The Trunk 17/12/2017: 2017 In Review, Part 4

Welcome to the fourth and final part of our year in review - and, with it, the last Trunk of 2017!

collective groan from the audience

But don't worry - we're determined to make this year go out with a bang. If you've just joined us, we highly recommend skipping back to parts one, two and three before proceeding.

Alright, enough preamble. Prepare yourselves for the final chapter!

22nd September: Universal Medium

"The coastline was something to behold, even though my monocle was irreparably broken."

Alliterative duo Stuart Stephens and Paul Powell gave us this slice of ambience-infused prog back in September, and it quickly became one of Elephant Towers' go-to chill-out albums. Universal Medium is like a good dessert - deep, rich, and easy to lose yourself in. Shying away from the kitchen-sink tendencies of some of their prog contemporaries, Whitewater exhibit an admirable degree of restraint, making careful use of musical space to ensure that the many, many layers never become overwhelming - at least, not in a bad way.

13th October: Fukushima Surfer Boys

Look, I know that last one wasn't exactly A-grade material, but it's getting very hard to write amusing captions for these abstract covers, okay?

We move now from something relaxed to something decidedly less so: Fukushima Surfer Boys is a concentrated ball of electric energy. Clever application of distortion, both vocal and instrumental, is what really makes this album. There's a fuzzy, staticky edge to this joyously weird album which, far from bogging it down, lends it a unique verve that combines with the overall hectic pace to create a record that takes you on a breathless and brilliant rollercoaster ride.

3rd November: The Divine Abstract

Like, look at this. How am I meant to say something funny about whatever this is?

I've tried not to bring personal opinion into this year-in-review too much, but there's no hiding the fact that The Divine Abstract is one of my favourite albums of 2017. Justly critically acclaimed for its bewildering range of instrumentation and impressive laundry list of guests, this album grabs you by the brain from the moment you first hear it, and is unlikely to let you go anytime soon. There's an easy, jazzy confidence to The Divine Abstract that really sells the diversity and technical genius of its music. Charlie Cawood may well have a masterpiece on his hands.

1st December: Murder and Parliament

A leaked X-ray of Tom, behind the frankly unconvincing human suit.

Can Tom Slatter, an artist known perhaps first and foremost for his weird lyrics and surreal narratives, pull off an album with no vocals at all?

Apparently so. Talented git.

Status Update

Christmas is in full swing at Elephant Towers, and various members of the team have been sighted hiding in pine trees, shovelling handfuls of chestnuts into their greedy maws, and, most bafflingly of all, watching primetime television. 'Tis the season - but the season for what, we know not!

Review Roundup

We've a surprising number of reviews to cover in this last Trunk of the year! First of all, two in French - Chromatique's take on Irritant and Profil's review of Fukushima Surfer Boys. We are reliably informed that these are both positive. (It's times like these that I really regret abandoning French at 14.)

Jerry Lucky of The Progressive Rock Files has also given Murder and Parliament an "Intriguing" rating, calling it, um, "intriguing". And Roger Trenwith, in his annual list of the best albums of the year, gives spots to a plethora of BEM bands - see how many you can spot!

That's it from us for this week, and, indeed, this year. We're taking two weeks off for the holidays, so The Trunk will return on the seventh of January in the shiny new year of 2018. Until then, take care, and enjoy the music!

The Trunk 10/12/2017: 2017 In Review, Part 3

Welcome back, my friends, to the show that ends next week - but we've eight releases to get through before then, so let's get back to it.

9th June: Irritant

This is what lab safety posters look like in the mirror universe.

Bristolian melodic prog quintet Schnauser kicked off our summer (shut up, summer totally starts at the beginning of June, solstices be damned) with a wacky, psychedelic slice of a very special kind of music. If track names like "Chinese Brainwork", "Hypertension" and "Sorry, You Were Out" don't grab your attention, the smooth, groovy sax and perfectly cheesy synths most definitely will. So, whether or not you've got PPI, you should find Irritant enjoyably weird - and weirdly enjoyable.

23rd June: Confound and Disturb

Sadly, we didn't have the budget to photograph the other half of Rob's head.

BEM released a spoken word album in 2017.

It's bloody good, actually.

Robert Ramsay is a longtime friend of the label, but we had no idea what to expect from his first solo project. What we got was a combination of Rob's brilliantly unsettling voice and an assortment of weird noises, with an atmosphere all of its own. Make no mistake: this is music, unfettered though it may be by such petty mortal concerns as "instruments" and "tunes". On a label full of strangeness, it's still easily our strangest release of the year.

4th August: Minotaur

Insert awful joke about taking the bull by the horns here.

After This, you'd think Simon Godfrey might be content to hang up his hat and call it a year on the new music front, but you'd be wrong. Nothing can stop this man, and Shineback, the project that gave us BEM's very first release, returned with a vengeance in August, giving us both a powerful twenty-five-minute package of smart, precise electronic beats and a harbinger of bigger things to come next year. (Oooooh.) It even features Rob on the track we've chosen to represent it! Man, those two are so close, you'd almost think they used to be in a band together or something.

1st September: My Tricksy Spirit

Who spilled all that paint all over our nice clean green screen?

My Tricksy Spirit's self-titled debut album brought us into autumn with characteristic flair. It's a spacey, melodic journey, featuring a wide range of performers and many, many instruments from all manner of cultures to explore. Ever heard a tabla? A tsouras? How about a gender wayang? Here's your chance! A kitchen sink in the very best way, My Tricksy Spirit reminds us that innovative music isn't just about iterating on the traditional Western canon. One of MTS' members, a certain Mr Charlie Cawood, would give us another stark reminder of this later in the year... but that's a story for next week!

Status Update

Tumbleweed wheels past BEM head office, at least until we can catch it with the hoover. 2018 draws ever closer, and we must sit tight and brace ourselves for the wonders and horrors it will bring... as should you.

Review Roundup

Schnauser were featured in this month's issue of the CRS magazine! For the full article, we highly recommend picking up a copy, but you can find a very small preview right here...

