'Too Much Time On My Hands" is a cheeky retort to those who treat artists like they don't have real jobs. In late 2010, I decided to take a break from the music business, having spent many years working for a major label, and concentrate on my own creative work - Space March. Most friends [...]
I was trying to decide which demo to play you this week, until I saw the fabulous Regina Spektor at the Sydney Opera House the other night which led me to Twee Song. Regina does the quirky twee pop thing superbly in songs like Fidelity and the pizzicato rhythm immediately reminded me of Twee Song. [...]
I wrote a number of ballads for the forthcoming album and it was hard choosing which ones to record, but 'Leaving Town' always stood out as a really interesting song. It represents an odd style of music this Industry would rather didn't exist - a sub-genre of synthpop which I like to call "pastoral synthpop" [...]
'Babylon' is a song about a controlling man corrupted by the pursuit of money and power. Heavy topic, I know :) The mythology surrounding Babylon is popular amongst sci-fi enthusiasts and conspiracists alike - the genesis of reptilian humanoids, the Babylonian Brotherhood who supposedly control the world and other fanciful ideas. So it was the [...]
A friend of mine once commented on the women and geography theme running through my albums - on Without This You Can Never Change there was 'Canadian Girls', on Monumental – 'American Girl', and on the forthcoming album will be my latest song 'Norway' in which I personify the Norwegian landscape as a kind of [...]
With an album tracklisting that's fast becoming a "some" based tongue twister - first, 'Someone Something Sunshine' and now 'Sometimes', not to mention another album contender 'Something To Sing', this album is assured to have more "somes" than a mathematician's convention! "Sometimes" is hot off the mixing desk. I came up with the germ of [...]
Unlike most electronic musicians, I tend to take a "rock" approach to writing songs, in that they'll have a verse, bridge, chorus and middle 8, each with their own chord progression, vocal melody and lyrics. Conversely, a lot of dance music tends to work on simple chord progressions, or no chord progression, as chord changes [...]
Every time I write what I think is a good song, I fear it's the last good song I'll ever write. But then, like magic, out of nowhere comes the germ of a new song. You can't predict it or fit it into a schedule for writing songs - it just happens. What I've found [...]
