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Circus worlD - The Dandelion Radio Session E.P.

2018 is the 20th Anniversary of Circus worlD - Mark and I first performed using that name in January of 1998.  This E.P., recorded for Mark Whitby at Dandelion Radio and aired in the autumn of 2017, revisits the early years of the band, collecting some of our defining songs.  It can be downloaded on a name-your-price basis as usual, or you can buy it on CD which comes with another five tracks from the earlier days of the band, two of which have never been released before now.  You can find it here - https://circusworld.bandcamp.com/album/the-dandelion-radio-session-e-p.

Flamethrower - This is the oldest song here, I’d guess it was written some time in May of ‘98.  At the time it felt vaguely special, a standout song from the early material; when we had the opportunity to record a song for a local compilation that summer this is the one that we chose. That recording, though exciting at the time, lost the essence of what the song, and band, really sounded like at the time.  I wanted to try to recapture that here, though I’m not sure I succeeded.  Hopefully I got a little closer though.  Originally Mark played all of the lead guitar on this song.  He advised me to add a new solo to it, I began and ended it in a similar way to his, but rather than repeat the same phrase throughout that section I moved off into something new.  Strangely this is not a song that found its way into our live sets often after ‘98.  For that reason it was nice to come back to it here.  Marie from Postcode reprises her role from the original recording adding vocals; unusually I also sing on the choruses.

Green -  If ever there were a song that came to define the band, this is it, whether we expected or understood it.  I can still remember Mark showing it to me before an acoustic set at The Cul-De-Sac in the early spring of 1999; we played it for the first time that night and played it at almost every gig we did from that point on I think.  I remember a few people singling it out for praise at some of our early performances of it but it didn’t seem to be until the early-mid ‘00s that it gained more significance to our fans, with other artists covering it and mass sing-alongs of the whole song, including the instrumental sections.  I always liked the song but it was never my favourite, I’m not sure any of us thought it was our best, but we always enjoyed playing it.  

Pandora - Another of the songs written in our first year of existence, this was written by Mark on a guitar with two missing strings, in an unusual tuning which was then expanded to feature six strings.  Originally it was tuned lower, to sound in D, but we eventually tuned it half a step higher to match the bass tuning (at the time we tuned everything half a step down from standard).  For this recording it is up to E, as we were using standard tuning for most of the other songs. When we first recorded this song, way back in 2002, I had added some keyboards to the latter half of the song, but here I decided to keep it closer to the way it was written and the way it was performed live.  I did give it a slightly different intro though, with a new drum beat.

No Light Shines - This is in the same tuning as Pandora and was written the day that Mark showed me how to play that song.  It started with me playing what became the verse lead guitar part, which Mark then wrote the song around.  As with Pandora we played these songs a few times back in ‘98 and then dropped them for several years as it was a hassle bringing extra guitars just for two songs.  Six years later we finally reintroduced them to the set and we played them at most of gigs from that point on, with them becoming high points in the show.

Viscera - This is the newest song here, though it is still almost 15 years old. We actually played this slightly differently live, with a simplified chorus chord progression, and I played the melody in the breakdown in a different timing, mainly because I had forgotten what Mark had originally written.  So for the first time here I actually played it right, after all these years!  Mark wrote this not long after the band had reunited following a couple of years of inactivity and it became a staple of our live sets from that point on.

Brood - This is another song that we played at almost every gig we did after it was written. It is a song that evolved over the years, starting life as essentially a jam on the opening section of the song, with me playing bass and Mark on guitar.  We played it live like that a number of times, with Mark improvising different lyrics every time.  Eventually Mark wrote the rest of the sections and I helped to arrange it into the form it has now.  It was only after several years of performing it that it gained vocals over the last section of the song, previously that part had been instrumental.  This is the first recording that features those final words.  I originally used an E-bow for the lead part in the second vocal section, but it was always a bit annoying trying to switch between that and a plectrum, so at some point I ended up changing to playing it how I do here; I thought that it would be better to play that way on this recording to give it the same feel as our live shows would have.

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Nanaki - Decline & Dislocation

Following a quiet couple of years, here is the second Nanaki album to be released in 2018.  The songs contained on it were recorded during the same period of time as previous album 'Epilogue'; despite this 'Decline & Dislocation' is a different record.  'Epilogue' was mostly based around guitar, bass and drums and whilst they are still the most important ingredients here, different instrumentation also appears on a number of the songs - organ, glockenspiel, piano, etc.  The guitars, including some 12-string work this time, were played with a variety of implements over the course of the record too, including drumsticks, screwdrivers, violin bow and slide, and opening track 'Curator Of Molluscs' features what I think is my first recorded example of tapping.

When I first put the tracklisting for 'Epilogue' together I had chosen some of my favourite tracks from the new material.  I was a little surprised when I finished sequencing this record how well it seemed to fit together and that I actually felt that it might be the better of the two albums.  There's a certain variety to this record; in a way it feels like it combines elements of every period of Nanaki, from the early days through to the 'comeback' releases 'Afterlight' and 'The Dying Light' and then 'Epilogue'.  Along with he obvious Post-Rock elements I also think there is more of a Post-Punk feel to bits of the album, something that was also apparent in some of the early material; there are also bits of straight-up Indie-Rock and maybe even Prog in places.

