Autoflag: Doggerel

That's right, the debut Autoflag album, Doggerel, is very nearly here. We've spent this evening setting up the Bandcamp page and dubbing the tapes after work every night. It'll be a free download and a grand total of 13 cassettes will be available, old tapes that we've found and recorded over with the album. There's a dramatic reading of a couple of chapters of the Bible, the first Spice Girls album, a Smurfs tape, a lot of Christian pop, all sorts. They will cost £3 each and will of course include a free download, which is useful because it turns out some of these cassettes aren't as long as the Autoflag album. Never mind, it's all about the principle of the thing. Here's the cover art and tracklisting:

1. Codex of Eshnunna

2. A College Noted For Knowledge (2014 edit)

3. thirty one ten yeh

4. Superman vs Freddie Mercury

5. Mirabella's Record Breaking Mast

6. /tw0th!rds

7. Glass Dust

8. Snowblind

9. Frankenstein Creates His Monster

10. Frankenstein's Monster Destroys Wigan Pier

11. Hi Fi Low Ebb

12. Police Academy Police Academy

Here's the first cassette (!!!):

We don't have a release date for it yet, it depends on when the cassettes are all done. We're cooking up something special for the artwork for them as well. I wrote an article for Cultured Vultures about the label and the release, which has some little clues of what we've got in mind.

In the meantime, my review of Spiderland by Slint has gone up on Echoes and Dust, and I'm going to be doung some more reviews for Silent Radio soon. Exciting! Also I've rejigged an old poster for From The Kites Of San Quentin who are touring at the moment, check it out:

Yeah, you missed the York date. You're a terrible fan. Apparently the London date needed its own poster.

Nuff stuff. See you later.

Give Over

I think this is the most pop thing I've ever done. Kelly said she really likes it, she's been bugging me to upload it for like three weeks or something. I only just finished it this morning though. Don't worry, the next thing I'm working on is probably the least pop thing I've ever done. Absolute balance. Album details coming soon. This won't be on it...

Dancing about architecture

This post is mainly about music writing, OK, but there is one piece of admin first which I appear to have overlooked. The rather lovely folks at Salle Pierre Lamy have featured Police Academy Police Academy by Autoflag on their podcast. The podcast is kind of the most difficult thing to describe, suffice it to say that they last about 2 hrs but are well worth every minute of your time. Think of it as watching a film, but without pictures or a coherent narrative. They're pretty incredible. Anyway PAPA was on podcast 20 which came out in October (!) and there have been two more since, so sorry for the delay. The thing that reminded me is that they also used Jackson's Symphony No5 in SPLADIC 1. That stands for the Salle Pierre Lamy Audio Described Image Challenge and a number 1, because it's the first one they've done. Here it is.




Good eh.

Anyway, in other news I've been doing a bit of writing about some bits of music. This was all kicked off by taking part in the 1p Album Club's Christmas swap. The 1p Album Club is as straightforward and brilliant as the name suggests, the idea is to buy an album for a penny from Amazon and send it to someone else. They send one to you and you review them. Lovely. I received Ditherer by Fog in the post and you can read the words I wrote about it by clicking on these words that I've just written. I bought Welcome To The Monkey House by the Dandy Warhols but I don't know if it's got lost in the post or something but it hasn't been published yet, so I'll put the words I wrote about that at the end of this thing. Maybe I wrote too much, maybe that's it. I got a bit carried away but it was good fun.

Since then I've written about Spiderland by Slint in time for it's reissue for Echoes and Dust and I've written a piece about releasing the Autoflag album for Cultured Vultures which I am literally going to email as soon as I've finished writing this. These are both cracking little sites which I'll hopefully be doing some more stuff for so I highly recommend you go and get lost in them for a bit.

Without further ado, Welcome To The Monkey House.

The Dandy Warhols were surely destined to be a one hit wonder in the UK, known for That Song From The Vodafone Advert (Bohemian Like You) and a terrible name. Their previous album Thirteen Tales From Urban Bohemia was full of the same retro rock that everyone from the White Stripes to the Von Bondies were peddling at the time. So surely nobody expected their second album to be a snake-hipped mix of electro-indie and effortlessly sexy falsetto?

