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 5/8/2018: From the Vaults - World Turned Upside Down

Welcome back 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. This week, we're back in 2014, the year we successfully landed our first space probe on a comet... and, more relevantly for this piece, the year Trojan Horse released their second album and one of BEM's early titans, World Turned Upside Down.

If your night sky looks like this, contact an astronomer, or possibly an exorcist.

Trojan Horse is built around the core of the Duke brothers: broadly, guitarist Nick, bassist Loz, and keyboardist Eden, though in practice they all play a great many instruments. On World Turned Upside Down, they're joined by drummer Richard Crawford and produced by "collaborator" (their words) Danny The Red, which I choose to believe is his real name. They had one self-titled album and one EP under their belts by 2014.

At their core, Trojan Horse are psychedelic progressive rock. Thick guitar, deep compositions, big vocals, and a hell of a lot of flair. We often give opening tracks as tasters for a band's sound here on The Trunk, but this time we're going to show you the closing track from WTUD, as a perfect summary of what these guys are all about in less than two minutes.



Give yourself a moment, and maybe a second listen, to drink it in. Get a load of those vocals! Everyone pitches in their voice on this album, and the bouncy, reactive vibe all those voices lend is infectious. I often find myself trying to sing or hum along to all the parts at once, which usually goes about as well as you'd expect.

That same sense of bigness extends to the rest of the instrumentation too, from guitars you could probably drown in to powerful, razor-edged synth lines. But, somehow, it doesn't overwhelm you. Here we have another all-too-rare example of a band that loves deep, full compositions but doesn't see that depth and fullness as the final goal. These songs still sound like songs - bloody good songs, at that - rather than bulging collections of noise.

While reviewers sometimes had a hard time describing what this music was, exactly, most were in agreement that WTUD was a sterling collection of music, from The Progressive Aspect ("an album of fierce independent spirit and unstoppable energy") to PROG Magazine ("everything that’s great about both classic and modern prog") to Already Heard ("might just be the most interesting album you’ll hear all year").

If you like the sound of all that... well, World Turned Upside Down is still available from the webstore, and the dazzling follow-up Fukushima Surfer Boys is also worth checking out. Climb aboard this Trojan Horse and you're sure to leap out into a defenceless Troy of... um... good... music?

Wow, I'm good at this.

Status Update

Come rain or snow or thunder or, in this case, frankly unfair heat, the Elephant Towers stand as a bastion of stiff-lipped endurance. The release clocks wait for no heat wave or summer storm, and we keep them running. The clock for Arms Open Wide ticks ever closer to the 17th, the timeframe for preorders trickling away into the void like oiled sand. The clock for Dial has a little longer left, but the march towards September 14th is no less constant, and again only a preorder will thwart time's tyranny.

Review Roundup

Two more reviews rolled in for The Euphoric this week from Europe - one from relatively close to home, an 8.8 from Profil, and a fantastic six out of six stars from Uzbek site Progressor. If you fancy a "wild, eccentric yet also compelling production", look no further.

And here's something we never expected to say: it's not strictly a review, but one of our artists was featured earlier this week on Radio 3! Part 10 from Matt Baber's Suite for Piano and Electronics got a spot on Nick Luscombe's Late Junction, and, if that doesn't establish our genre-fluid cred, I don't know what does.

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 22/7/2018: Talking Points - But Is It Prog?

We don't consider Bad Elephant Music a prog label. A lot of our bands self-identify as being progressive rock, but a lot of them don't, and honestly we'd like to think that genre-blending and genre-defying music is one of our hallmarks. But we do still have a strong connection to the prog scene, and there's one question we see repeated time and again, in person and online.

"Is (band / artist / album / song / cheese brand) prog?"

Double Meanings

Part of the problem with this question is that "prog" can have multiple meanings. Depending on who you ask, and even on specific contexts, it can refer to a fairly specific set of genre conventions or to a broader theme of musical broad-mindedness and experimentalism. These are, in many ways, worlds apart. Not only do they mean very different things, but sometimes they don't even overlap.

I was trying to think of a witty caption for this image, but then it hit me - who on earth scratches their head with a single finger like that? That has to be really inefficient, right?

You could argue, for example, that some modern bands that stick very close to the style of 70s prog classics aren't the second meaning of progressive because they're not breaking new ground - but you wouldn't dream of calling them anything but the first meaning of progressive, because that's a genre in which they're firmly rooted. Equally, bands which are undoubtedly progressive in the broader sense may not fit into the same prog box as, say, Genesis - maybe their songs are too short, maybe the instrumentation isn't thick enough, or maybe they just don't sound like Genesis even if they do sound small-P progressive.

We can't help but wonder whether a lot of "is it prog?" discussions stem from different people using different definitions of the word, and, since one indie label isn't going to convince every music fan in the world to agree on one of them, 

Why Talk About It?