It really is very small indeed. We did warn you.

Join us again next week for the fourth and final volume of our 2017 year in review!

The Trunk 3/12/2017: 2017 In Review, Part 2

Welcome back to our whistlestop tour of what BEM's been up to this year! Last week's Part 1 took us up to March, and today's feature will get us as far as mid-May, so let's cut the preamble and get back to it!

14th April: Baritonia

"David, can you think of something witty to say about a literal coffee stain?" "Nope." "Aight."

How do you explain The Bob Lazar Story? Well, the men behind the project, New Zealand-based noodlers Matt Deacon and Chris Jago, have called it everything from "ProgMathsyFusion" to "tritonal wankery", but honestly I still don't think I'm any further forward. Nonetheless, an album with track names like "Toptop Switcherooney, Elbow Patch Man" surely deserves a listen, and such curiosity would indeed be rewarded - this is an odd album, but a thoroughly satisfying one, with equal parts moderation and flair and superb musicianship across the board.

28th April: Field Recordings

Efforts to establish a BEM annex in the Hell Dimensions are still underway.

Field Recordings is proof positive of that there's nothing quite like The Fierce And The Dead live. After Spooky Action, we and the band wanted to give everyone a taste of the TFATD live experience, a finely honed wall of guitar that hits like a goddamn express train, and this album, featuring some extremely pretty artwork by Mark Buckingham, is effectively a half-hour chunk of concentrated, unfettered power.

There's more to come from the boys in the new year. In the meantime, present your face for melting.

5th May: Unlike Here

"Morning, Greg." "Morning, Hal."

Italian prog-fusion quartet Syncage were unleashed on the world in full this year, dragging us headlong into an unsettling world of "manner masters" and "unaware actors" in their first full-length album. A smart, vibrant concept piece that tells of an escape from a strange, repressive society, Unlike Here is a highly experimental record that draws elements and themes from so many genres that it's easy to lose count. It also gave us one of the best music videos I've ever seen, a dazzling display of both musical prowess and screwball humour.

The band put together a half-hour documentary film about their experience of putting together the album, and it's well worth a watch (don't worry, there are English subtitles). In a musical field that can tend towards staleness, Syncage are an injection of youthful energy.

19th May: This

Scientifically proven to be our most anxiety-inducing album cover.

Simon Godfrey, eh? First he, as Shineback, gave us an impressive slab of intelligent dance music in Rise Up Forgotten, Return Destroyed - BEM's first ever release. Then he showed us his singer-songwriterly cred with the two volumes of Black Bag Archive. And this year, we got this. And by this I am, of course, referring to This. (We've gotten a lot of mileage out of that joke and we're not stopping anytime soon.)

This (by which I mean... oh, alright, I'll stop) is a kinda-sorta-supergroup fronted by Simon and filled out admirably by Echolyn's Tom Hyatt, Cold Blue Electric's Joe Cardillo, and Stone Jack Baller's Scott Miller. By their powers combined, we received a collection of eminently singable pop-rock tunes that are as diverse as they are brilliant. With influences from XTC to 10CC, it's often unexpected and always a delight to listen to.

Status Update

Murder and Parliament is out now! Stream or purchase the whole album from the Bandcamp page now and see what magic Tom Slatter can achieve with no lyrics whatsoever.

And the Elephant hopes to see a few of you at Masquerade 2 today, featuring Tom, Big Hogg, and plenty more great music!

We're into December now, and Christmas approaches on swift wings. That means a lot of cloak-and-hopefully-not-dagger operations in the dark corridors of Elephant Towers... and not just for presents. Stay tuned.

Review Roundup

Anyone here read Greek? Against the Silence just reviewed The Divine Abstract and Google Translate only gets us so far - but we certainly agree that this album is "a really impressive moment in 2017". Tap into that moment here.

Our year's review is halfway done - next week, we'll have another one! Well, four. But that doesn't rhyme.

The Trunk 26/11/2017: 2017 In Review, Part 1

Wwwwwelcome, ladies and gents, to the first exciting installment of the Bad Elephant Music 2017 Year In Review Feature! Over the next four weeks, we're going to look back at all sixteen of our major releases of 2017, which will take us through to the end of the year. (The Trunk is taking the last two weeks off - David almost wouldn't let us, but we did our best desperate Victorian child impression ("but it's Christmas, sir!") and he relented.)

All these albums are still very much in stock, and you can click those titles to head over to the BEM webstore, where you can buy copies, or, in most cases, stream the whole album for free! We'll also be including a sample track from each album to give you a taste right here on The Trunk.

Without further ado, let's get down to business!

3rd February: Flightless

Note: Music, though good, will not induce brain geysers. Hopefully.

Our first album of 2017 was a reissue, taking us almost three decades into the past to revisit and remaster original recordings dating back to 1988. Rog Patterson describes Flightless as an example of his "characteristic bleating on the subject of human stupidity", and it's telling of both the songs and the society surrounding them that the former feel even more relevant now.

In the tradition of the "heavy wood" genre brought to light by Rog's old band Twice Bitten, stripped-back, strings-only instrumentation accompanies Rog's melodious yet biting vocals. Flightless may be older than certain members of the BEM staff, but it has undoubtedly stood the test of time.

3rd March: Tope's Sphere 2

That big planet looks a bit like those plastic flying saucers you put in the laundry.

I had no idea what to think when I first heard this album. I'm still not completely sure what to think even now.

The unique, unpredictable wit of Orange Clocks is probably better experienced than explained. The music is a heady psychedelic blend that evokes the vintage TV to which the album pays homage, and the narration is by turns unsettling and hysterical. That first listen to Tope's Sphere 2 was one of the strangest half hours of my adult life, and I think that's a better pitch than anything else I could say about it.

Well, except telling you all that Tope's sidekick is called Chode. That might sway you.

17th March: Happy People

Apparently, if I mess up a press release, I'm going to get put in one of these.

