Shineback
Simon's first solo project with BEM was Shineback, which the man himself describes as "intelligent dance music" - the infectious beats and synthy instrumentation of EDM without compromising the ability to tell a story or play with compositions. Rise Up Forgotten, Return Destroyed was a hard-hitting concept piece that also had some prime examples of what I believe the kids these days are calling "bangers", and it was exactly the right note to start BEM's publishing career on.
About this time last year, after a while without any Shineback, Godfrey stirred up our appetites once more with Minotaur, an EP (a pretty long EP at well over 20 minutes) that brought back the sound afresh in a few more standalone pieces, "paving the way", as he puts it, for Dial. This second full-length album is something we're very, very excited to share with you - it's a very different album from Rise Up Forgotten, both musically and thematically, but we're confident that established fans will still find a lot to like here.
Valdez
What's this? Okay, no, we've run that joke into the ground already.
Valdez are a great pop-rock band made of four great musicians from great bands who continue to insist that they are not a supergroup. When you hear the music, though, the distinction is academic. It's just the one album, but This is a fantastic example of what can happen when formidable musical minds cooperate. It sees Simon's deft songwriting and ear for a melody drawing on the talents of Echolyn's Tom Hyatt, Cold Blue Electric's Joe Cardillo, and Stone Jack Baller's Scott Miller, and the four of them bring the songs to life with practiced verve. This is well worth a listen whatever your usual tastes - you might just find a few of the tunes worming their way into your brain and staying.
As Himself
We have to confess, Motherland gave us whiplash. After the walls of electronica Rise Up Forgotten had given us, a whole album of almost entirely acoustic work was a bit of a shock to the system, but it was far from an unpleasant experience. With re-recordings of a few Godfrey standards, some never-before-heard material, and a tight twelve-week recording time that gives the album a very intimate feel, it's probably Simon's most personal work, and it's held up very well indeed.
A lot of creative types end up with a lot of fragments that don't fit comfortably into a larger whole. I write, for instance, and if I had a penny for every time I ended up with a passage I really like that doesn't have a story to slide into, I'd have quite a few pennies. For those, Simon has the Black Bag Archive (volumes 1, 2, and 3), collecting songs that range from as far back as the late 90s to as recent as just a couple of years ago. These compilation albums may be mixed bags in terms of style and content, but the quality is consistently worth your time.
Status Update
Arms Open Wide is out now on CD and digital download! Kershaw's latest is a brooding collection of darkly relevant songs, well worth a listen if you feel like a dose of foreboding and fear.
Meanwhile, if you've been keeping an eye on the Dial page, you might have noticed that the tracklist has been released! Just names for now, but hopefully enough to get the mind spinning with possibilities...
Review Roundup
Many thanks to John Simms for this lovely review of Arms Open Wide! He's damn right when he says it's "not an album to put on to cheer yourself up", but he likes it nonetheless as an expression of some of the darker roles music can play.
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