Hello again, it has been a while since I posted on the blog, hasn’t it? I tend to just get on with things and the thought of posting updates on blogs and social media comes to me after the fact. One of my resolutions for this year was to get better at that…better late than never I suppose! So what have I been doing since the start of 2018? Read on…
Bands, bands, bands…
As covered in my last post, I’ve been spending a lot of time building back up a personal band project since Glossom came to end almost exactly a year ago today. This new band is a trio called Neverbody and I’ve been pouring a lot of time into writing, recording, rehearsing and more to get the material to a satisfactory stage. The current standing of the project is that the completed mixes of our debut EP are about to be mastered and then we’ll be launching it, along with social media et al, in the next week or so. Expect melodic instrumental guitar music with all the intended composition grandiloquence of modern prog, but with tasteful runtimes and none of that endless soloing and ‘widdlying’ in high registers. But I leave that to your impression when the time comes…
I have also continued my collaboration with dark ambient/trip hop collective Venusian, who most recently released a track and video for ‘Perihelion’. Mixing and mastering by yours truly and great collage video work from keys player John Pearson, check that out below!
Commissions and other collabs
I had another chat with prolific podcaster Tom Kwei on his Metallica analysis show Alphabetallica, together we discussed Ennio Morricone and his classic ‘The Ecstasy of Gold’ from The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. The piece has been used an intro track for Metallica since the 80s and I had a great time talking over the great composer himself and the unique connections between the classical and metal genres.
Oh, and in case you missed it at the end of last year – check out this great cover of my theme for the Alphabetallica podcast by Youtube musician Kaosware!
I also did a score for a short Pixar-esque animation by Canetoonist, but I haven’t seen the final product yet. Once I have I’ll be sure to post it here! The teaser is on Youtube.
Finally, French singer songwriter Christophe Serra popped over to my studio in Liverpool to do some recordings and we eventually ended up with his newest EP ‘The Simple Things’, a collection of Christophe’s latest batch of charming and often provocative pop tunes. Good (but not clean) fun!
That about wraps it up for now, see you again soon.
Alex Cottrell 