‘Last Night I Dreamt Of Hibrihteselle’ by Richard Moult
19 Apr 2015 Leave a comment
in Releases, Videos Tags: Adam Leonard, Alison O'Donnell, Amanda Feery, Amanda Mowat Moult, Áine O'Dwyer, David Colohan, Delphine Dora, Michael Tanner, Sophie Cooper, The Ætheric Quartet, united bible studies
Composer, painter and poet Richard Moult‘s new solo album Last Night I Dreamt Of Hibrihteselle, a Loegrian dream sequence, can now be purchased from Delphine Dora’s exquisite label Wild Silence. The album comprises of song settings to poems by Mary Webb, Ivor Gurney and Gladys Mary Coles, and includes guest appearances from members of United Bible Studies, as well as artists such as Delphine Dora, Adam Leonard, Amanda Feery and Sophie Cooper.
I am honoured to sing on this album. It has been an immense labour of love for Richard, a friend and true artist, and I believe the finished album to be a triumph.
Download or buy the release via the Wild Silence bandcamp page:
https://wildsilencelabel.bandcamp.com/album/last-night-i-dreamt-of-hibrihteselle
Keeps out invaders who come but still can’t control the violent side
21 Feb 2015 Leave a comment
in General, Gigs, Radio, Releases, Videos Tags: David Cameron, ed sheeran, Kanye West, Lord Lucan, shergar, u2
Photograph: Lisa Byrne
My plan is for 2015 to be the year Invaderband spreads its wings. The following things should become reality this year: Releases, local(ish) Irish gigs as usual but also UK dates (I know, great!), some in my birthplace and spiritual flat-capped home of Manchester. Current plans for UK are early August, but a new website is being developed right now (invaderband.com) so keep your eye on that and you will be able to sign up to a mailing list to stay bang up-to-date, and get one of our super-shiny new recordings for doing so – taken from sessions at the end of 2014. There are lots of plans (videos, festivals, blah & blah) and I am very excited because I believe these new recordings to be the best thing I have ever been involved with musically.
As for the solo stuff, the Octopus project will end in a couple of weeks with Octopus Part 8 released on – gosh you’re clever – the 8th March. I believe I have saved some of the best music until last there as well, with the usual mix of covers (Beatles again this time!), previously unreleased songs/recordings and a great BBC session track of a ‘Nature Recordings’ song, so it kind of brings it up to date with my solo releases too. I only realised recently – this was genuinely an accident – that the 8th song on the 8th release is ‘The Eighth Tower’. There are 8 Invaderband recordings, I have 8 songs written for my new solo album and I live at No. 8 on my street, so that mystical digit is clearly relevant to me in a universal sense. Richard Dawkins would say that it was coincidence & random, but he’s a bit of a bore. The lovely art for Octopus 8 is here, kindly created by my friend and brother-in-song, Chris McConaghy:
Free download for 1 month, then I think I will bundle up all 8 releases into 1 and sell it for £20 or something extremely reasonable indeed for 64 songs. I might even press up some physical copies with extra songs if there is a demand for that, but I don’t want to fall into the double pack with a photograph extra track and a tacky badge trap, which there is a real danger of. Maybe I’ll just make 8 and put them on eBay.
That’s all I can think of for now. MASSIVE thanks to BUYERS of the Octopus releases which are always available for free originally. I know who you are and I’ll hug & kiss you all if we ever meet…
Bye for now!
+A x
In the long and dreadful hours the wizard’s curse played on
07 Dec 2014 Leave a comment
in Releases Tags: mercury 7, metrolink, Norcross, Owl Service
The lovely people at Trust The Wizards did an interview with me, and it’s just been published over here. Enjoy.
