Tuesday, January 05, 2010

Sunday, January 03, 2010

So, there are a load of other places you can get info about Thee Moths from, and they are -

http://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=home#/pages/Thee-Moths/47602832523?ref=ts
http://www.theemoths.co.uk
http://www.myspace.com/theemothsband
http://www.virb.com/theemoths

You can download a lot of stuff from those sites, and if you want to get a real look at what the last 10 years have brought then you should click here

I'll try and post a little more regularly from now on.
So what's happened in the (almost) decade since I last posted on here? A lot - here's the easy version of what Thee Moths have been doing....

What happened when Thee Moths met the 00's - a decade in albums
 
I started the 00's as a member of Magnetic North Pole but when that band broke up the band that I'd be 'in' for the next decade came together.

Thee Moths started out as a five piece band featuring 3 guitarists, it was noisy, it was loud, it lasted 2 rehearsals before I called time on it. The next version was a trio, featuring the same drummer and a bassist called Kat (not the one I later married). That version actually gigged, playing two shows at the end of 2000, before breaking up as well.



It was only when I started working with my then girlfriend, Dominique, that Thee Moths proper started. The first album was titled 'The Need' and was 13 tracks of fuzz pop with girl/boy vocals. It was very influenced by The Microphones and Eric's Trip and marked the only time the genre 'Tiny Pop' was used to describe anything, ever. Released as a tape on S.O.U.L. and a CDR (in a run of 100) on our own Tiny Pop label, it featured tape hiss, clanking drums, and distant vocals. On reflection it's a nice enough record, but sounds nothing like what was coming later. (listen and download here - http://virb.com/theemoths/audio/albums/35260)





2003 marked the release of the follow-up, a 12" vinyl album, featuring two 'movements' spread over it's two sides. Far more ambitious than 'The Need' it was, again, inspired somewhat by The Microphones. This time I'd been reading about the forthcoming 'Mount Eerie' album, a kind of concept record that was supposed to feature choral vocals and numerous parts. Recorded in 2002 during two weeks during a visit to the UK from Dominique, we put together what we imagined 'Mount Eerie' would sound like if we did it. We put on hugely multitracked choral vocals, acoustic pop, string sections, drum machines, loops, samples, and everything else we could think of.
Stolenwine records of Manchester liked it enough to release as a 12" and CD and the NME liked it enough to give it 7 out of 10 and describe it as 'lo-fi magic'. I think it sold about 5 copies. (listen and download here - http://virb.com/theemoths/audio/albums/35252)




'Sand In Our Pockets' wasn't an album at all, but a 4 song EP that was released on Total Gaylord Records, a US label with no idea of how terrible their name was (it didn't stop them putting out stuff by The Pippettes later though). Initially it was going to be released by Maladjusted, a label run by Kat Burke from Alaska, but that ended up not happening so Total Gaylord stepped in. It came out in 2004, after being recorded in 2003. It was the last record to feature Dominique as we'd broken up by the time it was released. It's four songs of almost folky pop, and you can hear it here - http://virb.com/theemoths/audio/albums/35257





In 2004 I ended up playing a handful of shows with Lucky Dragons, YACHT, and Bobby Birdman which completely changed the way I thought about making music. They were using laptops and I rushed out to grab a second hand Powerbook almost right away. 'Nature', released on Banazan Records, was the result. It meandered across 70 something minutes of field recordings, slight pop songs, fractured beats, and mangled samples. It got a lot of reviews, mostly favourable (though some people absolutely hated it), and was the first thing that I had available on iTunes when it was released in 2005. And, yes, that was a real laptop that I painted on for the cover! You can buy it here - http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/nature/id144784592




'Glytchvölk Musique Concrète' came out around the same time as 'Nature' on Pet Piranha records, and was intended as an introduction to the band. It featured a load of tracks that had come out on other things, plus six new tracks tacked on the end. Plan B magazine thought it was good, and I ended up with a lot of copies in a drawer. You can buy it here - http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/id212873796 and listen to it streaming here - http://www.last.fm/music/Thee+Moths/Glytchv%C3%B6lk+Musique+Concr%C3%A8te




2007 marked the first Thee Moths album not to appear in a physical format when I put 'Sparrows and More Sparrows' up as a free download. The nearest I ever came to making a pop record as Thee Moths, 'Sparrows...' is ten tracks mixing the laptop constructed backing tracks with the layered vocals of earlier records. Heard by more people than any of the other records (downloaded a LOT from both www.theemoths.co.uk and http://www.archive.org/details/SparrowsAndMoreSparrows. Around the same time I also put out a couple of mini-lps, 'Thirty Three and a Third' (on Beat is Murder), and 'Soft Heartbeat, or Gentle Clicking'. 4000 people downloaded the former, and 8000 the latter, probably because they were free)




'Cave Cave Cave' also came out on Beat is Murder, and was also a free download in 2008. Put together in the space of 24 hours just to see if I could do it, 'Cave Cave Cave' is a mosaic of samples, loops, beats and song fragments, and ended up getting downloaded about 3000 times from BiM and god knows how many from theemoths.co.uk. People seemed to like it, though I decided to stop doing Thee Moths shortly after it was released.


In 2009 I started recording as Thee Moths again, and released a series of stupidly limited 3" CDrs, alongside a few free things online. You can read about those (and buy them if you like) here - http://www.mcgazz.co.uk/moths/superlimited.html

There have been loads of other releases alongside these 'main' ones, nearly 70 last time I counted in fact, you can find a lot of them online at archive.org these days.




2010 sees the release of 'Data Magic Analogue Wonder', the 6th 'proper' Thee Moths album which will be released as an actual physical thing on Dead Pilot Records - I'm rather excited about it to be honest.

See you again in ten years when we look back at the first 20 years of Thee Moths :)