His Sighs & Silhouette / Not A Tee Pee

MUD 01 the first collaborative compilation from Not A Tee Pee can be downloaded for free here.

My contribution is a Murder Ballad in the vein of Nick Cave. Drums and electric guitar were recorded live in the Katerwaul HQ before over dubbing vocals, violin and acoustic guitar at home. This was my debut on violin. In fact it was the first time I'd even picked one up. It was Rae's Grandad's and it was lying about the flat. I tuned the bottom string to the root note of the song and placed masking tape markers (Shhhh don't tell Rae) to all the notes I'd worked out fit the song. I hope I've not upset any classical music Elders.

Drums and Percussion - Nick Morrice

Vocals, Guitars and (horrible) Violin - Tim Courtney

His Sighs & Silhouette

The stars are hiding behind the clouds
And the rain beats down onto the mounds
Of earth piled by her beautiful body
My god how she loved her Woody
Clementine lies amongst the grieving timber
That same forest where he placed that ring upon her finger
Woody labours his trowel through the slimy bog
His sighs and silhouette lost amongst the fog

Oh Woody, your jumper soaked in blood
Oh Woody, your knees submerged in mud
Oh Woody, how can it have come this?
Your lips still taste of her last kiss.

She somehow reminds him of their first child
Asleep lying perfect and motionless, her skin so mild
The raindrops that glisten and trickle down her neck run clear
Her throat cut from ear to beautiful ear
Woody wipes the rain from his former wife’s face
He lowers her into the soup her hair floats to the surface
“Goodbye my Clementine I will always love you”
And then she was gone without a word spoken more true

Oh Woody, your jumper soaked in blood
Oh Woody, your knees submerged in mud
Oh Woody, how can it have come this?
Your lips still taste of her last kiss.

As Woody turns to the car parked on the hard shoulder
He slips in the sludge as his head collides with a boulder
His body slides through the streaming mire
To be drowned with his wife as the water grows higher

Oh Woody, as you sink in the grime
Oh Woody, you and your love entwined
Oh Woody, what have you gone and done
The dirt and the worms will inherit your lungs

Mark McCabe's "When I Grow Up" EP

Recently Mark McCabe has been working on the follow up to his Debut Album "Is That How You Really Feel". Instead of rushing things and throwing everything he's written since into another Album; he's taken all his best material (including a sublime cover of The X-erts "Just Go Home") and whittled it down to his strongest 5 recordings. It would be tempting to tell you its not as good as the Album (that I recorded and produced) but I would be lying through my chompers. Instead what Mark has done has probably produced a mini master piece.

Mark's lyrics have always been the biggest draw for me but he's reinforced them with a maturity vacant from his previous material. The instrumentation is more stripped down and bare than the full on Folk-Punk he was trying to create. Instead his life experience of moving to Paris and the bare resources afforded to him have carved a troubadour out of him. The EPs two last tracks, tear jerker "Salt & Pepper" and the nostalgic bird song of "Trains", are ones that stick with me after listening and have me humming down the street.

On a rare visit to his native Scotland Mark asked me to quickly draft up some artwork for the EP. I was more than happy to. With the title of the EP and its nostalgic undertones, it seemed to be tailor made for my current work of Nostalgia and harks to childhood. So I asked Mark to bring me one photo of him as a child that would everything up. What it would say about him and his record and maybe even his childhood. He came back to me with him dressed in a crudely improvised BATMAN costume. The theme of playing dress up and pretending to be some one you don't want to be/pretending to be something you're not fascinated me. The trees and the rain for me symbolise every tree you've climbed as a child, but the rain also portrays every task or trouble you've had to face, maybe ones that would often have you looking back to those simpler times when you'd actually live for everyday, just to get out and climb those trees for fun and not for wealth or status.

Mark's EP has no set release date but look out for it in the future.

Not A Tee Pee

Just finished writing my song for the 1st Not A Tee Pee compilation. John Hekert came up with the idea of keeping all of his musical friends in touch by writing songs to specific themes. A new theme will be announced every few months and each theme will be released as a compilation on Band Camp.

The current theme is "Mud" thanks to Ry Walker. I decided to write a murder ballad. and here it is. I recorded this with Nick Morrice the other night, playing drums with brushes. A far departure from the raging drum parts with Katerwaul. More information on the release soon.