On The Night The Creature Came Ashore
12 Nov 2014 Leave a comment
in Releases Tags: Aldiss, Eye, Film, John Foxx, Our Krypton Son, pulco, Ultravox
Octopus Part 4 is out now. FREE download for 1 month from
http://adamleonard.bandcamp.com/album/octopus-part-4
“Back as promised with Adam Leonard, now midway through or thereabouts with the Octopus project which all things being well will see over the course of the next 8 months, 8 release and featuring 8 tracks all released on the 8th. The tracks feature an assortment of covers, live cuts (as with Fahey pastorally love note ‘my life’ featured here and culled from a rare CD-r set ‘to give up you have to bloody start’, rare audio from long since out of print stock and some rare unreleased gems prized from the Leonard archive. ‘Octopus part 4’ is the November selection which includes as its parting shot a sublime cover of Ultravox (mark 1)’s ‘just for a moment’ which we mentioned with much fondness elsewhere this missive. Taken from the ‘lucky seven’ soundtrack and to date previously unreleased ‘there is also tomorrow’ opens proceedings on this chapter, a sweet but teasingly brief glacial overture snow globed in a stately and stilled porcelain panoramic aspect. Staying with soundtracks – very loosely – dug out from that golden year of 2003 and prized from his ‘how music sounds’ set – ‘music for a slow motion film’ is adorned in the feint speckling of soft psych shimmers and ghostly arabesque swirls to craft out something that sounds not unlike a withdrawn and wounded Porcupine Tree happened upon in a late night studio rehearsal by Will Sergeant. In truth the best here and touched – one suspects – by Bowie / Eno’s immortal ‘Low’ there’s a chilling frostiness attaching to the previously unreleased ‘germans visit Frederic’ whose hollowing and edgy Mancini like sonic choreography had us much in mind of Gnac had he of course happened upon Bronnt in a dark shadow entry. Elsewhere ‘the ballad of Brian Aldiss’ wheezes, yawns and weirds to a fracturing Barrett-esque mindset that pays nods aplenty to both Hitchcock and Orridge. Hitchcock as in Robyn is readily recalled again on the curiously saloon bar soiree that is the mellowing ‘taking time’ while ‘the twinkling of an eye’ – again pulled that aforementioned ‘how music sounds’ set is ghosted in a becoming atmospheric velour that recalls the quite perfect Grails. Essential then”.
– Mark Barton, The Sunday Experience / God is in the TV / former editor of the legendary ‘Losing Today’.
Close Our Eyes To The Octopus Ride
08 Aug 2014 Leave a comment
in Releases Tags: Beatles, deadbeat, dreams, greaser, groves, jethro tull, John Foxx, robot, sgt pepper, she's leaving home, smiling, the beatles, tsunami, wicca
The Octopus Project kicks off with Part 1 via bandcamp. Free download for 1 month, £4 thereafter.
There’s Tentacles Between Our Worlds
21 Jul 2014 Leave a comment
in Releases Tags: Beatles, bidston, film noir, Halo, John Foxx, Lillian Gish, lord's, lord's station, lovely rita, Metamatic, Robyn Hitchcock, the beatles, UFO, woodlice
I was planning a rarities & unreleased songs release, but when I looked through what I had I realised there was quite a lot of stuff floating around on tapes, CDs and MP3s that have never seen the light of day. So what I’m going to do instead is release 8 tracks every month for 8 months which (frantically pressing calculator buttons) gives you, dear listener, 64 tracks. And what’s more, it’s all gonna be free – initially anyway.
So, ‘Octopus’ – for that is the name I have decided upon – will be an audio retrospective of my recorded work over the last decade, under my own name, pseudonyms, side-projects and collaborations, bringing together music from sold-out limited edition releases, album outtakes, demos, live versions, soundtrack work, BBC sessions and cover versions. All eight releases feature previously unreleased material. Stylistically impossible to pin down ‘Octopus’ issues forth Ivor Cutler-style harmonium dirges, acoustic guitar/vocal visions, pulsing analogue electronics, laptop prog, spooky instrumentals, glassy-eyed drones, piano torch songs and more.
The Octopus Project will commence on the 8th day of the 8th month this year.
Come writers and critics who prophesize with your pen
17 Feb 2014 Leave a comment
in Releases
Alan Davidson photograped by Will Leatherbarrow
Reviews for the Kitchen Cynics tribute album, ‘Yesterday, Perhaps’:
- “This is an internet-defyingly brilliant album, which I can’t find to buy anywhere, and I can’t find any digital samples of to share with you to convince you just how fucking ace it is. But honestly, it’s incredible. It is in fact one of those albums I first heard, thought what on earth is going on here, and then proceeded to play it again and again for hours … Adam Leonard and Sharron Kraus may be more famous in the folk world than they are in mine, but I’d not heard of them before, and their contributions to this album are absolutely fantastic …” – Matthew Young @ Song By Toad
- “The LP is a hell of a starter to get to know the talent and songs of Kitchen Cynics” – Psychedelic Folk
- “I have loved the songs of Alan Davidson ever since I first heard him on a CD compilation that arrived with an edition of the wonderful Ptolemaic Terrascope magazine, and when you read the list of artists willing to contribute a track to this tribute album it seems that I am not the only one, the list containing some of the best current artists working in the loose genre of folk music … to end side one Adam Leonard treats us to a rendition of “The Place You Hid” a great version and the perfect way to reach half-time … A perfect package” – Terrascope
- “A fantastic celebration of one of the last bastions of home-grown DIY psych in Scotland, highly recommended” – Volcanic Tongue
- “… Pearls Before Swine’s Tom Rapp turns in a memorable version of “Richard in Bedlam” early on, only to be outdone on the very next track by Alasdair Roberts and friends’ sinisterly percussive “The Horseman’s Word”. Impressively, the standard doesn’t drop at any point thereafter with Adam Leonard transforming “The Place You Hid” into an unlikely anthem with (gadzooks!) commercial appeal” – The Active Listener
- “This album makes the case for The Kitchen Cynics’ work as a songbook of folk’s universal themes” – The Wire magazine
You can buy the album direct from me using PayPal (to adamleonard@hotmail.com) for £8 + £2 P&P for UK.
