hipster – the ashen

Farewell 2020, you won’t be missed

31st December 2020 by the_ashen

2020, end of year, live, music

What a year. What. A. Fucking. Year.

It’s the last day of 2020, and with the turning of the year, comes that moment where nostalgia typically swells, and hopefulness pokes up its little bright head above the winter snows. Except, this is 2020. Surely, 2021 can’t be worse, can it? There’s no snow yet, at least not visible here, in my little lockdown room. But, is that hope peeking out? Maybe. Maybe.

I’ve been one of the lucky ones. I, and my family, and most of my friends got through the year. Many didn’t, but we did. I had work. Many didn’t, but I did. I even managed to play a gig. Many didn’t, but I did. I heard a lot of music, and even made some myself, which I’ve now consolidated under the banner of Kosi Records here. I didn’t use the lockdown like I’d hoped I would, but who did? It was soul crushing, but here we are, on the brink of 2021, and so there it is…hope.

In all this, there have been things that have delighted and sustained me.I climbed mountains, I hiked, I ran and rode almost 1000 Kilometers.

I watched a lot of online concerts, my favourite of which was the Folk On Foot Festivals, especially the second one, where O’Hooley & Tidow & their baby Flynn stole my heart, and the show. I listened to hours of The Old Songs Podcast, where I discovered Burd Ellen. I made a series of long form interviews called “The Ashen Asks” with a bunch of great musicians over on my YouTube Chanel, was that in 2020? Wow. Seems forever ago. I watched Piers Cawley grow a community around weekly swapping of traditional songs on his YouTube Channel. I worked on the audio of a film by Andrew Leach and Alec Bowman called Overheads. I remixed some other people’s songs in my own style, and I mixed an album for Jon Wilks, whose humour, patience and friendship has kept me company through the dark days of winter, via the wonders of WhatsApp. That should hit the shelves in January, and I can safely say you won’t want to miss that one.

Another upside of the year was that Bandcamp.com introduced Bandcamp Fridays, where once a month they waived their fees to help artists, so many of whom have lost income to the lockdown. There was a lot of noise and a lot of buzz, and it got overwhelming at times, but it was also fun, and I found many new artists, some of whom I’ll list below, and of course you can buy their work even if it’s not Bandcamp Friday, I know they’ll appreciate it. These, among many others, were my soundtrack to the year.

What will 2021 hold? Who knows, but l can’t help marking this arbitrary moment in time by peering closely at the snow, just to see if there’s anything poking through.

My Bandcamp soundtrack to 2020, in all its joys and sorrows, as eclectic and changeable as my mood, and like the year, in no particular order.

Live For Ever by Bartees Strange.

The Land is A Sea In Waiting by Pefkin

Access Denied by Asian Dub Foundation

A Formless Mass Of Chaos by Stephanie Merchak

Cabin Lights Off by Myles O’Reilly [Indistinct Chatter]

EP1 & EP2 by The Magpie Arc

The Isolation Sessions by Piers Cawley

Five Stages by Hilliat Fields

Silver Came by Burd Ellen

Seascape by Billow

If You See A Rook on its Own, it’s a Crow by Elle Osborne

Inversions by Belinda O’Hooley

I Don’t Want to Let Go, but I Need to Let Go by Whetman Chelmets

One by Ian Arkley

Sweet England by Jim Moray

Historical Record vol 1&2 by Josienne Clarke

Sing To God Vol 1&2 by Cardiacs

Dark Turn of Mind by Iona Fyfe

The Fiery Margin by Alasdair Roberts

Loss by Adzes

Fjældmark/Wintarslāf by Fjældmark and Wintarslāf

Pėdsakų lede nepalikus by Algis Fediajevas

Argonauta by Aisha Burns

To The Chaos by Tragical History Tour/Order of the Wolf

Moribund Kingdom by Spectral Child

Temporary Antennae by Caïna

Dawn by Kuyashii

The Salted Air by Nadine Khouri

At The Sound Lab by Electroscope

Slowdive is out today!

