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| I'm collecting all salvageable material and compiling it here. Some of this stuff is newly remastered, some has never been released before. There's a separate page for Complete Videos |
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Muster Point Jeeps Debut Jeeps album. |
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7 Love Rivals Glen Strachan Sequel to 8 Love Rivals, this mini-album brings the total number of character portraits in the series up to 15/36. Featuring vocals from Edvina Fahlqvist, William Nein, Rachel Thomas, Ioana Gherghel. |
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Acoustic Covers JEEPS Well we couldn't find a permanent drummer for so long that we played a million acoustic shows and got pretty good at it. 'An eerie, ethereal, folk-infused sound created with dreamily evocative harmonies' - Paul Boyling, Your Universe (UEL) |
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Am I There
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Solo Collection Glen Strachan The Solo Collection is a kindof "Best Of" from the material I recorded between England & The April's last album in 2007 & the start of Jeeps in 2010. I somehow managed to write more than 6 albums worth of songs in that time, but wasn't able to get most of it released until very recently, with some tracks faring better than others in the lost audio stakes. With the release of this collection, I plan to leave that era of songwriting & amateur home recording alone & move onto fresh material. | |
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Jeeps On |
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Jeeps On (2014) JEEPS This started life as a track recorded in 2010 with drummer Kasem & William Nein on bass & backing vocals. It was left unfinished but, since the song has become a favourite in our recent performances, in March 2014 we went back to Alchemy Studios in North London & re-recorded the vocals, adding Edvina Fahlqvist's harmony & a subtle synth part. | |
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What The Nice Lady Brings
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What The Nice Lady Brings (2013) JEEPS Two old songs of mine brought to life by a host of brilliant musicians. Markus Karijord from Norway plays flute, and piano on I Want You, Again. Rachel Thomas & Jae Kerwood (England & The April) sing a harmony & Jae also plays bass & drums. Edvina Fahlqvist plays piano & sings main vocal on What The Nice Lady Brings. Hana Piranha plays violin & I play guitar & sing a bit too. | |
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Down At The Philosophy Bar
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Down At The Philosophy Bar (2013) JEEPS There actually is a place called the Philosophy Bar in London, and I just started singing the 'heaven help my heart' chorus during a long, long shower some time deep in the Summer of 2013. By this point the band was just myself & Edvina Fahlqvist, so I recorded the drums myself & had no idea how it would sound until everything was added in the studio. A decent song but I fucked up the production, sounds alright very loud, ne'ermind. | |
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Cornermoon
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Cornermoon (2013) JEEPS Cornermoon was recorded mid-2013 while drummer Riley was visiting the UK again on a brief trip through Europe. It was recorded almost as soon as it was written, in a very basic home-studio setup with cymbals balancing on broken old mic stands & only two mics on the (mono) drums, but somehow it's one of my favourite productions. B-Side If I Slide was written by Clara Day around 2006, the original song can still be heard on her old MySpace page. She refused us permission to release the song. 'Eclectic London-based folk group with elements of post-punk sounds and complex compositions' - Evening Standard | |
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Take Your Time To Leave
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| Take Your Time To Leave (2013) Nicola Achilleas Chxxlie & I wanted to write a pop song innit. Not bad for a first try. |
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Another Day In The Office Of Love
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| Hollering & Handstands (2012) JEEPS Hollering & Handstands was recorded late in the Summer of 2012, and is the closest I've come to blending distorted rock music with choral/classical elements. I guess you guys aren't ready for that yet. But your kids are gonna love it. 'Dark to light, folk to punk' - Bugbear |
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Whirlwind Bromance
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| Whirlwind Bromance (2011) Dodgy Posture Working on urban style tunes with Chxxlie had got a little more serious, and the previous name for our collaboration was perhaps too offensive for the ideas we were developing, so we changed our name and released this single which somehow manages to be funny & sad at the same time I reckon. B-side was made as a birthday present to his friend who just started learning jujitsu or tae-kwondo or something. |
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Take Me Home Country Roads (John Denver)
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7 Dodgy Covers (2010) Glen Strachan I was hibernating in Chesham, "a friendly Buckinghamshire market town", doing a paper round on the Chiltern Hills, and trying not to drink too much, with limited success, as usual. I dunno. I must've recorded a bunch of acoustic covers I guess. | |
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Selfish On My Birthday
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Your Starkself (2010) Glen Strachan Your Starkself was written when I was leaving Berlin the first time, via an extended stay in New York in 2009. The original concept was to write an album of songs that could be played on one string of a guitar, and while most of the songs developed beyond this blueprint, the naked prototypes can still be heard beneath the layers. 'Your cuntery and your music are intimately linked' - Myles Manley | |
