STONE TAPE THEORY - FUSSY PUSSY

Released December 2011
TOR17

A REPORT TO THE ACADEMY (STARDATE 8000.75.4312.9 - EARTH SPECIFIC 31.12.11)
THIS REPORT IS RELAYED IN 3 DATA STREAMS, DESIGNATED FOR SPECIFIED PERSONNEL AND CLASSIFIED FUNCTIONS:

1 FACTUAL: Stone Tape Theory is Alastair Popple. Though he has been an integral part of the Treehouse Orchestra from the very beginning – his fingerprints are all over every one of our releases to date - "Volume 1: Fussy Pussy" is Alastair’s first solo release and what a strange and wonderful thing it is. What it exactly is, however, is less easy to express. It isn’t an album in the conventional sense, that’s for sure though, at nearly 35 minutes, it is of album length. It is perhaps best to simply consider it as a single extended piece of music in parts, or movements. The titles of said parts are helpfully provided on the record’s sleeve, as follows:

[i)Peir ii) Cat Traffic iii) It’s Only Skin Creep iv) Ineffective Mass v) Fussy Pussy]

Guessing where one section segues into another is part of the fun. There is much fun to be had. And much beauty. And bewilderment. And cosmic wonder.
Why don’t you just listen?

2 SENSUAL: The sleeping machine awakes with throbs, hums and bleeps (BBC Radiophonic atmospherics), a steady pulse warming all circuits until the engine finally kicks in (trance-like drumbeat and relative static/drone/flow).
The conscience of the vessel is fully powered now (a psychedelic organ, promising a saucerful of secrets) – a hybrid of Terran and Alien technology (50s sci-fi theremin, Earth vs Flying Saucers). The ship is ready to leave Earth’s orbit.
It heads off steadily (early Beta band acoustic guitar chug, sometimes lost in a cosmic fug) and the beat of the great machine – a choir at its heart - as it heads out deeper into space.

Music of the spheres accompanied by the spirit of adventure & the burning lamp of human curiosity (blissed-out country slide, fuzz bass and crashing guitar). Dark matter and uncertain destinations (guitar wig-out) leaving us at the edge of the known universe (spaced electronica and ethereal violin, fading to pure energy/soul/consciousness).
However, no matter how far we venture out into the vastness of space and whatever we might find and face there, we must always take our human element with us – the achievements, fears, concerns (petty and profound), insecurities, paranoia, passions and peculiarities amassed over centuries and not easily left behind (12 inch extended mix of previously unreleased "Great Escape" period Blur track). Maybe we were never meant to leave them behind. To be continued...

3 METAPHYSICAL: This is how it feels, if I try to walk,
sometimes when I breathe, always when I talk. Better not to talk. This is how it reads, down in black and white. Written in the paper, on tv tonight - the future’s not too bright.
And the cat goes to sleep (but she never has the same dream). And the cat goes to sleep. Again.
Horizontally - grounded as can be - vertically challenged, making little sense (in the present tense).
Spinning little ball - hello one and all! - read it in the paper, every rise and fall (the writing’s on the wall).
And the cat goes to sleep, though she not getting any younger. Yes, the cat goes to sleep again.
[I turn the light on once more - and off again, just be sure the world doesn’t end (that I won’t lose a friend). Men did/did not land the moon. Aliens do/don’t walk among us. The noise it makes is reassuring and sound and true. It’ll until the next time the universe shakes.]
Mass communication. Hands across the sea. Nation speaks to nation, but no-one talks to me. No-one talks to me. Fortunes ebb and flow, good times come and go. Watch it on the telly, if you want to know (though you know you don’t know).
And the cat goes to sleep, though I’m not sure who she belongs to. And the cat goes to sleep. Again.