If you’re outside of the UK, send me an email and we can sort something out. Cheers, Adam.
‘Yesterday, Perhaps’ LP
28 Nov 2013 2 Comments
in Releases Tags: Adrian Crowley, Alasdair Roberts, Electroscope, ENF100, Jeffrey Alexander, Josephine Foster, Kathleen Baird, Kitchen Cynics, Major Matt Mason USA, P.G. Six, Pearls Before Swine, Rory McIntyre, Sharron Krauss, Tom Rapp
I’m thrilled to have a new recording released on this tribute album to The Kitchen Cynics, alongside some impressive names from the current “alt-folk” scene such as Josephine Foster, Tom Rapp (of Pearls Before Swine), Alasdair Roberts, P.G. Six, and Sharron Kraus. I have covered the song ‘The Place You Hid’ – the original of which can be heard right here. A special mention too for Conor Mason for taking my tracks and doing his secret audio voodoo to end up with the finished track. Thanks Conor. This (vinyl) LP will be the 100th release on Alan Davidson’s Les Enfants Du Paradiddle label.
Sleevenotes for ‘Yesterday, Perhaps’.
In a world that is changing with increasing speed, it is up to the individual to find sanctuary and contentment in the small things, the pleasure of a summers day, tea and toast, a favourite toy, or, just maybe, the songs of Alan Davidson, their focus on local history, a sense of place and life’s small pleasures the perfect antidote for the chaos and confusion of modern day living.
For over a quarter of a century, Alan has recorded a wealth of classic tunes under the guise of The Kitchen Cynics, every album containing more than its fair share of gems, his work ethic summed up with 2007’s “Tune-A-Day” project, 365 songs/musical pieces that maintained the quality throughout, each month bringing fresh happiness to those that subscribed to the series.
Now the songs of The Kitchen Cynics are celebrated and shared by some of the finest artists working in the, loosely connected and ever expanding, Folk genre, the quality of the musicians involved a testament to the regard that Alan is held in by his peers.
Voted as gig of the year (2006) by Josephine Foster, in The Wire magazine, Alan has also been described thus “Kitchen Cynics makes me think of a meeting of Anne Briggs and Robert Fripp” by Dylan Carlson (Earth), and this seems to neatly sum up the range of sounds found on Kitchen Cynic records, quiet and loud, humour and regret, living side by side perfectly reconciled by songwriting skills of Mr Davidson, the musical landscape would be a sadder place without him (Simon Lewis ~ editor of the legendary Terrascope).
—
Available from kitchencynics@googlemail.com
These Times And These Tunnels Are Haunted
20 Sep 2013 Leave a comment
in Releases
New music from myself, Ashley Cooke and Stephen McLeod Blythe.
Now available to order. 30 x C30 tapes released on 30th September.
‘Songs For Abandoned Tube Stations’ is an EP of songs by RELYCS (Ashley Cooke, Adam Leonard & Stephen McLeod Blythe) inspired by the sights, sounds and ghosts of the dozens of closed, unused, or only-travelled-through-at-speed Underground tube stations beneath the streets of London. The EP contains 3 tracks – ‘Aldwych Branch Line’, ‘Lord’s Station’ and ‘Down Street’, recorded by Ashley Cooke (AKA Pulco), Adam Leonard and Stephen McLeod Blythe (AKA Unexpected Bowtie) respectively. The music literally travels from Cooke’s complex and highly evocative subterranean soundscape, past Leonard’s dark, dripping platform of ominous organ music, terminating at Blythe’s wonderfully simple yet effective chip tune Nintendo Gameboy programming, like the music from some uncreated ‘Super Mario London Underground’ game. Mind the gap and enjoy your journey…
Format: Magnetic tape, each with 3 full colour postcards, credit sheet and a high quality digital download via Bandcamp. The tapes come in stickered slip cases, in an edition of 30 numbered copies.
Price is £5 + postage to your location (£1 UK, £2 EUROPE, £3 R.O.W). PayPal to adamleonard@hotmail.com [Oyster cards not accepted].
KEEP MUSIC PHYSICAL
The Message Tapes 