based on a trip round the bakeries of a newark NJ district's eateries - bakeries on every corner (this being a streetview map to check out the neighborhood of a Seton Hall Pirates hoodie).

jan 23

bakery song

a little late, uploading this in april.   I did not have a dry january.

feb 23

wet january

kinda written about love in old age, and baldness, maybe borrowing a lot from Lal and Mike Waterson's song Scarecrow (which i learnt from James Yorkston's version).

mar 23

skeleton song

jun 23

fireweed

me trying to do a Swan Lee / nick drake kind of thing, rowboat and semitone intervals.

aug 23

oars over the water

Fish Slappa beats etc.  Beard on the howl.

Clingfilm - by Fish Slappa, with o u beard vocal

this song got populated with cartoon characters randomly.

sept 23

start from scratch

kind to yourself

'world' being just a little party scene noting someone's absence.
I wrote the first few lines in someone else's notebook while drunk, at said party, then totally forgot I'd written it, was shown it later, copied it and finished the song from it.

this world without you

oct 2023

shooting star

oct 23

in the autumn

one of batch of songs written while away in yorkshire recently - this one based on three dreams about the same person.   recorded since getting home, with viola layer.

dec 23

how can anyone...

storm debi

from october.   not having much energy for the hard slog of things, wondering if just the open hearted puppy eyes thing might be all that's needed.  probably not but maybe it's a start.

nov 23

would that be enough?

from a dream during recent yorkshire trip, or earlier.  after years of dreams of being stuck in a forgotten academic year where I've not been getting the work done, I actually had a dream where I got the certificate at the end, so hoping maybe my subconscious had moved on and those dreams would end.  (they haven't.)  with piano and fuzz.

finally got my diploma

may 23

I've seen the movies

maybe I miss you

should we get together?

slightly S&M lovesong, I guess.  with wonky flute and viola.

jan 24

in weeks

a mixture of reality and watching lost in translation again.

feb 24

scarlett johansson

"diss track" is apparently the term.  with an 'ooh' and a sideways glance around the talk show studio.

(in case not obvious from title, it contains a swear word.  and a fake sitar.)

mar 24

herbal tea fucks

march song from winter/spring mushy-heartedness.

anyone in this town

from february/march, with flute a little high in the mix

just how fragile

over her

inspired a little by dancing to olivia rodrigo in a kitchen.

laundromat

true story, although mostly the happenings in my head.  
just guitar and voice, another recent one with guitar part more open-stringy, maybe A and B strings fretted evenish so often an octave plus a tone apart, G open as drone note.

apr 24

so nearby

three different backs of envelopes, lots of Cm and Gm, some piano and a bit of electric.

hello kitty eyes

writ in amazon-brown paper pad mostly at laurie canyon studio, KPI HQ, staring at big waterhouse paintings, with fine brown homebrews, during recent hiphop odyssey.

she's a real waterhouse girl

watched most of blade runner for first time in ages recently.  this is me feeling like harrison.

may 17

blade runner song

written mainly on trainride into north-west england the other week, feeling a little bleak.  Recorded last couple of days, but with the 'wrong headphones' for mixing, so can't promise mix isn't awful.   I was probably consciously mimicking galaxie 500 with this one.  including the bass, flute and vocal ahs and oohs.  and the 2 neighbouring chords trick.  G and A as was.

oct 19

on the northern line

resigned to no city journey until autumn, and barely coping in the meantime.

may 20

until the geese do

hopefully the answer to the question is in there, such as it is.

oct 20

how am I so stable?

mainly lone angst-howler in a cabin.  some musical friends I see too seldom and play with even less often except sporadic long distance layerings by email.

openuniversitybeard

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