'The Days Go By', which we made a video for, making it the de-facto single, really feels to me like the sort of thing that might have been written back when Nanaki was first starting.  In fact it almost felt a little too simple, too obvious, but...I liked it, and it also felt like it was a good time to write something that looked back fondly at the past, without being completely indebted to it; although the basics of the song are the sorts of thing I might have done in the past, there are parts that are definitely more representative of me now - the flute, glockenspiel, some of the bass playing.  In fact I'm really happy with some of the bass playing on this album and other more recent Nanaki releases.   Bass has always been important in Nanaki, starting with early songs like 'January Overkill' and 'Disembryo' which were written around the bass lines.  This continues to be the case, with 'Curator of Molluscs' and 'Your Words Are Broken' starting out on bass before other instrumentation was added.

'Decline & Dislocation' is available now and can be found at https://nanaki.bandcamp.com/album/decline-dislocation.  As usual you can download it on a name-your-price basis, or you can get it on CD which comes with three extra tracks, two of which have never been previously released (the third comes from the long-unavailable first album 'Fashion Is The Enemy Of All Art).  As ever, I hope that you will enjoy the music.  You can watch the video for 'The Days Go By' here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lglDSoOCLJE&feature=share

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Circus worlD - The Deceiver E.P.

The follow-up to 2017′s ‘The Burning Well E.P.’ is a new release from Circus worlD - ‘The Deceiver E.P.’.  As you may recall, we spent a good part of 2016 recording new material - twenty songs in fact.  Contained within this E.P. are another five of those songs.  Once again this record concentrates on our more full-on (alt) rock side, with hints of grunge, punk and post-punk in there too.  Once again it can be downloaded on a name-your-price basis, with a CD containing another five lo-fi recordings from the Circus worlD vault also available.  And of course, we also once again hope that you will enjoy it.  You can find it here - https://circusworld.bandcamp.com/album/the-deceiver-e-p.

High - The lead track, and the second single to be taken from the forthcoming album.  This one was actually written back in the summer of 2013, but aside from a very rough set of guide guitars nothing had been done with it.  I quite clearly recall the day that we originally put the song together.  Mark had already written the bulk of it, and like ‘Black Swan’ it was instantly obvious to me that it was going to be a great song the moment that he played the melodic riff that features on the choruses and intro.  I did add a few touches of my own to it though, like taking it up an octave on the intro and final chorus, and adding the ascending run at the end of it  Work was finally done on recording the song properly towards the end of the sessions in 2016.  Upon listening back to the guides I decided to speed it up somewhat, and also to shorten the outro chorus.  Originally the song was played in Drop-D tuning (like most of the new songs), but it doesn’t really need to be, so I decided to record one guitar in that tuning and the rest in standard.  A good portion of the new material was recorded with my Aria guitar, but I used three different guitars on this track.  The guitar in the left speaker was the Aria. the clean guitar in the verses was my Telecaster and everything else was my Stratocaster (which I bought from Mark back in 2012).  

Dying By Stages - This dates back to the early stages of the sessions for the album, probably March of 2016 I’d guess.  This proved to be one of our more collaborative songs, in terms of the basic song/chord structure.  I think Mark only had the verse riff when he brought it to me and we fairly quickly wrote the rest of it.  He wrote the first half of the chorus and I added the descending chords that finish it, as well as the riff that forms the breakdown and outro.  We were still in the ‘dark and heavy’ mindset at this point and this track fits in with the somewhat grungey vibe of other songs from the early stages of these sessions, like ‘Demons’ from the last E.P. and ‘Kill Their Sons’ from this one.

Lucid Dreaming - Recording-wise this came towards the end of the sessions, though we laid guides down for it quite a bit earlier.  There was so much material being written that I couldn’t keep up with it, so I ended up working on the ones that I had clear ideas for first and then tackled the others.  This one makes me think of post-punk for some reason, I think partly it’s Mark’s vocal delivery.  I used my Gordon Smith 12-string again on this one, for the picked parts in the verses as well the riff over the choruses (which I doubled with the Aria).  I also got to play a nice noise solo, which is always enjoyable.  The lyrics touch on a post-apocalyptic future, a theme which features on a number of songs on the album.

Kill Their Sons - This was the first song that Mark brought to me to record back in February of 2016.  It is quite different from anything we’d done in the past, but I really liked it and got to work on it straight away.  The slow and dark feel of the song encouraged me to approach my leads differently than normal and I remember really enjoying playing in a more minimal style and dragging out some of the notes more than I might normally do.  I was off work when we got together to do this so I was able to get the music all recorded straight away and a couple of days later Mark came back to record the vocals.  We were both happy with the results and I think that was the point that we both decided we weren’t going to stop at just one song.  I don’t think either of us realised how many songs we would end up writing and recording though. 

 Awakening - The oldest of all the new songs, this one dates back to 2012, around the time of the very brief reunion of that year.  The music (other than the tambourine) was all recorded back then, but was mixed again from scratch in 2016. Guide vocals had been recorded too, but sonically they were lacking, so we redid them sometime in the summer.  This was one of the few tracks we didn’t see entirely eye-to-eye on.  There is a fairly obvious beat that should go along with the main riff, but unfortunately I really didn’t like how that would sound, so I went for a more straight-ahead beat instead.  It’s probably not how the song should sound, but I needed to do it in order to enjoy the song.  Mark was understandably a little surprised , and perhaps not entirely happy with it, though he has since said that maybe I was right.  I got my way this time, but later in the sessions there was a song in which he vetoed some of my ideas, so we ended up even (he was entirely right about the other song, so I think it all turned out for the best).  As soon as we knew we were doing an album and perhaps a single I figured this would be a B-side, but when it was finished I was really quite pleasantly surprised by how it had turned out.

