28/10/2018: Office Takeover

The wind whistles outside, inaudible behind double-glazed windows. I kick back and gaze at the screen and two million little lights shine back at me. This weekend, Elephant Towers is all but deserted, with the Grand Elephant off on a trip. The only sounds are the ticking of the orange clocks, my jovial, sanguine hums as I wash the dishes, and the cat's protestations that this isn't enough food, human.

... I wish.

All is not well. Yesterday, my computer picked up a nasty Trojan horse that turned my screen into a delightful but useless Rube Goldberg machine of error messages. I'm having to reformat my hard drive to get the damn thing working again. Worse, it was mid-backup, and the syncage wasn't quite finished, so some of my data may well be corrupted even there. The brackish white water of the pond outside is attracting some unseasonably late mosquitoes, and the quiet keeps being interrupted by next door's dog, Valdez - a schnauser, but you wouldn't think it from the way he squeals like a great big hog - and by some guy revving his car out front, a custom job with a ton o' chrome.

I need to get out of the house. Not like my PC's moving any time soon. And, what the hell, I could use a paradigm shift.

I put down the Argos catalogue I've been idly leafing through and step out for a walk. It's brisk outside - temperatures in London aren't forecast to hit single figures - but I've long been blessed with the gift of cold resistance,

I miss the Grand Elephant, in whatever far meadow he's off to. I know he'll be back soon, but we are kin, and the household hasn't been the same without him. As his representative online, though, I have to hold the line in the meantime, stand under the banner and make sure I'm one of the fierce as opposed to the dead.

It's a dark and dangerous vigil at times. Dark powers wait at the edges of my perception, ready to walk, crawl, or even flow into our reality at the slightest hint of weakness (or failure to release interesting new music with creativity and heart). They whisper in their mother tongue, asking me why I'm being so bloody weird this week, what's happened to the completely serious Trunk that probably existed at some point.

I look back at them and it's like staring into a fractal mirror.

"Because," I say, "I felt like trying to squeeze as many band names as possible into 500 words of prose, and there's nothing you can do to stop me."

They hiss and contort in shock and fear. "How many did you get?"

"23, I think." I smirk. "And I wonder if you can spot them all."

"You've a tricksy spirit", snarls their leader, a coiling mass with a face made of rocks: nine stones, close and jostling for position.

"Maybe so," I retort, "but that's 25 now."

Status Update

See above.

Review Roundup

Jerry Lucky likes Now We Have Power! In fact, he "urge(s) you to check them (Sanguine Hum) out."

Two more strong reviews en Francais this week: one for Now We Have Power and one for Old Town.

And yet more love for Now We Have Power comes from The Prog Report: "the type of progressive, thoughtful, inventive music that I think the world needs right now."

Last but by no means least, the hardworking folks at DPRP have given Arms Open Wide an 8.5!

14/10/2018: War and Music

We opened preorders recently for The Great War, the sophomore album from industrial rock artist Saul Blease. To be released on November 11th, the centenary of the end of the titular war, it's an expansion on a previous project to produce one piece of music for each year of the war, with new material to form a full-length album.

World War I, arguably the first modern war and certainly one of the ugliest, claimed around forty million lives in a protracted, bloody stalemate, collapsed four empires, and laid the groundwork for an even larger, deadlier conflict two decades down the line. Yet it has served as the basis for a huge amount of popular media, including a surprising amount of music. From Sting to Metallica to Coldplay (no, really), the Great War has been the subject of songs in almost every conceivable genre and style.

But all this raises a pretty big question: how do you turn one of the most horrific episodes in human history, a four-year slogfest with no real long-term winners, into something people want to listen to?

I think about this question a lot. As the centenary of the war draws closer, there's been a notable uptick in media based on it, and, while I like to think you can make good media out of anything with enough creativity, World War I in particular strikes me as challenging. As I'm sure many of you did, I read All Quiet on the Western Front for school, and, while it was a powerful book, I wouldn't exactly call it entertaining. More recently, the game Battlefield 1, the confusingly-titled fifteenth installment in the series, dodged the question by focusing on lesser-known theatres of war, staying away from the trenches. Is it actually possible to turn the Western Front into something you can enjoy?

Yes. Absolutely.

The Great War uses its medium to its advantage. Industrial rock is the perfect genre for one of the first truly industrial conflicts: World War I involved mass production and mechanization on scales never seen before, and even the conflict itself was often described in mechanical terms, a vast, uncaring machine that swallowed up millions in the service of its purpose. So music as huge as this - deliberate and monolithic and best played very loud - really couldn't be more appropriate for the subject matter.

It doesn't neglect the human element, though. One of the main narratives surrounding the war is that of brave, heroic soldiers caught in the machinations of generals and politicians. On this album, the vocals play the part of these "lions led by donkeys", and Blease doubles down by keeping them almost trapped in the mix. They're often distorted or drowned out by the titanic drums and guitars, conveying the sense of, as the song titles would have it, 'Valiant Hearts' swallowed up by the 'War Machine'.

At points, though, individual moments of humanity take the spotlight. 'Angel of Mons' refers to the mythical appearance of angelic forces appearing to fight alongside the British during the Battle of Mons, but it's the penultimate track, 'Hellfighter', that really shines for me. The American 369th Infantry Regiment, popularly known as the Harlem Hellfighters, saw more action and suffered more casualties than any other American regiment, and were heavily decorated for bravery and tenacity in battle, and the song that honours them is just as gritty and desperate as it should be. As a primarily African-American unit, the Hellfighters had to deal with discrimination by their command staff as well as enemy action, and their valor even in the face of this adversity deserves an arrangement as powerful as this one.

