Slow Food, Track By Track, Pt 2 – Grown-Ups At Play

You can download Grown-Ups At Play from here, and the whole Slow Food album from here.

The simplest tune on the record in terms of the techological wizardry. There’s one little loop towards the end, but most of it is just Trip and I playing, with him hitting some deep, deep bass pedals (srsly, you’re not going to hear those if you’re listening on laptop speakers or through crappy headphones. They dig deep.)

Trip and I have experimented with this kind of thing before. I think this is the best tune to ever come out of our non-loop improvs. It’s almost like we growed up ‘n’ stuff.

This is almost an old fashioned duet.

Almost.

The loop section adds a lil’ StevieSpice to the proceedings. After all, we are grown-ups.

Is It Good? Yes, It’s Good. Can I Make It Better? (New tune with Mike Outram)

…That’s what my brain is asking when I’m improvising.

A couple of weeks ago, I had the great pleasure and good fortune to spend a day recording with Mike Outram – guitarist extraordinaire. I’ve been a fan of Mike’s for a long time, having heard him in a couple of different settings with Singer/Songwriter Rebecca Hollweg, and more recently with Theo Travis’ Doubletalk quartet.

We were able to snag a day recording in the rather lovely studios at Leicester College, giving the students there something to record, and a very different type of project to work on. Continue reading “Is It Good? Yes, It’s Good. Can I Make It Better? (New tune with Mike Outram)”

Lawson/Dodds/Wood Album Available On Bandcamp.com

I’ve got loads of End of year/start of a new decade type blogging to do over the next week, but for now, here’s the Lawson/Dodds/Wood album, freshly uploaded to Bandcamp.com, for download sale, pay-what-you-like. 🙂

<a href="http://lawsondoddswood.bandcamp.com/album/numbers">Number Five by Lawson/Dodds/Wood</a>

If you weren’t around here when it came out, feel free to watch the documentary on the making of the album that’s on Youtube – I’ll embed part 1 below, then click through the links. (the sound on the first one’s a bit rough, but it gets much better as they go on!)

Upcoming London Gig – Oct 7th with Michael Manring

Yup, finally, about 5 years after our last one together, I’ve got a London gig with Michael Manring. For those that don’t know, Michael is, IMHO, the finest solo bassist ever to pick up the instrument. He’s been doing this stuff longer than I’ve been playing bass, has sold literally hundreds of thousands of records (how many solo bass players can you say that about??), and has even reinvented the instrument to make things possible that weren’t possible before.

The gig is at Round Midnight Jazz and Blues Bar, on Oct 7th, starting at 8.30. Tickets will be £8 on the door, £7 in advance – to reserve tickets, call 020 7837 8758 or email “ntmusic [theATsymbol] gmail [a dot] com”. (it’s highly likely to sell out – we played to about 130 people at the Troubadour last time he was here…) Continue reading “Upcoming London Gig – Oct 7th with Michael Manring”

More New Music: Cruising Towards a New Album…

Photo of Steve Lawson's feet, operating a looperlative, at a Recycle Collective gig. Photo taken by Steve BrownI’m finally making some headway on ideas for a new solo album (or whatever a collection of music that used to be called an album is now called). I’m still not sure whether it’s going to be all completely solo, have a few special guests, be all collaborative, or what, but at least some musical ideas are happening.

I had another go at the new tune I posted on Youtube a couple of weeks ago, at the gig in Edinburgh last weekend. This new version is a lot faster (not sure that’s a good thing) and has a nice little loop/delay thing going with the melody about half way through, and then an improv section at the end where the main loop disappears, a bit of the tune continues and a few other interesting things happen around it – so here’s the 0.2b public beta version, on youtube: Continue reading “More New Music: Cruising Towards a New Album…”

A Foray into Dark Ambient Improv (More New Music)

photo of a painting from the Urban Scrawl exhibitionI spent a lovely few hours today with David Stevens, a wonderful musician working mainly with abstract drones and soundscapes, often using bowed strips of metal to create the most amazing textures.

We met through Tuttle, and have been talking for a while about recording together, and today it finally happened, though not without an hour or so of technical faffing thanks to some problematic gear… Continue reading “A Foray into Dark Ambient Improv (More New Music)”

Lawson/Dodds/Wood album launch gig next Monday!

Right, wireless is now working on Das Boot – will be back to full blogging speed before too long. But first, some news you really need to know 🙂

Hopefully you’re already planning on coming to the Lawson/Dodds/Wood launch gig next week at the Vortex in Dalston. If you’re not, there’s still time to postpone whatever it was you had planned and come and see us do our thing. It’ll be fab, I promise.

If you’re VERY new to this ‘ere blog and are wondering who Lawson/Dodds/Wood are, you can go and listen to (then buy if, as you probably will, you decide it’s the most wonderful thing you’ve heard in a long time, and indie loveliness such as this deserves some investment 🙂 ) – head over to stevelawson.net/ldw – there’s a player embedded there so you can listen to the album, which is out on the day of the gig.

Alternatively, also embedded in that page, are videos and links to a load of other videos about the making of the album. Which is pretty amazing, as the main bulk of the material was improvised live in the studio.

It’s fab, honest, and we’d LOVE to see you at the gig – you can book tickets for it at http://www.vortexjazz.co.uk – please come along and hear us. The CD will be launched on the night, and if you’ve ordered the CD in advance, you’ll be able to pick up your CD on the night.

Lawson/Dodds/Wood Pt 5 – What Patrick did with the improvs…

Here’s my favourite of the little Lawson/Dodds/Wood videos so far. After doing the 18 minute long group chat that the last four vids were culled from, I did two 7-8 minute interviews, one each with Patrick and Roy, about what they did specifically on the project.

With a project as well defined as this, it seems really important to set the scene as to where the music came from, what limitations we put on ourselves, how we managed to do edits and overdubs while sticking as close as we could to the improvised basis of the project. Patrick describes his (major) part in that really well here –

If you’re enjoying the youtube vids, please feel free to comment on them, rate them, and hit the ‘share’ button to send them to your friends on Facebook or to ‘stumble’ them etc. It all helps us a lot!

Lawson/Dodds/Wood, the making of Numbers video #4

It’s back to me talking non-stop on this one, I’m afraid… actually, that’s not all true, Roy gets a look-in half-way, but there’s lots of me. 🙂

The next two are mini-featurettes on Roy and Patrick, so look out for those in the next few days. Til then, here’s #4

© 2008 Steve Lawson and developed by Pretentia. | login

Top