You can watch the video for high here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfaHObrYCuI.

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Nanaki - Epilogue

It has been a long time coming, but here is the new Nanaki album.

Following the release of ‘The Dying Light’ on the final day of 2014 things have been fairly quiet from me as Nanaki.  I had the honour of recording a Dandelion Radio session for Mark Whitby early in 2015, then later that summer I started work on some new material.  By February of 2016 I had amassed 9 finished new tracks and had decided that I would aim for 14, to be divided it into an album and an EP.  That’s when things went awry, in a good way, as unexpectedly Mark Sayle contacted me about working on some new Circus worlD material.  This ended up becoming 20 new songs and taking more than 6 months, but after taking a bit of a break to refresh myself I started work again that autumn.

The music flowed easily again and by early January I found myself with 15 finished tracks and realised that due to their lengths I wasn’t looking at an album and an EP anymore, but 2 full albums.  Fast-forward a year and the first of those albums is finally here.  Rather than release the tracks chronlogically I chose to put the albums together using the tracks that I felt went together best.  Thus ‘Epilogue’ contains 3 songs from January of 2016 along with 3 from the later sessions, including ‘As We Fade’, the final song to be recorded, in January of 2017.   

Unlike ‘The Dying Light’ there were no concepts behind any of the writing this time, it was just a case of trying to write music that I enjoyed.  Although I was somewhat settled into ‘Nanaki-mode’ by this time I still found myself trying new things and experimenting.  ‘Farewell’ contains the least amount of tracks of any Nanaki song (bass, 2 guitars, drums and electronic drums) and ‘Into The Afterlife’ is by far the longest thing I’ve ever done, featuring a multitude of different sections - it just kept growing and growing until it became what it is now.  A number of pieces that turned into sections of these songs were written after Postcode rehearsals before I unplugged my guitar - ‘What Could Have Been’ and ‘Like Distant Dreams’ in particular were mostly written that way.  Way back in the early days of Nanaki there were shoegaze and post-punk influences apparent alongside the more obvious post-rock sound, and I think they return a bit here, as well as on the next album.  Opening track ‘Farewell’ began with something of a slowcore influence too, whether that’s apparent to anyone else or not.

All things considered, it shouldn’t have taken so long for a follow-up to ‘The Dying Light’ to have arrived, but it’s here now.  Once again Grace Turner has been kind enough to provide wonderful artwork for the cover.  You can find the album here - https://nanaki.bandcamp.com/album/epilogue.  As usual it’s a name-your-price download, or you can buy it on CD which also comes with the Dandelion Radio session as bonus tracks.

There is a video for ‘Farewell’ and you can see it here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_cxUMwJzto&t=5s.

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Circus worlD - The Burning Well E.P.

Before I was in Postcode, I was in a band called Circus worlD, for many years.  In fact, the demise of Circus worlD in 2007 was one of the catalysts for the formation of Postcode as a full band.  Though the band featured a number of other musicians over the years the two constants had been myself and Mark Sayle, the main songwriter in the band.  Over the past few years the two of us had occasionally got together and written some new material, but it had never really gone anywhere past the initial writing and demoing stages.  More-or-less this time last year Mark approached me again about recording a new song that he’d written, so we once again reconvened and once he’d showed me the song I went about recording it.  I have to admit that at the time I wasn’t really expecting much more to come of it, but a couple of days later recorded Mark’s vocals and, for the first time in more than a decade we had a finished new Circus worlD song recorded.

The following week Mark had another song for us to work on, soon followed by another.  Not long after that we had a further two songs on the go and then another and another.  The weeks turned into months and we continued writing and recording, with me handling all of the musical duties, though Mark had written the majority of the basic chord sequences and in some instances (such as the choruses of ‘Black Swan’ and the verses of ‘Nibiru Rising’ on this EP), melodic picked parts for them too.  I had free reign to do whatever I felt like essentially and, thankfully, in almost every case Mark totally approved of what I had done with the songs.  

In contrast to the intense negativity that had made the ill-fated full-band Circus worlD reunion of 2012 a largely joyous affair, the sessions for this new material were enjoyable, with a feeling of excitement and creativity throughout the process. To me it felt a lot like the early days of the band again, though the way of working was quite different.  By the time we had finished, in late August, we had twenty finished songs, including the four that we had begun in the preceding years.  When we had begun in February of last year there had been no real goal.  When we had recorded a few songs I thought perhaps we might make an EP, which evolved into the notion that we would be doing a full album.  As the material mounted up I was keen on the idea of issuing a single first, with three or four B-sides.  It turned out that we had so many songs that the best option was actually to release two EPs, each being led by a single from the album.  When I realised that I was really taken with the idea; to me it harks back to a time when music was more valued and singles and EPs were viewed as important.  In today’s music world it may be considered anachronistic, and perhaps it is, but it was something that I felt we should do.

