The Trunk 28/12/2018: 10 David Elliott, CEO, Myths Debunked

A few months back, we took a moment to set the record straight on a few major misconceptions we'd been seeing about the label. Nonetheless, the rumour mill has continued unabated, and so, today, on the birthday of David Elliott, CEO, we must return once more to cast aside these vicious aspersions.

Buckle up.

David Elliott, CEO, started BEM as a serious venture.
FALSE. BEM was started as just one cog in an overelaborate practical joke and David just hasn't worked up the courage to tell anybody yet, suspecting that it'd rather ruin the fun for everyone who's put their time and money into the project. It's okay, he never reads this thing, so there's probably no harm in me telling you now.

David Elliott, CEO, had too good a time in the 90s.
FALSE. David insists that he didn't actually have a good enough time in the 90s, on account of all the terrible music and questionable fashion choices, as well as the arrival of a certain nagging dependent towards the end of the decade. No idea who that was.

David Elliott, CEO, doesn't listen to all the bands he signs.
ONLY TECHNICALLY TRUE. David doesn't listen to any of the bands he signs, otherwise he'd never find the time to sign bands. Actually listening to the music falls to Martin, James, and the BEM cat, Sid.

Sid, hard at work.

David Elliott, CEO, is hypoallergenic.
FALSE. David causes allergic reactions in susceptible individuals at distances of up to half a mile. Tragically, this includes David himself, who has been known to react unfavourably to his own beard.

David Elliott, CEO, was once arrested for Prog Crimes.
FALSE. They were Folk Crimes, and that's all I'm legally cleared to tell you.

David Elliott, CEO, is spicy.
PROBABLY FALSE. David is famed for his low spice tolerance, as exemplified by his official approach to curry: "nothing warmer than a korma". David himself is not believed to be spicy, but, without access to his full taste spectrum, we really have no way to be sure.

David Elliott, CEO, was briefly an uncredited member of National Health.
MOSTLY FALSE. While David never played for National Health, he did, at one point, bear a very slight resemblance to a bearded Alan Gowen, and could probably have played if he'd wanted to, provided that he got in early and security didn't bother to check.

David Elliott, CEO, is soluble in water.
FALSE. Human skin does "prune up" after prolonged contact with water, and David's is no different, but even extensive testing with powerful fire hoses failed to make so much as a dent in him. He then confiscated the fire hoses, which I honestly can't argue with. They were powerful.

David Elliott, CEO, is a Manchurian Candidate-style sleeper agent, programmed by the KGB just days before the fall of the Berlin Wall.
NYET. Extensive vetting processes have confirmed that David's mind is completely free of Soviet interference, at least for now. He's checked regularly as company policy, and we'll be the first to let you know if he starts displaying an unusual affinity for the colour red or starts talking about the means of production again.

David Elliott, CEO, isn't cool.
FALSE. He's very cool indeed. The coolest cat in town. Happy birthday, David!

Status Update

Preorders for A Map in Fragments and Close to Vapour are up and running, with less than a week left to go on the former, and 'Truck' is finally out. The real highlight of today, though, is David's birthday, which all BEM employees are required to celebrate as part of their contract. With that in mind, we'd better go get the party cannons set up - see you next week!

The Trunk 21/1/2018: The Trunk on The Trunk

That title might have tripped you up, but don't worry, everything's fine. Do not adjust your set.

Today, the 21st, is the 21st birthday of Huw Elliott, the mysterious nocturnal PR gremlin behind The Trunk. So, naturally, The Trunk decided to sit down with him and ask him a few questions about what it's like working for the best record label ever to be named Bad Elephant Music.

The Trunk: So how did you become the terrifying PR gremlin you are today?

Huw Elliott: Well, hypothetical second Trunk writer who's definitely not me, it was really very simple. I started out just writing press releases as a way to practice writing in a slightly different medium. It was a nice change from the thousands of words of essays I was having to crank out at the time. Very refreshing.

I'd been doing this for a while and then David suggested that I step up and try something a little more regular and scheduled. We were doing our Advent Calendar at the time, the Christmas event where we had a featured track every day of December up until Christmas Day, and I took over the track writeups as a sort of trial period. It worked pretty well, I stuck to it, and, just over a year later, I'm still bloody doing it.

TT: Have you ever found that your music tastes clash with what BEM releases?

HE: I'll admit that I was a little bit worried about that when I started out. I kind of had BEM pegged as a prog label, and, unlike a lot of our audience and most of the rest of the staff, I'm not a devoted prog fan. I do like a lot of progressive music, and I hear plenty of it through David, but my personal tastes lie towards the faster, heavier side of the musical spectrum, and often the more electronic side, too. I'll give almost anything a whirl, but I don't love prog with quite the same passion as I used to.