If there's one BEM artist we can rely upon to make us think and sing along at the same time, it's Tom Slatter. Happy People is a concentrated burst of lyrical bitterness that brings new voices into the mix alongside Tom's own, telling a compelling tale of a dark, paranoid world not so very different from our own. More of a conceptual whole than his previous work, it's a story in and of itself, of which this preview track here is just a single chapter.

It's also catchier than an album with this much depth seemingly has any right to be. We here at Elephant Towers were humming lines from this record for months after the first play, and it still gets played, even from a music library as crowded as ours. Not only does he tell great stories, Tom writes bloody incredible tunes too, and combining the two is a recipe for genius.

31st March: Gargoyles

Jessica never cared much for family reunions.

In their own words, Big Hogg make "electric music for the mind and body". Paying homage to the Canterbury scene with a series of intriguing modern twists, Gargoyles delivers on that promise with a twisting, almost hypnotic series of songs. Laid-back, but never soporific, it's a perfect album for relaxed Sunday mornings (maybe even the one you're currently having!), and for any time when you just want to lose yourself in a tune.

Between carefree whimsy and subtle foreboding, there are many steps to this journey, but somehow none of them feel jarring or out of place. This album closed up a very busy March in admirable fashion, and, just like Happy People, it still gets plenty of play over here.

Status Update

Murder and Parliament is out this coming Friday! If you've not preordered yet, we highly recommend that you do so now so you get the goods as soon as possible.

Masquerade 2 is just around the corner - if you liked the sound of Big Hogg or Tom Slatter in today's feature, both acts will be playing there, so grab your tickets and prepare for a great day's music, "plus masks, madness and pre-Christmas revelry". Fancy!

Review Roundup

Progarchives Special Collaborator (what an ominous title) Kev Rowland has published his review of Fukushima Surfer Boys, and concluded that "those who have more discerning tastes will find much here to enjoy". Oooooh.

And, while it's not strictly a review, Simon Godfrey showed up on Future Feature this week to talk about his experience with Valdez and the production of This. Simon says some words, and we think they're well worth a listen.

We've got nine whole months left to get through, so join us again next week for part two of our retrospective!

The Trunk 19/11/2017: The Lyrics and Legends of Tom Slatter

Even on a label that prides itself on releasing genre-defying music, Tom Slatter has always been especially hard to pin down. He's always been defined most stridently by his songs, and the stories he tells in them, and, given that his new instrumental project Murder and Parliament is now less than two weeks away (we are very excited), now's as good a time as any to take a look back at Slatter's previous work, all five albums of it. Instead of going through album by album, though, we're going to look into some of the more notable themes we've seen repeated over the years, and showcase a few of the best examples thereof.

Hoo boy. Are you ready for this? We're not.

Seven Bells John

Flashback to 2010, and Tom's first solo album, Spinning The Compass. (It's now available in a shiny, remastered digital form for just £5!) Track four, 'Lines Overheard At A Seance', is the first appearance (though not by name) of an unsavoury character who would plague Tom's music for a while to come: the nefarious Seven Bells John.

Who's this guy? He's "a criminal, a murderer", and the voices you hear in this song are his victims. You'll probably be familiar with at least some of the rest of the story if you've heard Fit The Fourth, whose twenty-minute closing track covers the finale of his tale, but perhaps you don't have the full picture yet.

To complete the story, you'll need both of the aforementioned tracks, as well as 'The Steam Engine Murders And The Trial Of Seven Bells John' (also on Fit the Fourth), Tom's EP Black Water, and a few caffeine-fuelled, sleepless nights, until your conscious mind starts unravelling at the seams and everything clicks into place. Or I guess you could just read this synopsis.

The story of Seven Bells John is complex and nonlinear, and didn't become clear as a single story until quite a way into it, so who's to say Tom hasn't woven more narratives into his work, unseen until the time is right? Perhaps even Murder and Parliament, bereft of lyrics, will continue the great work somehow? We shall have to wait and see.

Augmentation

"How many songs about replacing your body parts with mechanical alternatives is too many?" asks Tom in his Bandcamp bio. The correct answer to this question is beyond the scope of this article, but Mr Slatter seems committed to pushing the envelope.

There's a definite steampunk sensibility to many (if not most) of these songs, but it's rarely more evident than in this piece from his third album Three Rows Of Teeth, a track by the name of 'Self Made Man'. Spoilers, it's a more literal take on the phrase that you may be used to.

Self-improvement and self-perfection in general are strong themes throughout Slatter's work, and it's worth listening out for those callbacks and cross-references wherever you can find them.

Infohazards

It's no secret that much of Tom's music is laced with biting wit and a sharp satirical edge. Nowhere is this more evident than on the title track of Happy People, released earlier this year:

Tom describes Happy People as "loosely a concept album", and he's done an illuminating track-by-track writeup of the album and the meaning behind the lyrics - start here. But what Tom may not have told you is that every track on this album is also a potent weapon - played <REDACTED>, at double speed, and with the <REDACTED> part pitch-shifted one octave down, these songs can destroy brain tissue at a distance of up to 500 paces!

Thankfully, you're not allowed to know the exact processes involved, and I don't think Tom himself is entirely aware of what he's created. But I know. I know, and I've got your number, Slatter, and <REDACTED> <REDACTED> <REDACTED> on the <REDACTED> with a <REDACTED> so you'll have to <REDACTED BUT ALSO UNINTELLIGIBLE>

The remainder of this article has been removed for public safety reasons.

Status Update

Preorders are open now for Murder and Parliament and the release date for December 1st draws ever closer. Other than that, we've mostly been keeping calm, watching the skies, and preparing for next year. We do have a rather exciting (and rather bulky) feature starting right here on The Trunk next week, though, so do prepare yourselves for that.

Review Roundup

The Divine Abstract is fast becoming one of BEM's most critically acclaimed releases - congratulations to Charlie on producing something so many people seem to love! He got a shout-out in DPRP's Something For The Weekend feature, praising "a unique album that is a true delight to the ears", and there's a review from PROG Magazine's Alex Lynham, too, agreeing that listeners "will find their explorations rewarded".