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THE DEAD WEST - VOLUME III

Released December 2011
TOR16


Well, I certainly didn't expect this. The previous EP is a refreshing blast of sonic revelry that clears out the cobwebs but The Dead West's third album is one of those proper albums that blokes talk about in excited whispers, sat at their regular table in the pub. There's the initial glee at trumping their peers with something new, something exciting and then the struggle to articulate what the new and exciting elements actually are. So, what do we get? Well, there's dusty, widescreen epics, haunted, cracked ballads, fuzzed-up folk, psychedelic romps... it sounds like it shouldn't work but it does because the songs are so good, and where other bands might self-consciously hold themselves back, The Dead West don't – they are gloriously over-ambitious and, this is the best part, match their aims with the execution on Volume III. There are breath-taking shifts within songs, moments of pure atmosphere, and most importantly rather than three individuals (whose solo work is elsewhere on this site), it sounds like a proper band.

It seems a shame to give too many secrets away in this review; part of the joy is the first time discovery and then, listening to a second, third and twelfth time, thinking 'I can't believe they did that'. The sinister Lanegan blues that opens “Cointelpro” would be adequate for most bands; they would decide to take the piece up-river into the troubling, nightmarish territory that The Dead West go. There are no shackles here; no manager demanding ten percent of nothin', no record label fat cat skimming the cream off the top, no one to tell them they can't do it. They want to do it, they can do it and by jiminy it's a damn good job they make of it. I've known The Dead West for a long time, we've shared the odd bottle of wine and recording session; heck, we've even been the inarticulate blokes in the pub, and I didn't suspect they were capable of this. Download this, and then take all your other records to the charity shops; you won't be needing them anymore. - Review by Jeremy Bye

Download here :

http://www.mediafire.com/?7z9d95au9ayo3hj

And with that last post, dear reader, we have caught up with the Treehouse Orchestra. From now on all posts containing releases will be posted as they are completed. - Ste.

THE NIGHTOWL SINGS - BY THE LIGHT OF THE FALLEN MOON

Released November 2011
TOR15

Months in production, the third Nightowl Sings release started out as a death obsessed 5 track E.P. to a 20 track strung out odyssey to the 9 track album we have here. Compiled from dozens of songs recorded in the latter half of 2011 the album starts with the slight red herring of ‘Green Eyes’. The melodic organ intro is the only time this release harkens back to the pretty song or folk music of previous records. The remainder goes straight for the scuzz guitar jugular. Songs like ‘Tall Dark Pines’ and ‘Loner Stoner Drones’ tease the listener in with near traditional structure (albeit lo-fi, oddly mixed tradition) before making the curious curse themselves as they end up lost in outros designed to spook and sadden. Spookier still is the album’s closer ‘Bright Yellow Sun’. Some plans have failed, the singer turns to his love to make it alright but from what? ‘Let Me Sleep (In your Flower Bed)’ at first may sound like the slightest song here but it conceals the blueprint for this release and, perhaps, this artist’s manifesto. Dissonant noise combined with playful melody. ‘O My Soul’ may stomp along knee deep in reverb drenched distortion but it’s the chorus melody you remember. What feels like the album’s most hard hitting moment is ‘In My Heart (The Snow Is Falling)’. Here, a broken heart feels like the apocalypse as the singer lets his pain pour out and flood the world, guitar noise burning cities, drums levelling man’s concrete folly. Heavy shit. - Ste.

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http://www.mediafire.com/?gi1bsacrzxmfcd5

