so it's time for our monthly mixtape! and it is being posted today because it's my birthday. yeah, 26 years old... i decided to celebrate the date just like last year: compiling songs and building a mixtape with 26 musics, one for each year i've lived. not that they have some relation with a specific year. actually the mixtape has this first songs with a positive and romantic view on life - just like when you're a kid and think that life will last forever; then we go through some songs that i feel represent me in some way (well, i think everyone has at least 1,000 songs in that category...) and the end has this tunes with a look on life that is a bit less naive and accepting that everything ends (baby, that's a fact!). so the idea was to build this 'years/life passing' mood, from birth until death.
i'm really happy, because lately i've been receiving a lot of emails from people saying kind words about the blog and even more happy for all the new bands contacting me and sending their material to be featured here. keep them coming, readers and musicians!
to celebrate your collaboration via email, here's a band that i got to know via gmail... (actually the day i received this message was pretty special because 3 or 4 bands contacted me on that day!) so this guy - that i thought were two - sent me this very brief message with the link to his band's myspace. while i looked to it, i was asking for more info, if he could share some songs with me (us!)... because the greatest thing about having a blog is to use it to promote new bands, that's what i really like the most, pass along the good music. as you can see, the blog does have a lot of albums from well known acts that were shared. but at some point i realize that i wanted to share 'new' things and not 'hot' things. maybe i got what i called the 'john peel syndrome' because the idea of receiving new music from new artists is fucking amazing to me and it makes me feel very honored and emotional. it's not like i'll start to ignore some labels or more established artists that i love; they just won't be on the spotlight, but they'll sure have their space. that's why i took some time off, you know. at first it was an unconscious action: i suddenly stopped posting; just after some time i realized that a change was about to happen. i'm not the same person that started the blog 15 months ago (you're not either) and my ideas started to go more and more distant from the initial purpose of creating it. the blog is a process... and that's the beauty of it: it could be a blog about personal thoughts but it's a music blog because that's the way i feel myself to be more personal, sharing the music i listen. it's a blog of a boy with more dreams than actions that share music that in some level(s) touch him. and by the way, yes. i do feel that this blog is my diary.
well, the original idea wasn't to share all this thoughts on this post, but i'm glad i did it. let's go to boundary jim now... (actually, is boundary JIM but since here we don't use capitals... but just so you know.)
here's the band in the words of paul ducke (songwriter): "i moved to berlin last summer to set up a band to be able to play live. we opened up a few nice shows for more known bands. then in october i moved back to my parents. to write and develop new songs. the first ep of boundary JIM will be released on cass/flick from belfast (label of the drummer of 'girls names' who are signed to captured tracks)". this band songs are a mix between a lazy shoegaze with a delicious melodic sense that resemble part of the c86 movement. and more than anything: their sound is lo fi. he sent me two tracks to share with you: 'mile', with an hypnotic guitar hook and sounding almost like an introduction to their music, as if you were swimming deeper and deeper (or the opposite way, depends on the perspective). and 'rainy days'. a melancholic ode to dark days with the sometimes awful feeling of being trapped or the comfort feeling of being inside.
hi everyone! almost a month since our last post, i'm stopping by just to say that haven't found much time (and inspiration, to be honest) to keep the posts coming. i'm starting a new routine and still haven't figured out the best time on the schedule to share my love for music here. but don't worry, real real soon our posts will start to run again! lots of hugs!
just to share something: have you seen the new ok go video called 'this too shall pass'? personally, kick the ass of the one with the treadmills...
time for our (so far, monthly) interview. this time, we went to london (not phisically but myspacecally) to talk with my sad captains. in case you don't know them already, their 5 people making pretty songs, with two singles released (one on fortuna pop! and other on white heat) and a (beautiful) full lenght released last year on stolen recordings. their music is full of melodic crafting and goes very, very well with cold days and grey skies, specially when you feel like being "somewhere else". and if you are a melancholic, it'll probably be your new favorite band. who answers the questions is ed.