1st September 2019 by the_ashen

New Music

it’s been a long, hard journey, but finally, the album is out, and it’s now everyone’s – not just ‘my album’. the songs are mostly very personal, but i also hope that they are universal. i care very much about the lyrics, and worked hard to make them ‘true’. it’s not that everything should be strictly factual or autobiographical, but the truth, honesty and vulnerability must be real and not pretended – in these songs i gave a lot away, and exposed some deep parts of myself. David Harley, reviewing a pre-release copy at Folking.com said:

I love the punning title of ‘Last Action Zero’, and the wordplay in the harrowing, haunting lyric, but don’t expect a comic song. It’s a very effective performance: in some respects the best track on the CD.

that’s exactly what i wanted, the lyrics were always supposed to be the highlight on this album, covering for some of my musical limitations. i also wanted to address some of the things i see wrong with the world, but i also wanted it to feel personal – the final track of the album is the most direct in that sense, and it was also very special as it includes a final part that was sung by a group of individuals who, although they never met in person, became Andi’s Internet Choir. over 20 different parts were recorded for the short final verse of “Love Without Borders”, and although i had no idea how much work it would be going into it, i think the result speaks for itself. David Harley again:

The sparse electric guitar and percussion morph at the end into four lines sung by the […] Internet Choir with a very church-y organ accompaniment. It’s a stunning and uplifting finish to an album that mostly tends towards the downbeat.

there are always things you can do better, but to continually pursue perfection is to never achieve anything. at a certain point you have to let go and let things be. this is the group of songs that was for this moment, and they’re as ‘right’ as they’ll every be. i hope you will hear the passion and the care in there, and forgive the ragged edges.

you can now get the album from here on CD and high quality digital. if you don’t want to do that, please do stream it on Spotify you can also find it on Amazon, iTunes, Apple Music, Deezer and most of the other streaming services.

Supporting Josienne Clarke

17th August 2019 by the_ashen

Out and About

Bratislava, josienne clarke, live, slovakia, Trnava

Really exciting news, I’ll be supporting Josienne Clarke on her first live dates in Slovakia this September. Josienne is one of the best singers in the world, and has won the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards. Josienne has frequently been compared to the great Sandy Denny, but present too are elements of Nina Simone and Gillian Welch; all three are important influences on her work.

Mr Alec Bowman will also be playing some songs from his forthcoming work, and this will be their public debut!

I will be playing songs from my new album Slowdive, which has been described by folking.com as “show[ing] traditional/folk influences, and can certainly be described as fitting in with “a melancholy folk rock project“, though there’s a raw passion here that transcends melancholy”

Come see us on 4th September in Nadvorie, Trnava and Cafe Scherz, Bratislava on the 5th

Love Without Borders

8th August 2019 by the_ashen

New Music

new music, single

a while ago, i had an idea for a song. there was just a melody in my head, but i heard it as a choir. i wrote the melody down, and as i was singing it, words started to form. i very rarely write songs quickly, but in this case, the song just started to come together fast. the first part of the song was mostly a list of phrases that i felt would likely fit there, but the ending came together whole, now i just needed a choir.

through the wonders of the internet, i put the call out for people who would be interested in helping me with the project, i wanted about forty people as, from experience, a lot of people tend to say yes, but then can’t do it for whatever reason. i went to a studio and put down some guide tracks with my good friend Kate doing the high tenor and soprano parts (i’m a baritone), only later realising that the midi keyboard we’d used was out of sync with the tempo click on the track. (tip – always record to the click if you’re doing a guide track, rather than the accompaniment), not really sure how it happened, but there we were. after several hours of moving and stretching things using Melodyne, i sent out the guide tracks, and waited for the tracks to come in. in the end i got 17 people and some were kind enough to record two different parts of the harmony. then it was a case of editing them to fit more perfectly to the timing, and achieving a balanced mix – as everyone had recorded at different volumes and quality. it’s all on there – everyone who recorded a track is on the album.