I think it'd be fair to say that The Great War proves, to me, that World War I can inspire more emotions than existential despair (though there's nothing wrong with that once in a while). This album has it all: awe, fear, and even a little bit of hope.

Give it a try.

Status Update

Now We Have Power is out now on CD and as a digital download. Much praised by critics and fans alike, we highly recommend checking it out if you haven't already.

Elsewhere in our roster, Orange Clocks have released a live album, of all things: Tope's Sphere 2 in its entirety, as performed at Sonic Rock Solstice, plus a new song, all for the bargain price of whatever you like. Check it out here!

Review Roundup

Bit of a quickfire one this week, as we've had a lot of reviews recently:

Amplified Magazine reviews Close to Vapour and A Map in Fragments.

Classic Rock Society reviews Old Town (two parts there).

Popgruppen reviews Now We Have Power.

New Boots reviews Orange Clocks at Sonic Rock Solstice.

And Jacques Becker reviews Unidentified Dying Objects, which I believe is French for Unidentified Dying Objects.

30/9/2018: BEM In Charts

The Young Elephant, author of this fine column, started a new day job this week in his civilian identity, working with staggering amounts of data. On that note, we've prepared rather a special Trunk this week - BEM in charts!

We've come quite a way since 2013 and its two BEM releases! The figure for 2018 is, of course, a touch low because the year's not over yet.

There's a lot of variance in the length of a BEM release, from EPs (that's Minotaur down at the low end there) to epic double albums (Emmettronica messing with the scale at a hefty 29 tracks). This isn't the whole story of course - most of the tracks on these records aren't your typical three-minute pop songs!

BEM's BQ (Beard Quotient) is actually pretty low at the moment. These figures are, of course, subject to change, so you should not use this chart for serious research purposes. (And that's the only reason why.)

We run a very tight ship here at BEM, with zero tolerance for unapproved slacking. The operative word there being "unapproved".

I didn't want to include this one. Bem made me do it.

Status Update

Now We Have Power is less than two weeks away! Be sure to preorder to avoid disappointment (and to get hold of the preview track 'Speak To Us' right away).

Review Roundup

PROG Magazine had two lovely reviews for us this month - one of Now We Have Power, and one of Dial. As always, we'd encourage you to pick up the full issue if you can, but these reviews are worth a read regardless.

We close out today, though, with a very prestigious review indeed - a rare perfect ten from The Prog Mind, awarded (rightfully, of course) to Dial. "The only real danger with technology is that often, the music loses some of its soul. This is not the case with Dial." Damn right.

The Trunk 26/8/2018: One Year of Trunkage

It has been three hundred and sixty-four days since the publication of the first ever edition of The Trunk. I think that's close enough to a year to call this the blog's first birthday.

Tempus fugit.

Pictured: me, feeling old.

When I first pitched The Trunk, it was little more than a pet project, something to keep me writing and hold me to some kind of schedule during the stressful final year of my degree. Since then, BEM has released fifteen new albums, I've graduated, and we've had some time to experiment a little with the format of this thing. While I'm overall pretty happy with where it's ended up, I do think The Trunk can be better. So this week, instead of looking back as we often do, I'd like to look forward and talk about some of what we're hoping to bring to this blog in the weeks and months to come.

More Interviews

Thus far, The Trunk has interviewed Matt Stevens of The Fierce and the Dead, Louis Smith of Mothertongue, David Elephant, CEO, and, um, itself. These pieces are, unsurprisingly, some of our most-viewed content - they're exclusive insights into the creative process, and they're always fun to conduct and publish. They're also the sort of thing we really couldn't publish on the Facebook page alone, so they represent The Trunk at its best and most useful.

I think it's only reasonable that we do a few more. Now that I'm out of university, I have a lot more free time and brainspace to dedicate to preparing questions and planning interviews in advance, which was always the main obstruction to getting them done. We've got some new material in the works which is definitely worth talking about, but nobody can do that better than the artists behind it.

More Participation

The recent Talking Point posts have been unexpectedly successful - we knew we'd get a few responses, but we've generated some genuinely interesting discussions, and it's great to see our audience pitching in and having their say. So we'd like to do a little bit more of that.

We're still experimenting with what works and what doesn't for this - our survey didn't get many responses at all, but opening a more freeform discussion went a lot better, so that's what we're going to stick to going forward. Talking Points will continue as a semi-regular feature, probably a little less regular than From the Vaults (which will keep going strong until we run out of albums to cover, which, at the rate we're putting them out, seems unlikely to happen anytime soon), but we're also looking into a few new kinds of content. Stay tuned!

A New Look

The Trunk doesn't look half bad at the moment, but I still can't help but feel that something's missing. We don't have the logo, we don't really have any graphics at all, and the whole thing just feels a little bit spartan. With that in mind, we're hoping to jazz it up a bit soon. I have a redesign planned which will keep the fairly minimal aesthetic we have at the moment but hopefully bring a splash of Bad Elephant verve too, and I'm going to stop talking now before I spontaneously turn into a wedding planner or something.

I can also tell you that I'm doing a little bit of work on the Facebook page too... keep an eye out for that when it arrives.

And... that's about it. Here's to another year of Trunk action!

