Hello AW massive.

Hope you are all keeping well.

I finally got off my arse and released some music on Bandcamp.

Take a listen. Buy a copy if you like.

Let me know your thoughts.

https://steeveclarke.bandcamp.com/releases

In 1979, I was the bass player and singer in a new wave band called ‘Impulse’. (40 years ago. Yikes!!)

I got back in touch with the guys recently and the guitarist Richard sent me some songs digitised from the original tape masters as well as a load of photos.

Overcome by a warm feeling of nostalgia, I wrote a song about it. I started with a four bar drum loop lifted from one of the tracks. You can hear the loop right at the beginning. It’s very grainy and there is audible tape hiss :).

I put together a video which contains a montage of some of the photos as well as some FCP trickery.

The guy with the bass that looks like Lurch from the Munsters. Yeah that’s me 🙂

Three of my friends from the local folk club agreed to appear in it doing “backing vocals” (all shot pre-Covid)

14/11/2019

Spare ticket for Steve Hillage / Gong on 14th November in Southampton

Engine Rooms. Starts 7:30

Cost me £30. I’ll take £15

This was something I wrote as a calculated attempt at a “happy song”.

In keeping with that theme, I tried to capture the feel and excitement of early 70s glam rock which

I always associate with innocence and joy.

It’s also the first song to feature my new Vox AC10 guitar amp. It’s very loud and has that traditional amp smell (warm valves and sawdust).

This is actually quite an old song of mine. I wrote this in the late 80s and have re-done it now I have the technology to get to sound how I heard it in my head. Guitar parts are done with my new Fender GT40 modelling amp which I’m very pleased with. In keeping with the 80’s feel there’s quite a lot of Moog synth on it too. The image is of me as a nipper and is even older than the song 😉

Many years ago (1978 i think it was) I was in a band called Eclipse. We had an audition for the newly revived Jack Good Oh Boy Show.

Our keyboard player who played a Fender Rhodes piano borrowed a Minimoog from a friend for the occasion. Nobody owned synths back in those days. They were just too expensive so we had no experience of them.

The audition started and we were up ready to play our song. It plodded along averagely until it got to the keyboard player’s solo which was normally a tinkly electric piano thing, whereupon he let rip with the Minimoog. The other guitarist and I stopped in our tracks and looked at each other, jaws agape. Man what a sound. From that day on I vowed that one day I would own a Moog synth.

Well… fast forward to December 2016 and that has finally happened. I bought this little fella as a Christmas present to myself (see image).

On my recordings up until now I have been using the various synth plugins that come with Logic and to be fair » Continue Reading.

Following on from Twang’s excellent album, In the spirit of outrageous self promotion, here is a new song from me.

Downtime

This is a song I wrote during a period when I was suffering a long bout of creative block. I figured the best way to tackle creative block was to write a song about it.

The original recording I made was dull and uninspired. When I came to re-record it I thought what can I do to improve it? What would Bowie do? Well, he would make it more funky and add some weird Robert Fripp-like guitar (In his case, actually using Robert Fripp). The end result is much improved I think (My clumsy attempts at Frippertronics are on the fade out). Enjoy

-Ask