THE DEAD WEST - ALCHEMISTS AND LOST SWEETHEARTS

Released October 2011
TOR14

A lost boy in a pink suit walks down the middle of a lonely highway, the road stretching back into the horizon and a past he can’t always remember but then again can’t completely forget, as hard as he might try. A female aviator, smiling with the crowd and her aircraft behind her, then posing for an official portait, formal but movie queen glamorous, and once more in her plane, up in the clouds, never to come home again. A French film star smells a flower, lost in thought, the perfume as fleeting as her too-short life. Three delinquents, dancing in a café – an epiphany before it all falls apart – they’ll either end up dead or doomed to conventionality. A peyote prophet of the Beat underground glowers from a mural on a wall in Mexico during the Day of the Dead, one minute lost in another dimension and the other staring steely-eyed at the camera, holding a gun and waiting for the next game to begin. And all these moments hidden in the pages of comic books and arcane tomes filled with alchemical symbols and the faces of women who have died or otherwise gone missing – sucked into another dimension – with only dog-eared snapshots, scratched reels of celluloid and worn shellac discs to remind us they were ever really here.
These are the images on the cover of "Alchemists and Lost Sweethearts" – a 20 minute EP that is the second release by The Dead West. This picture gallery is an introduction and set of clues to the world that you will find in the music - visual representations of the anecdotes, reports, confessions, come-ons and love letters running through the tracks of the record. There is alchemy and lost love, as well as debauchery, loneliness, paranoia, abandon, broken promises, narcolepsy and maybe (just maybe) a kind of transcendence, even if it is just getting lost in the clouds or on the road somewhere.
Oh, but did I forget to say that these are also pop songs? Eight of them. Some ragged, some lovelorn, one or two demented, a couple lost in space, maybe a few lying in the gutter but all of them looking up at the stars. A mini jukebox – there’s one of them on the cover too. We hope you’ll want to keep popping a coin into the slot. - David.

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http://www.mediafire.com/?db2wm6d2cf0asoa

WHIRLAWAY - I KNEW IT WAS FUCKED E.P.

Released August 2011
TOR13

This E.P. was recorded in summer 2010, Shane played, Marc engineered and I was there to hang out. I provided Shane with smokes and poured the wine. I spent most of the evening outside, listening to the trains. It was one of the sunniest weeks Northern England had seen in a while. Every now and again Marc would join me as he left Shane to work out a chord progression or something. “To Thee”, “An Ocean Refuses” and “Dice and Bones” all sound like everybody has left the room, even the player. Circular guitar picking with touches of experimentalism and whispered vocals. This isn’t polite folk. It sounds like ghosts. As the evening went on things got hazier. We all picked up instruments and I got to play drums on the thundering improvised fuzz-fuck of “Skin factory”. In addition to the songs recorded at this session is a track Shane, Alastair and I attempted unsuccessfully to record several times a couple of years back. The sessions lay forgotten until Alastair took another look and managed to salvage this version. His determination and hard work paid off. The track is an ethereal, sombre hymn to loss called “Shudder”. Listening to this record now is like opening a trap door into the earth, a place removed from time and space. Close the door and the sunshine stays outside. - Ste.

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http://www.mediafire.com/?rogo3xg7bwjryye

HILLS! WEREWOLVES! RUN! - HILLS! WEREWOLVES! RUN! 2

Released May 2011
TOR12

As flames rose up in Cairo and the euro crashed in the land of Greek gods, Hills! Werewolves! Run!  (Marc Gillen, Stephen Benson) recorded their second album. Opening track ‘Heat death of the universe’ is a colossal dirge of repetitive crashing guitars and tribal drums, melody and rhythms sift slowly through its pockets of light, like Les Rallizes Denudes floating in space. Then comes ‘Alexandra’ bristling with melody, stop start rhythms, fuzz bass, and lost radio waves giving an aura of restless yearning and existential threat. ‘All aboard’ is a sombre and stately love letter to artists and political dissidents through the ages, as violin and folk guitar warble sweetly in hope of safer shores and esoteric encounters. ’Rhino’ is an eastern flavoured instrumental at the albums centre providing calming waves of shimmering guitar and off kilter percussion in the midst of stormy surroundings. At the albums close comes the trilogy ‘We fight, we breathe, we fall’ a fifteen minute call to arms, mixing the introspection of Low’s ‘Sunflower’ with the juttering rage of blast first period sonic youth, smoke and tattered flags billow from its schizoid guitars and drums. This ecstatic fury gives way to layered drones and soaring flute, allowing us to stand still for a moment in clearing light as the world keeps running ever faster to nowhere. - Marc

