Avant-Garde, experimental composer, cassette culture pioneer, frequent collaborator, self confessed football, music and theology nerd. noise architect, poet, occasional writer, podcaster, speaker ...one head of the Two Headed Emperor.
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Some time in the early 1980's when still part of the insane picnic, myself and Pete had the idea to record a Christmas e.p. We had been inspired by some of the better Christmas tunes and felt it would be good to offer our own perspective on the Winter solstice and the disconnect between it's Pagan origins, the Christian hijacking of the festival and ultimate descent into debauchery and materialism in a world that is losing touch with it's soul.
I recall that I sketched out the original notes to the song and had various lines and ideas for a chorus along the lines of "the christians stole our festival" which if my memory serves me well was a line I stole from a conversation I had with fellow diy cassette sojourner Martin Newell. I don't remember if the insane picnic made any serious attempt at rehearsing the draft version of the song but needless to say we never actually recorded it. A decade later, in the 90's myself and Pete ushered in a rather obscure project under the name of Ermin Grud. Our album "The narrow path" is a lo fi attempt at progressive music laden with the wonderful sound of the mellotron and the iconic Hammond B4 organ ... a kind of precursor to the Two Headed Emperor. "Shaman of the snow" came to the surface for discussion at this time and I fine tuned the lyrics which are pretty much the lyrics that we have today albeit brutally edited. Again we didn't get around to a serious recording of the track, so it was shelved as we descended into the distraction of ordinary everyday life for almost a decade. In the early 2000's we dabbled in several projects for other people and after a lengthy lay off were just getting back into creating, writing and recording without much sense of direction. So again the idea came up and we even started to visualize the other songs on the e.p. but still it didn't come to fruition the way we had imagined it. Finally this year we pulled it off. We decided that Pete' softer more melodic folk voice suited it better than my earthy growl and this is the e.p. as close to how we imagined it as a fledgling idea 30+ years ago. It fits perfectly in the Two Headed Emperor body of work. The Two Headed Emperor - Shaman of the snow We can't wait to unleash the new album on you early in 2019... |
ArchiveThese pages represent my best attempt at a musical journal, travelogue, archive record of my musical landscape and everything I have been involved in over the years. It features celebrated projects to undeveloped ideas, sketchpad moments, memories and general stuff that has been part of my creative endeavours and the Falling A Records story. I am attempting to place things in chronological order though as time passes and I trawl the crates in my loft, I am discovering that my record keeping has been quite vague at times. Please feel free to interact and correct where necessary. The page also serves as the archive page for the website and is where we post our various announcements etc., Archives
September 2024
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