safehouse demo(n)s

27th August 2019, Safehouse Studios, Oxford.  Where professional greats such as Foals and Glass Animals recorded some of their seminal works. But on this day, it was I, Soloman Tump, who plugged in a load of stuff and made a right old racket for a couple of hours.

I recently listened back to my studio recording, with all of its static, feedback (some of it which was intentional), the plugging in and out of stuff, the fiddling with cables and the general chaos of it all.  And I decided I actually liked some of it enough to stick it on bandcamp.  So, I present "safehouse demo(n)s", 4 tracks in all of their naturally entropic states.  Kind of noisy droney dismal electronic stuff.... exactly what you might not expect from me I guess.

All of these sounds were improvised.  There was barely any planning, I just turned up with a couple of boxes of kit and plugged it all in on the fly.  I probably should have spent a bit more time deciding what I wanted to do, but such is the nature of Soloman Tump that I am pretty proud of how this recording turned out.  If you take time out for a listen, I hope you enjoy it, warts n all. 

And thanks to Safehouse Studio for letting me make silly sounds for a few hours.  I wanted to go back again but then Covid happened, and I moved to Devon.  It's a great little studio, really compact, atmospheric, and given this was August, damn sweaty in there! It helped get me in the "mood" for jamming hard. 

Mixcloud

It looks like they are imposing a posting limit soon on Mixcloud - 10 shows only.  So... I shall start removing the old episodes as we move forward.  I cannot afford the premium thing right now (and there's no point doing it for 3 months only to then lose the privilege and have to delete everything anyway if I want to add a new show).  More info on it here.

I understand why they are doing it - server costs and loads must be through the roof.  This will definitely clear out some of the chaff for them, but may also lose them some customers.  I guess they have properly done a cost/benefit thing and it should earn them some money.  Hey ho, not from me unfortunately. 

This is a shame because I have enjoyed the Mixcloud platform to date.  The main thing that was a bit slow and awkward is the tagging of shows (because I do it all manually rather than using a tracklist app... yeah I know, i'm still fairly analogue.  Hence this blog I guess...)

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So what next for Soloman Tump?  Well, the Christmas / final episode of The Tump Clump in 2022 is up next on 2nd December. And I am slowly working on a new Ep of tracks.  Some potential collaborative stuff bubbling under but nothing concrete on that yet.

Also, the latest RENTAL YIELDS volume is imminent, featuring the Megaheadphoneboy rework of some Soloman Tump sounds.  These compilations are fantastic and well worth throwing a few pounds at as we head into winter.  Proceeds are supporting a homeless charity based in Manchester and those without a roof could really do with the help right now.  On this release you will also find Tump Clump friends and alumni Robin The Fog, Decommissioned Forests, Pulselovers, Polypores, Field Lines Cartographer, Pettaluck, Giant Head, The New Emphatic and Concrete/Field.  What a role call!

Amazing work by Front & Follow putting these compilations together, curating so many artists and being generally fab at organising a bunch of disconnected people who are probably all working together for the first time.  Very inspiring and I hope it has kick started some new projects around the place.  I enjoyed working with Megaheadphoneboy and Klaus Von Mork in our little round-robin trio, it felt fairly effortless and all of our creations are very different and inspiring.  More please :)