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http://www.mediafire.com/?v8ywrknqa25j4a8

CAT OF TOMORROW - SONIC MANGA

Released March 2011
TOR11

Cat of Tomorrow is David Thompson and "Sonic Manga" is his first attempt to explore what music a futuristic feline might make when left to his own devices. The spirit of early 80’s electro pop pervades this 9 track E.P. as does the influence of Joe Meek, the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, Serge Gainsbourg and Brian Eno. There are tributes to Marvel Comics, Brigitte Bardot, Delia Derbyshire, Krautrock and Francoise Doleac (if you don’t know who she is, shame on you and go ask your dad). It could as easily have been called "More Songs About Space Travel, French Film Stars and Roman Catholic Guilt" but the official title sums up the main aim of the record – to create a weird and wonderful comic book for your ears, aided perfectly by Hobo-Pup’s superb cover art. - David

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http://www.mediafire.com/?964r7qxr6e44lsp

WE ARE THE WOODEN HOUSES - THE BALLAD OF PETER J. AND OTHER SONGS

Released January 2011
TOR10

A gentle acoustic strum breaks through the silence, a call for honesty and understanding in the midst of a relationship's dying embers or its bright new flame, which we can't be sure, hope and doubt pull us one way, then the other. Ambiguity, beauty, and space create a world set apart at the beginning of the third We are the Wooden Houses album the 'Ballad of Peter J and Other Songs'. As we meander through the albums eight songs this world is maintained and nurtured, as we join characters cast adrift, whether it be the '13th Apostle' looking for "A new town or new day", or the protagonist in 'Zaire's Sister' running from "The Warsaw Pact on his tail". These are songs moving away from controlling shadows and searching for some meaning in the physical and spiritual world. What that meaning is we don't know. Musically, the DNA of the first two Wooden Houses releases can be felt strongly, plucked strings, hypnotic drones, moments of quiet alchemy, yet added to this are traditional song structures closer to folk and country, sung with gentle grace. In 'Ludmilla (feel so sad)' the line "Floating right above your heart, and I feel so sad" is devastating, as we are reminded of the loneliness of space and our internal struggles with the world that holds us from it. In 'Don't look Now/Lost Cosmonaut' the album's final track, our characters are finally cut adrift in twelve minutes of soft piano, violin, lapping water, industrial interference, samples, and drone, the structure of  their old world is gone now, they are floating in the great cosmos with 'Ludmilla' hoping to find somewhere new. - Marc

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THE NIGHTOWL SINGS - DREAM LOGIC TRUCKSTOP JAMS

Released November 2010
TOR09

The Nightowl Sings (Marc Gillen) second TOR release arrived in November 2010. The opening quiet/loud dynamic of ‘Black Tambourine’ sets the scene in a world where Guided By Voices are always number one and Kurt Cobain married Tobi Vail and retired to chop wood and release spray painted DIY cassettes in Nebraska. Stephen Benson and David Thompson provide additional chops to many of the albums songs, giving the record a ‘band in a room’ feel as opposed to the tense singular claustrophobia of the ‘Ghosts’ E.P. ‘Eyes illuminated’ is a lo-fi scuzzfest that shouts out to lost hero Dan Tracey, as it dances in deep woods with strangers. ‘Sunset At Smurf's Castle’ tugs at memories of childhood hideaways, friendly ghosts and looking out to sea as its nine minutes bursts with high octane choruses and intense smouldering codas. ‘Mary George’ murmurs tales of incest and lust, its haunted vocal wrapped up in banjo and sparse percussion. ‘My Head in Lists’ is a fuzz pop classic, as James Brown fights it out with The Fall and gets his arse kicked. The album’s closer ‘Slow Movers/To You’ is a hazy instrumental of lolloping drums and samples which unfurls into a lovelorn poem to that girl you love. - Marc.

