What happens when Penny Goring and I collaborate on a words and music project? BOLUS, that’s what. Penny is, as any of you who know her work from her blog and the Year Zero Writers website, a pretty extraordinary writer – and her spoken word delivery marvellously detached and deadpan.

I’ve wanted to do more instrumental backings for spoken word pieces for a while – and when Penny sent me recordings of her works “House” and “Temporary Passport” they seemed ideal. Musically I’ve drawn inspiration from William Basinski’s “Disintegration Loops” plus my beloved doom/drone metal, as well as using some more folky instruments – the Appalachian dulcimer makes an appearance, as does Estragon the deluxe shruti box. There’s even a tuba solo in there somewhere.

Here’s an excerpt from Temporary Passport:

BOLUS – Temporary Passport – excerpt by Stuart Estell

You can buy the mini-album as an MP3 download from Amazon for just £1.38 by clicking here.

It’s also available on iTunes but thanks to a pricing cock-up in the hands of the electronic distributiony people it’s considerably more expensive on there. Plus you can also listen on Spotify here.

I also posted this on Audioboo last night – an ad hoc recording of Howard Skempton’s piece June ’77.

You should of course buy this, and play these glorious miniatures: Howard Skempton’s Collected Piano Pieces

The recording of “Velocity Girl” last night put me in mind of this catchy little seasonal offering that I recorded towards the end of 2006, as a private release for distribution to friends and colleagues in place of Christmas cards. Given that I was in the final few months of singing with folk group The Village Wakes at the time, it met with some fairly interesting reactions.

The story behind it is this: one evening I was musing idly to myself, and found myself wondering what would happen if doom-metal funsters Sunn O))) tried their hand at recording a Christmas carol. I decided to find out.

Recording this was pretty simple; there are just three tracks: heavily de-tuned guitar, bass, and a Xasthur-inspired vocal performance that makes me sound as though I’m being burned alive at the bottom of a well. You’ll no doubt be pleased to know that no recontructive throat surgery was required in the days immediately following the recording session.

The lyrics are from a traditional West Midlands version of “We Wish You A Merry Christmas”, although as befits the genre, you’ll be lucky if you can make any of them out. Around the six-minute mark you should be able to hear the words “We wish you a merry Christmas”, and the dementedly-repeated phrase at the end is in fact “A PIE! A PIE! A PEPPERCORN! A PIE!”

Nobody said that all Black Metal had to be miserable, after all.

Download Black Christmas MP3 (10 MB approx)

They are, of course, perfect pop.

Armed with an array of distortion pedals of different shapes and sizes, I set about a marvellous evening’s entertainment bludgeoning this song to within an inch of its life with noise and feedback. It emerged beaten, bruised, but ultimately with the tune intact, if nothing else.

No wonder the Stone Roses nicked it for “Made of Stone”.

Download my version of Velocity Girl (3 MB) – I take no responsibility for hearing damage caused by this recording…

The album’s press release reads:

A compilation of original artists from around the planet.

This global release has been made available on the winter solstice
(21 December 2008)

Music, culture, sounds and experiences express this diverse collection of unique (with a capital U) artists on the compilation.

Ranging from Portugal, India, Uruguay, Japan, and France to name a few, the artists are specially selected by Invisiblegirl from the MySpace social networking site.

A Place In Space is a truly fascinating listening experience.

A Place In Space is available online from iTunes, by following this link  

There are a few CD copies available in the award-winning independent record store Piccadilly Records in Manchester

Download The Elf Princess (be warned, this is a big file as it’s encoded at 256kbps)

So, here’s a very rough electric version of Sam Hall, a traditional song of a foul-mouthed murderer who’s about to swing for his crimes. Beware, if you’re sensitive about strong language, there is some swearing in this song. Sam isn’t a particularly nice character, after all. Damn his eyes.

I’m out of practise with mixing distorted guitars, so you’ll have to bear with me.

Download Sam Hall (5MB approx)

The album will be an iTunes release; here’s a trailer featuring all the artists.

“Something I Can’t Have” is possibly my favourite Jesus And Mary Chain song. The original is a glorious storm of pop-noise, confrontational and touching in the way that only Jim and William Reid ever really manage to be. You just know that behind the arrogant, disinterested posturing, there have always been a couple of sentimental old fools who love a good tune.

I’ve recorded it very simply indeed – just acoustic guitar and acoustic bass. I might start playing it live – something I’ve never got round to doing, despite having learnt it (ahem) about 15 years ago when the Sound Of Speed E.P. first came out!

Download Something I Can’t Have (3.3 MB)

As this recording is now out and about “in the wild” I thought it time I put it up on here too. As I mentioned before in the previous plug for Brumcast, there’s some blurb about the song in this post. I’ve edited out the mildly incomprehensible verse I wrote about the modern art sculpture of a swing that used to adorn the St Chad’s circus roundabout, as most people I played it to hadn’t a clue what I was on about!

The instrumentation on this one is strings-only: acoustic bass guitar, mandolin, acoustic rhythm guitar and acoustic lead guitar. The lead guitar part was played on a Nashville-strung guitar (i.e. the bottom four strings are an octave higher than normal, giving it a really luminous quality) and it’s got loads of reverb on it.

Any of you who are avid fans of The Jesus And Mary Chain might notice that some phrases in the guitar solos are “inspired by” the Mary Chain song “Why’d You Want Me?”

Download I Can’t Find Brummagem (4.9 MB)