New Material (Part 2)

Well progress of sorts has been made!
Following the recent live debut of Glen Brielle (and surviving my ice bucket challenge), I have managed to demo record 2 new tracks - "Where Is The Laughter" and "Invisible".

Where Is The Laughter is a very light acoustic and synthy type feel with some lovely sound clips loaded in at the intro - a bit like Steve Hackett's "Carry On Up The Vicarage". Invisible is much darker but sounds awesome even in its demo format - programmed drums, fretless bass, nylon string acoustic and Hammond organ sounds.

Next up, I've now completed the first draft of lyrics for "Misty Mountain" - now called "Mystic Mountain" - and "Night Perfume". So far I think the lyrics are quite strong but they may change as I start to put them to music. The concept of "Mystic Mountain" includes an instrumental mid section which, hopefully, may feature some of the gorgeous clarsach playing of the brilliant Pippa Reid-Foster. Perhaps even a debut of my flute playing!

Next up is "The Source" in which the theme is in my head - and which may feature electric sitar and pan pipes!

Watch this space for further updates.....

FURTHER UPDATE (28.8.14)

Another lyric written today, the concept came together for "The Source". Strangely this one just seemed to flow, to write itself, in about half an hour! It was never intended to have any darkness of feel but has ended up being quite a positive message but includes some wee stabs at both organised religion and politics.

I also tweaked a track I'd written called "Dead World" and have decided to reclaim "Her Ghost In The Fog" and include this as mine (I wrote it anyway) in the future project.

It's all coming together quite nicely!

Well that was fun!

Well, that was a pretty awesome weekend - in fact a pretty awesome few weeks! Since the summer holidays I've been rehearsing with the amazing Hugh Carter & Pippa Reid-Foster weekly on the Glen Brielle project. Huge mileage on the car as I trekked from Dunfermline to Glasgow & Paisley to work on material. Boy did it work out!

 

The ultimate goal was to have 2 of Hugh's new tracks (Leaving Woodside & Slumber Sweetly) along with the Carter penned "Gullible's Travels" reworked for the launch of the brand new Abel Ganz album at the Centre For Contemporary Arts (CCA) in Glasgow on Friday 15th August 2014. Glen Brielle opened the show to a very welcome and actually very appreciative audience! With Hugh on guitar, vocals and flute and Pippa doing a gorgeous job on harp it was left to me to produce various non-guitar sounds from an electric guitar! The Roland GR-20 really has now earned it's corn!

 

Whilst normally I'm power chording to oblivion with The Shine, Glen Brielle gave me the chance to explore the softer and more melodic side - and I have to say it's a side I like! I sincerely hope Hugh continues with the Glen Brielle project and that I can continue as his left hand hired gun (or preferably part of the Glen Brielle nucleus....)

So, following on from this, I was inspired to revisit and complete a couple of my own demos this weekend - on the basis that the guitar synth was still out. The momentum continued through Sunday and I managed to complete both tracks which had been written and were gathering a wee bit of dust - "Where Is The Laughter" and "Invisible". Again harking back to "Gullible's Travels", Invisible is now almost like Dreamaway revisited - all moody fretless bass, nylon acoustic guitar, Hammond organ and even the radio news announcer.

 

A successful weekend all in all and here's to, hopefully, a continuation of Glen Brielle! Back to work tomorrow with a spring in my step - OK, that's maybe pushing it a bit....

 

Finally, huge thanks to Nigel & Helen Reid-Foster for the stunning photos from Friday night both on this page and on my Facebook. The video of the set is my own recorded from the gantry. Equally, to Hugh & Pippa for being stunning musicians and making me very happy with the creation of something really quite special!