And so to the EP itself, the first release of new original material from Circus worlD in twelve years.  ‘The Burning Well E.P.’ contains five tracks, led by the first single from the forthcoming album.  The songs on it lean towards our more straight-up rock side, from the catchier, poppier ‘Black Swan’, to the darker and grungier ‘Demons’ and ‘Nibiru Rising’ and culminating in the epic ‘The End.’, perhaps the closest to metal that we have ever got.  The EP can be downloaded on a name-your-price basis, but there is also a CD version available which comes with five bonus tracks from our past, recorded in somewhat more lo-fi fashion (hey, we’re named after a Guide By Voices track, our early stuff should sound pretty rough around the edges, right?).

Black Swan - The lead track, and what we consider to be the first single from the album that will be released later in the year.  To my recollection (which may not be entirely accurate) this was recorded in late June and to me it stood out straight away as ‘single’ material, even before Mark had added his vocals to it.  With some of the new songs I didn’t really know where they were going to end up, what they were going to become, until I had worked on them for a while; as I added drums, bass, extra guitars, etc they would slowly reveal themselves to me, almost like watching a Polaroid picture develop.  Other songs, like this one, seemed fully-formed from the outset - I knew instantly pretty much what the finished track would sound like, certainly from a musical perspective.  From the instant that Mark played it to me, from the chordal riffs to the picked melody over the choruses I knew it was going to be a great song.  Of course when Mark did add his vocals I was even more convinced.  I originally played a slightly flashier solo on it, but I knew it wasn’t quite right for the song.  For some reason it occurred to me that maybe I could try using my 12-string on it and, after going for a quick cigarette, I played the take that made it to the record.  It wasn’t wildly different from the original solo, just slightly subtler and more in-keeping with what I felt the song needed.

Demons - This stems from the early days of the sessions, perhaps early March, and was probably about the fourth song to be written.  It is also one of my favourites and think that we were both slightly surprised when we realised that we hadn’t selected it for inclusion on the album.  When we first started working on new songs ‘dark and heavy’ was the description we used for what we were doing.  This evolved as the sessions moved on and we began exploring different directions as we always have, but this song, as well as others, epitomises the vibe of what we were doing to begin with.  This is another song that grabbed me as soon as Mark played to me and again I instantly knew what I wanted to do with it. I haven’t played a huge amount of guitar solos over the past several years (especially in Nanaki where it would be wholly inappropriate), but this features several and I’m really happy with them.

Nibiru Rising - We began work on this the same night as ‘Demons’, though I didn’t get to work on it until a bit later; we were writing and demoing at such a rate at one point that I had no way of keeping up when it came to properly recording all of the songs.  Like ‘Demons’ I feel like this song has something of a grungey vibe, particularly in the main riff section. This is one that I didn’t immediately love, but the more I have heard it the more I’ve come to really like it, to the point that I was again almost disappointed that it didn’t make it to the album.  Another great vocal from Mark here and some noise guitar from me, which is something that I’m always partial to.

Fire Flowers - An anti-war song, if that wasn’t obvious enough.  I never really know what to expect when Mark adds his vocals, but from time to time he comes out with something I really wasn’t expecting, as on this track.  Musically I heard it as a kind of punky Dinosaur Jr. type of song hearing Mark’s almost Cult-like delivery was definitely a surprise, but I think unpredictability is generally a good thing in music.  Most of the music for this was recorded on the final Sunday of May having been up since Saturday morning recording another new song.  Features two fairly over-the-top solos from me too, using a wah pedal, which is something I very, very rarely use.  

The End. - Another somewhat surprising track from us, veering as it does way closer to metal territory than anything else in our catalogue.  In the intro and outro however, I think it has some of the most beautiful sounds that we recorded of the entire sessions.  The only song on the EP in standard tuning, as the rest of the songs (and the majority of those recorded last year) are in Drop D.  Of course, a song entitled ‘The End.’ had to be the final song on the record, but musically I think it is a fitting closer.

You can see the video for ‘Black Swan’ here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGWpMJBqOqQ

Hear, and obtain, the EP here - https://circusworld.bandcamp.com/album/the-burning-well-e-p

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The video for Kieran’s Christmas song.

Skyline Advantage - Christmas Or Something (Official Music Video)

From the Small Bear Records album “Smells Like Christmas Spirit”, available from www.smallbearrecords.com

[zebracore]

The Dandelion Radio Session EP

We were very happy, not to mention honoured, to be asked to record a session for Mark Whitby, to be played on his show on Dandelion Radio.  Dandelion Radio, and Mark in particular, have been great supporters of ours over the years and recording a session for them is something I’ve wanted to do for quite some time.  I actually got the chance to do so twice this year, having recorded one as Nanaki earlier in the year which had been broadcast on Mark’s show throughout June.  Shortly after finishing recording that we began work on the Postcode session.

