The lead single from my new album as The Silent Committee, City of Reflections, is available as a FREE download NOW!
https://thesilentcommittee.bandcamp.com/album/city-of-reflections
The download includes an extra non-album track.
Also, if you didn’t see it already there is a video that accompanies the song, here or here.
The new album is entitled ‘One Day The Sadness Will End, But I Don’t Think Today Is The Day…’ and is due to be released on October 27th exclusively through the projects BandCamp.
See above the video for the lead single ‘City of Reflections’.
The single will be available to download for free on Friday October 6th and includes an extra non-album track!
The album will do all the usual TSC stuff – instruments played, sampled, broken and oddly arranged in a minimal, ambient fashion. It’s been a stop start few years in the making, but overall I’m happy with the result.
Subscribe to the blog here and/or follow @ 4DRecordings on instagram for more news on the album release as it happens.
Much love.
CFx
The Silent Committee EP, ‘Imperfect Machines’, makes it’s debut on streaming sites from today!
If you like it enough it is still available to download from Bandcamp for a very affordable price.
If you’re the streaming kind then Spotify, Apple, Tidal, YouTube etc. will see you right.
Also as with the other releases lately, you can dance to them on TikTok or soundtrack bizarre reels on Instagram.
Imperfect Machines was the last lengthy and fully conceived/planned release from the project back in 2019. It sought to be the acoustic album, utilising no synthesis or electronic instruments – heavily relying on upright piano, viola, voice and various string instruments. The acoustic were ultimately toyed with by effects pedals and laptop maniupation, but the acoustic sounds do still shine through.
Since the release of this EP the project has lay kind of dormant, releasing tunes for piano day and odd songs here and there.
But all that will change in October. Stay tuned!
CFx
Took A Walk
This song was a real slog to make. It’s lyrics are a little cliche, for sure. The tune is simple. The repetitive refrain of ‘time to save’ was sung in four part harmony without looping or pitch correcting – I sang every single one!
It wasn’t a happy time but the song, I think, kind of pulled me through.
The EP still exists on BFW Recordings website as a free download, and the music video still resides on YouTube and below. I do intend to soon either remaster or completely re-record the song with my improved recording abilities and will probably put it online sometime on or around October 10th.
For now though, ‘enjoy’ the original in all it’s awkward and difficult glory!
The Silent Committee’s 2014 album ‘zero.’ has undergone the remaster and expanded reissue treatment.
All 10 of the original tracks have been edited to boost volume, improve dynamics and just sound better than they have ever sounded before. The reissue also compiles all 3 songs recorded for the BFW Recordings series ‘Album In A Day’ and improves their audio. There are then 2 more compilation project recordings, possibly unheard of before due to their obscurity.
As always: for purchasing the album Bandcamp is your best bet – cheapest, comes with high quality artwork and liner notes, and your purchase supports the artist directly! The Bandcamp page itself features a write up on each track individually about inspiration, instrumentation and background on all the songs makings.
If you’re more the streaming kind then please support The Silent Committee over on Spotify, Apple, Tidal, YouTube etc. Any plays and shares help us out.
If you feel like setting a TikTok or Instagram reel to these strange electronic/ambient tunes then they should be available on there too! (I’d love to see what they end up soundtracking)
CFx
Enki were a huge part of the Northampton music scene throughout the 2000’s and early 2010’s.
I joined the band playing bass in around 2008 after spotting a poster tacked up in The Labour Club that said something along the lines of – must like playing 7 minute songs with only one chord. I was intrigued, looked them up online and was hooked on the their debut EP.
We played many, many gigs. Mostly around Northamptonshire itself, popping up at The Umbrella Fair, Bardic Picnic, White Ark festivals and many others. Our live performances took us further afield with Liverpool and London being particular highlights.
There were numerous live and studio recordings made during our time together that we distributed randomly on CD. We were all into DIY music production and made a good number of songs. The one that got some good attention towards the end of our run was a song called ‘Beta Moon’, that saw airtime on BBC Northamptons Weekender Introducing programme and is featured on the soundcloud link below. The band saw a few lineup shifts throughout the 8 years we gigged. This song features Mike Goff on vocals, Thomas Nightingale on guitar and backing vocals, me on bass and backing vocal, and Owen Copps on drums. This recording also features the viola playing of Roz Webber.
