01 Mar 2015 Leave a comment
in Radio Tags: BBC, Electric Mainline, Fly, Interview, Invaderband, octopus
I appeared on BBC Radio Foyle’s Electric Mainline show last week. I played a new song, had a chat with DJ & host Stephen McCauley and he played a track from the final release in the Octopus series, part 8.
https://soundcloud.com/themessagetapes/adam-leonard-fly-bbc-session-260215
https://soundcloud.com/themessagetapes/adam-leonard-interview-bbc-session-260216
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
29 Dec 2014 Leave a comment
in General
So that was 2014. Thanks to everyone who has listened, liked, disliked, ignored or heaven forbid bought my music this year. You’re all stylish and beyond cool. The new album is coming on slowly, but I’ve a feeling it will be my best one yet.
Invaderband music will be released in 2015 too, I promise, along with other bits and bobs I’ve been working on. x
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.
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’.
26 Sep 2014 Leave a comment
in Gigs Tags: Derry, Invaderband, Sandinos, the mighty stef
13 Sep 2014 Leave a comment
in Radio
A brand new track entitled ‘Pleasure Boat’ will be broadcast at this year’s The Dark. Outside event. From thedarkoutside.com:
The Dark Outside FM 2014
A 24 hour Radio Broadcast of Unheard SoundNoon 27th September – Noon 28th September 2014
Galloway Forest Dark Skies Park. Murrays Monument, A712, Dumfries and GallowaySound artist, Frenchbloke, curates 24 hours of previously unheard music donated exclusively for this project by musicians and producers from all over the world. The site-specific transmission will be of specially composed work, forgotten recordings and alternate versions of existing work, none of which have been heard in public before. These sound works will be on air for the duration of the broadcast, then deleted. They may never be heard again.
Listen in your car, or on a portable radio. Visit The Dark Outside HQ at the top of Murray’s Monument for a friendly chat, a comfy sofa and a fantastic view, then sit back, relax and hear the transmission at The Dark Star Lounge deep in the Forest.
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.
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.
The Message Tapes 