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A Touch Of Harry In The Night
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A Touch Of Harry In The Night (2010) JEEPS For a few months in Jan 2010, Kasem Chouja joined Jeeps on drums for some shows in London, and at the end of his tenure we recorded these three tracks at a studio in North London. We drank about twenty cups of 'free' coffee & had to replace it. The producer said my third harmony on Channel 10 was ridiculous, "This isn't experimental jazz" he said, and he was fuckin' right about that, but the harmony is awesome. 'Recorder-infused psychedelic grunge with hints of Wire and Brian Eno' - Cheap Thrills | |
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{Yeah}
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| Three Song Gangdong (2009) Two Man Gangbang Well now. Wasn't sure whether or not to include this little piece of work or not, but what the hay. I met rapper man Chxxlie in a Berlin bar, back when it was relatively unusual to encounter a fellow Londoner in that town. He called me one drunken evening and shouted the chorus to 'Get Yo Pussy' at me, and I agreed that it was, indeed, comical. He came over the following day, we constructed a make-shift vocal booth in the corner of my Prenzlauerberg apartment & we spent the next few weeks recording this monstrosity. |
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Something To Somebody
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| Bleach The Chameleon (2009) Glen Strachan Bleach The Chameleon is the second of two releases originally written as one album titled My Life The Trainwreck. The material was mostly written in early 2008, just after 8 Love Rivals, once I'd moved into my first permanent apartment in Berlin. I found a room in Prenzlauerberg that was completely unfurnished save for a piano which had a strange lever that made it sound like it was being played underwater, and this subdued sound completely matched the themes I was working with of diluted personalities & the retaliation of the ego.. and the muted tones perfectly suited the neighbours too. 'A true classic album. A masterpiece.' - William Nein, AsYet |
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Time Against The Tower
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| The Lizard The Lollipop (2009) Glen Strachan The 2nd part of My Life The Trainwreck. I'd just moved to Berlin, and heard all these amazing phrases in German that became songs almost by accident. Many of these songs were written as a joke in 2 minutes, but this gave me a lot of freedom as the other projects I'd been working on had taken a lot of focus & hard work. These recordings helped me find a new angle on things.. and the weight is never far away. 'Melanie and The Sun reminds me when I did acid, it's just druggy, the title at the end, it sounds like Anderson, it's like the Beatles man, backwards bananas' - Ben London |
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Richard Hate Goes To The Cinema
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| 8 Love Rivals (2008) Glen Strachan 8 Love Rivals was written when I was first arrived in Berlin at the start of 2008, before I'd even found a place to live. I was sleeping in people's hallways & found a temporary room in an artist's house near Eberswalder. I flew back to London to get my computer & a mic, and wrote this album there in a few weeks. It is the first part of lifelong project The Love Rivals Collection. 'Abstract, arty, and emotive in equal measure, 8 Love Rivals also manages to be melody-rich and lyrically intriguing at all times' - Steve Rudd, ThisIsUll.com 'Some of Leonard Cohen's poetic introspection and folksiness in the lyrics, a bit of wry darkness, enough catchy poppiness to be accessible - all is amalgamated into something quite new' - A Future In Noise | |
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Syphilis & Tinnitus
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| On A Monday (2008) Glen Strachan On A Monday was recorded at the start of 2008, while the decision to leave England was skirting around my periphery. It's probably the least cohesive record I've made, with darker tunes like Oh Safia and Don't Expect Me To Be Gentle sitting uncomfortably alongside the ode to a period of joblessness that is On A Monday. It was during the recording of drums for They Don't Need Love that I gave myself tinnitus, and the drum part never even got used so that was for nothing. 'My mind's blowing, you've had these songs all this time, and WHAT THE FUCK' - Ben London | |
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Mr Understanding |
| Mr Understanding (2007) Uxbridge Mens Choir Yeah so this is a weird one. William Nein, Joe & Danny Gardner, and myself recorded an unlistenable a cappella version of Material Girl by Madonna and sent it in to local radio station Hayes FM, under the pseudonym Uxbridge Mens Choir. For some reason. They played the song and later invited us in to do a live session on air, which we did, providing this new cover of a song which was currently their song of the week. Jet Tea pretended to be the mastermind of the whole project, and we broke up the band live on air. So there you have it. 'You're just a bunch of lads from around Uxbridge' - The Infernal Racket Show | |
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Uxbridge Skies
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The Speed Of Sneeze (2007) Glen Strachan While Safety In Cucumbers was envisioned as an album themed by my suburban surroundings in West London, it became wider in scope as the writing developed, and ultimately became part of a trilogy documenting my re-discovered but finally souring love affair with the whole of England. The Speed of Sneeze aimed to narrow the focus once more, and I did almost all the writing on a bench I'd made for my back garden, between kicking a football around the yard & inventing games like World Cup Corners with my housemate Mikey the Uxbridge Strangler. 'Near-classical guitar-work and strangely bucolic folk tales of everyday life in suburban London' - Opposition T | |