The band never officially split up. We’re more on hiatus due to geographic problems and real life happening. There have been efforts to reunite and jam as recently as 2022 with a planned festival appearance, but unfortunately that return event was cancelled completely, leaving us without a venue. Maybe next time. The various members meet up and talk online about projects, so who knows maybe some recordings in the near future, either as Enki or something else.
Here, we are going right back! Way, way back! Around 2005/2006 time was where it all began. A young Chris dressed head-to-toe in black singing sad, mostly acoustic songs into the microphones at Beck Studio in Wellingborough. The Beck Studio sessions never got released to the world because I felt my inexperience shone through a little too much. The first songs that made it onto the internet were 4-track cassette demos and then from these demos I returned to a studio. Hot Rock in Northampton was recommended to me by Stevie Jones of the Wildfires so I sought them out to complete a demo CD of ten songs playing acoustic guitar, bass, lap-steel and vocals. I’m still proud of it as a whole but for similar reasons to the Beck sessions they’re not out there in the world anymore; I was young and not fully developed as a songwriter and definitely not as a singer. It was still the days when MySpace reigned supreme that these songs got any air.
I’m contemplating putting together a compilation of earlier songs via Bandcamp in the near future and may well include a song or two from these sessions if I feel they can still work and survive in the real world.
Below is a song that was written for the Beck recording sessions – although the version shared was recorded around 6 years later at home, with a more focus approach on production.
CF
As the title would suggest; the debut album from The Silent Committee, ‘The Missing’ is now available on a multitude of streaming services and storefronts!
If you feel like setting a TikTok or Instagram reel to these strange electronic/ambient tunes then they should be available on there too! (I’d love to see what they end up soundtracking)
This will be the remastered audio and extremely expanded version (more than twice the length of the original release).
A reminder that the Bandcamp page is still THE place to buy it from as it is the most affordable and is formatted in the way CF intended it to be seen. The bandcamp pages for each song also include write ups about the inspiration and instrumentation.
Hope you’re enjoy the recent run of [4D]Recordings releases and rereleases.
As a spoiler of sorts, there is at least one more definite NEW release coming later this year. Keep yer eyes peeled and hit the subscribe button for the newsletter or follow the Instagram.
CFx
Today I’m casting my mind back to 2011.
To Bury A Ghost was the music project of Jonathan Stolber. It’s best described as an alternative rock or art rock outfit.
I got to know Jon through a shared interest in effects pedals and home recording. We kept appearing on the same review blogs and local music broadcasts and eventually caught up to perform together. His band had just released their debut EP The Hurt Kingdom and he was looking to take the songs on the road. I performed guitar, keyboard, glockenspiel and backing vocals in the live lineup. The poster above was for our short tour as a four piece band. The gigs were loud and fierce! It would be good to do this again sometime.
After the tour had finished we set to recording some alternate versions of the EP songs and demoing some new stuff. The demo we set loose into the world was called Dancing With Epileptic and can be heard/downloaded still at bandcamp.
We still hang out and tinker with writing and recording sounds. Jons latest solo project is called The Holy Road and is well worth your time to give a listen too.
The Divine Undone.
This is a hard one to share. I had such high hopes for a future with this band, but it wasn’t to be. We had an albums worth of songs rehearsed and tight…but it lasted two gigs and one home recording demo session. We were all busy with other projects and real life stuff that it sadly never took off.
The project had the psychedelia of Enki and the rough edges of Snakeman. We were a four piece built around the songwriting and guitar/saxophone playing of Kirsty Wilkins (The Lunar Trixies). Featuring members of Presley Johnson (Alex George on drums) , Enki (me on bass), and Jontys Jam Night regular, Mario on guitar it was a bit of a Northampton supergroup back in 2014.
We at times sounded like The Doors, Jefferson Airplane, Jimi Hendrix…anything with that late 60’s psych edge. I played a home made fretless bass for this band that was named Ragwitch.
Some of the songs would go on to be performed by new band The Ginhouse Gypsies, Muddy Boots and The Lunar Trixies. All that remains of our short time as a band are a bunch of photographs, one of the coolest gig posters I’ve ever been attached to, and a live recording that I shall share snippets of in due time.
Chris Fordham Music 