PVC

Saturday 9 July 2011

Hello!

Hello folks.. welcome..we have decided to begin a blog that hopefully will be of interest to those of you who listen to the sounds we make.

We began X-Amount as a trio of musicians way back at the beginning of the 1990s. Then, it was Andi on the drums, John Edwards on bass and myself (Simon) on guitar. We began our first rackets in South London, just improvised grooves for our own enjoyment really. Not much has changed.

John soon switched from electric bass to double bass, Andi added parts of a Simmons electric kit to his minimal acoustic set-up, and I used a toy sampler and a tape recorder to trigger sounds with a home-made wooden foot pedal. David Fitzgerald joined the band on cello. Off we went.

Check out some of the best bits of the band on this free LP: X-Amount:live band recordings



We played a handful of gigs in London, then the band ran out of energy (or something), we played less.

After John & Dave became too involved in other projects, Andi & I continued, moving into more electronic areas, we even did a gig on our own at one point (at the Labour Club in Lewisham).

We put together a lot of music, and got invited to play Glastonbury. We went, but didn't play because of the maddest of technical cock-ups (I may tell that story sometime). You can hear the set on Fat Bankers (free download) which we recorded back in London.



There is another LP of recordings from those times available, Leakage (also free).



We went our separate ways for a while, I moved to Salisbury began teaching and DJing and playing with other bands, Andi moved from Plumstead to Kent, but just recently we started again.

Which is why we are here.

Since March this year we have been jamming with laptops and sounds we have collected out and about. We still use sounds we were fond of when we started, shortwave radio, feedback and noise. We have added things like bird song, building site noise, warped conversation, gates, church bells, gas ovens, a dog.. well anything that interests us. These sounds are blended with home-made loops of bass, guitar, drums, percussion and keyboard (we rarely sample anyone else), and then.. trashed.

You can hear the latest stuff (and more) on my SoundCloud page.

Live shows and more releases are planned. We will elaborate further very soon..

I leave you with the artwork from our latest offering..

Many thanks for stopping by.

Simon.

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