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Hello The Blurs (T.Johnstone)
Dub Me Now (T.Bailey, A. Currie/J.Leeway)
Space Capsule (Right On) (T.Johnstone/D.Johnstone)
Tween (T.Johnstone)
You Scared??? (T.Johnstone)
Brighton (T.Johnstone)
Wrong Girl (T.Johnstone)
Down Four (T.Johnstone/D.Morrison)
Produced and performed by Tam Johnstone. Recorded and mixed at Fen's house, Hove. The Harmonic Recording Co., 2002.
Free download. 1 track, continuous play (mp3, 37.2MB)The making of 'Honey Pie'
April 2002. I'd just played the IPO festival in Chicago and a couple of gigs in New York, one of which boasted an audience of three and a half people (including two friends, the sound man and a guy who walked in halfway through and then left again.) I was having lunch with some friends at the Chelsea Bar and Grill, barely hours away from catching a plane back to England, when I began pondering aloud what the hell I was going back to. As my pondering gradually morphed into anarchy, I decided I would screw going home, stay in New York, get a job and start a new life! Yeah!! Rob Sacher at the Luna Lounge gave me some work in the bar and my grandparents lent me some money to keep me going. However, within a couple of months I'd come down with bronchitis, ran out of money, had to sell my guitar and come home anyway. So much for anarchy! After several panic attacks and having pissed off numerous ground staff at Newark airport, I finally managed to get on a plane at JFK and stay on! (See "Airport Breakfast" for a brief history of my aerophobia.) I arrived back in Britain and moved in with my long-suffering friends, Julie, Rob and Fen into their house in Hove. Summer was just starting to make itself known but I'd become a bit of a hermit since I got back from the States - it was the beginning of my 'sandbox' phase. I was gripped by anxiety on a daily basis and it would be almost 2 years before I would start to feel relatively 'normal' again. It got to a point where simply leaving the house became a major problem and I would spend days on end, hidden away, watching TV and wondering how long I was going to feel like this.My solution to all this was to busy myself with a new project: a complete overhaul and radical redesign of several 'Local Honey' tracks, completely changing the original structure and direction of the songs. I'd recently discovered Kraftwerk and Neu! and was also heavily into Radiohead's 'Kid A' and the first Miss. Kitten & The Hacker album. The album was recorded very quickly and since I didn't own any kind of sequencer at all, everything was done manually (even the 'loops') using delays and chopping up musical sections on minidisc. Some pieces already existed, marked as 'instrumental songs waiting for lyrics' (I tend to have a lot of these just lying around and they usually have working titles like "Bummytitbags ..1" .) The hardest part was trying to 'sync' the original vocals to the instrumental pieces as this involved a lot of speeding up, slowing down, pitch-shifting and chopping up in order to make them fit. I didn't have the luxury of a hard disc recording system, either: these tracks were created manually, without any sequencing or tempo map. Even though 'Honey Pie' began as an experiment, I'm really pleased with how it turned out. Sounds occasionally slip out of time, ideas sometimes loose their way and an eerie atmosphere hangs over the album. Nevertheless, it's an experiment I plan to revive and repeat again.
'Mountain Tension' ('Mountain Rescue' remixed)
Nice Bitch (T.Johnstone)
Trillion (T.Johnstone)
Panda Eyes (T.Johnstone)
Electro Ponce (T.Johnstone)
Shoot Shot (T.Johnstone)
Ma Hats' On Fire (T.Johnstone)
Lowdown (T.Johnstone)
Clearly Lost Inside (T.Johnstone)
Produced and performed by Tam Johnstone. Recorded and mixed in The Caravan, Airfield studios. The Harmonic Recording Co., 2004.
Free download. 1 track, continuous play (mp3, 26.3 MB)
The making of 'Mountain Tension' (The Harmonic Recording Co.,2004)
I was so pleased with the way that 'Honey Pie' turned out that I thought it would be a good idea to repeat the experiment with 'Mountain Rescue.' I used the same methods I used before except this time I used loops and recorded everything to a tempo clock. As before, I've tried to give these versions their own identity by renaming them (check out the Mighty Boosh references in the 'link pieces' - 'Honey Pie's are borrowed from 'Rock Profiles' and 'Futurama.') Hopefully this adds even more mystique to this whacked-out sonic journey!
From the Sci-Fi disco clubbing 'Trillion' ('Great Big World') to the trip-hop nightmare of 'Panda Eyes' ('Girls From The Mall'), past the DFA-baiting 'Shoot Shot' ('The Point'), under the dub SFA krautrock of 'Lowdown' ('Come Around') featuring Nick Zala's pedal steel from 'Desert Weathered Hiway' and finally, to my personal favourite: the Postal Service-esque 'Clearly Lost Inside' ('Over Here.') The link pieces are unfinished bits and pieces that seem to work with the main tracks (FYI, 'Electro Ponce' also features my old school buddy, Rob Hawthorne who has, in my humble opinion, the best laugh ever.) It was an enjoyable experience for me to make 'Mountain Tension' (constructed in a caravan - yes, those are real drums!) and I hope it raises a smile (or at least an eyebrow!)
P.S. Fans of my other band, Glass Shark may be particular interested in 'Mountain Tension' since it was, really, the starting point for Glass Shark.
I'm hoping 'Honey Pie' and 'Mountain Tension' will eventually surface on one CD with extra tracks I left off. But, for the time being, I hope you enjoy these freebies!