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http://www.mediafire.com/?hhj47iaf5xb88lx

WE ARE THE WOODEN HOUSES - DEAD SUN

Released October 2010
TOR08

In the spring of 2010 my partner and I went to Egypt. I packed my bags with Camus, Vonnegut and Huxley. I packed my ears with Agitation Free, Can and Bobby Beausoleil among others. We sailed down the Nile, basking in the African sun. The speed at which we travelled directly informs this music, fast enough to realise motion, slow enough to observe everything. I wanted to create a kind of Folk / Krautrock hybrid. Some of it sounds kinda folky, some of it kinda Krauty. Three long instrumentals. The first, "Open/Winter", is the third of three versions I recorded. It started out as a solo guitar piece which I then elaborated with some Organ and Theremin sounding slide. "Dendrenthema" is a fleshed out reworking of an earlier song and is probably the most German inspired music here. "Throbbing Cosmic Wound" was a joy to record. After a picnic by a river, my partner helped me create a 15 minute drone which I then attached to a long folk piece. It's a trip. The artwork was a picture I took in the nature reserve behind my house. The upturned train tracks represent the end of the conceptual line for the music which had no pre-determined destination. It's three long spacey instrumental songs in half an hour. Dig it or don't. - Stephen

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http://www.mediafire.com/?fi5x6y38cgepvh6

THE DEAD WEST - VOLUMES I & II

Released August 2010
TOR07

It takes some cojones for a band to open their account with a sprawling double album, even if the trio concerned all have a good chunk of musical miles under the belt in varying identities, often together - a Venn Diagram of Benson, Gillen and Thompson’s output would see no small amount of cross-over.
However, The Dead West is a different beast to their previous works - this is self-consciously epic in tone, the scene set by the opening “Clouds Disperse” which takes up nearly a quarter of the first disc’s running time. Like James Brown on stage, it frequently threatens to grind to a halt before renewing it’s energies and staggering on that little bit further. Images of parched earth, lonesome roads and giant mesa outcrops are brought to mind in this track, a theme which is picked up lyrically in the subsequent “Kings Of The Road”, a near polar opposite musically (bright, airy, short) and one which draws together Kraftwerk and The Beach Boys at its end - a mash-up that in retrospect seems obvious, but has thus far been overlooked.
It is the America as romantic idyll, as home to imaginary characters that informs the majority of The Dead West, the final outpost for strangers with mysterious scars, strong and enigmatic women, the search for a new future and a place to bury the past. The fascinations are clear : the music, the cars, the landscape; a culture experienced through the books, songs and movies that celebrate the country. Perhaps the influences weigh too heavy at times, but even then they are shot through with a certain English sense of distance, a twinkling in the eyes (the title of the Talking Heads homage “Zen Fringe”, for example.)
Although there appears an over-arching theme on the album, musically it is a grab bag of genres with each of the trio bringing their own influences to the work. It is only to be expected, therefore, that The Dead West veers from one sound to another; the plaintive “Johnny Don’t Forget” - a song in search of a Phil Spector Wall Of Sound - sits next to the Fall-esque holler of “The Crying Sea”, which cranks the dials into the red as it staggers to a conclusion. It shouldn’t make sense, and yet, because of what has gone before, kind of does.
The Second volume is the calmer of the two and contains the less obvious songs, the ones that need more time to appreciate. There is a trade-off; the first volume has the majority of the whoopin’ and a-hollerin’ stompers, even if it does stagger around like a drunken mountain man, high on fermented berries. The second volume doesn’t grab the attention as much immediately and yet is the more consistent sounding work - it opens with two instrumentals before the relaxed, folky “All The Girls Are Called Beatrice” which sounds like it could go on and on around its circular chord sequence…and pretty much does. The John Fahey influence makes an appearance in several places and then after the surprisingly jaunty “River Run” the trio give it some experimentation with the abstract closing radio experiments of “Woodsong/Hellsong” and the bluesy “Down The River”.
It could perhaps be argued that with a little judicious editing The Dead West could lose a couple of tracks and fit the whole shebang on one disc; but that suggestion flies in the face of the whole notion behind this double album; this is a place to go out on a limb, to try something a little different. Perhaps the writers’ influences don’t sit as comfortably side by side as they thought. Perhaps, at times, it smacks of a chaotically mix of tracks offers something for everyone (liking every track is probably limited to the band themselves); as an introduction to the Treehouse Orchestra, it could double up as a virtual label sampler. As sprawling double debuts go, it’s definitely a strong contender; in fact, it is so comprehensive an expression of The Dead West’s sound that one wonders where they can go next - a shambolic three volume set perhaps? - Review by Jeremy Bye