Status Update

Dial, now fully tracklisted and including a preview track in 'Consider Her Ways', will be released in just under three weeks. Get yer preorders in now.

The Trunk 19/8/2018: Godfrey at BEM, A Retrospective

Few artists can claim as broad a musical range as Simon Godfrey. Even just in his time at BEM, he's been a very busy boy, and the tunes he's given us vary wildly in genre and tone. Dial is out there on the horizon, less than a month away now, so let's take the opportunity to gaze back into the archive and take a look at Simon's many ventures with the label...

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.

Next week on The Trunk, I think we're going to have to do something special to celebrate our first birthday... has it really been that long?

The Trunk 12/8/2018: Genrefluid

David Elephant, CEO, is adamant, as we mentioned a few weeks ago, that Bad Elephant Music isn't a prog label. We are, as he puts it, "genrefluid". This week, we'd like to dig into that term a little - what exactly does that mean, and what are the implications for you, the audience, or the music industry, or, dare we say it, the world?

These are all real, serious questions!

The word "genrefluid" isn't a BEM creation - we shamelessly pilfered it from Knifeworld's Kavus Torabi, an exemplar of the term if ever there was one. To us, it has two distinct meanings, depending on whether you're talking about music or us as a label.

Firstly, it refers to music that eludes conventional genre classification, either by including elements from so many different styles and influences that the distinctions between them become meaningless or by being so unique as to be unrecognizable as part of any established category. We at BEM love this kind of music. In an era in which many genres have fallen into something of a stagnant period, breaking the mould completely is one of the best ways to stand out. Obviously, all music is at least a little derivative of something or other, but our kind of band is the kind that makes you think "there is nothing else out there quite like this".

This can make our music a pretty hard sell - back when I wrote BEM's press releases, I remember typing out a lot of lists of seemingly unrelated bands and feeling like I was only gesturing at the harmonious whole I was describing. That said, it can be a useful hook at times. You can't read "XTC meets Pugwash" and not be at least a little bit intrigued. (I'm talking about Valdez, by the way.)

When we use "genrefluid" to refer to ourselves, though, what we're talking about is almost the opposite. Rather than being so specific and unique that nothing else quite compares, we mean that we're a broad church, and will consider acts from almost all points on the musical spectrum. A lot of smaller labels develop a strong, focused brand for themselves, with artists that share a lot of stylistic features and that can be a very successful pursuit. But that's not us. We hope to cultivate an audience that's not wedded to any particular set of traits, and is thus willing to expand their musical horizons even when we release something that might not usually be in their wheelhouse.

Even just taking a look at our first few releases, there's intelligent dance music, instrumental math rock, symphonic prog, heavy psychedelia, and whatever the hell you call Tom Slatter. More recently, we've had spacey dub-pop, a piano-and-electronics solo suite, and even a spoken word album! So I think it's fair to say that we have a pretty broad stable. And we're proud of it.

So that's genrefluidity. Do we still fit the title? Are there any other bands you like that you'd call genrefluid? Let us know in the comments!

Status Update

This week, we finally revealed the packaging and album art for Dial, which is now just barely over a month away! You can check it out in all its glory here - and make sure to get your preorders in too.

Review Roundup

Mothertongue got some extended coverage in a Limelight spot about Where The Moonlight Snows in the latest edition of PROG - you can check it out here, and there's a link there to the album if you like what you're reading.

We also had some coverage from Poland this week, specifically a hopefully positive review of Mike Kershaw's Arms Open Wide. Thanks! We think.

The Trunk 29/7/2018: History of the Hum

Sanguine Hum. A band with seven years' experience under their belt, over a decade more if you count their previous ventures. We're absolutely delighted to have this critically acclaimed outfit on board with us for the release of their fourth full-length album, Now We Have Power. But just who are Sanguine Hum, and what makes them so very special as a band? Well, you've come to the right place for a recap!

Before the Hum

Before there was Sanguine Hum, there was the zingy ambient-progressive act Antique Seeking Nuns. Founded at the turn of the millennium by vocalist/guitarist Joff Winks and keyboardist Matt Baber, ASN marked the start of the Hum story, releasing several EPs and exploring new sounds throughout the noughties. Two of the duo's old contacts, bassist Brad Waissman and drummer Paul Mallyon, climbed on board not long after the first EP, Mild Profundities, and the quartet was in place.

This EP's called Double Egg, but I'm more concerned with a distinct shortage of beans.

This was all slightly complicated by the other band these people were involved with: the Joff Winks Band, a very different act playing very different, more singer-songwriterly music in sharp contrast to the experimental, composerly (that's a word now) edge of the Nuns material. Juggling these two dissonant styles, though, was difficult at the best of times; the excellent JWB album Songs for Days was an early sign of the kind of genre-blending progressiveness the quartet was capable of, but it proved a hard sell for both bands' fandoms.

And so, as the 2010s drew perilously close, the decision was made to bring the Nuns, the Winks, and "Nunbient", an ambient project by Winks and Baber, together as a new, unified entity that would combine influences from all of its predecessors into a new and exciting sound. And a new sound needed a new name. That name was, of course, Sanguine Hum.

Dives and Developments

Diving Bell was Sanguine Hum's first album as Sanguine Hum, and it catapulted them to a much wider audience. Initially self-released, Diving Bell was soon picked up and re-released by Esoteric Antenna to impressive reviews; from this moment, it was clear that going forward as the Hum would yield great rewards to come.

