smudie

Oliver Peel Session #16

2010-02-15T21:55:45Z

Early Saturday evening, my daughter and I were one of forty or fifty lucky people who gathered in an apartment at a secret location somewhere in Paris to watch Rivkah perform at the Oliver Peel Session #16.

She even sang the song we wrote together, Splitting The Atom - and it was the first time I'd ever heard it!

It was quite a moving experience to discover one of my songs in a live setting, as opposed to listening to an mp3, and together with the intimate atmosphere of the "concert en appartement", it all added up to make a beautiful moment for me.

Plus, my daughter told me afterwards she was very proud.

Vielen Dank Oliver, merci Rivkah.

Merry Christmas, and all that

2009-12-18T10:32:44Z

It's snowing in Paris, and I have just learned that the Christmas song I wrote with The Hogmanay Children has been released on the compilation album Chantons Noël avec Olga Records.

Admittedly, Like Every Christmas Eve may not be the happiest Christmas ditty you've ever heard, but with its mix of Japanese karaoke-style vocals in the first verse, a drunken church organ all the way through and some harmonies at the end that the Beach Boys would have died for, it still manages to be uplifting despite the somewhat morose subject matter.

Merry Christmas, and all that.

Like Every Christmas Eve

A beast in every song

2009-11-17T10:29:48Z

When Philippe Beer-Gabel of the band General Bye Bye asked me to start working with him a few weeks ago, he was happy to give me carte blanche to write about whatever I liked. However, he did have one specific instruction, which was to try to include a reference to an animal wherever possible. This is sort of the band's signature, it seems - a beast in every song.

Well, we've been working on a few tracks together, and so far I've managed to satisfy Philippe's request in at least one - Give It All Away - by slipping a few geese in there. I'm looking forward to hearing the sound of their beating wings in concert soon.

Give It All Away

A Recouvrance

2009-10-05T21:55:24Z

When I was in Brest a couple of months ago, our car stopped briefly at some traffic lights and I saw a man standing in a launderette in the part of town known as Recouvrance. He had his cheek pressed firmly against the window and his gaze was lost somewhere in the middle distance, fixed on nowhere in particular (which is where I suspect he felt his life was heading) as the washing machines spun through their endless cycle behind him.

Inspired by this curious scene, I went on to write a song called Shipwrecked, which I then gave to someone I recently began supplying with lyrics in the hope she could do something with them. I'd been listening to a lot of Dominique A at the time, and it turns out she's quite a fan too.

Needless to say, my song is not about this man, or at least not only about him. Seeing him was just the spark, and the rest came the way it always does... inexplicably.

Shipwrecked

An actor's face

2009-09-30T06:29:23Z

I'm excited to relate that one of my new musical collaborations is beginning to bear fruit.

Rivkah has already sung some lyrics of mine, performing with eliotE & the ritournelles on the lullaby Wheel of Dreams, and just yesterday she informed me that she has now managed to bash out a melody on her toy piano for a new song I wrote specifically for her a couple of months ago.

This is a new way of working for Rivkah, who is more used to writing her own lyrics (and only after coming up with the music first), so I'm honoured that she liked the words I offered her enough to try and make something out of them.

I haven't even heard the result yet, but I know I'll love it - I love everything about her swirling sound - and I'm too excited to keep the news to myself.

The song is called Splitting The Atom.

Splitting The Atom

Greedy Pigs

2009-07-14T15:24:07Z

Lasse Vegas

2009-06-30T07:22:24Z

NADJ has just released a new album, Lasse Vegas, featuring three tracks with my lyrics: the raunchy opener Pick A Card; the languorous eight-minute epic Cactus; and, my personal favourite, Jesus Freak.

As Nadj herself explains on her blog on MySpace, this album has been a long time coming, and has not been without its troubles along the way.

Still, I firmly believe that some things are worth shouting from the rooftops. If there are only a handful of people listening down below, that doesn't mean you should use it as an excuse to say silent, or that you should wait for a bigger crowd to gather. No, sometimes you just need to scream as loud as you can... and see how far your voice will carry.

*

Buy Lasse Vegas here or direct from the artist.

Never say never again

2009-06-05T13:52:26Z

Pourpre, the side project of Thomas Charlet from eliotE & the ritournelles, has recorded a version of my song Never.

Never

Songs for Manchester

2009-03-26T19:52:14Z

Manchester: "Sans puissance, le son n'est rien"

Manchester are a band who wear many of their influences on their sleeve - or, rather, in their name.

There's also very much of a Mancunian swagger in the voice of lead singer and guitarist Leslie Kervella, who I first met when she was pushing her way to the front of a VERY long queue for the toilets in the Pop In and proclaiming loudly, "Let me through, let me through - I'm pregnant!"

Now that she's given birth and found time for making music again, the first results of our labours are ready to see the light of day. Smoke Signals is about taking the not-too-subtle hint that it's time to move on, while Grip compares the act of making love to nothing less than climbing a mountain.

Rock on!

(Not just) for the kids

2009-03-25T07:55:57Z

Have A Good Night 4, released today, is a collection of "lullabies" performed by such rising stars of the French indie scene as Mina Tindle (who will be supporting Beirut on their upcoming European tour), MiLK and Fruit Juice, and eliotE & the Ritournelles (who have teamed up with Rivkah on Wheel of Dreams, a charming little ditty for which I wrote the lyrics), together with a few international guests.

The idea for our song came from eliotE herself, who told me about a dream she often had as a child in which she could "choose" what to dream about using a kind of magic roulette wheel. When she came to me with the idea they already had a vocal melody, which she described as being "a bit like the Andrews sisters", and I tried my best to respect that as I came up with the words.

I got a sneak preview of some of the album's contents a couple of weeks ago when I attended a special kids-only concert held at a playgroup in Montmartre, Paris - hardly the most rock n' roll of venues, I admit, but my daughter and her friend loved it!

Wheel of Dreams

Out with the old and in with the new

2009-03-04T21:53:52Z

Sometimes, you need to start afresh.

That's what I told OrangeColumbo, who recently suffered a hard-drive failure on his PC that meant he has lost several months worth of work, including his initial demos of some songs that we'd been working on together, and a hundreds of personal photos, and who knows what else.

I didn't really know what else to say, and I still don't - other than the fact that, since I learned the news a couple of days ago, I've been rediscovering many of the tracks we've written together over the years.

Old songs like Carousel. Great songs like Carousel.

We'll be back, my friend!

Carousel

Bye Bye Ritournelles

2009-01-29T11:11:55Z

My friends eliotE & the ritournelles began their European tour with a hometown gig in Paris last night.

You can follow their on-the-road antics on le blog du Bye Bye Ritournelles tour (in French).

Making music

2008-12-19T20:51:19Z

I've been making music.

Although I would never really claim to be anything other than a lyricist, I have nonetheless been amusing myself lately by setting some of my old lyrics that never found a home to a series of home-made electronic rhythms. And I've been singing them myself!

Silent Mode is the first demo resulting from these experiments to see the light of day.

I'm only doing this for fun, but if you download the track, I'd certainly be very interested in hearing what you think of it.

Silent Mode

One too many

2008-12-16T15:49:19Z

If you've ever sent a text message in the middle of the night after having one drink too many, this little song is for you.

A Drunken Text

The advantages of being single

2008-11-18T16:48:49Z

Someone told me that this song, Curse, serves as a good reminder of the advantages of being single.

That wasn't quite what I had in mind when I wrote it, but who knows? Maybe it does!

Curse