The minute long palm muted false start of a title track almost tricks the listener into expecting more of the same, but it soon makes way for lead single We Used To Be Friends' giddy synth squeaks and handclaps.

The Dope (Wonderful You) epitomises this new approach with it's funky synth loops and that falsetto vocal that sounds effortless to the point of lazy. I Am A Scientist is more of the same, insanely danceable and near nonsense drug referencing lyrics. I Am Over It is more mid-paced and guitar based, and brings to mind the first Gorillaz record. The Dandy Warhols Love Almost Everyone is throwaway filler, but at least it's sub-two minutes long. Insincere Because I on the other hand is a wispy dream pop ballad, so light and airy it's gone from the memory almost as soon as it's over. Second single You Were The Last High blows the previous two tracks out of the water though with the Prince funk riffs of the verse contrasting beautifully with its heart-swelling highlight of a chorus, matched on the record only We Used To Be Friends.

After such a high point the rest of the record inevitably drops off slightly in quality, but the anthemic shoegazey chorus of Heavenly makes up for the fairly forgettable verses. I Am Sound's wonky piano is so David Bowie that I've just spent the past 20 minutes going through his back catalogue trying to figure out which song I thought it was a sample from. Hit Rock Bottom is a similar glam tinged effort, with the vocoder-ed backing vocals recalling 20th Century Boys. It even contains the lyric "boys keep swinging", for crying out loud. The final track You Came In Burned is a confusing, almost ambient exercise, the comedown of the record.

I suppose they're now known as the band who aren't The Brian Jonestown Massacre in Dig! but this record is hugely underrated, predicting the trend of the last few years for endless parades of bands from Passion Pit to Chvrches being sold as the saviours of electro tinged indie. The Dandy Warhols could have been the godfathers of them all had they continued in this vein, but apparently they didn't like the record and self-released a different mix entitled The Dandy Warhols Are Sound six years later. If I'm being completely honest, the main reason I bought this for the swap was to justify having had We Used To Be Friends stuck in my head for the last few months. Relistening to the album hasn't helped dislodge it, only confirm that it's absolutely fucking brilliant.

In a bit. 

Frances' Mother, Who Has No Tastebuds

Frances' Mother, Who Has No Tastebuds is the name of the new track by our very own Autoflag. It sounds like this:



At least I hope that worked, I've mentioned before that my browser is unsupported by Soundcloud nowadays which makes life a bit difficult.

This was made as a sort-of Valentines present. She loves the Great British Bake Off which is why it's jam packed with samples. I wasn't about to start singing, OK. We've got some plans for Autoflag as it goes, in an effort to clear the decks as it were we're planning on releasing an album of older tracks. Stuff that's I'm happy with but want to draw a line under. Mainly stuff from before the old hard drive on my laptop failed really, so it's stuff that only really exists now as mp3s and not the original files with the individual multitracks and stuff. This track won't be on it and neither will Ryan Goshawk, and everything will still be available on Soundcloud (for now at least) but we want something proper, with a Tracklisting and a Name and Artwork, not to mention something physical. Here at Dead Pheasant we like physical products, so we're brainstorming at the moment to come up with a decent idea. Whatever it is, the record will be available as a download as well. We're getting there anyway, I've got a name and a running order figured out so that's a starter isn't it, and now I've written it here I feel something of an obligation to make it happen. Wish me luck.

Alright mates, here's the latest

OK so first things first, this blog post has a soundtrack. Not an especially good one, I'll be the first to admit, but this is some old stuff I found on a hard drive which is quite different to the sort of thing I make now but doesn't deserve to be destined to be forgotten on a bookshelf somewhere in Chorlton. The first few tracks are from a brief period where I was really into the idea of making something using just samples that sounded like a live band, complete with tuning up and horrible feedback solos and stuff. After that I started experimenting a bit more, and the more Autoflag sound starts coming together, and then there's Police Academy Police Academy, which is arguably both the best and worst thing I've ever made. It was put together from some stolen audio that a couple of my housemates recorded at university. It's almost free jazz, but also completely not of course. Don't miss the dramatic ending, it's bloody heartbreaking.