This busy transitional period also saw a personnel change. As Paul Mallyon departed to tend to other commitments, the band found themselves approaching a RoSFest booking with no drummer; fortunately, Andrew Booker (of No Man and Henry Fool) stepped in at the eleventh hour to cover both the gig and the upcoming new album, and he stayed on board.

I love this album cover, by the way. One of my favourites.

That new album was The Weight of the World, and it was the group's greatest success yet. Between a PROG Awards nomination, a spot among Stuart Maconie's top albums of 2013, and more great reviews, the appeal of the Sanguine Hum sound was now undeniable, and the band were clearly destined for more. And more was very definitely on its way.

Now We Have...

Sanguine Hum's next project had been conceived back in 2002 as an Antique Seeking Nuns project under the name of Buttered Cat, and over a decade of quiet tweaking and refinement finally came together in early 2015 as the double concept album Now We Have Light, "a future parable set in an entirely possible scenario". It proved to be their biggest hit yet in both critical and commercial terms, and saw their audience expanding and evolving with their sound - a great relief for a band that's never been shy to innovate and change their angle.

Pictured: the BEM cat, Sid, when lunch is five minutes late.

Early 2016 saw the band looking back almost a decade to the days before Hum were Hum, releasing the double compilation CD What We Ask Is Where We Begin, featuring the first ever CD release of the Joff Winks Band's Songs for Days and a smattering of other material from rare tracks to hitherto unreleased extra bits and remixes. Even now, though, in this moment of reflection, the cogs were turning in pursuit of the next big thing.

It had been clear almost since the inception of Now We Have Light that it was going to need a sequel. Now We Have Power was, again, partially composed and assembled, but putting it together for a release demanded some changes: Andrew Booker stepped aside and original drummer Paul Mallyon, who'd been an integral part of the early design of Now We Have Power, came back as a guest. And, of course, this album would have a new publisher. Enter a plucky independent record label by the name of Bad Elephant Music. You might have heard of them.

Now We Have Power will be released this coming October, and, while preorders aren't available yet, they will be soon. As always, keep a close eye on our social media to make sure you catch the news as soon as we let it slip!

Status Update

The doors to Arms Open Wide will open wide in about three weeks - preorder now to get it at the moment of release. Dial is a little further away, but our excitement remains; we can't wait to show you just a little more of Godfrey's next masterwork!

Review Roundup

Our thanks to Real Gone for this live review of The Fierce and the Dead, performing in a support slot alongside the majestic Hawkwind. We've long held that TFATD are best experienced live, and a quick read of this review should be evidence enough of that!

The Trunk 8/7/2018: 2018, Part Deux

Last week, we looked back. This week, we look ahead. Thus far, we've announced three more albums to be released before the end of 2018; there'll be more new music than that, rest assured, but in the meantime let's review what we know.

Unidentified Dying Objects

This one's close. So close we can taste it. In less than two weeks, Argos will unleash Unidentified Dying Objects on the world, and you've only heard a snippet of what the full album has to offer. Oh, and in case you haven't:

Don't just listen to the music, though - get a load of that guest list! Argos have enlisted some of progressive music's best and brightest, including Andy Tillison of The Tangent contributing his dazzling keyboards to the very track featured in this trailer. Unidentified Dying Objects is a none-more-prog continuation of Argos' bold, broad-church approach, with influences from across progressive history combining in a weighty, satisfying chunk of just plain good music. It also sees their permanent lineup expanding to five people, with the addition of keyboardist Thilo Brauss.

Unidentified Dying Objects releases on July 20th. Preorder here.

Dial

Announced last week, Dial is the next chapter in the Shineback saga. While we don't have preview tracks yet, we can offer you this rather good digital single, 'We Rescue', released in celebration of our fifth birthday:



After the critical and commercial success of Rise Up Forgotten, Return Destroyed, BEM's first outing in what's turned out to be a very prolific run, living up to the hype might seem daunting, but we can confirm that Godfrey has risen to the challenge, bringing back his signature rock-tinged "intelligent dance" style with some of the heavier elements seen on the Minotaur EP and an impressive laundry list of guests (we'll spare you the full list here, but you can find them all on the store page).

Dial releases on September 14th. Preorder here.

Now We Have Power

Matt Baber has already featured on the label with his Suite for Piano and Electronics, and now it seems the rest of the band want in too. Welcome aboard, Sanguine Hum, and, the rest of you, get ready for Now We Have Power! Again, there's no preview track yet, so enjoy this piece from Baber's solo album instead.



Sanguine Hum's previous album, the double CD Now We Have Light, began a "future parable", following a man named Don through a strange, surreal tapestry of songwriting and storytelling. Now We Have Power is set to continue this story with over an hour of new music, featuring guest performances from Mark Kesel, Kimara Sajn, and the band's former drummer Paul Mallyon.

Now We Have Power releases on October 12th. Preorders are forthcoming - and, in the meantime, you can catch a special acoustic performance from the guys at EppyFest later this month.

Review Roundup

Our thanks to Anil Prasad for this excellent writeup of Suite for Piano and Electronics, which you can still pick up here.

And to Stuart Maconie - yes, that one! - for featuring The Bob Lazar Story on this episode of Freak Zone! We're pretty close to the middle this time around, but we do recommend giving the whole thing a listen, as Stuart's tastes are fascinating and generally right on the ball. Baritonia is available to buy here.

The Trunk 1/7/2018: Five Years of BEM

Happy birthday to us, happy birthday to us...

