listen, download & keep

toward compliant towers is a kind of a drone release. unashamedly synthetic, but still, i hope, human. the bases of the songs come from memory, but not from nostalgia.

I really hope you enjoy it. it has maybe a little more colour than some of my previous drone stuff. particularly good to have on while writing, drawing, or travelling on a train or boat or a plane.

made with jeskola buzz (2002 version).

free as ever but you can pay what you want if you like.  go download it >>

Function Creep (2007)

bunker 1 (2013) is my first collection of b-sides. “B-sides” is probably not the right term, as I’ve never released a single–but in recording the several albums and EPs I have released between 2005 and now, I produced a lot more material than could ever fit onto those albums. Because I’ve always been very keen to keep each album thematically and aurally tight, there have been many, many tracks I have enjoyed, but which have not ended up on any particular album. Bunker 1is my way of releasing some of those songs.

This is just the first volume of these offcut songs: there will almost certainly be more. I have selected these songs on the basis that they flow well as an album; they are not in any kind of chronological or quality order. Please note: these songs represent snapshots of various points in my development as a musician and producer, and as such they vary a little in production quality — but they are all entirely listenable.

Five Automatic Landings (2011) is my second EP of atmospheric ambient/drone music, with the beats more minimal and the synths/melodic content foregrounded in a spirit similar to Community Shelter Planning EP. I call it an EP mainly to distinguish it from my “main” albums, even though it is as long as (or longer even than) Function Creepor Sure is the Risk Made.

As with CSP, this is an album of fewer, longer songs, which are allowed to develop slowly and to build in layers, though they are not as linear as that implies. Good for studying, drawing, writing, or just to wallow in and enjoy in whatever state you prefer to be. The beautiful cover photo is by Jani Saarijärvi; design is by conelrad.

Sure is the Risk Made (2009) is the album which I think has been my most popular so far. It has some of my most accessible, tightly-composed songs juxtaposed with a much more sombre, bleak side: Up Periscope, which gained some BBC airplay, is energetic, melodic and really quite poppy, whereas the black heart of the album is formed by the space and staccato noise of Paternoster.

My intention here was for the album to slide from upbeat and relaxing into darker, more difficult territory, and accordingly, paranoia, psychosis and anxiety are never lurking far behind the ambient facade of the album. There’s often a deliberate provocation and aggression in the rhythmic content as well as in the tonal content, and for the first time on this album I play with the distinction between the two. The subject matter is thematically linked by my ongoing fascination with the cold war, but there’s a broader appeal here to natural forces that are just too difficult for us to comprehend (see Byford Dolphin, and google it too, maybe). The main thing though is that you will probably like this album. People seem to. Give it a go.

Cover photo and design by conelrad.

While making Function Creep (2007), I also experimented with longer, sparser, more minimal tracks. These tracks fit more into the schema of electronic ‘drone’ music, with their focus upon atmosphere and background melody rather than beats and hooks (though the songs do have these things in most cases). The result was this collection of songs, which I calledCommunity Shelter Planning (2007) and released shortly afterFunction Creep.

This album was also heavily inspired by nuclear paranoia, the cold war, and so on. As with most conelrad albums, if you google some of the song titles, you’ll find out more about the ideas that simultaneously chilled and enticed me when making this album. I call the album an “EP” mainly to distinguish it from the more accessible, beat-driven albums of (mostly) shorter songs, but it is actually as long as (if not longer than) my “main” albums.

The beautiful cover photo is by Jani Saarijärvi; design is by conelrad.

After a lot of tweaking and a lot of anxiety, I finally released my first full-length album, Function Creep, in 2007. There are moments of patchy production but I’m still overall very pleased with it. It cemented my interest in finding interesting ways to deal with downtempo beats, constructing songs with electronic sounds that nevertheless sound warm and inviting rather than harsh, and getting around the technical problems of having very little equipment (virtually none, in fact, beyond my guitar and my computer).

While Function Creep is the title track, Target City is really the centrepiece of the album; it’s a shoegaze-inspired song with a vast-but-distant wall of crumbling guitars and vocoded vocals, the latter of which I went on to use quite a bit more, as I think they sound great. Other tracks on the album stand alone well, but it really works best, like most of my stuff, listened to from beginning to end.

The beautiful cover photo is by Jani Saarijärvi; design is by conelrad.