Our (relatively) new project, The Shining Tongues, has a new single due for release this week. Make Us Eat was recorded with help from Robin Jax of RobinPlaysChords (additional guitars) and Andrea Kerr of Living With Eating Disorders (backing vocals) as well as myself and Sam Mclaughlin as usual.
The single is released later this week but you can hear it right now by pre-saving it on Spotify here: https://show.co/H2F08dO
Even if you don’t use Spotify that much, pre-saving the song is still a huge help, so thanks in advance! It will of course also be available from The Shining Tongues Bandcamp page along with an additional bous track.
Here, for you, is our final Winter Solstice track. This was crafted together from some of the last recordings we made with Paul before he died and I don’t mind saying it captures The Infinite Three at the peak of its cosmic glory.
A final parting gift before the next chapter begins.
In memory of our brother, Paul Middleton.
With thanks and love to everyone who has supported our music since 2009.
Thanks to Prog Magazine for the enthusiastic review of Ascension Zone – “Their most innovative recording so far.” – We are humbled and elated, despite the fact that the only progression in our music is that which hurtles us all towards the supreme non-space of hysterical nothingness. Love and Rage!
Give praise to all the little animals and listen to it with your beautiful ears and brain. May the way out be as sweet as the way in.
It is also available from all the usual places one would expect to find such things.
Let us know what you think.
We are exhausted but joyful.
The pig’s head represents the destruction of ignorance.
AND.. If by some wonderful miracle you happen to be in the town of London tomorrow night, we shall be performing live at Electrowerkz. It’s a benefit show for Alzheimer’s Society and Zazimut and a tribute to Jim ‘Tornado’ Evans. Information here and here.
As is our way, we present to YOU our sonic ritual to celebrate the new sun. God is a bisexual cat. Thank you for your heroic support of our work this year. We shall return in 2019 with two new albums, more tours and eternal vibrations.
Foam, the sister EP to Innocence is due to be released on 27th April. We’ll be playing songs from it and its predecessor at a few different venues across the UK next week.
Take a look here to see where and when we’re going and if you can make it along to a show or two please come and say hello!
Releasing the Innocence EP just before the turn of the new year brought us, as is always the case with new recordings, an enourmous sense of weight lifting from our collective shoulders. We all feel very proud of the new songs and are looking forward to performing them live this year, expanding and opening up the songs even further.
As we’ve mentioned many times, these new songs were all born from much longer sessions of intense collective improvisations. My own personal vocabulary of improvisatory musical language took a leap at the beginning of 2017 after having attended a couple of terms of lessons at the wonderful Morley College in London, under the tutorship of Alex Haines.
Alex graduated from the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama in 2013 with a first class degree in Jazz Guitar, and has since become a sought-after performer in many of the UK’s top jazz clubs and venues. As well as being patient and wise teacher, Alex’s playing is a thing of great beauty. Here he is, in a trio with Alex Munk and Nick Jurd, performing a piece called Robots.
When I decided to attend Alex’s classes a friend of mine casually remarked “Why do you need to do that? You already know how to play the guitar”… I didn’t mention that I felt that my own playing at the time was somewhat clumsier than I’d ideally like but I did reply that the process of learning never stops.
Alex, if you happen to be reading this, cheers mate. I’m still wilfully ignoring harmony, but at least now I know what I’m ignoring and why! Ha!
Here’s to the absorbtion of more wisdom and the further inflaming of neurons in 2018!
Dearest friends. Here, as is our tradition, is our annual sonic ritual to summon the New Sun. Thanks and love to everyone who has supported us through 2017.
Onwards towards endless vibrations. May we be reborn as cats.
Our new EP, Innocence, will be released on Friday 15th December.
During our 2016 tour we stopped off at studios in Newcastle and London to record several hours of improvised music. The most promising lumps of sound from those sessions were excavated at the start of 2017 and Innocence is the first fruit to be assembled from the wreckage.
Four new songs for you: Innocence, Hot Strings of Love, Like A Dog and These Animal’s Eyes.
Innocence is intended as the first of two related EPs. A virtual ‘Side A’ of an album, with ‘Side B’ – a sister-EP – to follow in 2018. The cover artwork is by Harumi Foster.
Also due for release soon (on the 21st December as usual) will be this year’s Winter Solsticesong. For those of you who dont’t know – for the past seven years we have issued a new, longform piece of music every 21st of December. Every year presents a new creative challenge for us to bend and manipulate our sonic muscles for you in new and innapropriatly physical ways.
…Which is where the new one will live after it has hatched from its moist egg.
One more thing… There’s a couple of new(ish) shirts available from our merch store. The Lucky Beast shirt features Andrea Voisey’s amazing cover art from last year’s album and can be found here. And the Sonny Sharrock Was Right shirt can be found here, with all the proceeds going to the Youth Music charity.
