In A Glasshouse

Good afternoon, comrades

It's a big day for us.  Last night, exactly fourteen months to the day after making it's first preliminary demo tape, we received the finished master of our single 'In A Glasshouse'.  It's an ambitious new direction that marks the beginning of an exciting project, and we're all immensely proud of how it's turned out.

Dive in - it's free to download and explore over at

GLASSHOUSE.WHITEHEATHMUSIC.COM

Tonight is the launch party and the start of the mighty Make Believe Tank Tour, so it's gonna be a pretty special night.  We'll be showing Emily's artwork, and you'll be able to buy exclusive prints of some of the images.  Here's the Facebook link - starts about half seven.

I'm not going to go off on one this time with some unreadable annal regarding it's creation, but would still very much like to mention the folk that were involved in the process of making the website, if only because we can't actually pay the poor bastards and they deserve some sort of recompense for those long and awful hours spent in communication with people like ourselves.

Emily Hair helped us develop the idea and brought it to life in a much more vivid and original way than we had initially imagined.  Despite the massive workload we saddled her with, she insisted on doing them in what seems like a pretty labor intensive way by etching into lino before painting over the top.  She's got a really exceptional and individual style, and these works only scratch the surface of her overall project.  Make sure you take time to properly investigate her blog, where she's always posting the things she's working on.

Alex McGivern is one of mine and Sean's oldest friends; a couple of years above us in school, he introduced us to dark ale, tabletop RPG's and nihilism.  We've been wanting to work with him ever since playing 'Countdown to Extinction', a game in which….well, head over to his website aeonofdiscord.com and you'll see for yourself.  He's a part of a group called The Reality Council who are experimenting with gaming in new and exciting ways, an influence you can really feel in the 'World' of In a Glasshouse.

Finally, Matt Byrne and Chris Parker (the aforementioned crunkle who is the photographer behind the war photos) played Johnny Harris and Jimmy Shoes on 'Hard Radio', and helped to create a lot of it's content.  A pair of very talented jokers, you can check out some of their weird and wonderful skits over at Chris's vimeo.

The track itself, as I've already gushed, sounds fucking awesome.  We'd worked with the producer, Graeme Steel, back on Take No Thought For Tomorrow, which was a pretty intense experience and meant that we knew each other really well from the outset; it was as fun an experience as going into a studio can be, and we couldn't imagine the track sounding any more perfect or close to what we'd wanted.  

Right.  Arselicking done, I'm off to drink some Pale Cream to celebrate the wrap.  Will you see you tonight for some messy rock and roll.

Al x

Dress Up with The Crunkle; War; New Songs

So we’ve been photographing ourselves.  It’s apparently a necessity, and the attempts in the past have been so disastrous we decided to take the matter into our own hands.  Kind photographers have made heroic efforts at trying to not make us look like a bunch of dorks….to no avail.  See exhibits a b and c

(Hmmm I can't work out how to embed exhibit b, but it's pretty hilarious - it's in the photo part of this review of limbo, go have yourself a wee chuckle at my dreadful hair and our bizarre expressions...)

I assure you we’re some hot ass in real life, we just aint that photogenic. To circumvent this problem – well - we did what all ugly and uncool people have done throughout history: dressed up as soldiers and fannyed around.  Check it out!

So much fun.  Haven't played dress up in a long long time and we all regressed to a playground mentality.  That's why we're in that there skip.  Sure, they kind of look like we play too much Warhammer, but we're all dead chuffed with how it turned out.  

They were taken by our good friend The Crunkle, a strange and lank figure who refuses to bend his spine.  Quite talented, though – if you follow him on the old twitter (@elwinkingman) you can find out what he’s up to.  He’s just directed a series of films about dresses based on horrific diseases, an event he’s celebrated by ordering a big pack of business cards.

And we got new songs for the album up, just up there – download them for free, play them at parties, have a wee cry etc etc.

WAR!

Al xxx

News, with Guitar Solos

Every band has to always be asking itself the question: are they as good as AC/DC?  The point isn't that you'll ever be AS good, but it's a great little technique to help you grow some balls.  Seems like we've grow a little lax with this vital thought experiment, and when some nutter got in touch with us on the internet with that very question we were fairly taken aback.

