Building Sound Buildings

As you may recall, I've been intending to build a new studio since last summer. We got the planning permission a couple of months ago but it's taken until now to be ready to start work on it. But today the builders arrived and started taking down the old structure and I've decided I should blog the whole process. So, for those of you who may be interested in watching the studio develop from an old shell to a shiny new room, I've started a new blog: Building Sound Buildings.

The build will be taking a lot of my attention for a while so you can expect the new blog to be rather more active than this one, but I will try to remember to drop by from time to time and let you know what else is going on in my world.

21 years and counting...

After many years shuttling between record labels, I have finally managed to get full control of most of my music back, and am happy to be relaunching my own Disco Gecko label this year. To start with, we are releasing an anthology of Banco de Gaia tracks entitled 'Songs from the Silk Road'. This comes out in February, either on CD in a lovingly crafted Digifile wallet (minimal plastic used) with an 8-page booklet or as a download with 2 bonus tracks – we recommend getting it from our BandCamp page as not only do you get 1 more bonus track, but you can also download the artwork and booklet as well. Available from February 1st.

We will be following this up with digital re-releases of the early Planet Dog albums and I'm currently digging through the archives to find bonus material – hopefully will be able to add some live versions, remixes and outtakes to each release.

Moving on to live shows, to celebrate the new album we're doing a launch gig at inSpiral Lounge in London on February 5th and a small gig on our home turf at The Castle in Bruton on February 19th: copies of the album will be available at both shows. We're also booking up festivals for another packed summer and will be releasing details soon.

In other news: the university course is going well, we now have full planning permission for the studio build, so that is progressing according to plan, and I'm looking forward to getting out and gigging again. See you all soon!

Homes, studios and brains

Ok, it's been over a year since I last wrote something here. That is incredibly slack of me, I know, but in my defence there has been a lot of change going on.

A couple of months ago we moved house. That entailed a few months of packing and, more significantly, taking the studio apart, which means that for the first time in 20 years I have no studio of my own. Serious as that sounds it is a temporary inconvenience and I have already launched plans to build a new, improved place. To be honest there were some serious problems with the last studio which I was never going to be able to fix so it's refreshing to start from scratch and hopefully get it spot on this time.

In the meantime I have access to another fine facility courtesy of The Orchard Recording Studios so I can continue to work on whatever may need doing. Which leads to the question: "what the hell am I doing musically at the moment?"

Well, actually, not a huge amount. Getting the new studio set up is the priority right now so new music is on hold, but we are planning to re-issue the old albums next year with added tracks and a few rarities so there's a bit of work to do. And there is also my other bit of news...

As of next week I will be studying Creative Sound and Media Technology. As you may well have noticed I have been working with video in my live shows for some years and I am fascinated by how effective sound and image together can be. I figured it would be good to really look into that in depth, leading to who knows what creative possibilities in the future, and you'll no doubt be pleased to know that the course involves a lot of new writing and recording so new material to release shouldn't be too far off.

I also thought it would be good to give my brain a bit of a work out too, 20 years of making music with a bit of label managing thrown in has got a bit predictable and I think waking up a few dormant brain cells can only be a good thing. Of course, I might find I get there and there aren't many cells left to re-awaken...

And finally all is revealed

Well, it's taken a while and we've had countless interruptions but finally I can tell you everything about the new album. There's a lot to tell so I'll break up into bite-sized pieces.

I formed Banco de Gaia with Andy Guthrie back in 1989, that's 20 years ago in case you didn't work it out, so it seems appropriate to do something in an anniversary mood. (No, I'm not buying Andy a ring). The new album is in effect that something, a kind of 20 year retrospective with a difference.

The title, as revealed previously, is "Memories Dreams Reflections" and the music can be broken up into three sections. Oh, and it's a double CD for those of you who still buy such things, or a damned big download.


Disc 1 begins with the 'Reflections' bit. This is a selection of cover versions of tunes which hugely inspired and influenced me in my formative years. To be precise it is a full length version of "Echoes" by Pink Floyd (that's 22 minutes), "Starless" by King Crimson and, as some of you may have worked out from recent live shows, "Spirit Of The Age" by Hawkwind.