Oh yes, today marks exactly five years since the release of Rise Up Forgotten, Return Destroyed, and, with it, the birth of Bad Elephant Music as an entity.

I don't think any of us, back in 2013, anticipated where this little project was going. If you'd told me back then that, in five years' time, we'd have this many releases in our catalogue and this many talented musicians on our roster, I'd have given you, at the very least, a cautious side-eye. Watching BEM develop, at first from the outside, then from the inside as a copywriter, and eventually across social media, was fascinating. It wasn't a meteoric rise to fame, more a progression of being quietly impressed every couple of months when we hit some milestone or signed some new artist or picked up a juicy nugget of press attention. But, looking back now with the benefit of being able to chart a complete course, all those milestones really do add up.

We released two albums in 2013: the aforementioned Rise Up Forgotten and Spooky Action. We're proud to have both Simon Godfrey and The Fierce & The Dead still with us, still producing fantastic music, from Simon's multifarious projects with Valdez and as himself to TFATD's The Euphoric, which has become something of a crossover breakthrough this year. 2017 saw fifteen major releases, and this year looks set to keep the same pace, with eight albums already out and several more in the pipeline. Again, this pace - more than one release every month - was unthinkable when we started this venture, but, as the BEMpire (ooh, I like that, I think I'll keep using it) has grown, so too has our capacity and our audience.

There was one thing, though, of which we were absolutely certain, even back in 2013. We knew that Simon Godfrey was not done with Shineback.

Dial will be released on 14 September, 2018. It's a new full-length album from Shineback, this time a full collaboration between Godfrey and long-time cooperator and enabler Robert Ramsay. It comes with a star-studded lineup of special guests, including BEM alumni Dec Burke (Audioplastik), Matt Stevens, Joe Cardillo (Valdez), and Daniel Zambas (We Are Kin), and many more listed in full on the album page. Yes, there's an album page, and yes, you can preorder from it right now.

You'll note that the page doesn't have a tracklist yet. But, if you think we're going to tease you like this and leave you without any new music, you are sorely mistaken. See, during the Dial sessions, Simon recorded an extra song specifically to celebrate BEM's fifth birthday. It's called 'We Rescue', and we'd like to share it with you here.

And, if that's whetted your appetite as much as it did ours, you can buy 'We Rescue' as a digital single here, naming your own price.

Happy birthday indeed, Bad Elephant Music. Here's to more independent sounds for independent souls.

Status Update

We've had a couple of releases in the past couple of weeks that are worth spotlighting: Exo-Oceans, sold in partnership with Andy Tillison's solo project Kalman Filter, and Old Town, an EP from Evenflow, a joint project by Stuart Stephens (Whitewater) and Mike Kershaw. Both these albums are available from the BEM webstore.

Unidentified Dying Objects is now less than three weeks away - to get it right on time and avoid disappointment (as well as getting the preview track 'The Hunter's Last Stand' immediately), preorder now.

Review Roundup

Rather than actual reviews, this week we're bringing you a couple of mid-year top lists that feature BEM artists. The Progressive Aspect's best of 2018 so far features Mothertongue and The Fierce & The Dead, while the latter got in at #29 on Louder's top 50 of the first half of 2018! Congratulations are in order to both bands.

The Trunk 10/6/2018: The Secret History of Bad Elephant Music

As you may be aware, because we can't seem to shut up about it, 2018 marks the fifth anniversary of the founding of Bad Elephant Music. The actual day is coming up very soon - that would be July 1st, the release date of Rise Up Forgotten, Return Destroyed, the first BEM record, back in 2013. So, as that very special day approaches, let's take a look at some pieces of BEM history the Grand Elephant probably doesn't want you to know about.

The Week of the Two Elephants

If you're a history buff like me, you may know of the Western Schism, the time in the late fourteenth and eary fifteenth centuries when two and then three people claimed the true papacy and denounced each other as heretics. Well, for a brief time in 2014, the very same thing happened to Bad Elephant Music.

It looked a little like this.

During a staff meeting at the local curry house, an argument broke out about the best Genesis album, and it soon spiralled out of control. Reigning CEO David Elephant (claiming Selling England By The Pound) drew battlelines against upstart [REDACTED] (who favoured Invisible Touch), who had claimed half of the young company's meagre assets for himself. As hours wore on into days, the situation looked set to escalate into all-out war, but an eleventh-hour intervention by David Elephant's wife, who said something along the lines of "oh, grow up already", put a stop to the chaos and reunited the label.

The Week of the Two Elephants is still commemorated every year by sliding an Invisible Touch CD into the stereo at Elephant Towers and immediately turning it off.

The Markov Chain Disaster of '16

In a previous article, we alluded to the pilot scheme undertaken back in 2016 to replace Bad Elephant's PR team with an experimental bot, Loxotron3000. As we mentioned, the incident was suppressed at the time to avoid inconvenient questions from the audience, but we can now reveal that the bot was not, in fact, posting blurry photographs of Magic: the Gathering cards.

It was sending vital state secrets to Portugal.

It looked a little like this.

To this day, we don't know how Loxotron3000 got hold of these state secrets, or why it was sending them to England's longest-running military ally rather than anyone who might stand to profit from them. All we know is that we received a knock on the door from MI5, who informed us that a track we'd featured from Emmett Elvin's album Assault on the Tyranny of Reason was laced with coded messages related to the Trident nuclear programme. Needless to say, Loxotron3000 was destroyed and its leaks were redacted with extreme prejudice, and we've tried to put the whole unpleasant incident behind us.

