Music
I find it hard to listen to older recordings of me singing. I think this is a pretty universal phenomenon for anyone who makes things - by the time you’re capable of judging your own work properly, you’ve usually moved past whatever version of yourself that made it. All I hear is the flaws, to the point of embarrassment.
That said, I think it’s worth owning and respecting your past for what it is rather than hiding it away and although I can’t hold up past work and say “this is great” - I can at least say “I made this”.
After Fluffy Little Dog quietly picked up over 30 million streams and there was nowhere online that actually explained who wrote it, in the spirit of being vulnerable I created this page to talk openly about my music - warts and all.
I do still very much enjoy singing, and I sing regularly as part of the One Voice community choir run by The Grand and often post videos of my performances on my Instagram page. Maybe I’ll even release some new tracks one day, who knows.
Below you’ll find links to (some of) my discography, in reverse chronological order, and I have made individual pages for each track so you can stream them, with lyrics and some explanation as to how we got there, in a fairly self-indulgent manner.
Badly Parked Sedona (~2012)
You’ll be pleased to know, I never park like this.
After Intrinsic, Richard Williams and I worked on quite a few side projects, but Badly Parked Sedona was one of the only projects that got as far as official release.
I used to drive a Kia Sedona and as our first release, Kittens In the Snow, was intended as comedy - I thought a comedic sounding band name made sense.
Our songs ended up being more popular with children, so in hindsight the name was never really suitable.
You can read more about each song below as well as listen to them.
Intrinsic - The Cold Awakening (~2003)
Intrinsic was a band that started while I was at school, but we didn’t start doing any original material until we all ended up at the same university (Kent at Canterbury).
I once overheard another band on campus describe us “pretentious wankers”, and there was some truth to that. We all listened to way too much Dream Theater and Van Halen - writing a song without a lengthy guitar solo was never considered.
Looking back, oblivious self-confidence had one positive side-effect of providing great motivation to just keep going, which can be difficult when surrounded by critics.
I was on lead vocals, with Nick Eve on Bass and backing vocals. Jon Clarke played Guitar and Richard Williams bounced between guitar and keyboard whilst also providing a lot of the initial songwriting. His brother, Neil Williams played the drums.
Our biggest success was winning “Keynestock”, the battle of the bands run by the university’s Music Society and this allowed us to warm up the crowd at the end of year prom before The Bluetones came on. Granted, several hours before they came on - but a win’s a win.
We recorded and released an EP in 2003 using Adobe Audition on a machine that frequently crashed and a room padded with egg boxes. To say it was done on a shoe-string budget would be generous.
My vocals used to get likened to Brian Molko a lot, as I had a habit over-twanging to the point of being nasal, something I have spent years struggling to undo.
It was hard to keep a straight face for this staged photo.
One particularly memorable gig was for the 200th issue celebration for Computer Shopper magazine which is where this photo was taken. It wasn’t long after this that I took a step back from the band to focus on my journalism - probably the right call…
The EP is somewhat eclectic - there’s something for everyone I would say, but Dreamer was the most universally liked.
After my own initial distribution, I released the album on Jamendo along with some demo versions of songs, and then a few years after that, Jon released it on Apple Music, YouTube, Spotify, etc. using DiskoKid.
I’ve provided lyrics and some background to each song so you can learn a little more about it, should you want to. Or listen to the whole album on YouTube.