I hope that worked, I can't tell as my browser is old and rubbish and unsupported by Soundcloud nowadays, oh dear. Anyway, back to more important matters.

Kites are releasing an EP of course, it's called 7.83 Hz: Earth Chorus and I've heard it and it's dead good. They're running a competition where you can win two copies of the EP/DVD, a hotel room and two guestlist spots for a Victoria Warehouse Records event, and, most excitingly, two tickets to see the band at Soundwave Festival in Croatia. OMG. All you have to do is like and share the thing I made on Facebook. This is it underneath, but you need to click on these words to see the thing properly OK.

Also, This City Is Ours and Mind On Fire are putting on another gig. This one's for Flako at Islington Mill on the 12th of July. The artwork is stolen from the new Flako EP, I think it's pretty great.

In other, slightly less immediate news, the poster and sticker things I've done for the aforementioned Kites EP have been done so I'll post them once the band have decided it's time for them to be shown off. Fair's fair. I've also been asked to design some greetings cards for a new company which is pretty cool and not really something that I've done before so that should be fun.

In a bit.

Early spring clean

Yeah, hi, sorry.

Erm, I've not posted since October. There's really no reason for that, other than becoming a bit disillusioned with blogging. I don't really have a better way of keeping a record of what's going on though, and I have been busy, not so much with new stuff but exciting things happening nonetheless.

The Sketchbook Project thing in London was a lovely little setup, like a library within a library. When I got there I couldn't check my sketchbook out immediately as someone else already had it, which was a pleasant surprise. Here I am when I finally found it anyway:

Ridiculous amount of hair and beard. I found Bambi's as well, it looked like this:

I can't believe my last post was looking forward to the Carefully Planned festival, it seems like ages ago now. Well, it was ages ago... Anyway, the exhibition that Amy and I organised as part of it was a great success as was the entire festival. Here's some pictures from that then.

Great weekend. Looks like I needed a haircut then as well, scruffy git. Coming into this year now (happy new year!!), we went to see the David Shrigley exhibition at the Cornerhouse. I loved it, obviously, what with being a superfan and all. 

Not sure why I look so frightened in that last one, to be perfectly honest. After that, it was the Skyliner Streetview exhibition which has been a long time coming but completely worth the wait. It was packed out, really busy and really impressive in terms of the number of submissions and the quality. Hayley did a cracking job, she can be really proud of herself. I know she's got a couple of ideas for events later in the year which are very much in the early stages yet but sound very exciting.

Most of these photos have been craftily stolen from Kelly's Instagram account, by the way. I should credit her, so consider this a credit. That reminds me, now I've got a phone that's not a complete shed I've got an Instagram account as well. Naturally my username is DeadPheasant so chuck us a follow will yer? Cheers.

OK, what else? The poster thing I did for This City Is Ours has been updated to include their new residents and the Wahlbar logo and I've done another couple of posters for them as well. Unfortunately these events have been and gone by now of course, but here they are anyway. I think the latest one is my favourite so far actually.

Last but by no means least, this past week has been the most successful for me music-wise everrrr. I've done a remix of 200x by Johnny Foreigner which I can't share yet but Junior from the band emailed me to say he was "tripping out" listening to it. It's a seven minute psychadelic thing and I'm pretty pleased with it so hopefully they'll like it enough to include it in the batch of remixes they're putting together of Johnny Foreigner vs Everything for release very soon. Exciting stuff. ALSO one of my tunes Frankenstein's Monster Destroys Wigan Pier has been featured on the second monthly edition of Drowned in Sound Community Podcast Radio which you can listen to right here:

To be honest you should listen to the previous one as well because the standard is very high and I'm really pleased to have been featured alongside such good stuff. All my tracks are still available to download for free from my Soundcloud account still but I have to warn you, Superman vs Freddie Mercury is nearly at its download limit so if you want it, get it now. Although I'll probably just re-up it when it does anyway.

Right, anyway, I think that's everything. Now I've got all this out of the way I'm going to get back into doing this on a regular basis again. Promise.

Hey look, another update

I'm back, like I said I'd be back.