So, if the discussion's so confusing, why have it? Well, we can definitely link of at least one reason why it might be useful to classify things as prog or not prog: classifications can be a very useful reference point for music fans.

Even a cursory glance at the venerable Prog Archives makes it very clear how important discrete classifications can be. At the very top of the navigation page, front and centre, is the list of "prog sub-genres", over twenty subsections representing different kinds of progressive music. Anyone familiar with metal will probably find this pretty familiar. These categories can be a little reductive, especially when a band could fit into more than one (and the discussions about which fits best can rival "is it prog?" for sheer volume and ubiquity), but they serve as a very useful signpost to help people find new music in styles that interest them. If you like, say, one math rock band, well, you may not like all of them, but you'll probably find other things you like in that same general area.

It's with good reason that, even when we're faced with a band that's truly unlike anything else we've heard, we try to describe it in terms of a combination or evolution of influences from existing bands: that's what hooks people. If we tell someone we've made something wholly unique, even if we try to describe it in terms of instrumentation, it's not as immediately eye-catching or attention-holding as saying it's X meets Y with a dash of Z. So we've seen first-hand how effective discrete classifications can be, and it does make the whole "is it prog?" question make a lot more sense.

Over to You

But enough waffle from us - what do you think? What does "prog" mean to you? Is there still a value to determining whether something is prog or not? Do you think BEM is a prog label? Does that matter? If you've got anything to say on this, we invite you to join the discussion over on Facebook!

Status Update

Unidentified Dying Objects is out now, on CD and digital download. Pick up a copy, it's really rather good!

This week we also announced a new album from Mike Kershaw: Arms Open Wide will be released on August 17th, and preorders are open right now.

Further on the horizon, Dial is still set for September... we can't wait to show you a little more of Godfrey's follow up. It's going to be good!

Review Roundup

We got a solid review of Unidentified Dying Objects in the most recent PROG, which we shall reprint for your viewing pleasure here:

Susan at Progressive Music Planet also delivered this fantastic 9/10 review of Suite for Piano and Electronics, proclaiming it "a wonderful choice... to expand your musical universe", and, over at Progradar, EvenFlow's Old Town got a writeup from the inimitable Jez Denton, "a truly wondrous collaboration that deserves further development". Thanks, guys!

The Trunk 15/7/2018: From the Vaults - What Lies Beneath

Welcome back 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. This week, we wind back the clock two years to 2016 - a mixed, messy year for the world at large, but a very, very good one for music. And the album we're looking at today is just one example of that trend: What Lies Beneath.

Get off the road! Please! God, this picture makes me anxious.

Singer-songwriter-keyboardist Mike Kershaw boasts an extensive back catalogue of solo work, with four full-length albums and one EP over the four years leading up to What Lies Beneath. His first project with BEM sports, for the first time, quite a few guest performers at his side, including BEM comrades Stuart Stephens (Whitewater), Leo Koperdraat and Frank Urbaniak (Fractal Mirror), and Tom Slatter (Tom Slatter), with Dan Bowles (The Rube Goldberg Machine) at the mastering desk.

What Lies Beneath is, above all else, a careful album: carefully constructed, carefully instrumentated, and carefully sung. And when I say "careful", that is absolutely a good thing. Have a listen:



One of the things I like about progressive music is variety, and that's on this album in spades, but one of the things I dislike is excess, especially where there doesn't seem to be a point to it. It's fortunate, then, that Kershaw's arrangements are so very well thought out. There's nothing here that doesn't belong, not a single ounce of padding or filler, and, as the track builds and coalesces, the growth feels considered rather than just being more for the sake of more. I don't think anyone would dispute the progressive influences at play here, but there's space to it too, and that's not as common or as lauded as it should be.

Reviewers have paid particular attention to Mike's vocals - they, like everything else on the album, are very measured, and do his beautifully elegant lyrics the justice they deserve. It's clear at every juncture that this is a man who cares deeply about the music he's making, and has refined and polished it to a mirror sheen.

Speaking of reviews, you can find one from Progradar here, one from Progarchy here, and one from PROG (noticing a pattern yet?) here. That last review is of particular note, as it calls Kershaw a "perennial underdog", and that sounds about right to us. This music deserves to reach far, far more ears, and, if you'd like yours to be among them, What Lies Beneath is available right now, physically or digitally, here.

Status Update

Unidentified Dying Objects is out this coming Friday! Time's running out if you want the album as soon as it drops - preorder now to avoid delays.

The countdown to Dial is a little longer (almost too long, we'd argue), but you can still preorder here, and listen to the single We Rescue right now to tide you over until September.

No review roundup this week. We'll catch you all next time!

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.