Next week, the beginning of the end of the year! Yes, already! Kind of!

The Trunk 5/11/2017: From the Vaults - Spooky Action

Welcome back to From the Vaults, the semi-regular feature where we dive back into the BEM archives to revisit some of our older releases. One of our earliest albums recently celebrated its fourth birthday (has it really been that long?), so we're going way back to 2013, and to an album that's become one of my personal favourites from the label: Spooky Action.

No Photoshop - Matt's hands really do look like that. He should probably get that checked out.

Fortunately, The Fierce And The Dead live up to only the first half of their name. The fiercely capable quartet of Matt Stevens and Steve Cleaton on guitar, Kev Feazey on bass and Stuart Marshall on drums first exploded onto the scene in 2011 with If It Carries On Like This We Are Moving To Morecambe. We at BEM liked this album so much that we released a remastered version late last year - do give it a listen if you haven't already.

But we're not here to talk about that album, not today. No, we're here, in the spirit of the season (what do you mean, Halloween's gone?), to get spooky.

Spooky Action was released in November 2013,

Following on from Morecambe's 'Part 1' and 'Part 2', and the On VHS EP's 'Part 3', Spooky Action opens, as you might expect, with 'Part 4'. This was the first I ever heard of TFATD... and what an introduction it was.



The moment the Big Riff kicked in, I knew I'd be listening to this album a lot over the coming months - and, as it turned out, years. There's just something about the way these guys assemble their songs, with the twin guitars playing off each other and the steady, forceful beat, that makes them extremely earwormy. I'd probably be singing most of Spooky Action to myself constantly if there were any lyrics, but, in their absence, I tend to find myself humming along instead.

TFATD are often classified as post-rock, math-rock, or something similar, but I think this does them a disservice - even just on this album, there's a lot of diversity of sound, from the ominous, bass-heavy crunch of 'Pyramid Hat' to the surprisingly brief proggy excess of 'Entropy'. A standout track for me is 'Let's Start A Cult', known during production as 'Duck Street' because of the weird honks at the start. Take it apart and it's composed of a few fairly straightforward building blocks (well, until it gets to the climax), but put it back together and it never sounds simple or monotonous.

Spooky Action was widely and pretty positively reviewed. It comes "highly recommended" by Jason Ritchie of getreadytorock, PROG Magazine's Malcolm Dome calls it "an album that gives you a glow", and Jester Jay Goldman at Spectrum Culture says it's a "bracing tonic" even in a saturated post-rock scene. Progarchy, too, noted that the album "reaches the depth and richness it reaches precisely because it does not take itself too seriously", and I'm inclined to agree. This is a complex, technically superb album, but it's got heart too, and it's that little injection of tongue-in-cheek verve that pushes the tunes one step above good.

This is to say nothing of what The Fierce And The Dead are like live. They've been playing a lot of gigs this year, including a standout set at RoSFest where they did their job of waking everyone up, as the first act on the Sunday, with charismatic panache. (Word on the street is that this set was recorded, both audio and video. Interesting.) I myself got to see them at the Borderline recently, and it was one of the best gigs I've seen in a very long time indeed.

And, as it happens, you, too, can catch them live next week! They're supporting American metal outfit Big Business at the Underworld on Wednesday night. For more details and tickets, check the event page. Failing that, their live mini-album Field Recordings should give you a taste of the TFATD live experience, and is available right now.

What of Spooky Action? Well, since it's a little older now, you can grab a copy for the reduced price of £5 physical or £2 digital right here. I consider this a seminal piece of label history, and if you don't already own a copy, do yourself a favour and rectify that. You won't regret it, I promise.

And keep your eyes on the skies. Next year is Spooky Action's fifth birthday, as well as BEM's, and you can expect album number three before 2018's even halfway done...

Status Update

Charlie Cawood's The Divine Abstract is out now and on its way to your ears - or, if it isn't yet, you can make it so at the webstore.

Other than that, November is set to be a pretty quiet month for us release-wise, but you can still look forward to a couple of approaching live shows, Prog for Peace next weekend and Masquerade 2 at the top of December - more information and tickets behind the links.

Murder and Parliament, Tom Slatter's new instrumental project, will be our last release of 2017, and you can expect preorders for that very soon.

Review Roundup

Can you round up one review? We're damn well going to try. Progressive Music Planet published their review of The Divine Abstract at the start of the week, and Susan, better known as madvinyl, gave it a rare and impressive perfect 10 review. It quite literally doesn't get better than that.

The Trunk 29/10/2017: State of the Elephant, Winter 2017/18

We're five-sixths of the way through 2017! Good heavens, hasn't it gone by fast? We've released no fewer than twelve albums with more to come before the year's out, and it's been an absolute blast. Still, we're not quite ready to bid this year goodbye just yet, and so, to cover the final stretch, here's a roundup of everything happening in the next three months...

Live Elephants

Progtoberfest 2, featuring the trinity of The Far Meadow, The Gift and The Rube Goldberg Machine, is today at the Bedford! We understand there are still some tickets going, too; they'll be available on the doors for the slightly higher price of £12, which is still a screaming good deal for five great acts and an afternoon of music. We'll keep you updated on the results, of course, and, if you're seeing this early and at a very loose end, here's something to do with your Sunday!

After that, there are two more festivals left in 2017. First up, in collaboration with Prog Sausage, is Prog for Peace on November 11th. The Far Meadow and The Gift will be back, hot on the heels of Progtoberfest, and joined by Konchordat and The Room. This one's at the Iron Horse in Sidcup, from which you can pick up advance tickets, and proceeds go to charity.

Last but not least comes Masquerade 2! The brainchild of The Gift frontman Mike Morton, this is another one-dayer featuring BEM's Big Hogg alongside such esteemed acts as Magic Pie and I Am The Manic Whale. Tickets are available here.

That's about it for upcoming live shows, but there's still plenty else to look forward to, such as...