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http://www.mediafire.com/?94q88gjkzhd2503

THE NIGHTOWL SINGS - GHOSTS E.P.

Released May 2010
TOR06

When Marc, Dave and myself decided to form The Dead West we collected together the songs we would like to record. As always, Marc had way more than we would need. He decided to record the five songs that make up this E.P. alone and produce his first solo work.
Static, crackle. A melody starts. Sounds recorded in isolation and not anchored by time. The listener feels like a ghostly electronic communication has been captured, travelled through steel and wire and manifests itself as aural mist. Out of the mist stand heroes of both old and modern times, Buster Keaton, Calvin Johnson. “Man On Wire” is a salute to love, art, people here, people gone and the beauty that one can feel when unafraid to surrender his heart to such things. “Clouds Pt.1” feels like the listener has turned the dial and picked up the same lost broadcast that picked up the opening track. Imagine songs as shattered glass, some of the pieces are big enough that the original artefact can be worked out. “I’ll stay by your side.” Ah, this is a love song. “A ghost is born today.” Or perhaps not. “Huxley Lowfair” is a near ten minute story describing the life, death and after life of an American civil war soldier. Quite how our protagonist ends up haunting a library in Glasgow is a mystery. The broadcast is interrupted by more static and noise. Some communication is lost, never hitting it’s mark. Sometimes it doesn’t matter. In the end the singer assures us that no exorcism or worry is needed. If you never pick up this transmission again, it’s ok. The ghosts are laid to rest and all we have are memories. - Stephen

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http://www.mediafire.com/?ms2jnyysc07ssq3

VARIOUS ARTISTS - CHRISTMAS WITH THE TREEHOUSE ORCHESTRA

Released December 2009
TOR05

Why not a Christmas record? We’ve all grown up with Christmas singles and the seasonally-themed album. The impulse is as old as pop itself, from "White Christmas" through Elvis, The Beach Boys (even Johnny Cash had a go) all the way to Low, The Flaming Lips and Sufjan Stevens. And, of course, above all stands Phil Spector’s "A Christmas For You". So the Treehouse Orchestra’s roster of artists came together on one record – for the first time! – to offer their own special wishes for the festive season. From the traditional (Treehouse’s accapella rendering of "Angels We Have Heard On High" and a spine-tingling "Auld Lang Syne" from We Are The Wooden Houses) through the kitsch (The Road Movies’ "Christmas in Hawaii") to newly-minted classics like The Otters’ "Feast of Stephen" and "It’s Christmas Time!", this a record to take to your hearts and pull off the shelf every December. Happy Christmas everyone! - David

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http://www.mediafire.com/?g9is0tvsvzc7a91

