Links to mostly recent digital releases of professional recordings I have made with various bands and musicians. Please do have a listen.
2024
Permaculture EP by Tangential jazz trio. Five (or six with bonus CD track) slices of jazz for the old times, jazz for the new times. Read about the CD here.
Writes Joey Herzfeld: On the 26th March at 1 pm (exactly four years ago as I write this) the UK went into Lockdown. As scientists toiled to create vaccines and key workers kept our infrastructure from buckling I made my own contribution. I wrote some weird music. Lots of it. And then…I didn’t release it. Look – it was a crazy time, right? You can hear me playing on Joey’s song “Strange dreams,” the EP title track.
2023
A triple A-side of HORROR from Joey Herzfeld and musicians. Three spine-chilling tracks about creepy-crawlies to get your skin itching and your toes tapping. Released on … Hallowe’en. I play on “Spiders’ Revenge.”
A spacious, and intimately recorded 50min piece written by Chris Dowding, the second sky marks the first studio-recorded hymn release. Luminous textures alternate with melodic passages, with solo spaces along the way for double bassist George McKay and Chris’s processed trumpets. Elsewhere, electronics textures intermingle alongside surging violins… Music to watch clouds by.
2021
in lockdown follows experiences of the pandemic for an expanded hymn collective. An alternative hymn arrangement for unprecedented circumstances unfolds in a game of consequences… All tracks recorded at their homes by the musicians. Three tracks are duos of Chris Dowding (trumpets, fx, laptop) and me:
- ‘The Slaves Lament’ (Robert Burns; arr. McKay). I’ve researched the surviving notated music of anti-transatlantic slave songs from 18th and 19th centuries, and arranged and begun to record them. This is the first of them in that project.
- ‘the linking bond’ (Dowding).
- ‘idumea’ (trad. shape note hymn; arr. Dowding). This one was recorded for the 2020 Sufjan Stevens ‘Songs for Christmas’ project. There’s a nicely atmospheric video by Norwich film-maker Paul Thompson for the song here.
2020
This recording documents our first performance with an extended hymn line-up, with guests, in a 2019 gig at the Camouflage contemporary jazz night in Norwich:
- Chris Dowding (trumpets & electronics)
- Graham Dunning (vinyl, objects & electronics)
- Sylvia Hallett (violin, bicycle wheel, saw & electronics
- George McKay (double bass)
- David Ross (electronics).
2019
Songs From the Big Sky is the first album from the East Anglian folk heroes Punch House Band. Locally sourced tales of blood and bone.
1995
Pete Moser, then of More Music Morecambe, and Boris Howarth’s 1995 choral song cycle, recorded live at Lancaster Town Hall with several choirs and a full band. I still remember fondly especially the song ‘Lullaby’, and its bass line that I came up with. One from the archive.