One thing they have which we don't?  Face-melting mother-fucking four-by-four piece-of-cedar ass-whooping metal-on-metal heavy-ass guitar solos.  Well not anymore folks.  Not anymore.  We've done a wee number that's got one which will drive you INSANE with the full force rocking.  I lie awake at night asking myself the question how we let ourselves get by without one for so long.  Perhaps this is the reason people have always been calling us a folk band. 

In other important news, we're playing the Scottish Parliament on friday around half four to celebrate it's opening, and then on saturday we'll be kicking wir jams at the Pyramid Stage of Kelburn Garden Party in the later part of the evening.

To celebrate these wonderful events why not have a listen to some tasty-fine noodling from the greats.  

1) The Boss and Morello

OF COURSE you work for him.  You just don't know it yet.

2) Prince

Watch him at the end send the guitar back up to heaven, it's work on earth now being done.

3) Metallica

A great example of a guitar playing a man, rather than the traditional method of it being the other way around.

3) David Gilmour

Basically, Waters - fuck off.

4) And finally...Slayer

The annihilation of the earth itself?  The sound of the triumph of the hordes of hell?  No!  A guitar solo!

PIECE OF CEDAR!

Al

Gig Alert: Album Launch Party

Well I can’t contain myself – less than a week till the album launch!  After a year of agonisingly piecing together ‘Take No Thought For Tomorrow’, the wee bastard is finally ready to be set upon the world.  We’re celebrating with a launch party at Glasgow’s famous Oran Mor – which is apparently the church from Alasdair Gray’s Lanark.  It’s this Saturday – June 4^th.  Make sure you get yourself a ticket in advance so you can be 100% guaranteed the rock music mayhem. 

As part of a showcase for the label we’re going to be joined by the other awesome Electric Honey bands - French Wives, Miniature Dinosaurs and Woodenbox with a Fistful of Fivers. 

Here’s the link for buying tickets – hopefully see you there.

ROCK AND ROLL

Al.

O Waly, Waly

I was going to just post one of the many great versions of this song, but we were hanging out the other night and got time to record this pretty sweet cover of it.  Despite professing a strong hatred of Scottish folk, this is one of my favourite songs in the world right now - even though it was written in Scotland in the 1600's.  I love it, and am really proud of our specific interpretation of it.  It doesn't go down the lyrical, nostalgic road, and so loses a lot of the stoic poignancy; but I think it gains a lot in the emphasis on the dichotomy between boundless joy and small, ugly pain, that characterises the larger emotions of humanity when they get in relationships.  Here it is:

O Waly, Waly by whiteheathmusic

I originally came to it through Benjamin Britten's arrangement, which creates a sense of complex emotional significance with the smallest of means.  It's the first track on a CD of his that I got a couple of months ago, and I used to obstinately skip it in the belief it was just some standard Amish nonsense.  Check out him and his bf bringing it to life back in the day:

And that's pop music, right there (Britten's far superior version, that is, not ours).  You struggle for so long to write something interesting and beautiful, and then one day you pull the most infectious and incredible music out the end of your arse.  Perhaps the most difficult things to write are tunes like this: songs that manage to be painfully affecting with an effortless smallness.  

Anyway, hope you enjoy our version!  Thanks for checking it out.

Rock and roll indeed.

Al. 

The Story of 7:38am

A new single!  Which was of course always going to be the album’s other lightweight track, ‘7:38am’.  Though a fairly simple idea, this is the second oldest song on the album, and it’s had an interesting history from it's original inception to finally appearing on an big boy record.  Well, I use 'interesting' in the loosest terms possible...it's not so much a story as a sequence of very bland and commonplace events.

But before I drag you down our dank and sunless memory lane, take a moment to check out the video that Cosmic Joke made for the single's release.

So - once upon a time...

It was written about eight years ago in the Blairgowrie days of the band, if these were even the ‘days of the band’ at all.  Sean and I were there, complimented by a cellist, guitarist and drummer.  It was written much in the same way as Black Sabbath’s ‘Paranoid’ and Queen’s ‘Who Wants To Live Forever’: ie, in five minutes, to order, for a specific need. 

We were about to play what we thought would be our biggest show to date.  It was at a gala in a large park in Dundee.  By this description, our young minds imaginatively conjured up images of a Glastonbury-style festival, complete with a crowd that was chanting our names as we finished a long and triumphant set.  The problem was that we only had like five songs.  So, just before leaving we sat down and wrote ‘7:38am’.  It was, of course, totally rocking, with a big cello riff and really funky kit drums.  Unlike the present version, it’s main body was a jumpy, lively guitar strummed in compound time.  Rock music, man.  666!  YAHH!