But that's never been a problem for me because, as far as I'm concerned, BEM isn't really a prog label. I look back over what we released last year, for instance, and there aren't really that many albums I could comfortably call prog without a lot of caveats attached. Some of what we put out is pretty familiar territory for me, but some is in genres I wouldn't really have touched otherwise, and some is hard to pin down into any particular genre. And I really enjoy that. Left to my own devices, I tend to recede into my comfort zone, and it doesn't hurt to be drawn out of it.

Only after extensive preparations can the PR gremlin venture out into the sunlight.

TT: How have things changed since you started out?

HE: Even though we've cut down the number of posts we make per week, I think I'm about as busy as I was when I started out. I'm on a much looser leash than I used to have, in terms of what I can post and some of the ways I can get creative with content - that's how this blog came about, really, as a way to write something slightly longer-form than a Facebook post.

We do release a hell of a lot more than we used to. David mentioned something along these lines in his interview, but we schedule a fair way ahead and we don't usually have long gaps between releases any more. That's a plus for me, of course, because it means I've always got something to write about. I'm rarely stuck for material.

TT: What are you excited for this year?

HE: I've been enjoying what I've heard of Reformat, and their new track has really stoked the flames for me. That kind of heavy, synthy sound pushes a lot of my buttons - I'm an avid gamer and this song in particular would be the perfect theme for an intense boss battle. On a similar note, The Fierce And The Dead have new material this year, and, while I can't reveal too much about that yet, I promise it's well up to the hype. I can't wait for May, when I can finally talk about it properly.

And there's more Shineback to come too. Simon Godfrey is a real wild card in our roster. He's full of curveballs, but they seem to be consistently pretty damn good, and I enjoyed Rise Up Forgotten and Minotaur. The stakes are high, but I'm sure he'll deliver.

TT: Have you struggled with balancing your label commitments with uni work?

HE: I'm actually typing up a history essay with my other hand as we speak. It's pretty intense.

Status Update

It's been a busy week for BEM, with new music videos from both Reformat and The Fierce And The Dead - if you missed those videos, hit the links to watch now! That latter track, 'Truck', will be available on Friday, so stay tuned. Meanwhile, Tonochrome's A Map in Fragments continues to tick down ahead of its release in less than two weeks' time - preorder now to get hold of it as soon as it drops. After the holiday dry season, we're officially back in gear and firing on all cylinders. Brace yourselves.

Review Roundup

Only one review to report this week: Phil Lively at The Progressive Aspect offered us his take on Black Bag Archive Vol. III, and concluded that "the contrast between songs on this album should make for welcome variety". Lovely!

The Trunk 14/1/2018: From the Vaults - Land of Shadows

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. Word on the wind is that, next week, longtime BEM collaborators The Gift are about to start writing some spicy new material, so it's a good time to step back and revisit their second album, one of BEM's first releases: Land of Shadows.

This photo taken from underneath one of those lattice bridges.

The Gift started out way back in the mists of 2006 (has it really been over a decade?) as the brainchild of frontman Mike Morton, who recruited guitarist Leroy James for the project's debut double album Awake and Dreaming. (That link will take you to the 2016 remastered version.) Since then the group has seen a number of departures and arrivals, and its current lineup is much refreshed and up to six members, but, at the time of Land of Shadows, The Gift were primarily a trio: Mike primarily on vocals and keyboards, his son Joseph Morton on drums, and David Lloyd on guitars and bass.

Land of Shadows came out in May 2014, a full seven and a half years after Awake and Dreaming, but numerous interruptions and commitments hadn't kept Mike from working hard on new material, and it shows. Have a listen to this:



If I had to choose one word to describe this album, it'd be "careful", and not in the backhanded sense of being overcautious and unimaginative. The amount of work that's gone into honing and refining these pieces, both lyrically and musically, is evident on every single track, perhaps most of all in the twenty-minute epic 'The Comforting Cold'. But Land of Shadows never feels clinical or over-engineered - the spark of raw emotion is still very much present.

Genre-wise, The Gift are symphonic prog writ large, with movements, layers, and clarity despite the diversity. Both the two long tracks and the handful of shorter ones display a keen sense of purpose and method - this is not kitchen-sink music, and everything that's present is present for a reason. It's a system that works on heavier, rockier songs as well as lighter ones, and helps both fit comfortably together on the album.

Land of Shadows was critically acclaimed, with Progarchives special collaborator tszirmay giving it a comfortable four and a half stars for providing "a new adventure to place under the gilded prog tree". Bryan Morey at Progarchy called it a "true masterpiece" and one of his favourite albums of 2014, and Martin Hutchinson (rest assured, this was before he joined the BEM crew) gave an album he called "tantamount to genius" a glowing writeup and a perfect score!

What have The Gift been up to since then? Well, we released their third album, Why The Sea Is Salt, in October 2016 to another warm reception and very strong sales. And, again, they're about to start work on some exciting new material, so we'll keep you posted on their progress there.

