7. Miserable Monkeys

These are all Voice Memos that I've found recorded on my iPhone between June 2021 and December 2023.

I've decided to upload them all here so that I've got all my rough sketches and happenings in one place. These are the very first starting points of all songs, just captured on my phone when 'the happening' took place. So they are all very much raw ideas. Some have developed into fuller songs, others have just been left by the wayside. My hope is that putting them here will make me listen to them more and see which ones stand out. It'll also be interesting to see which ones get the most plays / likes.

So no, production. Just raw recordings captured on my phone.

Come Back We Can Figure It Out

12. Synthamous

These are two tracks that Lee and myself did live in the studio after a Taut Angles session. The first track we've done a few times but this was a freshly improvised version. The second track was totally made up on the spot but I did a cheeky edit of the live recording. The original long take started with a guitar loop of two chords, followed by some bass which I then also looped and then played guitar over the top and looped that too. At the end when all the loops were playing (and Lee had finished singing) I went on the drums. SO.... what I did was take the two parts of the same recording and double them up so that the drums could come in sooner. Now I didn't have the separate tracks or STEMS for the separate elements, just a whole mix straight from the desk! So it's a really crude edit but it kinda works!

2. Our Own Ends

Firestations – Many White Horses

'Many White Horses' is a collection of sea-soaked acoustic songs and instrumentals, interwoven with field recordings and lyrics drawn from the immediate surroundings of a sailing expedition, all brought together with warm, textured production. It marks Mike Cranny’s first solo endeavour, playing a variety of instruments and self-producing, albeit one enriched by Laura Copsey’s contributions on flugelhorn, flute and vocals.

The album was conceived and largely written at the beginning of August 2024 on a sailing yacht (Sail Britain’s “Merlin”) in the Inner Hebrides. This was the location for a week-long art residency with seven fellow artist-explorers all keen to capture something of the essence of being at sea and viewing the land from the sea. The voyage, through high winds and waves, took in the mysterious Isle of Rum and the coastline around Arisaig, before Mike and Laura continued the journey for a further week; travelling around the Ardnamurchan peninsula, across the Isles of Mull and Ulva to end up off-grid on the remote Isle of Gometra. 

While the music, with its focus on quietly hypnotic, hushed acoustic instrumentation, may at first appear something of a departure from the last five-piece band Firestations album ‘Thick Terrain’, it remains closely related and recognisable by Mike’s song writing style. It also occupies a similar space to the ‘Sunken Versions’ – quieter and slower songs (featuring on the ‘Automatic Tendencies’ EP series in particular) that focus on the more meditative, stripped back side of the band.

The title track ‘Many White Horses’ was the first song to be written, making use of an aging sea-warped boat guitar that Mike discovered could only be played in an open tuning, with a capo higher up the fret board. Mike says: “The limitations of this guitar proved to be a gateway to other songs – the chord progressions and melodies had to be simple to avoid tuning nightmares, and where I might have ordinarily decided that a song was too straightforward, on the boat I didn’t have a choice but to persevere with simple song ideas. It turns out that limitations can be liberating”. The first single from the album ‘A Weight Starts To Lift’ was written a bit later and shows Mike exploring the possibilities of the open tuning “maybe the trickiest fingerpicking I’ve ever attempted”. 

The communal living conditions on the boat and the camaraderie developed through the everyday routine, and in other artist’s processes, made for a fertile environment. Laura, as expedition leader, provided a series of creative prompts, shaped by archipelago poetics. Moments and provocations that filtered into lyrics and rhythms included a collaboration with a square meter of earth, seeking out an audience on a micro scale, and reading laminated sheets of poetry in the sea. Field recordings and found instruments also give the compositions a strong sense of place and carry the listener across rough seas and onto remote islands.



Biography

Firestations (Lost Map Records) span genres from shoegaze to alt-pop and harmony-driven psychedelia. Their second album, The Year Dot, released in 2018, was followed by sonic collage album Dream Home in 2020 and the Automatic Tendencies EP project in 2020-21. The latter took the form of three EPs over a six-month period, each including alternative “sunken” versions by the band as well as covers and remixes of the band’s tracks by other artists. Thick Terrain, released in 2023, saw Firestations return to album format with ten tracks ranging from hypnotic sci-fi landscapes to addictive dream-pop jangles, exploring ideas around identity, conflict, progress and sanity. Bandmembers are Mike Cranny, Laura Copsey, Martin Thompson (aka Bit Cloudy), Tom Hargreaves and Neil Walsh.

Firestations - The River Knows

This isn't an album nor an EP. It's just three improvised tracks captured on my phone last night! I'm now of the opinion that if I took the time to sit and record this moment, I may as well share it to the world...

When the Time Comes - Instrumental

On the show this time, it’s the Mercury Prize winning indie-rock of English band, English Teacher.
Their latest release is “This Could Be Texas” available on Island Records.


Live on KEXP, Episode 474 - English Teacher

Moss Glow

Ishaaq Aarkistra - 'Grunderna'

Born from an improvised fragment with an odd tuning this song represents our first true collaboration as a song writing duo. There was something special from the get go when we first played this track together, experimenting with lyrics and drums. It came into its own when we performed it live and it’s remained in our live sets ever since.  

Written & Performed by Tom Roberts & Leon Lockley

Recorded & Engineered at 225 in Sheffield by Matthew and Lucy Board.
Mastered at The Bowling Green by Dean Honer  

© all rights reserved

The Places Where We Go (single)

This was us revisiting an improvised track we did on our very first session back in November 2022. We pulled up the original recording, quickly relearnt it and gave it another shot.
The audio was taken from the video camera that had a feed from the mixing desk so it's a little rough and ready and was only meant for our reference. However, we thought we'd stick it on here as a live studio demo.

The Last Sea - live studio demo

Camera operator and editor by day.
Musician and producer ￼by night.

Come Back We Can Figure It Out

leonlockley