Monday 31 December 2012

Futurepast Issue 4


A few weeks ago I was interviewed about Dead Wood activities for the fourth issue of Futurepast. The zine is out now and also includes other interviews with Justice and Burlish. This whole thing is put together by Midlands based music enthusiast Anand Patel, who's passion regardless of genre or trend is something I genuinely admire. Futurepast 4 is available for free from various record stores around Birmingham, or feel free to email direct for a copy.    

Friday 21 December 2012

Buben - The House Of My Ancestors (Family Tree Remix by Dead Wood)


I recently made a remix of a track by Belarus producer Vladislav Buben for a competition hosted by Tibprod Italy. I turned Part 3 of 'The House Of My Ancestors' into a zoned out droner using patches I created using Reaktor software. Click on the photo above to hear the results. Danielle at Tibprod Italy was enthusiastic about the remix, and a compilation of the chosen mixes will be available on CD and digital download sometime in the new year.  

Thanks to Curt



Photo of Dead Wood taken at the Bournemouth house show a few months ago. Thanks to Curt for asking me to play. 

Friday 12 October 2012

Bournemouth house show



Bournemouth house show tomorrow night, Saturday 13th October. Songs and noise.

Saturday 29 September 2012

Junto Project 37: Store Recording


A few weeks ago I made a field recording for the Disquiet Junto Project. The task was to make a Store Recording, and after loitering around looking well dodgy in M&S, Beales and Boots, I settled on Primark as my chosen department store to make a recording. Click on the picture above to hear.  

Wednesday 12 September 2012

Dead Wood - Late


As I've mentioned on this blog before, I'm quite a fan of the Diquiet weekly Junto project. This weeks project assignment titled Still Life was to create an abstract piece of music in honor of the painter Clyfford Still, using J.S. Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No 2, II. Andante as the sound source. I spent Monday afternoon/evening creating a drone piece for this project, but still managed to miss by midnight deadline by 40 minutes, hence the title Late.

Dead Wood - Forest


My pal Andrew Perry has just released a Dead Wood CDR on his suitably titled We're Gonna Get Fucking Drunk Tonight Boys label. The release is a collection of no-fi guitar jams recorded last summer in Wareham forest, and features lots of feedback, string scratching and general forest spookery. More details and a preview can be found by clicking the image above. Available now for £2 plus postage. Big thanks to Perry for making this release happen. 

Sunday 26 August 2012

Dead Wood - Arrival Transfer


This weekend I made a track for the latest Disquiet Junto project, Radius Joint. Click the photo above to listen / download. 

I've known about Junto since the start but have only really been getting into in the past few weeks. I like the community aspect and getting to hear what other artists have created with their contributions. Each week is a new project and the whole thing is hosted at Soundcloud. 

The Assignment for this week is to make a piece of music between 2-4 minutes long using the 14 second jingle from the Radius radio show as the sole sound source, with processing permitted. Tracks must also include the original jingle at the beginning. 

I've been wanting to do some computer creations for a while now and after having a go a few months back, my beloved original PC finally died, so I'm now learning about music things on the Mac. I made this by editing some loops from the jingle and jammed them with looping, effects and things in Reaktor. I wanted to make something rhythmical and had some fun trying.   

Signalvoid



Signalvoid compilation is available now and features 4 hours of one minute noise tracks, all with no fade outs and designed to be listened on shuffle. I've always been interested in people's interpretations of 'noise' and with over 100 artists contributing to this, I knew it would be a project that would interest me. My friend Jack put this together and I'm really impressed with how it's all tuned out. My contributions include a harsh screeching solo Dead Wood track, plus three collaborations with Knifedoutofexistence. Signalvoid is available for free download and also physical copy including all the tracks on a neat wooden usb stick  

Sunday 19 August 2012

Dead Wood - How The Tables



Today I made a track for Disquiet Junto project 0033: Turntable Played. Click the photo above to listen / download.

The Assignment: Make music with a turntable but without vinyl.