Anyway, when we got to the ‘festival’ it turned out to be some fun park with a stage thrown in, the main purpose of which was to give the guys who were running it some work experience.  In the entire expanse of the field there were about 15 families with small children (all easily about twenty metres from the gig), a purple dinosaur, and a balloon salesman.  The guy in charge introduced us as ‘The Mediators’ and then put nothing through the P.A. except Sean’s voice.  It was disaster in the most thorough sense of the word, and to cap it all off we nearly crashed the car on the way back.

Aye well.  It was worth it for the song.  We originally named it ‘Cobwebs’, and it wasn’t till two years or so later that it gained it’s current title.  Sean and I had been fannying about as first year students one night – not doing anything particularly rad, just fannying – and we realised it was morning time already.  Too late to go to bed before we’d have to get up again, we went to record some songs in the laundry room ‘to harness the vibe’.  Yes, we were assholes, but so were you.

Anyway, as it happened the vibe was pretty good: bit of reverb, bit of stone, bit of glass.  Your classic laundry room feel.  The only song we ended up working on was ‘Cobwebs’, and we finished with a version that sounded sleepy and peaceful.  It was just an acoustic guitar fleshed out with lots of vocal harmonies, though with the same rhythm of our original version.  When we finished it the time was…well, I’m sure you can guess where this is going.

When I learnt to play piano we wrote a really nice keys riff that seemed to make a good case for changing it to 4/4, and when the rest of the guys joined us in the year after that this was the version we beefed up to full band proportions.  Check out this video of some pretty lassies having a dance to it.

It was around about this stage that it appeared on our EP ‘The Sea Wall’.  But after playing it at every show for two years, it was beginning to get a bit tired and old: we all knew that it wasn’t the most exiting of all possible arrangements.  When preparing to record ‘Take No Thought For Tomorrow’ we reexamined the fine details of every song, but there was something about ‘7:38am’ that wouldn’t budge.  It was too ingrained in everybody.  We’d played it so often that the muscle memory made us appreciate as something purely mechanical.  After a few abortive attempts at re-arranging it, we ignored the need to do so and gave up.

When we came back to it in the studio, Jim encouraged us to go right back to basics.  We spent a couple of days building it back from the bottom up, starting with a uke lick that Mark had been playing around the original chords.  Arranging in the studio is a god damn luxury: you get a much more objective view on how you want things to sound.  I think it’s because of this that we managed it’s sparse, empty feel, that is so different from what we normally do.

And last night we re-arranged it AGAIN, and it sounds more awesome than ever.  Adz on drums, anyone?  That's how you make rock music.

So – hope you enjoy it!  Ta ra!

ROCK AND ROLL!
Al. 

GG – What The Critics Said

The first single from our album, GG, was released for free a couple of months ago on the internet, and has recently come out as a split single with Woodenbox and a Fistful of Fivers.

Though it may seem a strange choice of song to introduce folk to the album, we saw it as an opportunity to challenge people's expectations and provide a gateway for the mainstream to our unconventional sound.  

The critical reaction was mixed; in case you're interested I've got here a little digest of everything that was said.  Everything, that is, except the one from the Sunday Mail, which managed to appear positive without actually saying anything at all.

Dauphinmag.com seemed very excited, and despite some fairly unflattering comparisons (The Kooks and The Big Pink?) they dubbed it “a pretty excellent pop song.”  High regard for Sean’s lovely voice, and the assertion that “GG is an excellent, optimistic debut single that outguns anything I hear in the charts right now.”  Big praise, though we were especially relieved to hear that “it’s not a compromised Faustian pact.”  Dodged a bullet there.  Anyway - cheers guys.  Very kind.

Less warm was the response from The Edinburgh Reporter who seemed pleasantly surprised, if a little confused: “I was told a year or two back that White Heath…were sort of proggy.  If the new single is anything to go by, it would seem I was lied to.”  Don’t worry pal: the album versions got dragons on it an all.  Anyway, because of this they decided to sit pretty much on the fence, urging people to download it with the idea that “it’s only about two minutes long so if you hate it then you don’t have much to endure.”  Saying this, they did also mention that “GG is fun” and that “it contains synths.”  Well, what more do you people want?

