Wintermachine - MANE

Text originally posted on Wintermachine's Tumblr, 26th Aug 2013:

I suppose I should explain myself.

About a year ago - and year, one month and five days, to be precise - my first and most beloved musical outfit, ZIGO, released The Foal. It was a triumphant outpouring for us - after months of struggle, battling against unnecessary complications and delays and watching our ambitious release schedule dashed, the music itself solidified as a ferocious five-track EP, within't our best-written songs to date.

Those issues and altercations that had caused such a difficult birth eventually brought to an end our time with the 'label' that had overseen both that and our first full-length, This Is How It Ends. We vowed to complete our mission, however, and commit to tape the follow-up to The Foal, namely The Fox, and in so doing found the most talented individual we've had the joy of spending musical time with to help us make that ambition come to fruition.

That has been our state as a four-piece since, chipping quietly away at the dream's rock face behind the scenes. And we promise that as soon as you're ready, you'll hear what happens next. You will not be disappointed.

But in the meantime, I left home. I moved to Nottingham, the city that had educated me beyond my A-Levels, to do more of the same. But that didn't work out, and I ended up a working resident of the East Midlands altogether by accident. With my first pay cheque I treated myself to a microphone, with the second a pair of decent studio headphones, and the rest, as they say, is the demented noise of a madman left to his own devices.

I realise that as the first thing I release under the moniker Wintermachine, folks will assume the sound of MANE is to be my 'solo' vernacular. This is not the case. I can assure that there is more than plenty of the requisite moping feat. acoustic guitar on the horizon, but I wanted to cut my teeth on material with which I was more familiar. So I opened up my DAK of choice, dropped in the MIDI of each track of The Foal as a guide, and watched what happened.

I haven't sought to improve upon or undermine the original tunes on The Foal whatsoever. These songs aren't really anything more than rough sketches. The idea was simply to shift the focus on each song, and see what happened. It was complete experiment. Each song is intended to reflect and complement its original recording, to form part of a more detailed picture of the story ZIGO’s songs tell. 

If there’s any ‘improvement’ I would hope people hear, however, it would be in my own voice, and perhaps the delivery of the songs, which would betray a little more time spent getting to know them and a lot less pressure to nail a take in a space I felt uncomfortable. I guess by calling it MANE I was highlighting how the beast has changed as it's aged; if in The Foal we discussed the feebleness of the whole youthful creature, on MANE I hold its coarse hair in my hand to see how it has grown.

Thank you for reading, if you have read, and most importantly thank you for listening, if you have listened. Two months ago I had no music to share, and through a series of ridiculous experiments I have five songs that I'm proud of - if only because I've managed to cram so many band in-jokes into each track - with which to celebrate The Foal's anniversary.