We decided straight away that we wanted to go for a live feel, with no overdubs, just drums bass, two guitars and one vocal from Marie, with any backing vocals limited to a single track from Kieran.  When it came time to decide upon what songs to record we opted to go mostly for new, previously unrecorded material.  We did re-record ‘Reds’ which originally featured on ‘The ZebrATP’ EP, because it is a favourite amongst the band and we play it a little differently to the EP version.  An acoustic version of ‘Donny’ had appeared on ‘Zebracoustic’, but for the session we recorded the first electric, full-band version.  ‘The Hollow’ is a song that we wrote around the time of Jonny joining the band.  Musically it is an adaptation of the Nanaki track ‘Let Me Close My Eyes’, one of the few Nanaki pieces that I felt would lend itself to becoming an actual song.  The remaining two songs were brand new, never before performed by the whole band before we decided on learning them for the session.  Both were songs that Kieran, Marie and I had been working on and are some of the only songs in our catalogue that feature music that wasn’t written by me.  I’d always wanted the band to be a collaborative thing, so when Kieran contributed ideas that became ‘Simple Things’ and ‘Four Years’ I was really happy, especially as they turned into songs that I really like.  

We rehearsed the songs a few times in preparation for recording, mostly to get the new songs properly together, something that happened surprisingly quickly.  Adding the rhythm section changed the feel of the songs in a positive way, especially Jonny’s drums which were very different than I might have expected, but better than anything I would have thought of myself.  We recorded most of the music in a few days just before Easter, laying down the drums and guitars in three days (drums on the Wednesday, Kieran’s guitars on the Thursday, mine on the Friday, if I recall correctly).  After that things went a little more slowly, but soon enough Steve added his bass parts and Marie and Kieran recorded their vocals to the finished music.  I’m really happy with how it turned out and it’s great to have a new ‘band’ record after such a long time. One of the things I’m most pleased about is the fact that everyone contributed and added their own touches to the songs.  ‘Reds’ for example features some new bass lines from Steve along with some great drumming by Jonny (far different from the original basic, minimal drumming from me on the original).  The newest songs see Kieran and I becoming a proper guitar team, playing different but complimentary parts rather than doubling the same riffs or rhythms.  In that respect I think I’m happiest with ‘Four Years’, in which there is no definitive ‘lead’ or ‘rhythm player and the final chord hit of the song is the only time we play the same thing.

The session aired in September, which I believe is seven years after we were first played on Dandelion by Rachel Neiman.  I think overall the session has a bit of a post-punk feel, with some touches of Post-Rock here and there.  After some detours into new territory over the past few years with the records we’ve made this set of songs feels more like the ‘true’ Postcode sound to me, certainly more akin to the live performances by the band.  Although I love our most recent records and they contain some of the songs I’m proudest of, I’ve always considered us to be a loud (alternative) rock band and I think that side of us has been under-represented for some time, mainly by circumstance more than anything.  I think this EP does something to remedy that fact and is definitely a return to what I think of as the Postcode sound, whilst still exploring new areas and featuring input from new members of the band.

The ‘Dandelion Radio Session’ can be downloaded on a name-your-price-basis now from https://postcode.bandcamp.com/album/the-dandelion-radio-session.  Tune in to Dandelion Radio at http://www.dandelionradio.com/.

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Nanaki - The Dandelion Radio Session EP

Recording a session for Dandelion Radio is something I’ve wanted to be asked to do for quite a long time now.  So I was honoured and very happy in February when Mark Whitby approached me about recording not one but two sessions for his show - with Nanaki and Postcode.  I’ll talk more about the Postcode session in the future, but for now here is the Nanaki session which was played throughout June by Mark on his show.  It is available now from Small Bear Records and can be downloaded for free/pay-what-you-like from https://nanaki.bandcamp.com/album/dandelion-radio-session.

For those of you that don’t know, Dandelion Radio (which can be found at http://dandelionradio.com/) is an internet radio station inspired by the late, great John Peel and is definitely recommended listening.  We’ve had a lot of support from Dandelion Radio over the years, particularly from Mark Whitby, who I think has now officially played more of my music than anyone else.  Obviously I jumped at the chance to record this session, but the question I was immediately faced with was what tracks was I going to do?  Usually it would seem sensible to record new versions of recent material to help promote your latest release, but that idea didn’t appeal to me.  With ‘The Dying Light’ not long out, and with many of the tracks finished not too long before its release, it seemed a little pointless to redo any of that material, especially seeing as it would be me playing everything anyway.  I was (and remain) very proud of that record, so I felt that if I were to revisit it I’d either be trying to simply recreate what I’d already done, or possibly even ending up with inferior versions.  New material would have been an option, had there been any, but there was not.  That being the case, it occurred to me that this would be an ideal opportunity to revisit older Nanaki tracks and to record versions that I was happy with.  Thus I decided that I would go back to tracks from ‘Fashion Is The Enemy Of All Art’ which has been unavailable for many years now (though selections from it appeared as bonus tracks on the ‘Afterlight’ CDR).  

I originally decided to record four tracks (’January Overkill’, ‘Disembryo’, ‘Luthiers (Of Heaven)’ and ‘Let Me Close My Eyes’), all of which were staples of live sets back when Nanaki was a real band.  I even recorded the tracks using the Fender Jaguar that was one of my main live guitars when performing with the band.  That wasn’t for purely nostalgic purposes, I needed a guitar that I could play behind the bridge on ‘January Overkill’ and ‘Disembryo’.  It did feel kind of good  to be using something that I played back then though and I was happy to find that it was still in more-or-less working order (it definitely took a lot of abuse back in the middle part of the last decade!).  Those tracks came together pretty quickly after I’d relearned parts that I’d forgotten; for the most part I remembered everything that I used to play live, but some of the other parts I’d had no cause to play since I taught them to other band members about 12 years ago.  At some point not long after completing those recordings it occurred to me that if I were to record  ‘Candyfloss Deathwish’ then I’d have new versions of everything we played at our first gigs, which is something that appealed to me.  I knew it ran the risk of there being too much for Mark to play, but I figured he could always choose four of the five, maybe play the other on a later show, or I could just include it on the EP when it came out.  As it turned out he was able to play the whole session and ‘Candyfloss Deathwish’ proved to be the track that I was the happiest with.

