Music

Moon Grizzly

This was kind of an art-prog-improv-collective that would just jam together for hours in the basement, exploring the sounds and seeing where we went. Some members would swap around and play various instruments, so the total line-up included saxophone, computer noises, didgeridoo, djembe, assorted percussion, three guitars, bass, and drum kit. Still jamming with some of these guys now and then, but the saxophonist is in Italy for year and the computers man is in Wales so it’s just for fun. The recordings below are mainly generally completely spontaneous, though various bits of have been edited together and The Smell of Rain has a considered structure which evolved over a few playings.

The Smell of Rain (7:24)

Cannibal Disco (7:47)

Aubergine – Part 1 (9:05)

Karva Checkpoint

Prog four-piece with the standard rock line-up (guitar, bass, drums and vocals) that formed in 2003 while studying at music college in Leeds until imploding dramatically a few years later. It’s unlikely that I’ll get to play again with musicians of this calibre and that have such a strong connection as a group, but you never know. In true prog-rock tradition, we investigated long, twisting song structures and adventurous, dissonant sounds. Our late songs began weighing in at the fifteen minute mark, aided partly by the arcane magic of the Space Echo analogue tape-loop-delay unit that our singer used. we mostly worked with fixed composition, but the improv with these guys would just send me (us?) to another place, and I have so many really special memories of us just playing in our house that no-one else heard and that never got recorded. But that’s fine, we weren’t playing for anyone else.

One to Ten (7:08)

Same Old Story (12:35)

Being Asleep (8:26)

Müf

Formed from the remnants of the Reading-based band The Unholy, this was a wailing guitars band that I had a lot of fun playing with. However, I was only with them for a brief period of a few months in between living in Leeds and Manchester and in that time we only managed to get four songs down on tape and only squeezed in one gig.

Silent Effusion (4:29)

We Could Be Friends (4:23)