A long time ago, I joked about arranging Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells for Ukulele. My good friend Paul Tonner immediately made the joke much better by imagining Vivian Stanshall’s cast introductions as “Ukulele… ukulele… ukulele etc.”

Unlike most of my stupid jokes, this one got stuck in my mind and during lockdown last year I actually went mad enough to arrange and record the thing. As it turned out, I decided the Ukuleles needed a little bit of help from some of the other stupid instruments I own, so the full cast list is as follows:

Concert ukulele
Soprano ukulele
Yamaha Guitelele 
Fretless bass ukulele
Little glockenspiel 
Melodica
Cheap baroque recorder 
Bass guitar
Otamatone

It’s really far from perfect, but I fear that revisiting the track to fix all the little issues would try my girlfriend’s patience and sanity more than she deserves. In particular the cheap recorder I bought played so out of tune as to be unlistenable. I cheated by pitch correcting it after the fact, but it was so far out that the result now sounds completely fake.

One final disclaimer is that you really probably have to be as obsessed as I am with the original recording of Tubular Bells to actually get anything out of listening to this. I tried to be as faithful as possible in the arrangement and even if nobody else understands, at least I made myself laugh.

I was originally planing to make some sort of video to accompany the track, but it’s unlikely that I’ll ever get around to doing that, so I present to you, in its final (very flawed) form… UKULAR BELLS!

Ukular Bells

First single from my forthcoming album "Nobody's Listening." Head over to Bandcamp if you would like to download it - name your price or take it for free.

Album will be available from 5th December 2013

Freeman

'B-Side' of the single Freeman. This track only available as part of the single download - go get it from Bandcamp and name your price or take it for free.

New album available from 5th December 2013

We Are All Ghosts

A track from my new album "Nobody's Listening."

Visit www.robbielesiuk.com for more information.

A Day Like Today

Wee cover of a Tom Waits song that I fell in love with.

I Hope That I Don't Fall in Love with You

A free single to start 2016 and tide you over until I finish my new album. I have no plans to include these songs on any other release, but you can download it from Bandcamp if you like.

https://robbielesiuk.bandcamp.com/album/all-these-fine-memories-single

All These Fine Memories

Paint In The Lines

When you wake up to a missed call and voicemail from 3am, you immediately assume somebody has died. Or this.

Vocal performances by Jack Pacitti and Niamh Baker.

Robbie Lesiuk

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