As the original versions of these were some of the first things I ever recorded, before I had any real idea of what I was doing at all, it definitely felt good to be able to revisit them and to produce them in a way that I was satisfied with.  In fact, aside from its inclusion as a bonus track on ‘Afterlight’, ‘Candyfloss Deathwish’ had never even been released.  Actually that track is not technically a Nanaki track at all, though we played it live from the outset, it being the set closer at pretty much all of our shows as far as I can recall.  It dates back to my time in Circus worlD and began with the bass line, which was written by CW bassist Tony Leadley.  In fact all of the tracks that I recorded for this session were co-written.  ‘Disembryo’, ‘Luthiers...’ and ‘January Overkill’ began as bass lines written by Nanaki co-founder Emma Ryan and the second set of chords featured in ‘Let Me Close My Eyes’ came from Circus worlD frontman Mark Sayle, as did the chord voicings used in the strummed part, though he doesn’t seem to recall that fact.

Overall I think that the EP is often closer to post-punk than post-rock, with perhaps the exception of ‘Candyfloss Deathwish’ and ‘Let Me Close My Eyes’.  In fact some of the tracks were not originally conceived as being instrumental, it was only when we had decided that we were going to be a fully instrumental band that I realised that they didn’t need to have vocals.  ‘Candyfloss...’ had always been instrumental, but ‘January Overkill’ was the first track to be written specifically for Nanaki, as an instrumental piece (it was also, incidentally, the first thing I wrote on my then-new Jaguar, if memory serves me correctly).  So in a way this record helps to show the beginnings of what has become Nanaki and though it may be quite different from ‘The Dying Light’ perhaps you can hear how Nanaki has evolved over the years.  Obviously the fact that I now write everything myself changes things, but the bass parts from these early songs have definitely influenced some of my writing and I do sometimes start with the bass now, harking back to those early days.  I also play guitar with a drumstick on three of the five tracks here, something that I do to this day, though perhaps a little more sparingly now (I think my favourite drumstick-playing by myself features on the second half of ‘Unholier Than Thou’ from ‘The Dying Light’).

So anyway, here it is, my first Dandelion Radio Session.  As I said, I’m happy to have had the chance to do it and to revisit this material.  Now, more importantly, I hope that you enjoy it.  To recreate the desired live gig feel, please listen to it at high volume!

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Nanaki interview with Hominis Canidae

On New Year’s Eve 2014 I released the first Nanaki album since 2003, ‘The Dying Light’.  Hominis Canidae declared it to be one of the top 5 international releases of the year and asked to interview me.  This proved to be one of the most in-depth interviews I’ve done and was originally posted, in Portuguese, here - http://www.altnewspaper.com/terca-gringa/tercagringa-nanaki-o-projeto-solitario-do-mikie-daugherty/.  For those who, like me, are not fluent in that language, I have decided to post the original interview, as it was conducted via email.  Hope you enjoy reading it.  If you have yet to get hold of ‘The Dying Light’, you can find it here - 

http://nanaki.bandcamp.com/album/the-dying-light?from=embed

First of all. Nanaki is a band or a project of Mikie Daugherty? The stuff is the same or mutant

Now it's all just me.  When the idea for Nanaki originated it was me and a bass player, Emma Ryan.  In fact really it was her idea to be an instrumental band, though some of the material on the first album (and later) was recorded entirely by me.  After a while we were able to get a proper band together and on-and-off between 2003 and 2007 we'd play live with 4-6 members.  We never recorded much as an actual band though, I think really the only thing that has been released from that period is 'Gizmo' which appeared on the local compilation 'Alt-Rock 2'.  That was mainly written by guitarist Steve Halsall who also played on it along with Emma and myself.  

   After the band basically broke up, or fizzled out, I didn't have any thoughts about returning to it for several years.  In 2012 and 2013 I recorded a couple of Christmas songs for Small Bear Records festive albums as Nanaki and I guess that inspired me to start doing music like that again, so I wrote and recorded the 'Afterlight' EP.  Not long after that had been released I felt the need to do more and so I recorded what would become 'The Dying Light' last year.

In terms of writing it's not that much different from how I worked in the past, when it was intended to be for an actual band.  I do like playing in bands with other musicians, but in the case of Nanaki doing it by myself allows me to realise my vision fully.  Equally important to me is that I am able to be pretty self-reliant and I don't have to wait for other people or work around their schedule.  A lot of the tracks off 'The Dying Light' were recorded the day I wrote them and more or less finished in a day or two.  If I had to wait until other people were ready there's a fair chance they would have taken much longer or even never have been recorded at all.  It would be nice to work with a real drummer, and indeed to play live with a band, but I don't think it's something that is very likely at this point.

How many works the band Nanaki has?