i was still struggling with the arrangement for the first part though, all the rest of the album is acoustic guitar driven, but it just wasn’t sounding right to me for this song. then an amazing artist, Josienne Clarke (https://josienneclarke.com) dropped a fantastic new single called Things I Didn’t Need. i fell in love with the song, and particularly the sparse feel that she’d given it. it inspired me and i picked up my trusty old Gibson ES335 and borrowed a really old VOX AC30 with the modulation unit on it, built a percussion loop by tapping and scratching an acoustic guitar, and that was the sound.

the song itself is really about the impotence i feel in the face of the violence committed against minority communities and the rise of nationalism in the west, and also my anger at the way conservative/evangelical Christianity has come to represent the face of intolerance and the antithesis of the ministry of love the biblical Christ performed. the lyrics disturbed some people of faith, and they dropped out of the project, but i needed to speak the truth as i see it.

the lyrics are below

i saw you in a photograph, you had a baby in your arms
the sea stretched out behind you, to the blood upon the sand
a child washed up upon the shore might shock us for a day,
but the ones we keep in cages, are a million miles away.

they say “well, keep on rocking” but there’s no free world any more,
and freedom’s price at any price, is other people’s lives
none of us are saints, though we’re living on our knees
in the shadow of your phantom god, i see he looks a lot like you

oh yes, i’ve read your holy books, i’ve felt their poisoned hooks,
now you come to me like Lazarus, and you try to raise up Christ
you say somehow he died for me, but keep me on his cross
and you’ll only let me live again, if i’ll say that i believe

you talk like you’re so loving, but you save it for the few
no gays, no blacks, no immigrants, no starving refugee
so, i’ll believe it when i see it, when you care about the poor,
when a child shot down in anger, is worth more than the unborn

the rich reach for the moon, while the hungry cannot eat
wide oceans full of plastic, a climate laid to waste
but, your strength it is not power, and your power is not love
you’ll pay the price enough to kill, but not enough to heal

well, you’ll never build a wall, so high it can’t be climbed
tho its from Berlin to China, one day its gonna fall
so we’ll stand against your hatred, and eventually you’ll see
that flowers grow in killing fields, at the borders of the heart

can we love without borders, can we live without walls?
can we break down the fences that divide us?
can we open our arms, can we build a new world,
where the lines on the map, are not the boundaries of the heart

you can buy the single here https://theashen.net/product/lwb-single/

and you can hear it on Spotify here

A picture of andi (the ashen) in the underground

The Bowman Experience

6th June 2019 by the_ashen

Out and About

london, MrAlecBowman, photos

i recently did a photoshoot with Mr Alec Bowman, and he made a rather lovely blog post about our day. i have to say that meeting him was a confirmation to me that finding real friendship through social media channels like Twitter is quite possible. through a series of serendipitous events we were able to meet up in London, and quite apart from the many, many photographs he took of me (quite possibly more than are in existence in the entirety of the rest of my life), we had a wonderful time talking and getting to know each other.

i really don’t like having my picture taken, but Alec was able to keep things calm and comfortable. i really enjoyed his sense of excitement about his work and that he was very willing to work with me on getting the sort of images i had imagined.

you can read his blog post here

The Ashfields Estate

28th May 2019 by the_ashen

New Music

ashfields, hilliatfields, music, releases

working with other artists is something that i personally enjoy. it’s much less stressful than working alone, and often more inspiring. such was the case when working with my friend Marcus Druce of @hilliatfields fame. Marcus contacted me out of the blue one day, and asked me if i would put some acoustic guitar over a few synth pieces that he’d created.

i’ve been an admirer of his work for some time, and so was immediately interested. it took me a while to work out what i should be doing, and ultimately it went in a direction i don’t think either of us expected. the result though, is something that i’m really proud of. it’s unusual, haunting and definitely unlike the usual sort of music either of us make.

i hope you’ll check it out, you can find the information here