His philosophy hasn't changed and even from the earliest, roughest recordings he made, his music has remained free of affectations.

He once wrote a set of rules for recording music, the first of which being 'That microphone is fine where it is'...

His songs are his songs. His recordings are his recordings. That is why it was imporatant that Olly had the freedom to make every aspect of this album himself.

A couple of Summers ago, Olly and Steph walked the Thames path from where they live in London to some rural place similar to where Olly grew up. Loosestrife is full of the experiences of that Summer. The sometimes uncomfortable butting together of urban and rural existance. Memories of a past life picked out of the dog-shitted rubble of crumbling city walls.

How the hell do I describe what it sounds like? Olly's voice is soft as Autumn but he's a powerful singer when he chooses to be. His use of a bit of reverb on this new eight-track gives his quieter moments a spaciousness, like an orange campfire light back in the recesses of a deep, dark cave. He's used omnichord and drum machine sparingly, adding occasional vivid bursts to the pastel shades of his music. The guitar, his main deal, is percussive, ranging from soft woody chord sequences and riffs to grating metalic shangalangs.

Olly is never alone now in his songs. Steph is heard in the background in the flat where they live together, where Olly recorded Loosestrife. She is his companion in all of his stories. His art is a reflection of his life and it is a life that he has built artfully. It is clearly the most important thing to him and his songs simply offer glimpses, friezes of that life.

You can listen to songs from Olly's recovered back catalogue, here.

oliver watson: backlog vol. 2

It just occured to me that this blog is five years old this month. That's pretty old in internet years...

two white cranes/nervy betters tour 2013

 

I'll try and keep this short...

Bristol
We play at Aaron and Roxy's house and Kano and Ohne are there. We have a pizza party. The next day, we pick up the car. Super sporty with a spoiler. The rental men are excited for us. We see Rachael and Shuki. We pick up Roxy from work and drive to Birmingham

Birmingham
We listen to podcasts in the car. The show is at the Ace Bushy house (the Vagina Monolodge). Eve made us a tasty vegan cake. Jen Schande plays a lovely set then runs away. Everyone is super nice. We have fun. Next day, we go to have breakfast with lovely people. We do a crossword together.

Peak District
Friendly people at the youth hostel. We walk to Lud's Church. It is a big ravine all covered in moss. I guess it might be the Green Knight's castle. Steve makes such a great miso soup and stir fry dinner. We have a band practice by the river and scouts come with a chainsaw. We are afraid they might bully us.

Manchester
Liam makes us such tasty burgers and we meet Natalie. Roxy has an essay in her zine. She gives us vegan pie and cookies. LLION SWYD are so great. "Only dickheads win the lottery". We thought we had food poisoning but really we are just nervous. We stay up late and chat and then sleep in luxury. I have a chocolate milkshake with my breakfast.

Oxford
The light is prickly and nice on the drive. The owners of this house are both called Matt. We play to a little living room of people and then have a nice time chatting. In the morning, Steve and Roxy swim in the river. I sleep in.

Norwich
Anna takes us to a tea room. Me and Franky want to move here maybe... I am pretty exhausted. We get food at the place and set up with our own things. Stephen and Tammy arrive. They are so great! This is probably the best we play on tour. We have lost our minds at this point. I swap records with Anna. Her 10" has my favourite Middle Ones song on it. We eat breakfast at a raw vegan cafe. Anna picks up a shelving unit off the street.

Seaford
Nicol is waiting outside for us. So good to see him. We walk to the beach and swim in the sea at sunset. Roxy - a vegan - goads me into eating a battered sausage. We each play a song and then go to bed. Verity's room is very comforting to sleep in. In the morning, Nicol records some drums for the album.

London
Driving through London is intense. Holy shit. we stop for pizzas. I'm so happy to see Franky. We set up the flat and people start arriving. Olly plays first. He is great. It's his album party and he's made a good album. It's really hot and we have such a fun show and sing happy birthday to Olly. So many lovelies there! After I wave Steve and Roxy off I go straight to bed and sleep.

oliver watson, two white cranes, the nervy betters in our living room

So Last night was the last stop on the Two White Cranes/Nervy Betters tour and also the album party for Oliver Watson's 'loosestrife'. We had it at our house and it was lots of fun!

great people we're playing with on tour

 Bristol



Birmingham



Manchester



Norwich



Seaford



London



Super exciting! Here is the facebook page for the whole thing. Lots of them are house shows, so just contact me if you want to come to one of them!

two white cranes + the nervy betters on tour

So later this month I'm going on tour for the first time ever with good humans Steve and Roxy. I'm pretty excited! More dates TBA!
 

B R I S T O L
house show | thursday 22nd august

B I R M I N G H A M 

the vagina monolodge (houseshow) | friday 23rd august
facebook event

M A N C H E S T E R 

 house show | sunday 25th august
facebook event

 O X F O R D
house show | monday 26th august



N O R W I C H 

 the bicycle shop | tuesday 27th august
facebook event

S E A F O R D 

house show | wednesday 28th august
secret location

L O N D O N 

house show | thursday 29th august
secret location

olly watson: backlog vol. 1

The first instalment of Oliver Watson's extensive back catalogue is now available to listen to and download.

'Loosestrife', a new album by Olly will be released on Polite Records on the 29th of August.

i think it's ok to start thinking about autumn now

tiger & panda in our living room

frozy in our living room