His Sighs & Silhouette

The stars are hiding behind the clouds
And the rain beats down onto the mounds
Of earth piled by her beautiful body
My god how she loved her Woody
Clementine lies amongst the grieving timber
That same forest where he placed that ring upon her finger
Woody labours his trowel through the slimy bog
His sighs and silhouette lost amongst the fog

Oh Woody, your jumper soaked in blood
Oh Woody, your knees submerged in mud
Oh Woody, how can it have come this?
Your lips still taste of her last kiss.

She somehow reminds him of their first child
Asleep lying perfect and motionless, her skin so mild
The raindrops that glisten and trickle down her neck run clear
Her throat cut from ear to beautiful ear
Woody wipes the rain from his former wife’s face
He lowers her into the soup her hair floats to the surface
“Goodbye my Clementine I will always love you”
And then she was gone without a word spoken more true

Oh Woody, your jumper soaked in blood
Oh Woody, your knees submerged in mud
Oh Woody, how can it have come this?
Your lips still taste of her last kiss.

As Woody turns to the car parked on the hard shoulder
He slips in the sludge as his head collides with a boulder
His body slides through the streaming mire
To be drowned with his wife as the water grows higher

Oh Woody, as you sink in the grime
Oh Woody, you and your love entwined
Oh Woody, what have you gone and done
The dirt and the worms will inherit your lungs

Available for download here

Katerwaul's "Valley Under A Concrete Sea"

***KATERWAUL SIGN TO BRAVE OR INVINCIBLE RECORDS***

Another thing I didn't manage to sing and dance about on my blog due to laptop theft. BOI are an independent record label based in England-shire. They signed us in May and "Valley Under A Concrete Sea" is our first release through them. No prizes for guessing what the songs are about. Being signed to a label that actually "gets" your music and "gets" what you are trying to achieve, not just musically but artistically through recordings and art work, has been amazing. It was their idea to release the single on a CD-Vinyl and their idea to release with art work. You hear such horror stories about bands that don't get to have their songs to sound how they want and the art work to look how they like. With BOI we've just been working as usual, writing and recording our music the way have been, and I design all the packaging and artwork. Then BOI do the rest. Legends, absolute legends. This is a business of course and there is a financial side, but the return we've had for the small slice of profits have been worth more than money. With the label sorting out our marketing and online presence etc we can now forget about all that side and just concentrate on making noise.

You can download Valley Under A Concrete Sea for as little or as much as you like here.

Our album Here There Is No Why is also available on itunes thanks to our friends at BOI.

Distant Street Lights Video

Codes In The Clouds – Distant Street Lights (iambic Remix) – Official Music Video from Erased Tapes on Vimeo.

After seeing Olafur Arnalds live in Peacock Visual Arts Centre in dec 2007, it ignited a love affair with Erased Tapes records. It seemed like a record label made just for me. The following February I was lucky enough to attend an Olafur Arnalds show at the Monto Rats in London. That's when I saw Codes In The Clouds for the first time. Then they were up and coming and still finding their feet. Now flash forward almost 3 years and we're all good friends, Katerwaul playing 4 gigs with them. This year I nominated my services to make them a music video. I'm not sure they took me entirely serious. I had an Idea in mind so I pitched it to Shaun. He loved it and so we got writing. Ciaran sent me one of the latest Remixed versions of Distant Street Lights, probably to call my bluff. But by June we'd done it. Factotum Films had finished their first Music Video.

Casting the male role was easy. Our good friend Martin Murphy has known and worked with us for years, Shaun and Martin made the short animation "Toshiba60". We sat down one day and did a screen test reading various materials with Martin. As usual I was reading all the female parts. Martin's audition was a great success and we let him sweat all of a couple of hours before telling him the part was his. We decided to use this exercise to get back into shooting our own material so we borrowed a camera and DOF adapter from our usual cinematographer Dave and we used my camera set up as a second. The idea was to film both character perspectives with each camera. Richard stepped in to light our subjects so it was all in place... oh wait we hadn't cast a girl.