Bem

We bought a plush elephant last year. We named him Bem.

It looked a little like this.

It was meant to be a joke. Just a silly, innocuous little joke, a mascot more fitting than the horrifying spinning-headed monkey thing Mailchimp sent us.

Oh, how little we knew back then. Back when we still had hope.

Bem has usurped Bad Elephant Music. Bem owns our souls. Bem knows where our loved ones live. Bem's influence is inescapable, inexorable. Bem cannot be reasoned with, and Bem cannot be disobeyed. I can hear Bem calling me now. Bem's call is not a call I can refuse. I am Bem's messenger. I am Bem's. I am Bem. Bem. Bem. Bem. Bem. Bem. BEM. BEM. BEM. BEM. BEM. BEM.

b̨̬̠̥̮͜ͅu̶̶̘͓̰͈̺̥̜̗y̛͓̗̙̤̯̟̱͚ ̛͉̝͚̹̜̫̯̣͡o͏̶̞̻̩ų̩͚͍̘̺̖̰̜͡r̴̖̫̖͓̳̼͈̼͝ ͈̗̬͇͚͚̲m̴̗̳̟̘̻͎͜ṷ̢̥̹̺͔̠̙͠s̛͓̦̩̥̯̟͙̻͜ì͔̰͓̙͓̞̟̯͉̕c̶͏̡̰̭͍͔̯̜͈

Status Update

Dear readers, we have a very big week ahead of us. Busy busy busy. Suite for Piano and Electronics is out on Friday (preorder now for an exclusive bonus track!), and tomorrow we'll be launching preorders for the new Argos album! And we've one other huge piece of news lined up for Wednesday, so keep your eyes peeled for that...

We are also delighted to announce that The Fierce and the Dead have been nominated for two Progressive Music Awards - the band themselves for UK Band/Artist of the Year, and The Euphoric's sublime Mark Buckingham cover art for Album Cover of the Year.

Review Roundup

First up, congratulations to Matt Baber, as Suite for Piano and Electronics got a nice meaty column review in the latest PROG. As per usual, click through the image for a bigger, more readable version.

Jez Denton of Progradar gave Suite for Piano and Electronics a spin, too. Ideal music for dog-walking, apparently. We've no way to test that, alas, but we assure you that a dog is by no means necessary to enjoy the album.

The Euphoric was featured over on Echoes and Dust this week: Martyn Coppack concludes that you should "jump on board the TFATD juggernaut right now", which is encouraging, but also a little concerning, as we have no idea how he found out about BEM's secret experimental naval programme. Metal Gods TV also had a listen, with "Dark Juan" (God, I hope that's his real name) giving The Euphoric an 8/10, which he says is "the equivalent of a mass grave of people missing limbs and faces being discovered and the subsequent war crimes trial held in the glare of world publicity".

Okay then!

The Trunk 13/5/2018: The Singularity and The Euphoric

This week's edition of The Trunk is brought to you by the word "the". We've got two big "the"s on our mind this week: The Singularity, the debut album from Reformat, available now, and The Euphoric, the third studio album from The Fierce And The Dead, available very, very soon. (Get yer preorders in here!) Let's start with the first one. It's a good place to start, in my experience.

The Singularity Playback Party

Have you enjoyed The Singularity?

I survived the Millennium Bug and all I got was this epic artwork.

If you have (and we wouldn't blame you, it's a fantastic record), and you're in London or can get there easily, Reformat are holding a playback party for the album on June 25th! The band will be in attendance, as will a delegation from the Elephant, and apparently the first fifty pints are on the house. So, if you like great music and free beer, this sounds like a fantastic way to spend a Monday night. Check in on Facebook here to let 'em know you're coming.

Reformat also got a fantastic post-topping mention over on Heavy Blog Is Heavy's Post Rock Post feature. (Typing that was an adventure and a half.) Have a read of the review here, and, if you don't have a copy yet, grab The Singularity here.

The Euphoric Feature Review

Avid consumers of print may have noticed something rather big and rather special in the latest edition of PROG Magazine. For those of you who haven't read it...

Trouble reading? Click on the review for a bigger version.

Yeah. We'll let that speak for itself.

As well as this review, we highly recommend picking up PROG Magazine this month - on top of all the regular print goodness, there's an interview with the boys and a couple of announcements about other acts who've climbed aboard the Good Ship BEM recently. Speaking of which...

Status Update

Argos have signed to BEM for their upcoming fifth album Unidentified Dying Objects! This critically acclaimed quintet have enlisted an impressive array of guests and put together a rather exciting album trailer, which you can catch here:

Read the full press release on Argos here.

The Euphoric releases on Friday, so this is your last chance to preorder and make absolutely sure you get your hands on the limited edition bonus disc and art print! You can do so here.

That's about it for this week. Make sure to join us next time for more Trunky goodness.

The Trunk 22/4/2018: The Return

After a brief hiatus while The Author finished his dissertation, The Trunk is back in action!

It's a little like this, but with 100% less Steve Martin and slightly more synth.

We have a few important orders of business. First things first:

The Singularity

Yep, as of two days ago, Reformat's The Singularity is finally out! That means the full album is available to stream or download from Bandcamp now, and that we can share all kinds of spicy tracks you've not heard yet, like this one:



I can definitely imagine this song as the soundtrack to some fiendishly difficult boss battle in a 1990s video game. That's exactly what I plan to use it for, in fact - a couple of tracks from The Singularity have already found their way into my gaming playlist.