The rest of Disc 1 is the 'Dreams'. These are reworkings of early Banco tunes which will be familiar to anyone who knows the original cassette albums but mostly unknown apart from that. Ranging from faithful recreation to extreme reworking, the tracks are "Soufie", "Tempra" and "Terra Om".

Disc 2 brings the 'Memories'. It's a 78 minute selection of live recordings taken from over the years and including early solo Banco rave anthems, through the 5-piece live band of the mid/late-90s and continuing on into the 'Toby and Ted' years up to the current live video show (without the video obviously, this is an audio CD).

So, getting on for two and a half hours of music, hope that makes up for the wait.

On to the release details. The album will be released worldwide on September 18th (September 22nd in North America), both CD and download, and it will be available from all the usual places (so hopefully that's anywhere you can think of) as well as direct from our very own mail order and download stores. We are also planning to make it available for a short period prior to that to our mailing list subscribers, so if you want to know where and when you'd better sign up to the list fast.

It's taken a long to time get here but hopefully the album will more than justify it's 20th anniversary status. I can't believe it's 20 years since Andy first said "do you want to play some guitar synth at this gig I'm doing?"...

Studio update 6

So, it's all change here. Finished the writing, finished the recording, done the mastering, so now it's time to do the last few edits, compile the album and run the masters and.... it's done.

Hard to believe I'm nearly there, it's been a long, difficult struggle putting this album together but then again there never was an easy one. By the end of the week the album should exist in it's final completed form and I can finally take a day off.

Oh no I can't, got to start working on the live set for the first gig in 3 weeks time...

Feels great though!

The great Facebook debacle

I have been rather late getting a Banco page set up on Facebook. Everyone else seems to have done it years ago but I just, well, couldn't be bothered, frankly. Still, I did finally get round to it a few weeks ago, only to find out I was better off before.

For some reason Facebook decided that the name 'Banco de Gaia' is blocked and would not let me set up a 'Banco de Gaia' page. OK, I thought, it must be to stop copyright infringement, I'll just have to explain to them who I am and they'll lift the block. Mmm, except you can't contact Facebook to discuss things like that.

When I tried to set up the page there was a link to a customer service form which I duly filled in, explaining who I am and why I want to set up the page. Their response? Nothing. So I tried again, still no response. And again. And again. And again from someone else's account. And again, this time in a different name. Still no response.

So that's that. Facebook have blocked me setting up the Banco de Gaia page, and there is no way to discuss it with them. This is exactly why small shops with friendly shopkeepers will be around for a long time to come; big techno-corporations may seem all-knowing and capable but actually they're only as good as their programming, and in this case that's clearly dysfunctional.

That is, of course, assuming it's a bad web interface and not that they're blocking me because the Chinese government told them to because I spoke out about Tibet.... Nah, I can't be bothered to go down that route.

Anyway, I have the last laugh (so far). We discovered that they haven't put a block on 'Banco de Gaia - Official' so if you're on Facebook and want to go and have a look at a Banco Facebook page, you can.

Studio update 5

Obviously I've been quiet for a long time because I've been really busy in the studio. Yeah, well, something like that... Anyway, the album is coming along, maybe not as quickly as I would wish but it's getting there.

I just had an old friend of mine in the studio adding vocals to the tune I'm currently working on. He's an announcer on BBC radio, every album should have one.

Meanwhile I've been sorting out the 'boring' side of it all, distribution plans, record labels, all that stuff. Mostly sorted now, we have a plan and the album will be available everywhere when it's ready. Well, not sure if Kyrgyzstan is really covered or not, but most places will be.

I've also joined Twitter (do you join Twitter? Whatever, I'm doing Twitter now). You may notice it in the sidebar. Not sure what the point is but the above mentioned BBC radio announcer said it's great so obviously I believed him. Given how often I update this blog, my Twitter should be gripping...