OLD WEIRD - S/T

Released August 2009
TOR04

In early 2009, David and Marc had a vision over a good few pints of Guinness in Ye Olde King's Head (a sacred place and a site of many such visions, it must be said.) It was a vision of music as old as space and weird as time, travelling through the cosmos like stardust static and penetrating Earth's atmosphere like powerful pollen, settling into the soil and coming up from the ground as giddy green shoots of strangeness. Their idea was to condense the essential weirdness of folk, to take songs old and new then, if possible, take the 'song' part out, seeing what might be left. What essence remained. Old Weird is a manifestation of this phenomena, translating an ancient and ageless impulse into something new, vibrant and mysterious, demonstrating once again that there's nowt so queer as folk. - David

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http://www.mediafire.com/?264369om48czib3

HILLS! WEREWOLVES! RUN! - S/T

Released July 2009
TOR03

In the spring of 2009, the debut album by Hills! Werewolves! Run! (Marc Gillen, Stephen Benson) was released. Stylistically, the record covers a lot of ground. Running through the records spine are four miniature electronic instrumentals, coming over like Suicide lost on a foggy night in the Cumbrian hills. "Ships On Fire" the album's second track, struts like the Holy Modal Rounders hi-jacking a Velvets rehearsal, whilst David Byrne looks on, jerking his left hip at an empty disco. "Burn" is a whiskey soaked alt. country lament which looks up to grey coloured skies with tired eyes. Then bursts forth "Dreamin' About Jeffery" a stuttering alt. folk stomp drunk on surreal dreams about St. Augustine and sea creatures. An uneasy calm permeates the end of the album as the lovelorn piano of "Cassie Don’t Dance" cascades gently into the spooky introspection of "Candy", where trains whistle to keep the ghosts awake as sounds blur onto the end. - Marc


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http://www.mediafire.com/?3egrn4fq8qn5z63

WE ARE THE WOODEN HOUSES - DAG LIEF

Released February 2009
TOR02

My band had just broke up and I didn't know what to do. Marc suggested I come over to his house and record whatever I wanted. So, in January 2009, I headed over to Marc's with no clear direction or solid ideas. I had been thinking about my environment, how my county can sometimes feel isolated from the rest of the country. I wanted to make music that felt like it had escaped from somewhere, a land of witches, cats and spooky houses. Two songs on here are solo guitar compositions, in the past they would have been elaborated with multiple instruments and vocals but I decided to leave them be. An ambiance was forming. Two more songs were guitar based, semi improvised soundscapes. A method was conceived. The last track was wholly improvised, Marc and I playing 12 string, Piano, Electric Guitar and Radio. A principle was born. This recording is lo-fi, full of mistakes and is scratchy as hell but it laid a blueprint for what I wanted to do. We Are The Wooden Houses exists. - Stephen


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http://www.mediafire.com/?wglmpy14gp9ttuq

TREEHOUSE - FIVE STARS IN A FIELD AT DUSK

Released January 2009
TOR01

Before the Treehouse Orchestra, there was Treehouse - a place to play, to rest, to create and to explore. Four friends – Marc and Rachel Gillen and Alex and David Thompson - came together to make music without having done so before and with no definite idea about what kind of music they might make. The instruments they played – some learned (or relearned) as they went along – and the songs they had at hand (mostly by Marc, others written or found along the way) dictated the way ahead. The record that resulted was a sprawling, eccentric creature, with offbeat pop, folk tunes, cowboy songs, spooky ballads, ragged country and bursts of noise and experimentation (lost transmissions) sharing the airwaves. Out of the nooks and crannies, through the windows and out into the world, an orchestra of the imagination began to send out sounds and ideas, music that exists for its own sake but also to celebrate art, friendship and discovery. - David


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http://www.mediafire.com/?fhlf6h2vq4sd41s

On a bright and clear day, July 2008, a large box arrived. In the box, lay a machine, black and heavy, with knobs and buttons you could press with ease. It was a Fostex 8 track port studio, paid for with pounds, designed to catch sounds and realise ideas and dreams.

On a grey day, a few weeks later overlooking a man made lake, I exchanged ideas with Rachel for names of recording artists. Treehouse, The Treehouse Orchestra, The Nightowl Sings were mentioned amongst others. These names seem to enter the world with ease. A band and a label were born.