Studio Elephants

There are still two more albums to go before we call it a year. The first is coming up very soon indeed: Charlie Cawood's The Divine Abstract finally comes out on Friday, and we seriously can't wait to get this one out to you all - it's one of the strangest, most wondrous things ever to pass through our offices. If you want to make sure you get it as soon as possible, you can still preorder, and download the preview track 'Garden Of The Mind' right away!

In early December you can expect the debut album from BEM alumnus Tom Slatter's latest project, Murder and Parliament. There's a preview track here, as well, and you can download it absolutely free, so what are you all waiting for? Preorders for Murder and Parliament will open soon.

And, though we're not quite ready to give you the full details, we've another new signing to unleash on the world in January, so stay tuned...

The Fifth Elephant

Not this one.

We close with a look a little further ahead.

Next year is Bad Elephant Music's fifth anniversary. To be honest, we're still trying to wrap our heads around that. It doesn't seem like all that long ago that we were debating what to call the project and working out what all this record label business was really about.

But five years... that's a big one. And we're definitely going to celebrate.

You can expect new music from the bands behind our first two albums ever, BEM's hoariest veterans - Shineback and The Fierce And The Dead. You can expect a couple of other new developments which I've just been told I can't say any more about, on pain of voltage-calming. And, in general, we expect 2018 to be a very big year for Bad Elephant Music.

Keep an eye on our Facebook page, if you aren't already. Great things are afoot!

Status Update

What, you really want another one after all that?

Review Roundup

Two new reviews for The Divine Abstract flew off the presses this week: one from Progradar, where Emma Roebuck describes "clever sophisticated music that opens doors both spiritually and emotionally", and one from The Progressive Aspect, where Phil Lively praises a "meticulously presented" album that's "sublime by any definition of the word".

And, while it's not strictly a review, Birthday Cake For Breakfast recently sat down with Trojan Horse to discuss some of the musical influences behind Fukushima Surfer Boys. That one's available right now and fully streamable on Bandcamp, and there are still some copies left of the cassette version, too!

The Trunk 22/10/2017: The Making of Unlike Here

"Syncage, well... they are an interesting band."

So says Mike 3rd, the producer of Italian progressive fusion band Syncage's first full-length album Unlike Here. We released this album earlier this year, and it generated quite the buzz from review sites like Progradar and The Progressive Aspect. It's a concept album about two young men escaping a strange dystopian city-state, and it's one of my personal favourite BEM releases of the year. (And no, I'm not just saying that because of the editing work I did on the sleeve notes.)

Earlier this week, Syncage released a documentary on YouTube that takes a closer look at the production of Unlike Here, from the initial concept to recording, production, and the live shows that followed. The band and producer offer their insights on Syncage's writing process, what makes their sound special, and how they adapted a rich, diverse album to an equally rich and diverse live experience. The background music is all taken from the album, too, so it's ideal if you're looking for a taste of the music.

Syncage really are a joy to work with. They're eager, passionate people, and we think that comes through especially well in these interviews. So, rather than ramble on much longer about the video, we're just going to show it to you. It weighs in at about half an hour, and, if you enjoyed Unlike Here or you'd like an insight into what it's like actually making the music we release, it's well worth a watch. (Fair warning, the audio is all in Italian, as you'd expect, but English subtitles are available and switched on by default.)

Unlike Here is still available from the BEM webstore here.

Status Update

The Divine Abstract is less than two weeks away! It's still available for preorder here.

It just so happens that today marks a year and a day since the release of Sphelm's These Roots Know No Boundaries. It's a fab album and still sees regular play here at Elliott Towers, so why not give it a look?

And speaking of Elephant Towers, the Grand Elephant has been reorganizing his CD collection this weekend...

Not pictured: the many, many cups of tea it took to reach this point.

Review Roundup

Two new reviews arrived this week: one from The Progressive Aspect of the new hotness, Fukushima Surfer Boys, and one from Record Collector magazine of something a little further back, Schnauser's "hauntological slice of life" Irritant. Both reviews are pretty complimentary, and both albums are well worth your time!

The Trunk 15/10/2017: The Life of a PR Gremlin

Who is Bad Elephant Music?

Well, if you're mostly familiar with us through Facebook, you could be forgiven for thinking that the mind behind Bad Elephant Music is a man named Huw Elliott. Hell, you may well have found these very words through a post made under his name.

You'd be wrong, of course. David, Martin, Stefan and James are the white-hot core of the label. I'm just the digital face.

The face, and the ill-advised apron-clad power pose.

Not pictured: regret.

But today, dear reader, I'm giving you a look behind the curtain. You're finally going to find out what it's like being Bad Elephant Music's number one (out of one) Public Relations Gremlin.

If it's a weekday, I'll be roused by the incessant trill of my phone alarm. It's earlier than I'd like, and sometimes I'm tempted to stay in bed out of spite, but David has assured me that, if I don't get up in good time, he can hack my phone and play We Can't Dance at foghorn-level volume. Nobody deserves that, not even my terrible morning self.

I'm studying for something called a "degree" at the moment - I'm still not 100% on the specifics, but I am reliably assured that it'll significantly improve my future ability to buy Magic: the Gathering cards, so I persist. I'm usually in Central London by early afternoon, and I'll spend a couple of hours talking about history, or war, or the history of war.

It's not until I get home that the real fun begins.

Nuts and Bolts

Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday are scheduling nights, time to queue up a post for the following morning. News, discussion points, pretty much anything goes as long as it's at least vaguely label-related - and it can be pretty bloody vague. I got away with posting a photo of an elephant's trunk with the caption "coming soon" once, so I'm still pushing the limits.

Tuesday is the hard one, though, because that's when I have to choose the Wednesday track of the week. If something is new or resurgent or otherwise relevant, that gets top billing, but it can be surprisingly difficult to pick something if there's no obvious choice. I have legitimately just rolled a die before.

