Chaffinch recording artist launches debut novel – M R Brend

Ghostwriter - Dimensions

 

 

 

 

M R Brend has launched his debut novel Undercliff via crowdfunding publisher Unbound.  It’s a supernatural thriller set in the 1970s – and there’ll be some specially composed music with it.

As Mark Brend he has written five non-fiction books and contributed to many more.  His most recent book, The Sound of Tomorrow (Bloomsbury), which explores early commercial electronic music, was published in 2012.  He also works as a communications consultant in the charity sector, and occasionally as a music journalist.  As a songwriter/composer/recording artist Mark has released six albums under various artist names.  He currently records as Ghostwriter.

www.minutebook.co.uk

https://unbound.co.uk/books/undercliff

 

Ghostwriter – Dimensions. Released 4 March 2013.

Ghostwriter - DimensionsGhostwriter’s Dimensions EP is available from today!  It can be purchased from the Chaffinch shop, Avalanche in Edinburgh, Love Music in Glasgow, Monorail in Glasgow and Norman Records in Leeds.

Available on 7″ vinyl and limited to 200 copies.  It’s accompanied by a digital download which features an exclusive track.

Ghostwriter – Dimensions EP. 7″ vinyl with download. 4 March 2013.

Ghostwriter - DimensionsChaffinch are thrilled to announce that our next release will be from Ghostwriter.

 

Following the acclaimed 2010 release on Second Language, The Continuing Adventures Of The Strange Sound Association, Ghostwriter (aka Devon-based musician and writer Mark Brend) returns with the Dimensions EP.

 

Where The Continuing Adventures… parlayed literary ghost recordings and psycho-geographic notes into oblique vignettes, Dimensions offers sonic collage as a distillation of memory, place and recondite spirituality.

 

The title track finds Brend joined by Belbury Poly/Ghost Box’s Jim Jupp for an imagined walk through 1930s London alongside Christian mystic writer Charles Williams.  This 11 minute rumination is bookended with two short pieces, Autobiographical Sketch no. 1, and With Stringed Instruments, A Song, featuring Brend’s former Fariñabandmates Matt Gale and Tim Conway.

A fourth download-only track, Bidding Bell, finds Brend drawing regular Ghostwriter collaborator Suzy Mangion and new recruit Adrian Ramsey into a pastoral/choral conversation with God.

 

This is available on 7″ vinyl with accompanying digital download and is limited to 200 copies.  The release date is 4 March 2013.

Scottish Music Independent Music Fair – 8/12/2012

Local Scottish labels including Chaffinch team up to offer Xmas shoppers a taste of the Scottish and UK music scene.  Also participating are Chemikal Underground, Song By Toad Records, Olive Grove, Rock Action, Gerry Loves Records, Armellodie, Overlook Records, Love Music, Rub A Dub and more.  We’ll all be manning stalls with lovingly crafted slices of music joy.

This takes place on Saturday, 8th December 2012 at Chambre 69 in Glasgow.  Doors open at 1pm and entry is FREE.  Hope you can make it along.

www.smia.org.uk/

 

 

 

Lucky Luke album – release date and first review!

Lucky Luke - Travelling For A LivingChaffinch are pleased to announce that Luke Luke’s Travelling For A Living  CD album will be released on 21st June 2012.

We’re also thrilled with the first review to appear.  A glowing one at that, in The Word:

‘With age, expectations sink. How could they not? You get used to things. You’re harder to surprise. You can’t remember the last time you underwent a full-blown epiphany. It’s a realisation brought into sharp relief by the experience of going to see gigs.  If you see enough workmanlike performances on the trot, you even start to wonder what it would take to hear music so wonderful that you’d be moved to do something really stupid in order to get more of it.  At the 2004 Green Man, I found my answer in Glasgow’s Lucky Luke. In a hot marquee, three skinny blokes in floral shirts and two women in patterned dresses – the bastard progeny of The Pastels in ’86 and Fairport in ’69 – brought their clattering uplift to bear upon a mixture of trad arrs and original songs.  I cornered Morag Wilson (harmonium, vocals) and Lucy Sweet (vocals, autoharp) and and asked when her band might play London.  They had no plans. I put them on myself.  Barely anyone came. I lost £500.  The band stayed at my house. Next day, as I waved them goodbye, they left me demos of their second album Travelling For A Living.  One hour later, I didn’t care about the £500. In my head, I rationalised it thus: when Lucky Luke’s second album comes out to rave reviews, I’ll be boasting about this.

But, of course, plans don’t always go according to themselves.  And in the case of Lucky Luke, there were deals that fell through; there were newborn babies and there were “real” jobs – all of these factors now conspiring to make Travelling For A Living a posthumous release.  There’ll be no more epiphanies in marquees, but here’s a document of a band at the precise point of vertical take-off, where they leave the sum of their constituent parts far behind them.  You can hear it in on Mud In The Milk, where Sweet launches into a narrative about “a wild-hearted girl who cannot be contained by any man” with a gusto that calls to mind the young Kirsty MacColl.  There’s Jackie too, which refracts the ramshackle humanity of old Big Star records through late nights with early Steeleye Span albums.  Wherever you alight on Travelling For A Living, the collision of melody and execution is life-affirming, and no more so than on Morag Wilson and guitarist Simon Shaw’s title track, a lament for the human debris left behind when people throughout history have been forced get on their proverbial bikes in search of work.’  Pete Paphides.

 

 

Anthony Reynolds – Life’s Too Long. Release date 20th February 2012

Chaffinch are now taking pre-orders for Life’s Too Long.  Goto the Chaffinch shop.  Orders will be shipped on Friday, the 17th of February.

The following stores will also be selling the album – Action Records in Preston, Avalanche in Edinburgh, loveMUSIC in Glasgow, Monorail in Glasgow, Norman Records in Leeds and Sister Ray in London.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvfeHQP-B7A?wmode=transparent]

 

 

 

Chaffinch Week at Avalanche Records – 21st February 2011

Avalanche Records have built up an outstanding reputation over 27 years and in particular have shown an enthusiasm and commitment to Scottish artists and labels.

Chaffinch are chuffed to bits to be asked by them to take part in a Scottish label week. This begins on Monday 21st February and concludes on Saturday 26th February, at 3pm with an in-store session by Burnt Island.

Also available will be a 10-track Chaffinch CD compilation titled ‘Woodlands‘ featuring exclusive material from Burnt Island, The Second Hand Marching Band, Immigrant and South Downs. Avalanche Records, 5 Grassmarket, Edinburgh, EH1 2HY.