Songs were written, friends were asked and sounds began to form. The Treehouse Orchestra was growing. The first branch of this orchestra was Treehouse (Marc Gillen, Alex Thompson, David Thompson, Rachel Gillen); an album ‘Five Stars In a Field At Dusk’ was recorded and released in January 2009. The songs had a homespun feel, like the artwork that protected them. Folk, country, indie pop, drone and noise mixed together over it’s eighteen compositions. Guitars, Piano, Violin, Mandolin, ukelele, voices, samples, static and love sprung out of it’s beautiful mess.

Before we could catch our breath, three more branches sprung forth. Stephen Benson who had helped out on the Treehouse album formed We Are the Wooden Houses and conjured up a five track E.P. of guitar pickings and drones which meandered through an insular world of beauty and isolation, looking for John Fahey and Soledad Miranda. This was followed in the spring of 2009 by Hills! Werewolves! Run! (Marc Gillen, Stephen Benson) who released a playful album of miniature electro, country ballads, folk and Velvets tinged sonnets. At this point Alistair Popple became involved, adding much needed skill to the mixing, production and post production needs of all the artists. Alistair would prove to be an invaluable source of advice and expertise over the following years.

Old Weird (Marc Gillen, David Thompson) arrived in the hot summer, a year on from that first day, an E.P. of ghostly folk songs was conceived, like Harry Smith at a wake. These releases like the first had homemade artwork, pulling together cloth and pen, stories, photographs and illusions. They were given away as gifts to those we loved ; they all had a number TOR01, TOR02...etc. Each became a stepping stone to the next place, a bridge for us to see from.

At the end of the year we made a Christmas compilation which was held together with wood and glitter. It featured all the artists and people above, in addition to this, new artistic entities entered the fray, step forward The Ottors (Alex Thompson) with her stately and haunting violin tones enter to The Road Movies (David Thompson, Marc Gillen, Stephen Benson) brandishing a trio of guitars and alter egos rising up to an alter of Hawaiian psych.

Then came 2010 and an E.P. landed by The Nightowl Sings (Marc Gillen) with twenty minutes of deconstructed piano, reverb and songs about 19^th century ghosts. Next up The Dead West (formally The Road Movies) who put together a double album so sprawling, listeners were given a map before listening. The first disc took in guitar pop of all persuasions , linking Kraftwerk with The Beach Boys, Hank Williams with The Clean, all seemed possible. The second disc provided an esoteric journey through Kraut, psych, old time waltz, distortions, drones, clicks and meandering tall tales of love and death.

In the second half of the year a second We Are the Wooden Houses E.P. came, which added strung out repetitive ambient textures to beautiful plucked strings and a Nightowl Sings album which was something of a homage to early 90’s American indie rock.

That brings us almost up to date. This year has seen the release of the first Cat Of Tomorrow album (David Thompson) which links the BBC radiophonic workshop, Joe Meek and Buddy Holly and a We Are the Wooden Houses album full of beautiful sound poems, murder ballads and pastoral psyche. This was quickly followed by the second Hills! Werewolves! Run! Album, a high octane lurch fed on Sonic Youth, Norwegian Metal and political dissent. We have also enjoyed an E.P. from Shane Magee A.K.A. Whirlaway. (Shane was a member of Carlisle alt. Legends Harbourcoat along with Marc Gillen, Stephen Benson and Alistair Popple.) Shane’s E.P. is a haunting song collage full of whispers and battered dreams, simultaneously elegant and sad.

In the pipeline is another Dead West release, a Nightowl Sings album, a compilation of traditional folk songs and solo project from Alistair as yet unnamed.

I make that sixteen releases in three years, here’s hoping that creative streak continues and that you lucky listener can find the joy in these recordings that has sustained us thus far…
- Marc.