Pollen Count

Mapmaker

Flowing Lights 2022

Produced for the wonderful https://citiesandmemory.com/ as part of their SOUNDS of Italy project. Original field recording by Giuseppe Calisti. I just turned it into the mess you are now hearing : ) Official arty blurb below

Leaving Sicily is a poetic remembrance, expressed through sound, of my travels across the Island in 2017. For me the Island was a constant  barrage of wonder; both beautiful and terrifying, welcoming and isolating, modern and ancient and familiar yet alien. The piece heavily manipulates samples from the field recording captured at The Falcone Borsellino Aiport to express some of the dichotomies above. Leaving Sicily finishes with the ‘raw’ sound of the crowd of the airport terminal representing the transition from my surreal and personal travel back into the world of normality - just another tourist in the crowd about to return to his normal life.

Leaving Sicily

010123

This is a song that originated with Tez recording some killer guitar tracks over an amazing riddim that he created. I added some bass, organ, and a little guitar lick that shows up in there from time to time. This, of course, is the latest in our line of dub tracks I've made with my man in Manchester. He also used his wizardly skills on the production and mix, too, which is all him. He envisioned this song as a nautical theme, hence the name. We hope you enjoy it!

Desert Island Dub (with Llanpsych)

Firstly a big thanks to Shane of Harmful If Swallowed for agreeing to do do this male duet. It’s a first for me and probably for him, so a very interesting concept. It’s been a song that’s been hanging around a while just waiting for the right type of vocalist to agree. I am a great admirer of Shane’s work because of his fine lyrics and interpretations of real life. 
The song Elephant In The Room was wrote over five years ago with my son Owen  who would of been around 18 at the time. He had got into playing guitar and dabbling in song writing so my role was helping him with melody and lyrics. 
It’s a song I always thought had great potential and as I wasn’t that active in music myself at the time only a raw acoustic version existed.
This version is what we used as a sketch and Noobly transformed it into a full blown production. Seriously Noobly is a real talent and absolute pleasure to work with so respect to him.
There as been slight lyric changes but the melody is the same.
The song is about to close friends sitting in one of their living rooms in silence. There is an elephant in the room for both of them because a serious matter is not being discussed and neither of them are opening the conversation. The one  as done something really bad to the other so use your imagination.
The conversation is only happening inside their heads so hence a male duet of thoughts.
Hope you enjoy the song as much as we did creating it.

Elephant In The Room  -  Conscience of Kings feat Harmful If Swallowed

Flyover Sunrise

Well, my good friend Paco dropped me a note to say he had a piece of music to which I might like to try and add something, were I so inclined.  Always a good day when that happens.

Now, I can't honestly recall the precise sequence in which the neurons fired inside my skull to yield the result we have here, but we are where we are as they say.

Don't go looking at me for rationale.

Thank you, Paco, as always my friend, for inviting me to come out to play, and for mastering the end result in the midst of untold techno-horror grief.  I hope your DAW world resolves itself very soon.

Find Paco's brilliant music here: https://soundcloud.com/sonido-reflexivo

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Socrates at Sundown

I lie bewildered, here, in my sphere of cubes,
On crushed silk cushions sprawled.
I sketch the cool Palladian dudes
In charcoal, on Aleutian walls.
They think I know what thoughts are theirs,
And beg to trade their graceless airs, 
But I left them there to climb their stairs
Ever downward through Athenian halls.

They say my knowledge is remiss,
The diabolical's back in town.
Seems ignorance is bliss
For this philosophical clown.
I'm seeking emptiness of mind,
That's where I hope to find
That old, old friend of mine,
Socrates, at sundown.

My associate, Plato knows the game
Survives through pretty dialogue
He suffocates but bestows his shame
On city states whose statutes fog
The heads of people in their ranks
Attentive on the Eridanos banks
Dispensing death by way of thanks
As justice shreds its cogs.

Deep mental grasp of social structure
No need to ever write it down
Accused outcast for youth's corrupture
Where the bleeding of democracy is bound
To seek the causal end of time
Of Aristotle and Nietzsche's kind
The men of Athens rendered blind
Killed that old, old friend of mine,
Socrates, at sundown.

Socrates At Sundown (with MidiSound)

8/3 2023
Hönö  Gothenburg
Photo: Skeneby

Edge

Predator

Music from the Hill- Indie rock from near Oxford, UK.
NIGHTSHIFT TOP TRACK FOR MONTH OCT 2025: http://nightshiftmag.co.uk/2025/oct.pdf
Latest Nightshift review Nov 24 http://nightshiftmag.co.uk/2024/nov.pdf
Nightshift review Oct 2023 Top Track http://nightshiftmag.co.uk/2023/oct.pdf
Nightshift magazine demo review (Nov 2022): 
http://nightshiftmag.co.uk/2022/nov.pdf
Nightshift demo review from Jan 2022: http://nightshiftmag.co.uk/2022/jan.pdf
https://linktr.ee/arrowsofthesun

Mapmaker

Arrows of the Sun