01. first things first... the first time i heard the name 'my sad captains' i felt extremely intrigued by the name and had to check the sound a band with that name played. what's the origins of the name and the band. i (ed - singing and guitar) had been playing in a band for a few years with nick (guitar/samples) since moving to london for university. that broke up so i thought - hey i'll just record a load of songs myself and call it 'my sad captains'. once i'd done that, i thought they sounded good but would sound better with other people involved and that would be more fun. so i got in touch with my favourite musical allies (nick, jack and my brother jim) and we became a band. the name was taken from a poem by thom gunn, for no other reason than the book was sitting on a shelf unattended when i was looking for a name, and it seemed to capture some element of the music that i heard in my head.
02. do you guys get to live of music or have 'real jobs'? unfortunately we have 'real jobs'. soon, maybe we'll be able to scratch together a living out of the music thing though...
03. how do you create your music? mostly i come up with a basic song, make a little demo and then everyone piles in and deconstructs it and then we build back up into something else.
04. going to more specific questions, let's talk about the album. 'here & elsewhere' is a very melancholic album (it goes very well with a rainy saturday afternoon). tell us how was the recording process, how long it took to make it and what do you wanted it to be/say/do... we take quite a long time to do things. the songs were written over a period of four years or so, whilst we were getting our act together and seeing if the noise we were making was something that anyone might like to listen to. we recorded the album with paul jones, who runs what wasn't then but is now our record label - stolen recordings. we recorded it in a very hot warehouse in north london over about a month, and then faffed about for about six months finishing it and mixing it. i think we were trying to make simple, pretty songs more abstract by adding noises and harmonies. we wanted it to be very much a record, rather than a collection of songs, that you would sit down with - over a rainy saturday afternoon! - and it could take you on a little journey.
05. your videos are also pretty nice. they have this unpretentious feeling that i really liked. i'm not sure if all the videos i've found are official but anyway... 'good to go' is so beautiful and probably my favourite (though i really like 'bad decisions' too). how do you feel about making them? is it something you get involved with? and how produced are the? i mean, is it something like 'take a camera and let's see what happens'? we've never had anything like a budget, so its a case of having some kind of stupid idea that might look pretty, and then calling in favours from talented friends. nick is an artist and is pretty good with coming up with visual ideas, which we then attempt to execute in a very haphazard way. the actual filming is normally a logistically torturous process and invariably involves getting very cold, wet and miserable. this probably helps the mood though. despite of all of this, its something we like to do and think its an important part of communicating what we are like.
06. name some heroes and/or inspirations... movies? cartoons? historycal figures? abstract paintings? anything? at the moment: wim wenders, richard long, stephin merritt, hal hartley, my friend richard's house in san francisco, the watkins copicat tape delay
07. any song you'd like to cover? 'deep sea diving suit' by the magnetic fields. or 'the workplace' by jim o'rourke. or 'do it again' by the beach boys
08. if you could give a place and hour to hear your songs, what would they be? walking in a london park, early in the morning, when it's cold and clear.
09. finally, recommend something you've been listening lately... 'chant master' by lawrence arabia
10. what's next for my sad captains? releasing the album on vinyl soon. and we are recording some demos of new songs, so hopefully the world will get to hear a new album soon.
11. anything else you feel like saying? thanks for spreading the word...
here's our monthly mixtape. i tried to gather a few songs that i've been listening since the year started. after my last year's musical retrospective, i discovered a lot of things that could easily be among the best songs and albums of the year. unfortunately, it's impossible to catch up with everything in the short period of time that is a year (very subjective, i know, but as the music goes 'days go by so slowly and years go by too fast'). the name of the compilation was taken from the opening track 'beautifulgirlsunnyledges' by money can't buy music, a side project from gordon mcintyre (ballboy). a moving spoken chronicle, trademark of gordon's writing style. the other 20 tracks are a mixture of happy/gloomy tunes. it is more melancholic than i imagined it would be, but there are some moments that all you'll want to do is jump and jump and jump. so enjoy (!) and be careful, accidents* happen(!).