First things first, this blog post has a soundtrack. I doubt it'll take you an hour to read it, like, but go with the idea. This is my Tongue & Groove mixtape.



Look, the dog is singing and playing the piano. You can download it if you want, click on the, err, download button.

So Everything Ever was shown at the Spring Open show at the Egg, like I said last time. Here's a picture that James took of me looking awkward next to it. I don't know why it looks like I've got no eyes.

Very self conscious there, being forced to pose on the far side of a table from him. Another thing I mentioned last time was that my painting Venus Fly Traps has been included in the first edition of my friend Sian's zine Pushing Too Many Pencils. It's really great and if you click on those words it'll take you to her Facebook page, which you should like. I don't think I've ever posted it here anyway, so here it is.

It's actually a watercolour, which isn't something I've much experience of. Weeell, it's technically a watercolour. I actually drew the outline part of it in pen on paper like I usually do, then put the drawing beneath another piece of paper and painted over it. I deliberately kept it quite rough and used too much water because I like the saturated effect it gives. Anyway, once that was dry I scanned both in and composited them in Photoshop. So now you know. Here's what the zine looks like sat on my coffee table.

Pretty nice, right? That photo doesn't really do it justice but check out my coffee table eh. My grandad made that, it's my pride and joy. If you want a copy I've still got a few left. Drop me a line. Not on here, I never check the comments on this thing, but you can email me andyandyandy_vine@hotmail.com or tweet me if you're so inclined @DeadPheasant.

This City Is Ours is back with a new venue. They have moved to Wahlbar in Fallowfield, it's only just opened opposite Sainsburys and it's on the 16th of June. Phil told me he liked the flyer I did for the last one, the kaleidoscope cityscape thing (I'll get around to doing a how-to blog post about that at some point coz it's a nice technique and those things are amazing linkbait) so I came up with something similar. Here is the original photo I began with, it's by Kelly Ward and it was taken as part of a college project using a technique called tilt shift. Give it a google, it's well cool.

Well I started with that and made a right old mess of it, glitching it up and adding some words. Turns out they like this as well and want to run with the ruined pictures of the city as a bit of a theme so I'm going to steal more pictures off Kel and she's going to send them some photos to use in the visuals on the night hopefully. Lovely job.

I think that's about it. Some good stuff in the pipeline but I can't tell you about that here just yet for fear of looking like an idiot, so this will do for now.

Be safe x

This City Is Ours vs Broken Bubble

Alright mate, here's the latest.

Phil This City Is Ours asked me to do a flyer for the next night. It's a Broken Bubble special, and if you click on their name right there, you'll be able to see their Bandcamp. You'll probably notice that they're WELL into kaleidoscopes, and who isn't, right? So I thought I'd do something like that, but with a cityscape (coz This City Is Ours, innit). I found this photo of Manchester courtesy of Hayley Flynn who writes the excellent Skyliner blog. If you thought you knew everything worth seeing in Manchester, you were wrong. She can prove it.

So anyway, it started like this:

And then I got my grubby mits on it and it ended up like this:

I'll probably do a how-to post soon but I'm not in the mood now. Come along though, it's at Centro a week on Saturday and it's free. Be good to see you there!


OH and while I remember, I've got this new mixtape thing. Give it a spin if you've got a spare hour, or even if you haven't you can download it and play it in the background can't you.

Vaporous Light update from Andy V

Now then now then.

Since last time, Vaporous Light have released their second single,  Charming News / Lansdowne House. You can get for a mere pound (A POUND!) from their Bandcamp page which you can get to by clicking on that link up there ^. I've done the sleeve for this using a detail from the same artwork as the sleeve for The Eyes Of A Fool (and, incidentally, the CD for the album, but more on that in a second). Anyway, it's out on Akoustik Anarkhy as ever and it looks like this.

OK, so, the main news is this. I've also done the sleeve design for the eponymous album. Oh yeah. The band already had the artwork ready, it's by the same artist (Anna Garton) as the singles, so I had the job of putting it all together. It was a lot of hard work but I reckon it's paid off and I hope you'll agree. The band were a great help with plenty of input and we've just had it back from the printer! Hooray. Here it is.

Aaaaand here's a picture of it on Lego's turntable.