Monday, Wednesday and Friday are sharing days. I used to have a consistent timeframe for when I shared out the morning's post to all the various discussion groups, but student life has proven far too mercurial and weird to let that happen. I have a list of groups that get everything, and I'm currently working on finding more places to share more selectively for music that might appeal to narrower crowds. Same deal with Reddit: finding the right communities has proven the toughest hurdle.

Saturday is a special night, because that's when I usually write The Trunk. I tend to write the whole thing in one sitting - it works for essays and it works here too - and then give the whole thing a spellcheck before blasting it out haphazardly into the intertubes. Sometimes I have a topic suggested, but more often than not I have free rein to write about basically whatever I please. Even myself!

Ups and Downs

I'll be honest, I find some of our bands a little more challenging to listen to than others. I can respect the musicianship in almost every case, but I'll admit to being a child of my time when it comes to musical preferences. My tastes lean fast and heavy, and it can be difficult for me to wrap my head around the slower, mellower stuff, though there are plenty of exceptions.

But there are perks. BEM puts out a lot of music I genuinely enjoy - my favourite act of ours is The Fierce And The Dead, who I was lucky enough to see live recently, and I'm also fond of The Rube Goldberg Machine and Konchordat, to name just a couple. And I get a copy of each and every one on the house!

On a more practical note, the job's done wonders for my work ethic. I'm not sure what I'm going to be doing with my life once I'm out of uni, but getting into the habit of writing for an audience on a regular basis has been very good for me, both my writing skills and my ability to work to some kind of consistent structure.

So I'd say I do enjoy gremlinhood, on balance. Hopefully I get to keep being a gremlin for a while yet.

Status Update

Fukushima Surfer Boys is finally out, and The Divine Abstract is ticking down steadily towards its November 3rd release. Get yer preorders in now!

David and Martin had a great time at Summer's End last weekend - David, especially, has been playing a lot of the bands he saw there around the house. This weekend is looking substantially quieter at Elephant Towers, though.

Review Roundup

Just a couple of reviews of the new hotness that is Fukushima Surfer Boys this week. "Trojan Horse reinvent prog, again," says Joe Banks of PROG, and, while that's a bold claim, we do see where he's coming from. Meanwhile, Ben Forrester, from Birthday Cake For Breakfast, says in his review that the boys are "ready to fry our brains out" and "as eclectic and eccentric as we've come to expect for them". Top stuff!

See you next week for more Trunk - until then, do not adjust your sets.

The Trunk 8/10/2017: From the Vaults - Pandora

Welcome back to From the Vaults, the semi-regular feature where we dive back into the BEM archives to revisit some of our older releases. Last time, we jumped back a year to immerse ourselves in some of our Liquid of Choice. This time, we're going a little further back, two and a half years to 2015, and to an album by the name of Pandora.

Caution: not a real circuit board!

"Progressive fusion" group We Are Kin hail from Manchester, and, though they're now a quartet, the core lineup of Pandora-era We Are Kin was originally just a duo - drummer Gary Boast, and multi-instrumentalist (and current BEM team member) Daniel Zambas. It's worth mentioning that this is technically a re-recording. The original version of the album was released as a download in late 2014, and David Elephant liked what he heard so much that he and Dan concocted a scheme to record a new version with bassist Dave Hopkinson, singer Lauren Smith, and guitarist Adam McCann. Thus was born the version you can find on Bandcamp today.

Pandora was We Are Kin's first full-length album, and it set a strong tone for their work: a firm, surprisingly deep conceptual base, a coherent, original sound that wove its pieces together expertly and near-effortlessly, and a set of smooth, inexorable songs that neither rush nor drag. Pacing in music is deceptively important, and few people get it quite as right as these guys.

From the soaring, wistful 'Tides of Midnight' to the powerfully disjointed 'Weight of the World' to Hannah Cotterill's beautiful vocals on 'Soul', Pandora displays an impressive range as well as quality songwriting, and most tracks stand just as well alone as they do as part of the wider album. My personal favourite piece on Pandora, though, is 'The Speech', a stripped-down piano line supporting a superb spoken-word performance by poet Alex Dunedin, who also wrote the lyrics for much of the album. It gets... different towards the end.

Seriously, just give this one a listen and you'll see what I mean.


It'd be remiss to talk about We Are Kin without mentioning their live shows. Anyone who caught the Evening of BEM in Manchester earlier this year will testify that We Are Kin put on a magnificent live show. While I've yet to watch them in concert myself, the live footage I've seen shows a tight, well-realised performance with just the right amount of verve.

Reviews of Pandora were consistently pretty damn good. The Progressive Aspect's Phil Lively called it "a mature and well realised album", and our friends in Europe seemed to like it too - in Germany, BetreutesProggen and Babyblaue both gave it generally positive reviews. (More on what they actually say when I can get hold of Stefan. My German's still a little rusty.) Their second album, ... and I know..., was similarly well-received (and might well be worth its own From the Vaults episode someday!)

If this tickles your fancy and you'd like your very own copy of Pandora, we've still got plenty of copies over at the webstore, now at the reduced price of just £5 for a digital copy! Think of it as a kind of... um... late-bird discount. Sure. Let's go with that.

Status Update

Fukushima Surfer Boys continues to be a thing that is going to happen. It's not time to turn off those hype jets yet - and preorders are still open!

In case you missed it, there was a brand new Lab 558 very recently, featuring the exclusive first play of a new track from Charlie Cawood's soon-to-be-released solo album! If you've not heard it yet, give it a listen. If you have, give it another listen. Can't hurt.

It's Summer's End this weekend, so David and Martin are both living it up in questionably sunny Chepstow, leaving Huw in charge of the operation.

What could possibly go wrong?

Pictured: BEM HQ.

Catch you all next week, if there's still a BEM left to report from!

The Trunk 1/10/2017: Progtoberfest

Ah, October! The days are getting shorter, the winds colder, and, most importantly, it's almost time to get spooky. I'm not talking about Halloween, you understand, but about the spookily good lineup you can expect to see at...

Wooooo!