We released an album back in 2003 called 'Fashion Is The Enemy Of All Art' which is now unavailable.  A few years ago it was intended to reissue that, alongside a lot of old unreleased material, on Small Bear Records, but it now seems very unlikely that it will happen. Some of the songs, in remastered form, feature on the CDR version of 'Afterlight'.

Also in 2003, three Nanaki tracks featured on 'Alt-Rock' a local compilation that was put out by Mark Sayle and I.  It was ostensibly a various artists album, but in fact we were the only two people to play on it – together as Circus worlD, me as Nanaki and Harmony Dischord and Mark as The Fender Crash,  Black River Falls and Evil Andy.  That was re-issued in 2012 by Small Bear Records along with extra tracks that had appeared on 'Alt-Rock 2' the following year, including the aforementioned 'Gizmo' ('Alt-Rock 2' actually was a proper compilation, with a number of local acts appearing on it, but the extras on the reissue are just the ones from Mark and I).

After that there no more releases for almost a decade, until 'Afterlight' on New Year's Day 2014 and 'The Dying Light' on New Year's Eve.

Talk about your childhood in Isle of Man? I´m asked because the influence of 'The Dying Light', are all very sad.

My childhood was actually very nice. The Isle of Man is a very beautiful place and back then it was still a pretty busy tourist resort, so it was a great place to grow up. Sadly it's not what it used to be, cheap flights to Spain, etc killed off the tourist trade, but it's still special.  People that have been here often describe it as 'magical'.  Visitors are often surprised by the vibrancy of the music scene too.  Anyway, a lot of my memories as a child involve things like walks and picnics in the countryside, visits to the beach (Douglas beach is pretty ugly now, but it was nice back then) and generally happy times with various family members.  Maybe things weren't always as great as I got older, but there are no awful childhood stories or anything.  If anything a reason to be sad about it would be that those days are gone and so are some of the people that I shared them with.

But generally I'm not actually a sad or melancholy person.  I guess sadness is something that I'm pretty good at, but the fact is I'm mostly upbeat and optimistic.  I do tend to connect more to darker, sadder music though, something about it seems to resonate with me more and it has a certain beauty that I don't find in happier songs.  So yes, it's a sad album and a lot of it's inspiration comes from darkness or sorrow, but that doesn't mean that I was despondent whilst creating it.  In fact, I find that it's almost impossible to make music when you are truly dispirited.

Who are your idols? If any still exist idols...

I don't know if I have idols exactly, but there are plenty of musicians and bands that I have a great deal of respect for, and whose music I love.  There are plenty of artists that have influenced me over the years and who have changed the way I perceive and make music but at this point I strive to sound like myself rather than worshipping other people and trying to sound like them.  Whether I succeed at that I couldn't say, but it's certainly my goal.  I think common thread between a lot of the musicians that I admire is a sense of individuality, so although it's almost impossible not to be influenced by what you like and to take things from them, intentionally or subconsciously, what they really influence in me is that desire to be myself and to do things differently.

There is so much music that I love that it can be hard to narrow it down to a few key influences, but the likes of Smashing Pumpkins, Pixies, Sonic Youth,  Low, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds and My Bloody Valentine have all made a big impression on me in terms of the possibilities of music and particularly the guitar, which is my first instrument.  In terms of Nanaki, Mogwai were certainly an early influence and inspiration, not least because they were mainly instrumental and pretty much my introduction to that world.  In a way though, now it's almost more important to me that I don't sound like them because they cast such a large shadow over the realm of 'Post-Rock' that it's easy to be seen as just another cheap imitation of them and that's not something that I wish to be.  I really like Akira Yamaoka's work on the Silent Hill soundtracks and although what I do is quite removed from most of his music, I do think that has been at least a slight influence on me recently.

Talk about the origin of the band name. Why NANAKI? Something to do with the sound made by the project?

Nanaki is the name of a character from the video game Final Fantasy VII, though he's only referred to as that a couple of times in the game, normally being called Red XIII. It was a game I loved and played a lot with friends and bandmates when it first came out and I remember at one point thinking Nanaki would be a good name for a band.  So when we decided to start this band I suggested it as a name and it was agreed upon.   So really it has nothing to do with the music, though it was the first of several references to games  that I've made over the years ( 'Zanarkand' from 'Fashion Is The Enemy Of All Art', 'Saint Alessa' from 'Afterlight' and 'Yorda' from 'The Dying Light' all reference games in their titles, though 'Saint Alessa' is the only one that was really inspired by a game, musically.  Maybe 'Yorda' too to a lesser extent).

Do you like the term/tag "Post-Rock"? Why? Why not?

I'm indifferent to it really.  I know a lot of bands dislike the term, but I have nothing against it, other than trying to explain what it means to people that have never heard of it.  I tend to refer to what I do as Nanaki as Post-Rock because it seems like the closest obvious pigeonhole, I think it gives at least a vague idea the kind of music I make, to those that are familiar with the term at least.  Some of the stuff I've written doesn't sound like traditional Post-Rock at all to me ('Fuck Spotify' from 'Afterlight' being a good example) and hopefully I don't fall into the generic Mogwai/Explosions In The Sky/Etc-clone category, but overall the general instrumental, melancholy, pretty/noisy thing is probably closer to Post-Rock than anything else.  Art-Rock, or even just Alternative Rock could work too, really I don't mind what you want to call it as long as you listen.