The List took a similar vibe, awarding us three stars and calling it “gently tuneful guitar based indie.”  THE SHAME OF IT.

And then the Bluesbunny came along and blamed it all on Jim.  “A remarkably ordinary song from a remarkably inventive band. Apparently it was produced by some guy who produced Aberfeldy. Or maybe some guy who produced Biffy. Or some guy who thought that aiming a talented band at the stars wasn’t as good an idea as aiming them at the swamp of mediocrity.”  Ouch.  Bluesbunny!  I’m not sure what’s worse: the idea that we’re in a swamp, or that the swamp is so damn awful that he doesn’t believe we could have been dumb enough to dive in of our own volition.  It’s our bloody song!  The gentleman did, however, award us three carrots, so we won’t starve.

But it’s a fine-ass tune: download it here for free.  Next time I will tell you the tale of our new single 7:38am.  It’s totally awesome too.  Till then-

ROCK AND ROLL!

Totally Addicted to Bass

Exciting news, folks! Over the next month or so, White Heath will be undergoing a change.

We've come to the conclusion at long last that our current set up is inadequate. I know that many people have praised us for it's unconventional nature, but if we're being honest, it was only brought about by necessity. More importantly, it doesn't really have anything to do with the originality of our music: you don't go to concerts based on the size of an orchestra, but on the merit of the composer they've decided to perform. It became apparent during the course of recording the album that the constraints imposed on us by our live line-up were impeding the musical imagination of the band, and with the time afforded us in the studio we were able to explore avenues we wouldn't have previously considered. We've had ideas we can't physically re-create with the instrumentation available to our current live sound, and with this in mind we've decided to get ourselves a rhythm section.

Apart from the utter arse-ache of organising seven people to be in a given place at one time, we're all really excited about it: Adz and I in particular are going to be freed up immensely by not having to have one eye on always covering the bottom end, and I think Sean and Shou are quite relieved at being able to concentrate on what they do best. We're by no means going to turn into a 4/4 rock outfit or attempt to sideline our heavily percussive sound: it's just a way of giving the music more options, dynamics and textures.  It's going to be awesome.

So please give a warm welcome to the excellent Craig Salter, who will be joining as our bassist this very week. We're very lucky that he happens to not only be a damn fine musician, but also a very close friend. And, music aside, it's going to be great to have someone else to piss about with on the train to Glasgow. Everyone loves him; we're sure you will too.

We'll be playing our first ever gig as a six-piece this Friday (17th) in Henry's Cellar Bar at exactly 8pm. Please do come down and give your support. If Craig's lovely face (above) wasn't enough to get you in a tizzy, then remember we're supporting Tom Hingley, the voice of The Inspiral Carpets.

And for god's sake download our single.

Awesome! See you there!

Al

GIG ALERT!

As 2010 draws to a close the White Heath camp is beginning to pack up shop for Christmas.  The album’s recorded and pretty much mixed; we’ve one last day of final editing to go before we can call it a wrap, but all in all it’s pretty much there.  We’ve seen the last of the really big creative decisions, and the only thing left is a little polishing to make it perfect.  It’s nice that it’ll be completed to see the beginning of the New Year; it’s strange how there’s something about that festival in particular which encourages this kind of sentimentality.  For some reason Hogmanay really feels like it has some bearing on how you organise your life, even to the least traditional and superstitious among us.

Anyway, before that happens, we’ve a couple of shows lined up in Edinburgh and Glasgow if you want to see us play one last time before the holidays.

This Sunday (12th) we’ll be heading through to Glasgow to play at the Captain’s Rest with The Red Show and Rollor, both fantastic examples of interesting modern rock and roll, full of an energy and intelligence that drives their music forward.  Oh, and to play the charity card: it’s a fundraiser for children’s care.

As to our home city, we’re playing Henry’s Cellar Bar on Black Friday (17^th).  We’ll be supporting Tom Hingley, the legendary frontman of The Inspiral Carpets, one of Manchester’s most revered and influential bands.  This gig’s going to be off the hook, so make sure you get there quite early as other commitments have meant we’ve had to request one of the earlier slots.

Cool!  See you there!

Al

Opening the Cage: 4’33” for Christmas Number 1

“The All Sound Music of the Future” is a phrase taken from the writings of John Cage.  Though our music is perhaps not what Cage would have imagined when he coined it, we feel at home with his enterprising spirit and dramatic, unreserved approach to exploring the boundaries of what music can be.  We’d like to think he wouldn’t be too mad at us appropriating the phrase for the title of our blog.