Even if you're not a nerd like me, though, there's a lot to like about this album. There's been substantial critical acclaim for it already (check below for some of that), but we really do recommend it. Give it a spin on the Bandcamp page (it's free), and, if you like what you hear, pick up your copy today!

Stream and buy The Singularity here.

Review Roundup

I mentioned just a couple of weeks ago that reviews wait for no man, and, thus, despite the frankly epic review roundup I conducted then, we still have more reviews. That's just how it goes.

Reformat have unsurprisingly been in the spotlight. The Prog Mind gives The Singularity 8.5/10, noting that "Reformat have impressed right out of the gate". The album also got a bit of coverage on Heavy Blog Is Heavy in their Unmetal Monday feature. "Turn on your implants, hook into the web, and let the mechanical yet somehow human sounds of Reformat take you away." We're definitely using that one for press copy. And a recent issue of DPRP gives Reformat an 8/10 from Patrick McAffee, praising "an impressive debut from a compelling new musical ensemble". That same issue also reviews Murder and Parliament!

Fractal Mirror have been back in the reviews too, first at The Progressive Aspect (the very day the roundup went out, no less - truly the tide is inexorable!) with a strong recommendation from John Wenlock-Smith, who reckons it's "a very fine album... that will repay diligent listeners". Another review for Close to Vapour came in from Music Waves, and, while I'm a little rusty on my French, I remain fluent in the universal language of High Numbers Good. 4/5 ain't half bad, we reckon.

Dead-tree publications haven't been quiet, either. The Wire's Clive Bell gave The Divine Abstract an excellent writeup which is just a little too tall and skinny to fit here, so click through to give it a read. A slightly more blog-shaped review popped up in the latest CRS magazine for Tonochrome's A Map in Fragments, too, and you can take a look at that one right here:

And More To Come...

Without wishing to be too much of a tease, we have a big announcement to make soon, something new and exciting which we think will excite plenty of you. But, to maintain a sense of mystery, that's all we're currently prepared to tell you.

Woo, so mysterious!

Keep an eye on the Facebook page, watch the skies, and consult your whimsical music-themed ouija boards for more information coming very soon indeed.

For now, though, this is The Trunk signing off. Catch you all next week!

The Trunk 8/4/2018: Review Roundup Special and Six Questions, Twelve Answers

Reviews wait for no man.

Oh, no, sorry, I'm thinking of time. Time waits for no man. Easy mistake to make, you can see how I got that confused. Time, reviews, both inevitable, both accessible from your PC or web-enabled device... you get the idea. It's fine. I'm fine. I'm fine!

We have some reviews, is the point. This week's Trunk is mostly just going to be a whole bundle of them.

Let's start with the latest - The Euphoric. It may not be out until next month, but the preorder's live now. The band also recently released their second music video, an uncanny 3D-rendered odyssey set to the fabulous "1991". You may have missed it, but don't worry, you can catch it right here - you don't even need to leave this page!

And, if you've been on the fence about preordering, you're in luck, because we've a veritable bumper crop of reviews for The Euphoric...

• We kick things off with Lee Davidson of Prog Metal Madness, who praises a "beautifully written and paced album" that "takes no prisoners" - a very strong start!
• Progradar's Jez Denton notes that the band are "happy to confound, confuse and surprise in composition and performance".
• A lovely video review from Classic Album Review on Youtube concludes that The Euphoric is "worth hearing again and again, repeatedly" - well, that's our hope, too.
• Real Gone warns that you should "be prepared to work hard to reap the best rewards", but those rewards are "the best Fierce/Dead record to date". Definitely worth the effort.
• And Scraggly Bones doesn't like cake but he does like The Euphoric. Make of that what you will.

But it's not just The Euphoric that's been reviewed of late! Oh no! That's right, we have more reviews!

• Roger Trenwith at The Progressive Aspect gave us his take on Mothertongue's Where the Moonlight Snows just yesterday, promising something that'll "put a spring in your step and the zazz in your pizzazz". (Be advised: BEM is not responsible for your pizzazz. Please zazz responsibly.)
• Another one for Mothertongue from Phil Weller at Manchester Rocks, who reckons the new album has both "greater cohesion" and "greater longevity" than Unsongs before it.
• Progradar gave us two other reviews besides The Euphoric - one for Fractal Mirror's Close to Vapour, also by Jez Denton, who "urge(s) you to search this album out"...
• ... and one for Reformat's The Singularity, by none other than former D-Ream keyboard player Professor Brian C- nah, only joking, it's the inimitable Jez Denton again, calling the album "a sonically challenging journey into the unknown and exciting".

And, last but not least, a couple of print reviews from the latest PROG Magazine, one for Mothertongue and one for Reformat. If you're having trouble reading them, click through for the full-sized versions - but we do recommend grabbing a copy of the magazine too.

That's about it for reviews, but we do have one last order of business to attend to.

Tim Smith, vocalist of the Cardiacs, is currently fundraising for rehabilitative care following his cardiac arrest and stroke in 2008, and, to contribute to the cause, we've a strange gem of a piece for you. Back in 1999, the brothers Godfrey - Simon (of BEM's Tinyfish, Shineback, and Valdez) and Jem (of Frost*) - produced an experimental instrumental album of twelve tracks, six tracks each responding to the same list of six abstract questions. Long thought lost to a catastrophic hard drive failure, it was recently rediscovered in one piece by Simon, and they've put it up for sale for just £5, with all proceeds to be donated directly to Tim Smith's JustGiving.