Firstly I recorded the sound of 4 separate unamplified turntables while interacting with the machines by knocking the arm, messing with the cue / cancel buttons and occasionally letting the needle fall onto the slip mat.

The sounds were captured with a contact mic, recorded straight to cassette, then later recorded into a laptop and processed using loopers in Reaktor 5 software. There are no other effects used, although the cassette itself was old and there were some moments where it had previously chewed and stretched.

Saturday 18 August 2012

Andover



A photo of the Dead Wood / Phantom Heron Seas performance at We Are Collective at Chapel Arts in Andover last Sunday. It was a really nice afternoon and everyone was really lovely. Big thanks to Tom for asking us to play. 

Saturday 11 August 2012

Patches / badges



Amps Against Trend patches and badges available now. Click on the image for more details. 

We Are Collective


Kicking off today We Are Collective are hosting a three day event in Andover. Tomorrow from 1-6pm I have a stall selling Dirty Demos and Amps Against Trend junk, and Dead Wood / Phantom Heron Seas will making practice amp noises at 2pm. Click on the flyer for more details. 

Friday 3 August 2012



I made this a month or two ago. It was used (with typewriter text on it) for the insert of the Witch Cult floppy disk box set I released recently on my new label Amps Against Trend

Thursday 2 August 2012

Exempt Through Distance C20







Dead Wood / Phantom Heron Seas - Exempt Through Distance cassette is out now on the awesome Hairdryer Excommunication label. Kevin did us proud with this release, big thanks for all the effort involved. Chuffed to bits I am. C20 cassette with hand stamped labels, in oversized cases and beautiful letterpress covers by The Print Project. The cassette comprises of two 10 minute collaboration tracks of practice amp drone and spangles. A review of the release can be read here, thanks to Steve for writing nice words about it. Edition of 30 copies, available from Hairdryer Excommunication£4 plus postage. 

Lushfest





A few pictures of the Dead Wood / Phantom Heron Seas set at Lushfest last month. The festival was amazing. A very well organized affair, and I thought the sound was really decent for our set. Big up Matthew Shaw for inviting us, and for taking the photos above. 

Saturday 28 July 2012

Nord Collaboration



A few weekends ago I went to stay with my good friends Martin Thompson and Lucia Chung in London. We had a fun time catching up, eating, drinking and watching Irish gypsies bare knuckle fight in the street outside their studio. 


For the whole of this year Martin is making a sound piece every day using his Nord Modular and uploading to his site Monolog. This really is inspiring and hugely dedicated work. Late on the Saturday night Martin asked if I was into making a collaboration piece for his upload of that day. We sat down and played with 
ideas of specific frequencies, textures, while sipping on some single malt. The outcome can heard here.        

Monday 2 July 2012

Lushfest 2012



This Saturday, 7th July, Phantom Heron Seas and myself will be performing a collaboration set at Lushfest 2012, a festival curated by Lush, the lovely fresh handmade cosmetics peoples. The weekend looks to be a marvel of music, comedy, talks, demonstrations and vegan food. It sounds ideal to me, plus this will also be the least amount of traveling I've ever had to play a gig, as the festival takes place less than 4 miles from my front door. Music includes The Blue Trees, Richard Youngs, The Black Twig Pickers, Plastic Crimewave, Peter Delaney, Urthona and a whole bunch of others. Dead Wood / Phantom Heron Seas play at 1pm in the Anything But Ordinary tent.  

Tuesday 26 June 2012

Amps Against Trend



Most of my spare time over the past few months has been spent putting a new label together. The focus of Amps Against Trend is loud music, expect noise/pv/grind. I'm having fun with all this right now and have decided to make 3.5" floppy disk the main format for the time being. In this short space of time things have moved quickly and there's already 4 releases out including a Witch Cult 10 disk floppy disk box set! This is a re release of their 10 track 1 sided 12", now spread over 10 floppy disks. Yes, this is ridiculous, I know this only too well. There's 50 copies, so that was 500 disks to copy and spray paint! Thankfully the band came round and we all did the spray painting together.