In the meantime, it's a very good time to check out Land of Shadows, because, between our archive discount and the January Sale, it's the cheapest it's ever been at just four English pounds, and that's for a physical copy! Head on over to the webstore to grab yourself a slice of symphonic prog perfection today.

Status Update

Our first release of 2018, A Map in Fragments by new signing Tonochrome, is available to preorder now with one preview track already up and running. It's a very strong first showing from the art-rock quintet and we can't wait to get the rest of their material out to you. As usual, grab 'em while they're hot!

Fractal Mirror have been on the air recently, showcasing some new music from their upcoming fourth album, Close to Vapour. With appearances on ProgCore Radio on Thursday and House Of Prog on Friday, they've had a pretty busy week, and those who caught them on either stream are no doubt excited for the impending preorder and release.

Last but definitely not least, The Fierce And The Dead have released a brand new music video for 'Truck', the lead single from their impending third studio album The Euphoric. The track will be available to buy, and the album ready for preorder, very soon, but you can give the video a watch and a listen right now exclusively on the PROG magazine website.

Review Roundup

Alison Reijman over at Background Magazine gave Murder and Parliament a spin recently, and liked what she heard, praising a successful "scattergun approach" to composition and a skillful transition from vocals to instrumentals.

And, over in France, praise for The Divine Abstract continues, as Profil gives it an 8/10 for offering "a lot of possibilities... you just have to discover them".

The Trunk 7/1/2018: The BEM January Sale

Where the hell have you been?

Cut us some slack, it was Christmas!

Christmas was nearly two weeks ago!

We're only just starting to wake up properly, to be honest.

Well, at least give us some good news to make up for it.

You're in luck! You may have seen this announced on Monday, but we're currently deep in the white-hot burning core of the Bad Elephant Music January Sale!

The Bad Elephant Music January Sale!

Oh yes! The Bad Elephant Music January Sale!

What is the Bad Elephant Music January Sale?

I'm glad you asked.

Right now over at the BEM webstore, and all through the month of January, there's a blanket 20% price cut on dozens of slightly older BEM releases. It's the perfect time to dive into our archives and sample some of the music you might have missed before!

What exactly does the sale cover?

Almost every album released before the end of 2016 (and one EP, which we'll get to in a minute) is discounted in physical form only. That means that albums from 2016 and the second half of 2015 are £8 apiece, and albums from before that, already down to a fiver each, are now just £4, almost exactly the average price of a London pint. And remember, you can only drink a pint once, whereas you can listen to these albums as many times as you like. (I wouldn't recommend drinking the albums, though.)

Can we have a full list of everything that's reduced?

Sure! To reiterate, only the CD versions are discounted - digital editions retain their original price point. You can click on any of the album names below to go directly to the BEM store!

£8 Albums (2016 and late 2015)

• Jack Arthurs - Treasure House
• The Brackish - Liquid of Choice
• Emmett Elvin - Emmettronica 1998-2012
• Emmett Elvin - Assault on the Tyranny of Reason
• The Far Meadow - Given the Impossible
• The Fierce And The Dead - If It Carries On Like This We Are Moving To Morecambe
• The Gift - Awake and Dreaming
• The Gift - Why the Sea is Salt
• Heliopolis - Epic at the Majestic: Live at RoSFest
• Mike Kershaw - What Lies Beneath
• Konchordat - Rise to the Order
• Nine Stones Close - Leaves
• N.y.X - The News
• Matthew Parmenter - All Our Yesterdays
• Mothertongue - Unsongs
• Paradigm Shift - Becoming Aware
• The Rube Goldberg Machine - Fragile Times
• Sphelm - These Roots Know No Boundaries
• Matt Stevens - Archive
• Twice Bitten - Late Cut
• Under A Banner - The Wild Places
• Verbal Delirium - The Imprisoned Words of Fear
• We Are Kin - ...and I know...

£4 Albums (early 2015 and earlier)

• Emmett Elvin - Bloody Marvels
• The Fierce And The Dead - Spooky Action
• The Gift - Land of Shadows
• Simon Godfrey - Motherland
• Jon Hunt (The Artist Formerly Known As jh) - Morning Sun: The Best of jh
• Shineback - Rise Up Forgotten, Return Destroyed
• Tom Slatter - Fit the Fourth
• Trojan Horse - World Turned Upside Down
• We Are Kin - Pandora

The Single £3 EP (turns out there was only one EP on the list)

• The Fierce And The Dead - Magnet

Remember, these albums are also streamable directly from Bandcamp for free, so you can try before you buy. There's never been a better time to look into our back catalogue - why not dive in and have a taste?

Review Roundup

Two new reviews in for Murder and Parliament this week - five stars (out of six) from Uzbekistan's progressor.net, praising an "eclectic and varied production... more than challenging enough", and an impressive writeup from Emma Roebuck at Progradar.

Make sure to join us next week for more from the world of the Elephant!

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.