Comment the sentence: "Art is dangerous. It is one of the attractions: when it ceases to be dangerous you don't want it." (Duke Ellington)

It's a great quote, but I'm not sure how true it it really is.  I'm generally attracted to music with at least a hint of darkness, maybe it might be considered dangerous by some, but is it truly?  Is Nanaki dangerous?  Maybe to your hearing, it's certainly done some damage to mine over the years!

Do You considered yourself a nerd (talk about all the game references)? This is a problem? Do you think music as a study process?

Do I think of myself as being a nerd?  No.  Am I a nerd, would other people say I am?  Quite possibly.  The term 'nerd' generally implies intelligence and passion though, so I have no problem with that.  I guess a lot of the things that I enjoy, like fantasy novels, underground music and computer games aren't what would be considered cool by most 'normal' people, but then I don't really care for most mainstream entertainment.  I think all musicians are essentially nerds really, you have to be to put that much effort into learning how to play.  I know from experience that the kind of conversations that take place between musicians is boring and/or confusing to most other people!  

To me music is all about creativity and expression, it's not some kind of technical exercise or anything at all.  I'm completely self-taught, I've never had any lessons at all.  I've studied it in that I've been reading guitar magazines since I first started playing and I listen to music almost  constantly.  I know a fair bit of theory, probably a lot more than many people would expect, but I never 'practice' or anything, I play for the love of music, not so I can learn scales, etc.  I'm sure a lot of the knowledge I've acquired over the years has some impact on the way I write, but it's usually a very instinctive process.  Certainly it helps when I play keyboard, compared to the guitar I'm a total beginner as a player, but the fact that I know what notes will work, etc makes it much easier to do what I want.

How is the show of Nanaki? What or where was the best and the worst show of the band?

Well, there hasn't been a Nanaki show since, I think, 2007.  There is no band anymore, it's all just me.  What were we like back when we did play live?  Loud.  Really fucking loud.  Not really intentionally, it's just that our drummer hit so hard there was little choice but to crank the amps to be heard!  Intense as well, we definitely put a lot into the performances.  By the end of the set the bass player was usually hitting so hard that she'd be splashing blood onto anyone close to the stage.

Looking back, one of the best gigs I can recall was at a 24 hour benefit show for the Tsunami at the beginning of 2005.  I just remember us being at our best and playing a really powerful set.  The worst was definitely opening for Mother Vulpine, the band that the guy from Pulled Apart By Horses used to be in.  It started off well, but I broke a string pretty early on, then when I switched guitars something or other went wrong and my sound kept cutting out.  I got frustrated and ended up having some kind of panic attack or something and threw my guitar offstage and walked out.  I guess it makes for a good rock and roll story now, but at the time it wasn't much fun.

About the study process, can be a limitation from the creative method?

I'd say there is an argument for both sides of this discussion.  I think it's true that musical knowledge and theory can lead people to write and play in a way that they consider 'right', but at the same time, knowing how things work can certainly make things easier or inspire you in new directions.  Personally, I rarely think theoretically when writing or playing, but I do know enough that I know what will work when I'm adding extra instrumentation, which can certainly make things easier.  It also means I know how to use the 'wrong' note or chord if I want something to sound nasty or fucked-up.  But again, it's mostly more instinctive to me, I'm interested more how something feels or sounds, the emotion it conveys, rather than whether it's the 'correct' choice, musically-speaking.  I'm also into experimentation and doing things with the guitar and effects that you're not 'supposed' to do, so in that situation study and theory goes out the window!  If it sounds good it is good, regardless of how you got to that point, in my opinion.

Do you have any objective or goals with Nanaki?

All I want to do is make the best music that I can, and to have people listen to it and enjoy it.  I really believe in what I do, especially the new album, and I think there are a lot of people in the world that would love it.  The challenge is getting them to hear it in the first place and if they do, to give it a chance and listen to it properly.  Coming from a tiny island and having no money whatsoever for promotion doesn't make that easy, but I'm really grateful for the support I've had from blogs and zines, from radio and podcasts.  I hope more people will find the music somehow too.  

The instrumental sound limits you to passa your menssenger or amplifies?

Again, you could probably view that in two ways.  I think in some ways music can sometimes convey emotion and feeling more effectively than any other artform.  So in that way I don't feel limited by being instrumental at all.  And the fact is, it means I don't have to write lyrics or sing, which I think is probably for the best!  At the same time you can't share thoughts and ideas without using words, though I sometimes attempt that a little with the titles of songs.  For example 'Fuck Spotify' (which was on the 'Afterlight' EP) I think succinctly and adequately states my feelings on that subject. Sometimes the titles are just things I thought sounded cool though.

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New from Small Bear Records, Marie Jonny and I all guest on this record, you should check it out :)

(via Small Bear Records release the debut album from Vukovar)

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I love this new piece from the artist that supplied the brilliant cover art to the last couple of Nanaki records! :)

Grace Turner - Winter (2015)

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Small Bear Records announces vinyl release of Swedish act Club K ‘Let M Shake’

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https://soundcloud.com/zebracore/take-me-as-i-am

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https://soundcloud.com/zebracore/summer

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https://soundcloud.com/zebracore/caroline

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https://soundcloud.com/zebracore/this-day-will-come

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https://soundcloud.com/zebracore/echo