Progtoberfest 2 is the brainchild of Mike Morton, frontman of symphonic prog trio The Gift, one of BEM's first ever signings. The man himself describes it as showcasing "the best of contemporary UK progressive rock", and it will feature five bands across ten hours for the frankly excellent price of £10 (if you book in advance). Performing alongside fiery young heavy prog trio Habu and hard-to-Google neo-prog outfit IT, three of these bands - The Gift themselves, The Far Meadow, and The Rube Goldberg Machine - are BEM acts. But, if you've only joined us recently, you may not be familiar with their work.

Let's fix that.

The Rube Goldberg Machine

The Rube Goldberg Machine joined BEM to release their debut album Fragile Times, which arrived in April 2016. They describe themselves as a "forward-thinking prog rock band", and that sounds about right to us! Distinguished by soft yet sharply defined instrumentation and surprisingly incisive lyrics, this is deep, reflective music that manages to be very, very catchy too - a difficult combination to pull off if ever there was one.

For what it's worth, TRGM is one of my favourite BEM acts. I was lucky enough to catch their first ever live performance as a band at the second Evening of Bad Elephant Music earlier this year, and I was very impressed by the tightness and energy of their performance. We're looking forward to seeing them in action again!

The Far Meadow

Hailing from BEM's native London, The Far Meadow are a five-piece symphonic prog group with an impressive mutilayered style that draws equally on metal and jazz for inspiration. Perhaps most strongly identified with the striking vocal performance of Marguerite Alexandrou, they offer a rich vein of distinctive sounds. They joined BEM for their sophomore album Given The Impossible, featured here, which released towards the tail end of last year.

As well as their appearance at this year's Evening of BEM, The Far Meadow were at the first Progtoberfest back in 2015, and David Elephant assures us that their live excellence is undiminished!

The Gift

The Gift, under the leadership of Mike Morton, are the hosts and headliners of Progtoberfest 2. They were one of BEM's earliest acts, releasing their second album Land of Shadows with us in April 2014 and their third, Why the Sea is Salt, last October - exactly a year and a day before the gig, in fact, though Mike has yet to confirm whether or not this is significant. Or deliberate. True to their prog roots, The Gift are all about long songs and esoteric arrangements, assembled in some truly enchanting ways.

If you follow prog in the UK even a little bit, you may well have caught The Gift at least once - they're frequent, enthusiastic live performers and have been sighted all over the country, and even further afield in Norway and the Netherlands. They'll have the home ground advantage for this one, though, so prepare yourselves for The Gift at their very best.

I want in!

If any of these bands catch your eye and you can make it to London on Sunday 29th, advance tickets for Progtoberfest 2 are available HERE! Tickets will also be available on the door for the slightly higher price of £12.

Status Update

It's a quiet week for us here at Elephant Towers. We're counting down the days until Fukushima Surfer Boys is unleashed on the world - less than two weeks to go! Other than that, it's been our usual mix of plotting, scheming, conspiring, and other nefarious-sounding things. We're not at liberty to disclose any more than that.

Review Roundup

Hot off the presses, Whitewater's Universal Medium got an impressive writeup from Emma Roebuck at Progradar, who praises a "measured and careful" approach to composition and an ambient album with a bit more to it than most. And, though you won't get to hear Fukushima Surfer Boys for a while yet, Gary Morley already has, and he thinks it's well worth your time!

Meanwhile, Record Collector Magazine dives a little further back with Alex Neilson's four-star review of Big Hogg's Gargoyles. "Not remotely hammy" indeed, Alex!

The Trunk 24/9/2017: 10 BEM Myths Debunked

Distinguished readers of The Trunk, it has come to our attention that certain aspersions have been cast in recent weeks about our beloved record label. We were hoping that such baseless hearsay would die down on its own after a while, but rumours continue to proliferate, and it's about time we set the record straight. So, this week, we're going to address some of the speculation surrounding Bad Elephant Music, and just how much of it is true.

David Elephant, CEO, is not a real elephant.

FALSE. David Elephant is 100% elephant, and DNA tests by multiple trusted loxodontologists have verified this. We can, however, understand where the confusion originates, because Mr Elephant is an Asian elephant (Elephas maximus) as opposed to the more common, and arguably more iconic, African bush elephant (Loxodonta africana). Thus, he is smaller and hairier than the traditional image of an elephant, with smaller ears, and only 19 or 20 pairs of ears compared to an African elephant's 21; however, he has a more dexterous trunk that can perform far more complex tasks.

Left: an Asian elephant in the wild in Bandipur National Park, India. Right: David Elephant, CEO.

The name "Bad Elephant Music" has secret occult symbolism.

FALSE. Well, as far as we know. There may well be some secret society somewhere for which "Bad Elephant Music" resonates with unfathomable amounts of eldritch power, but it's probably not us.

BEM is soon to announce that it has signed a newly-reunited Gentle Giant.

FALSE. We keep pitching them the idea, but Gary Green's stopped returning our calls.

BEM has no PR department, and public relations are handled by an experimental supercomputer.

MOSTLY FALSE. PR reps Huw Elliott and James R. Turner are definitely real people (last time we checked), and they handle BEM's public relations themselves, without the aid of supercomputers. A pilot scheme to replace Huw with a Markov chain bot went awry when the bot gained access to his hard drive and started posting blurry photographs of Magic: the Gathering cards instead of news, featured tracks, and other label-related content. We suppressed the incident as best we could, but we are unlikely to experiment with public relations AI again for the foreseeable future.

David Elephant, CEO, committed acts of physical violence against Tom Slatter at the 2016 Prog Awards.

FALSE. Mr Slatter's reports that David Elephant threw "knives, plates, [and] the smaller members of Big Big Train" at him in a fit of violence at the 2016 Prog Awards ceremony, fatally wounding a parallel universe version of Mr Slatter in the process, are heavily exaggerated. However, Mr Elephant wishes it to be known that, if he wished to do so, throwing the larger members of Big Big Train too would be perfectly possible, what with his elephantine strength.

BEM is soon to announce that it has signed Steven Wilson.

