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Artist
Bells & Whistles
12+ albums
ambientinstrumental
about
My main involvement with music has been writing for magazines like Record Collector and Mojo (OK, just the two pieces) and online sites like Allmusic. These days I contribute sleevenotes for Mike Alway's bewilderingly eclectic el label. I also present a weekly radio show called The Curve Ball on 101.8 WCR-FM (www.wcrfm.com) which focuses largely on adventurous and imaginative music that exists independently of niceties like genre and marketing strategies - and which is thus mostly ignored by the media. The recordings presented here - made mostly between 2000 and 2006 and so named because they feature a hell of a lot of (fake) tuned percussion and wind instruments - represent my own fumbling attempts to create something that might make it onto The Curve Ball playlist. Though the fact that I can't sing, have precious little technical expertise and have never felt drawn to writing lyrics tends to restrict the pool of influences I can draw upon. (Ideally, I'd be writing limpid melodies in the style of Brian Wilson and Louis Philippe). What remains is what you hear. It's an amalgam of instrumental influences and any real musicians who fetch up here by mistake will surely wince at the shortcomings they display. But listening to the work of my younger self now, I find it's not all that bad after all and one or two people whose opinions I respect have said likewise. So who knows, someone might just warm to what they hear and decide it's exactly what they need to complement the fil