We had already started shooting and we still didn't have anyone to play our female lead. It was by chance I was borrowing a tripod from Topher Henderson, a local photographer, that it hit me. Bex, his girlfriend so innocently not knowing her life was going to change forever! We managed to guilt her into it and the rest was history.

Distant Street Lights was a fun experience. We always wanted it to be back to basics film making like we did a few years ago only employing the experiences we have gained since. It took 2 days to shoot and about 4 days to edit.

We were sworn into secrecy by the bands management to not show anyone this video until they could secure an exclusive and then use it as a promotional tool. Not bad for messing about one weekend, and the band themselves not thinking I was being serious. Ciaran claims that Stephen hit the roof with excitement after seeing it. Not sure how true that was but after seeing him watch the ENGLAND vs USA world cup game, I can certainly imagine what that may look like.

So finally after months of secrecy its finally been announced and premiered. So I hope you all enjoy it as much as we had making it.

Special thank you to;

Martin John Murphy

Rebecca Prentice

Richard Browne

David Falconer

Caroline Smith

Rebecca Wheeler

Rae Duncan

Sam Brill & Jen Mullen

Also to Robert, Ciaran, Stephen, Jack, Joe, Rob and Dan and everyone else at Erased Tapes.

9 Months In The life Of Tim Courtney

So what the fuck have I been doing for the past 9months? The small minority of folk who follow this blog will notice that I've not posted anything up since my exhibition in January. Thats a long time. Surely there's been things happening with the Band? An Artificial Light was supposed to be released in June/July, no?

The truth is I've had a very busy past few months in my creative life. So why the lack of blogification? (That's a word now I invented it and if 4chan pick up on it they can blow me.) In April my laptop was stolen. Along with the master copy of An Artificial Light. Rendering the past 12 months almost void and the 6 months of editing a waste of time. Yes yes I should have backed up I know that. But don't call me stupid, this was an error forced by lack of funds. I spent so much money buying my laptop in the first place to afford a 2TB+ hard drive to accommodate these massive project files. It sucks I know, I just hope the tiny fix that junky bastard got from pawning my life away was worth it. He did return one day to get the rest of my stuff but I scared him off with a swift cough "ahem" I said, "Aw fuck" he said then ran down the stairs.

Bottom line news update; Insurance companies are useless, credit cards are NOT covered by theft and you'll always need your parents. I'm 27 years old now and it did not feel too good to have my Father lend me money to replace a laptop that was not covered under my insurance policy. Apparently a laptop is a luxury item and it being worth over £1,000 needed to be itemised. Oh well. Its better to pay for 2 laptops than not have a means to make your art and films right?

So this quick post is a heads up to the many posts I'm about to put up to make up for lost time now I have a shiny new macbook pro.

A Life I've Lost

In a weeks time not only will I be a whole year older, a whole year wiser and fast approaching my next milestone birthday; but I will be celebrating the opening of my exhibition "A Life I've Lost". I'll be exhibiting illustrations, photography,film and music at kilau coffeeshop and art gallery on little belmont street aberdeen.

It has been a year since I got the nod from the curator to exhibit my work. And it will be my first solo exhibition since my Masters show in 2005. But what a year it has been for me creatively. I've managed to release an album with Katerwaul and successfully design the artwork and packaging. With promising reviews in The Scotsman and online, a successful support slot with codes in the clouds in Aberdeen and Glasgow, I've considered it a great triumph. Whilst all this was going on I was writing and preparing to make a new short film. On the eve of the album launch I was busy doing screen test and casting the film. The film is now well and truly underway with the editing already started.

I don't want to give away too much but by trauling through the this blog you will undoubtably come across work that will feature in the exhibit, but I have a few surprises in store also. So if you're reading this right now I here by invite you to the opening night. Sunday 31st January, Kilau Coffeeshop & Art Gallery 9a Little Belmont Street Aberdeen 8pm. If you can't make it the show will be up for eight weeks from the 31st January till the 28th March 2010. Most work will be for sale as well as the deluxe & standard editions of Katerwaul's "Here There Is No Why".

I hope to see you all then. In the meantime why not enjoy a sneak preview of my new film, "An Artificial Light" out later this year, by viewing the trailer below.

An Artificial Light (Trailer) from Tim Courtney on Vimeo.