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Infinite Skin |
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Infinite Skin (2007) TheBed Having split in 2005, TheBed reformed briefly in 2007, recorded Infinite Skin and went their separate ways again. It was my attempt to capture the live energy of the band in the studio, to compensate for our comparatively tame demos. 'Raw energy collides with melodic, emotive songwriting' - Picadilly Records |
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{A Purple Car}
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| Sticking Up For Pluto (2007) England & The April Sticking Up For Pluto actually began as an idea for a documentary about the band, which was to blur the lines between some of the crazy things that were happening to us & a fictional future where we turn into a ridiculous prog outfit. The riff for the title track was written to be a joke for some outlandishly over-ambitious piece I'd be working on, late in the documentary where I've lost all sense of perspective, but somehow the music turned out to be quite workable & predictably we became the band I was trying to mock. 'Superbly snotty punky grungy fare gives way to beautiful harmonies and a wistful psych pop air' |
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I Want You, Again
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The Ghostcone Trilogy (2006) England & The April The Ghostcone Trilogy is a patchwork of songs from many different times & locations, and features songs written by Rachel & Jae. 'From hard-cracked rock compulsion to jazzy romps and trickles, from breeziness to thunderstorms, from country and western playfulness to light tumbles with ringing high-hats. The bass wanders through the calm moments with warm purring sounds, and pumps big hooks through the rock and grunge episodes' - Opposition T | |
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{England & TheApril}
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Safety In Cucumbers (2005) England & The April TheBed had a show booked at Dublin Castle for 9th June 2005, but things were going terribly for the band & my stubbornness in refusing to use distortion from the new material was losing us a lot of fans. Rachel lived round the corner from me, and she'd filled in on bass when Chris had gone AWOL (dropped a TV on his head & lost his memory) a few months before. I'd just broken up with longterm girlfriend Clara Day, and feeling utterly desolate I went to see Jet Tea, and his mum was kind enough to suggest I take some time out in a little cottage she had in Cornwall or Wales or somewhere I can't recall at any rate, proper in the middle of nowhere. I took a little dictaphone and wrote almost the entire first England & The April album out there. I came back & demo'd a few tracks with Jae, previously of MoonDaySpeaks, and we played the Dublin Castle show a few days later with Rachel on Bass & Jae playing drums. 'The kind of teenage half formed crap i get by the bucketload. Glen knows where the best music is and we know jack shit - off you go and listen to Weezer and Pet Sounds and Dire Straits with grunge boy there' - Org Records |
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Soma Riot Wave Machine
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| Soma Riot Wave Machine (2003) TheBed By 2003 TheBed had gained something of a reputation for two quite different reasons. Our demos had made a little impact, mostly over the Atlantic where we'd had some college radio play, but also our chaotic live shows around the UK, and the surrounding drunken antics, had gained some attention. The main problem as far as I could see was that our demos, recorded at home, were very restrained & sounded like a different band to the abrasive, punky outfit that blasted live audiences out of the room in search of Coldplay. This remarkably unpopular recording was the result. 'Like being stuck in a half-waking dream in which you're lying on the floor being given a particularly vicious kicking, yet you refuse to snap out of it because you're ENJOYING it' - LOGO MAGAZINE 'Delightfully grating vocals over powerful straight ahead rock, with a truly sing-a-long-jump-along kind of a feel. Soma Riot Wave Machine is a bit of a stunner of a track - impressive from an unsigned band who clearly have the potential to go much further' - White Noise Online |
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Hundred Hand Slap
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| Shelter E.P. (2002) TheBed I wasn't happy with the two recordings we'd already made of Hundred Hand Slap, so to finally nail the song and a few others we booked a studio in London for two days. Two songs were finished, and two drums tracks were recorded, so the complete EP was never released. 'Honestly they have all the makings of a great cult band, and cult status doesn't mean commercial success, which means disposable at the moment...' - Anonymous Industry Mogul 'Very worthy and all that, but not pretty-sounding' - NME |
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{No Wonder America}
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| 7-Track Demo (2001) TheBed Chris & I got drunk in London one night & woke up under the Eiffel Tower. We stayed in Paris a few nights, sleeping on benches, and one day Alan called & said he'd loaded his van with a ton of recording equipment from a fancy studio in London where Placebo had been working on Black Market Music. We came home & recorded this demo, which is probably the most successful thing I've ever done. 'A band using the colours and structure of Nirvana as some kind of starting point and thankfully there's already a desire to be different ... and hey a band with ambition, a band with identity, a band with songs that already stand out' - Organart 72 |