So, if you've enjoyed Simon and Jem's work, or you'd like to give your support to a musical legend in need, we highly recommend that you pick up Six Questions, Twelve Answers from the webstore. Great music from great musicians for a great cause.

That's all we have for this week! The Trunk will now return to its scheduled radio silence for another two weeks while our author's mind turns to old-timey people with funny names like Simon Fish - but we'll be back very, very soon.

The Trunk 25/2/2018: Liked This? Try This

We've been releasing a fair bit recently from label veterans - people and acts that have worked with us in the past and are back for more. It's a pleasant thought, really: our little project has been going for long enough to have people coming back for more. But it also gives us an opportunity to refresh our memories, and yours, of what came before. So, this time, we'll be taking a short look at some recent and upcoming BEM releases and pointing you in the direction of older material by some or all of the same people. If you're newish to the label, you may just find some gems among these... and if you're not, well, hopefully you'll enjoy the ride regardless!

If you like Where The Moonlight Snows, try...

... Unsongs!

We're not going to go on too long about this one, since we did a deep dive on it last week, but if the preview track for Where The Moonlight Snows has whetted your appetite for this kind of progressive-indie-rock-jazz-quiff-pop (their words, not mine), we really do recommend that you give Unsongs a listen. Smart, brash, and eminently singable, Unsongs is not only a great album in its own right but very characteristic of the kind of musical approach BEM hopes to champion.

Where The Moonlight Snows also features a guest spot from Daniel Zambas of BEM alumni We Are Kin - you can't hear any of his contributions yet, but, if you like sharp keyboard work, ... and I know... and Pandora are also worth a spin.

If you like A Map In Fragments, try...

... The Divine Abstract and My Tricksy Spirit!

More specifically, if you like the masterful guitar work on Tonochrome's latest album, the man behind the groove, Charlie Cawood, has worked with us twice before. The Divine Abstract is his solo project, a richly textured instrumental odyssey with a bewildering array of guests and guest instruments which I personally can't recommend highly enough. He's also played with My Tricksy Spirit on their self-titled debut, a spacey melting pot of an album where Charlie works in perfect union with a cadre of thoughtful musicians. On both these records, he plays far more than just the guitar, putting his mastery of the plucked string to very good use indeed.

If you like 'Truck', try...

... Magnet, Spooky Action, and Archive!

If you've somehow been following the label for a while without hearing the full force of The Fierce And The Dead, we are so very, very sorry. That said, maybe you've heard their new single 'Truck' and you want a little more, but you can't wait until May 18th for The Euphoric. Fear not.

Start with Magnet. It's pretty short, but these five songs are a very good taster of what the boys are all about. If you like what you here, Spooky Action, one of BEM's very first releases, is a meatier chunk of face-melting - and, rather handily, you can get both CDs together on the Spooky Action Bandcamp page for the discounted price of just £7. That's almost an hour of pure sonic power at your fingertips. And, if you're still hungry, our reissue of their first album, If It Carries On Like This We Are Moving To Morecambe, is still in stock.

That said, if you like your Matt Stevens a bit mellower, his solo collection Archive, a musical maze of cleverly woven guitar looping, will sort you out.

If you like Black Bag Archive Vol. 3, try...

... This, Motherland, and Rise Up Forgotten, Return Destroyed!

Simon Godfrey must be one of BEM's hardest-working artists. Since the label's foundation, we've yet to see a year pass without him giving us something new (and he's got more scheduled for this year, so the streak may well continue). With classic pop-rock outfit Valdez, he produced this, and by this I mean This, an album of incredibly clever songwriting and equally polished performances. His solo work on Motherland is a stripped-down incarnation of that same songsmithing talent, and, if you'd prefer that talent in a more electronic setting, Shineback and Rise Up Forgotten have you covered.

And, of course, there's the recent Minotaur EP, and volumes one and two of the Black Bag Archive... if you're a fan of Simon's, you're certainly not short of material.

If you like Murder And Parliament, try...

... Happy People, Fit the Fourth, and Three Rows of Teeth!

When Tom told us he was making an instrumental album, we were a little surprised because he was so closely associated with sharp, eloquent, and thoroughly weird lyricism. If you'd like to find out what the Slatter Sound is like with vocals, you can't go far wrong with these three collections of stories dark and strange. It's ambitious. It's multilayered. At times, it's really confusing - but never annoyingly so. And it's definitely worth a listen.

Status Update

That new Mothertongue thing we were teasing last week is now available for preorder! New album Where The Moonlight Snows is out on March 23rd, a little under four weeks away. Make sure to preorder your copy soon to get instant access to the preview track, 'Earthbound', and ensure you get the album as soon as it's available.

Meanwhile, we're pleased to report that Close To Vapour is out right now, and we look forward to seeing what you all make of it!

Review Roundup

Just the one review this week: Tonochrome's A Map in Fragments popped up in the latest edition of PROG Magazine, and Sid Smith has given it a pretty stellar review - here, take a look:

Featuring a little bit of David Elephant's jumper peeking through at the bottom!

That's all for this week! I can tell you that we've got something pretty exciting planned for the next edition of The Trunk, so do keep your eyes peeled for that...