NOT A CHANCE. Steven Wilson's success is as dust on the wind compared to the plans we have for the next twelve months. Quite a lot of dust, granted, and a rather strong wind.

The recently announced third album from Trojan Horse, Fukushima Surfer Boys, now available to preorder from the BEM webstore, is intentionally being released three years to the day (because it's their third album) after World Turned Upside Down.

TRUE, ACTUALLY. We literally said as much in last week's post. Keep up.

Acclaimed comic book artist Mark Buckingham is behind the cover art for several BEM releases.

ALSO TRUE! Recent examples include Valdez's This and The Fierce And The Dead's Field Recordings, as well as BEM's 2016 Christmas sampler. Beeyootiful!

BEM is soon to announce that it has signed popular grime artist Stormzy.

FALSE. We do at least know where this one comes from - David Elephant did once see Stormzy for a moment while out for dinner in central London. You're not going to see him on Bad Elephant Music anytime soon, though.

BEM is a shell company used as a front for an international panda-smuggling ring.

FALSE. David Elephant, CEO, is vocal in his disdain for pandas. This would just be stupid.

Status Update

Universal Medium is out, Fukushima Surfer Boys is up for preorder, and Charlie Cawood, who you may know from My Tricksy Spirit, is signed to the label ahead of a November solo album release.

The Fierce And The Dead are playing live tonight alongside Monkey3 and Lo Chief. At the time of writing, there are still a few tickets left, so, if you're at a loose end tonight, come and catch three great bands for the price of one!

We're leaving our next Review Roundup until next week when word's out about Universal Medium. Until then, may your time signatures be irregular!

The Trunk 17/9/2017: Trojan Horse, An Equospective

"We listened to a load of King Crimson, Jethro Tull and Yes LPs, and dragged the 70s kicking and screaming through the subsequent decades, whilst cutting away all the 20 minute keyboard solos and ditching the capes." Thus begins the biography on Trojan Horse's Bandcamp page. With new album Fukushima Surfer Boys on the horizon and available to preorder now, it's a good time to look back on sevenish years of "Prog Nouveau" with those wacky horsey boys.

Trojan Horse and Trojan Horse Redux

A rare candid shot of the conference room at Elephant Towers.

Trojan Horse's self-titled debut album exploded into existence in November 2010, and then a second time a year later with redone mastering (and viola). Right from the start, the genesis of the "Nouveau Prog" moniker is clearly audible, with rich instrumental layering, unconventional song structures, and, yes, a thirteen-minute mini-epic in 'Bicycle Jam'.

Oh, and if you'd like to take a look back at this particular chapter of Trojan Horse's career, the whole thing's available digitally for whatever price you like. Including "absolutely nothing". You won't find a better deal than that anywhere, folks.

The Fire EP

I'm not sure how to tell you this, lads, but you're meant to face towards the audience.

The Fire EP was released in 2012 and contains one new track, some remixes thereof, an acoustic version of 'Disciplining the Reserve Army' from the first album, and a surprising (and surprisingly good!) cover of Neil Young's 'Ohio'. It's certainly a mixed bag in genre terms, but the quality holds all the way through, with one listener noting that it "really gels on repeated listening".

And as if the first album wasn't good enough, Fire is also now pay-what-you-want.

Paper Bells

"You know, this was a cute idea at the time, but none of these bells are actually fit for purpose..."

Early 2014 saw Trojan Horse's first single, Paper Bells, both an impressive, impactful track in its own right and an appetizer for what was to come. This song marked a tighter, more cohesive direction for Trojan Horse's music, bringing together a vast web of influences into something stabler and more refined - a trend that would continue later in the year under the grey, leathery wings of a certain independent record label...

World Turned Upside Down

This is the way the world ends: not with a bang, but with a stegosaurus-shaped hole in the sky.

World Turned Upside Down was finally released by Bad Elephant Music on October 13th, 2014. (Remember that date!) As well as including 'Paper Bells' and a new version of 'Fire', it brought together around three years' worth of songwriting into a deluxe package of punchy riffs, cutting vocals, and a generally harder edge than their previous work. It was well-reviewed, garnering praise from Silent Radio, Already Heard, and PROG Magazine.

World Turned Upside Down is still available from the BEM webstore at the newly reduced price of £5 for the CD or £2 for the digital version.

After the release of World Turned Upside Down, Trojan Horse's Nick Duke told CEO David Elliott that he'd "try to make sure it doesn't take us three years to get the next one out".

Ahem.

Fukushima Surfer Boys

I'm not sure what this is, but I think wearing it will protect me from malicious radio waves.

Trojan Horse's third full-length album, Fukushima Surfer Boys, will be released on October 13th of this year, slightly less than a month away. Yes, that's three years to the day after the release of World Turned Upside Down. Oh, those Trojan Horse lads. What rogues they are. What scoundrels.

If you like what you've heard so far, you may well be inclined to preorder the album, and you can do so here.

Join us again in 2023 for Trojan Horse's next album, which will probably have an even more confusing name than Fukushima Surfer Boys!

Status Update

Aside from Fukushima Surfer Boys going up for preorder two days ago, we're less than a week away now from the release of Whitewater's Universal Medium. Preorders for that are still open, too so grab 'em while they're hot!

This week has mostly seen New James (we're calling him that to distinguish him from BEM co-founder James Allen, who we'll now refer to as Previous James) getting settled into his new role for the label. Full disclosure, by the way: while James (New James) will be continuing his reviewing work, he'll no longer cover BEM releases due to potential conflicts of interest. He did, however, get a couple more in just before the whistle, which you can find in the...

Review Roundup

(Did you see that segue? Where's my damn Pulitzer?)

James' last couple of BEM reviews for Rock Society covered The Fierce and the Dead's Field Recordings and Schnauser's Irritant. You can read these in full dead-tree format in the magazine, but, now with 30% more camera tilt, here they are in all their embedded glory!

And as if that wasn't enough for you, James also covered Sky Architect's Nomad, which we're handling in the UK through a collaboration with FREIA Music. You can grab a copy right here!