Ace in yer face. I'll take some more pics soon enough, it's a beautiful gatefold digipack CD that needs showing off. More importantly, I've just listened to it and it's a great album. Not sure when it comes out yet but as soon as I find out I'll update here.

In the meantime I've uploaded another couple of tracks to Soundcloud. First off is a new one. If you like the sound of drums and the moon, this is for you.


A College Noted For Knowledge by Autoflag

I've also re-uploaded an older track, Frankenstein's Monster Destroys Wigan Pier. This had looooads of plays, but for some reason it sounded like one second of glitch, so obviously it had been people playing it and then playing it again coz it didn't work. Anyway, it's best listened to immediately after Frankenstein Creates His Monster. Like this, yeah:


Frankenstein Creates His Monster by Autoflag


Frankenstein's Monster Destroys Wigan Pier by Autoflag

I'm off to This City Is Ours' second birthday party tonight at Centro dressed as a ghost (Hallowe'en innit) so see you there. After that I need to crack on with making some kites for the From The Kites Of San Quentin EP launch next month. You'd better be at that one, it's going to blow your tiny minds.

In a bit yo.

New stuff from Andy V, plus other new stuff from other people.

Stuff by Andy V. There's quite a bit of writing about it all here, he'd really quite appreciate it if you read it. Cheers, yeah?

Floating Fish mixtape by Autoflag

As you should be aware if you've been paying attention (that means you at the back; would you like to share it with the class?) we've been doing the posters for the bloody lovely This City Is Ours for a bit now. Here is the latest which takes place this Saturday and has been made by Lino. Andy V was going to go down, but he's going out in Warrington dressed as if he's in Hawaii. If you're unfamiliar with Warrington's climate, it is very much dissimilar to that of Hawaii. Should be fun though, he's hoping that Mr Phil's Golden Shower will be ready by then.

Up the blog date. Blog the date up.

From The Kites Of San Quentin: Stoopid! (Autoflag remix) by Autoflag

Read the full update over at Andy V's blog right here.

This City Is Ours

So, yes, right. Check me out with an update within a reasonable time of the last one. Got Photoshop back again, haven't I? (I have.)

I've done a flyer for my mate Phil's clubnight, This City Is Ours. As you can see, it's from 7-12 at An Outlet in Manchester on the 14th of May, next Saturday. See you there? Yes. I've also been trying to remix his band From The Kites Of San Quentin's tune Stoopid!. It's sounding pretty OK so far, I'll post it here when I'm done. I don't expect it to be a winner, but it's alright. Incidentally we (Dead Pheasant that is) may be doing something a bit exciting with Kites but I don't want to go into too much detail in case I jinx it. Stay tuned.

Andy Vine has some things to share.

A label for Mr Phil's Dutch Rudder. I did this quite a while ago now but have only just realised I haven't posted it here so, ta-dah! Dutch Rudder is much nicer than Wizard's Sleeve, FYI.

A poster for a book called The Paris of the North, by Christian Lloyd. I didn't design the cover, so I didn't have a massive amount of flexibility, so I just tried to work with the colour scheme I already had. It was published in the Copenhagen Post, which is nice. It's a good read as well, so go and buy it. I recommend reading it on the train on your way home from work, but not on the way there, just read the paper and listen to music on the way there. This is what I do.

If I Was A Bhangra DJ I Would Call Myself Bombay Mix(tape) by Autoflag

This is a new mixtape I made. I actually made it in the hope that I could play it between bands when I put a gig on (which I was meant to be doing) but it fell through for one reason or another (the venue closed down). Anyway, if you've got a spare 80 mins and you want to find out how I mixed Shapes into James Blake (answer: excellently) then push the down arrow on the player and you'll be able to download it for free. It's the best mixtape I've made, I think, and I'm going to make them more often from now on.

As well as these things, I have been doing some serious work on my film. I've completely written the treatment for it to a standard that I'm pretty happy with, which means that after a meeting in the pub with some red pens which will probably end with me doing a final draft, I'll be getting to work on a script fairly soon. I will need many an extra. Volunteers should apply within. Must not be afraid of wearing heavy makeup, including fake blood.