We came across it on the train to our first ever session of studio recording.  Shu had borrowed a couple of his books from the music library and we were flicking through them to pass the time.  We’re not music scholars, and it came as a great surprise at how electrifying Cage is as a writer.  History is full of figures who were famous for their superhuman efforts as composers, but failed miserably at translating this into words: Wagner’s pompous and flowery essays when compared to the all-encompassing magic of his music is a case in point.  For Cage, however, there is not really a dividing line between where his philosophy ends and his music begin: it's all geared at daring you to imagine further than you already can.

There is something about Cage’s music which seems to surpass the tradition of experimentalism that the 20^th century is so famous for.  For a long time I couldn’t quite work out why, but last night I stumbled on a youtube comment that seemed to hit the nail on the head.  It was a remark that considered how in 4’33” you could see “the twinkle in his eye”.

And there it is: there is an innate playfulness about Cage’s approach to the often bewildering world of the avant-garde that makes it so infectious and compelling.  His fiddling with pianos to transform their possibilities and create fascinating tunes is a good example of the composer’s combination of childlike, hands-on excitement and sublime, technical wisdom.  Here, as in so much of Cage’s music, is an example of the tension between tactile fun and otherworldly beauty.

The same can be said of 4’33”.  There are obviously a huge many aspects to this piece/idea that folk much smarter and better prepared have discussed in depth, so I’m not going to lecture anyone.  I just wanted to say that here you can see that wonderful tension again: even watching the recorded performance, you’re not sure whether you want to burst out laughing at the ridiculousness of the situation or be drawn into a very poignant and affecting emotional experience.

Because though in many ways it is a fantastic joke, it is also demonstrates a really cool idea.  4’33” is an illustration of how much of ourselves we put into music, and an argument for the necessity of space and reflection to digest it’s awesome power.  Now, of course this is an obvious point and not even the most pertinent argument that piece presents, but I feel that with Suggs & Co recording it for Christmas number 1, it is a important one to consider.  How much of music today is set to 11 and compressed enough to remain there, with the gaps filled by the inane mutterings of radio DJ’s to help us feel like we are never alone?  More than a chance to batter SyCo again, it is an opportunity for clean space to triumph over landfill noise, and for experimentalism to beat similitude.

But the potential of a high profile mainstream recording extends far wider than a mere political statement.  Perhaps the most exciting thing about 4’33” being widely available on the airwaves will be the possibilities that repeated radio broadcast will give to the piece.  Cage’s whole point was that there was no such thing as silence; 4’33” is supposed to include the surrounding noise of the listeners own individual experience.  With repeated hearings throughout the wide variety of situations that you would expect to hear a number one single in, 4”33 will become more dynamic and exciting than ever before.

This Christmas we will see a fantastic opportunity for the world of the avant-garde to meet that of the mainstream.  It’s a momentous occasion, if you think about it.  Let’s make it happen.  Buy Cage Against The Machine’s 4’33”.

Oh, and while your at it, download our noisy, highly-compressed, tonally simple, radio-friendly and totally awesome single for free here. 

Cheers!

Al

Ps.

For fun: here’s a poem based on one of his anecdotes by another man who delighted in exploration and playfulness as grounds to a serious and affecting art, the greatly missed Edwin Morgan.

Opening the Cage: 14 Variations on 14 Words
"I have nothing to say and I am saying it and that is poetry." — John Cage

I have to say poetry and is that nothing and am I saying it
I am and I have poetry to say and is that nothing saying it
I am nothing and I have poetry to say and that is saying it
I that am saying poetry have nothing and it is I and to say
And I say that I am to have poetry and saying it is nothing
I am poetry and nothing and saying it is to say that I have
To have nothing is poetry and I am saying that and I say it
Poetry is saying I have nothing and I am to say that and it
Saying nothing I am poetry and I have to say that and it is
It is and I am and I have poetry saying say that to nothing
It is saying poetry to nothing and I say I have and am that
Poetry is saying I have it and I am nothing and to say that
And that nothing is poetry I am saying and I have to say it
Saying poetry is nothing and to that I say I am and have it
— Edwin Morgan, The Second Life
Edinburgh University Press, 1968