Ladies and gentleman, I give you my new album The Knowledge of Things To Come.
I’ve blogged about it quite extensively over the last few months and I’m really excited that it’s finally here. The album is only going to be available as a download, initially from the Music page here on my site via those sterling folks at Bandcamp, and soon via iTunes and all the other major download providers like Amazon MP3 and 7Digital. And yes, it will soon be on Spotify too…
Heres the track listing for you. Some of the titles are Joni Mitchell quotes, one is named after an excellent short story by Neil Gaiman, most of them I made up (with some obscure sci-fi references thrown in)
the music of chance
babel fish
go quietly now…
some mysterious song
no strings attached
harlequin valentine
the band sounds like typewriters
baliset
l for leather
the knowledge of things to come
Two of the tracks will be familiar to those of you that followed my old solo bass podcast. Early sketches of both baliset and go quietly now… have featured on the podcast in the past. I recorded versions of both for Mandala last year and those tracks are still up on my Soundcloud page if you fancy investigating how the tunes have developed over the years. The other tracks are all brand new live improvisations and compositions.
I really hope you like the album. Remember to click the Like button on the album page to help spread the word! I’m hoping to get a few reviews and possibly some features on the record. I shall of course post links here on the blog when I do.
And don’t forget to check out the Rejectamenta EP, which features five more tracks from the Knowledge sessions and is currently still available on a ‘pay what you want’ basis…
I thought it was time to let you in on some of the new music I’ve been working on this year. Most of you probably have Mandala by now, or have at least heard it on Bandcamp. And you will of course have checked out the latest Rejectamenta EP, which consists of tracks that didn’t quite fit on the new record but were recorded during the same period.
Yesterday I posted an unmastered preview track from the new record The Knowledge of Things To Come on my Soundcloud page. I had a great response over Twitter and Facebook from a number of people and thought it should be posted here on the blog.
I also thought this would be a good time to talk about what it is I do when I’m playing solo. Many people who bought Mandala have asked me whether I played all the instruments on the album. They were surprised when I told them it was just me playing solo live and I’ve found it is quite difficult to explain to non-musicians the concept and process of live looping without the music in front of me.
So I’ve annotated the track on Soundcloud with their rather useful timed comments utility. This had allowed my to provide you with a running commentary as the track plays through, explaining what is occurring musically and technically in real time.
Obviously this is one of the simpler tracks from a live looping perspective. A lot of what I do is a kind of musical plate-spinning exercise where I’m both playing and steering the arrangement live with the Looperlative. All the sounds on this track were produced wit the Pod X3 Pro going through the LP1.
The new record should be ready sometime over the next couple of months. It just needs mastering now. I also posted a preview of the album artwork via Instgram last night; got a good response for that too which I was really pleased about. The main image is by the excellent Icelandic photographer Johann Smari and the cover design is my own.
I was lucky enough to be invited by the excellent bassist and educator Lee Pellington (@Guerillabass on Twitter) to give a masterclass at Leicester College on Friday. We talked about what it means to be a freelance session musician and what you need to know to make it on your own. We also talked briefly about the solo bass project and I performed a few short live looping improvisations for the bass players in the morning. So, seeing as we’re looking at the process in today’s blog post, here’s a short video of one of my improvisations filmed that morning. The sound isn’t great and the noise of me pressing buttons is louder that the music, but you get the idea…
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Hope you like it. It’s also up on YouTube if you want to share the link. Watch this space for news of the new record. As soon as it’s ready I’ll be sending out advance download copies to a few bloggers and music writers for reviews. If you are a music blogger, reviewer, podcaster or radio host and would like to be included in this select bunch, then drop me a line here and I’ll put you on the list.  Phil and Oliver, you are at the top of the list…
It’s all well and good me babbling on about my new project with Steve Alexander Little Alex, but what does the music sound like? I hear you ask… Well hopefully now we can give you some idea.
We’ve been spending a lot of time jamming out new ideas and recording our efforts at Chez Alexander and we had one rather successful live session at Terminal Studios. I’ve been getting used to my new Line 6 setup and programming a whole new sparkly range of sounds, whilst Steve has been torturing his thumbs on the kalimba (see the bottom of the page!) and getting to grips with his brand new Maschine.
At our last writing session we recorded one track of live bass that we quite liked as it stood. So Steve took it away and programmed some drums with the Maschine…
Ladies and gentlemen; here is the first sneak preview of things to come:
We’d love to hear your thoughts. Remember you can sign up to the mailing list at Reverbnation and ‘Like’ us on Facebook (that sounds so naff, but that’s what they call it nowadays). Feel free to leave your comments here on the blog; in fact you can even click on specific bits of the track and comment in time with the music. Oh yes indeed folks; it’s all very technical here.
I’ll leave you to ponder the forthcoming joys that Little Alex has in store for you. And just for a laugh, here’s the video I shot of Steve hammering away on the kalimba from the same writing session. Just watch the concentration on his face…
