This is one of my favourite Tom Petty songs, and I thought stripping it right back to piano and voice would bring a new angle to it.  This was arranged and recorded in about three hours, and I was planning to come back and polish it, but I quite like the "live" feel.  I tried to keep the vocal arrangements as faithful to the original as possible.

Insider

This one has been under construction for well over 20 years.  Worth the wait?  I like to think so.  It's my first expedition into trance music, and it got rewritten several times to get to this arrangement.  The lyrics retell the story of the Lady of Shalott (very loosely, I admit): she was on the wall above my head during one of the writing sessions.  Thanks to Mark Hitchins for the chorus.

Just A Heartbeat

I've been sitting on this one for many years, but I'm not getting any younger so I might as well put it out there.  It's the most unusual production I've ever done, but I guess it fits the content -- all I'll say is a lot can happen between nightfall and sunrise.

Blue Black

A cover of Bleeding Love by Leona Lewis, but danced up a bit.  Not new, but never made it onto SoundCloud before.

Cover Stories

Bleeding Love (experiment one)

Back in 2010 I wanted to audition for X-Factor. I was going to sing Teardrop, and decided to make a demo. The original by Massive Attack is dark, moody and minimalist, but since there's no point recording a cover unless you do something interesting with it, I thought I'd see what would happen if I threw the kitchen sink at it, including ludicrous distorted piano solo. The result is borderline sacrilege: equal parts hilarious and terrifying.

Teardrop (experiment two)

Recorded December 2011.  Obsession with trying to get fit distracts from personality flaws.

Ironman

Recorded September 2013 but written many years earlier.

Song For A...

Recorded December 2014.  Guitar and bass: Mark Hitchins.

Fleeting

Reason user.  Slow worker.  Believes a little cheesiness never hurt anyone.

Russell Blandamer

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