Other releases include a floppy disk by my friends Ladstorm, titled xSHITFACEDx. 40 copies, 6 songs, 90 seconds, powerviolence. Thanks to Georgia for making the awesome inverted cross England cases. And thanks to Dom and Loz for being lovely gentlemens. 


This release is a noise collaboration I did with Matthew Shaw. This is 2 90 second cuts from a show we played together at The Winchester pub in Bournemouth. Matthew wrote a nice write up about how this all came about which can be read here. There's 30 copies of these which come in handmade wooden cases which I made, and individually painted. These too a long, long time to make!




And the first release on the label was a 90 second drone excursion by Petals titled Machynlleth for over an hour. This came out on the 7th May, 15 copies and is now sold out. Thanks to Kelly for helping me sew/make the cases.




Saturday 14 April 2012

Cadmium Dunkel Remixed Again Vol 2



A few years ago I did a remix of a track by Cadmium Dunkel, the alias of Norwegian experimentalist Roar Borge. Last week Tibprod Italy released a compilation Cadmium Dunkel Remixed Again Vol 2, featuring my remix: Dead Wood - Not To Happen. Other remixers include Skema, Kjetil Hanssen, Monolab, Hygiene, Delirio Sonoro and Cadmium Dunkel himself. Despite all the remixes being of the same orginal track, the album is actually a nice varied listen. I found it kinda weird hearing my remix again after all this time. Like a lot of the material I was doing then, my contribution doesn't really do much, has a very static lo fi feel to it, muffled feedback and a rather abrupt ending. The album is available now on CDR and free download/streaming from the Tibprod Italy Discogs

Sunday 25 March 2012

Ivoryshield album out now



Last winter myself and Georgia Jones started an experimental folk project called Ivoryshield. Our six track album 'You'd want that at the volume that you'd want' is finally released this month. We've made a bunch of homemade CDRs which are available through my label Dirty Demos, or you can download the tracks for free/donations from the Ivoryshield Bandcamp. Free music for poor punx.

Sunday 19 February 2012

Bournemouth show 8th March


For those in the Bournemouth area, I'm sure you will be more than aware of the fast decline of the towns music venues lately, resulting in a serious lack of shows round these parts. Well fear not, Krayon Recordings are hitting with a killer line up on the 8th March held in the delightful back room of The Winchester Pub. This is one of my favourite spots in town, complete with mirrored wall decor and mind bending psychedelic carpet. The line up includes ex Vibracathedral Orchestra drone master Bridget Hayden, the debut solo performance by ex Sunshine Republic lout Total Lizard, and a collaboration outing by Myself, Dead Wood and me old pal Phantom Heron Seas. For a more detailed run down of said shenanigans please see the Facebook events page.         

Witch Cult / Beartrap



This Friday Witch Cult head out with Beartrap on a massive Europe tour till the end of April. On the 27th February the tour hits The Dorchester Arms in Southampton where I'll be joining Witch Cult to make some harsh noise.      

Friday 27 January 2012

Ivoryshield




Last October I started a new music project with Georgia. She plays acoustic guitar and sings, and I do heavy computer processing. The result is kinda glitch folk I guess. We're called Ivoryshield and are working towards six tracks which will be released as a CDR on Dirty Demos and given away for free. The tracks will also be available for download, plus there might be a different version on cassette later. So far we have one track online, a cover version of a song by Tiger Lou titled You Can't Say No To Me. We hope you enjoy.   

Drawing


A left handed portrait I made of Georgia. I'm traditionally right handed yea. Black biro on an old envelope. 

Wet Dream





I'm currently working on a zine based around dreams with my friend Georgia. So far we've written a bunch of stuff, made some left handed drawings and I've spray painted the covers.

Warming



Thanks to everyone that checked out my contribution to the Instagr/am/bient project. I received some really nice feedback from folks, and was shocked to see my track had more than 1000 plays on Soundcloud in the first week! A great project and a total pleasure to be involved.