They’re a band – punk, pop, emo, all of that – that play together. Draper from Crash of Rhinos keeps seeing them outside McDonald’s on St. Peter’s Street in Derby at six in the morning. I think they sleep together in a Father Ted and Dougal + 1 arrangement. The songs sound like those written by inseperable friends. When you listen to them you want to call up the friends with whom you used to be or still are inseparable from and say, “Hey, friend, come round and listen to Papàyer and we can sing along even though you can’t sing it doesn’t matter just shout along and everything will be fine.”

Following the acclaimed album ‘A Lullaby Hum For Tired Streets’ (released in 2011 on CD and vinyl by Time Travel Opps and Triste Records respectively), Emphemetry releases the two-track digital single ‘Twinklebox / Old Dreams’.

It’s a digital-only soundtrack single.

‘Twinklebox’ is an alternate version of the soundtrack to the animation of the same name by Aaron Bradbury.

‘Old Dreams’ is the first in a set of piano pieces (to be released later in 2012) inspired by the shadowless walled town in Haruki Murakami’s novel ‘Hard Boiled Wonderland & The End Of The World’.

“My studio, where my piano is kept, is situated in a very old mill at Darley Abbey in Derby.

There are crooked passages between the mill’s buildings, bits of machinery from dead industries, and strange empty structures with walls swelled by years. In the foggy none-days of mid-late winter this place has an uncanny resemblance to how I picture the shadowless walled town in the ‘end of the world’ scenario from Haruki Murakami’s novel Hard-boiled Wonderland & The End Of The World.

I started bringing the book with me to recording sessions, and taking it to the ghostly pub around the corner. With every chapter I could point to a place or think of a person in the world around me here that fit the words perfectly.”

Pancake Day, Shrove Tuesday, day of the Shrovetide game of mentalism with long-from football as its excuse. Pete, Dave and Dana arrive in a van that’s back is broken. Dana plays as Insect Ark, and is supporting Pete on this tour.

Dana sets up on the small stage at Bar One, by a small but roaring fire and flanked by deep red curtains. Laptop, lapsteel, bass and an array of pedals create growing soundscapes that are spacious, spooky, industrial, futuristic. Some songs don’t have names, but the small Derby crowd aren’t feeling very creative being, as they are, warmed and full of pancakes.

Here’s my favourite Insect Ark song:

Pete sits there like something out of Twin Peaks. The guy could read your shopping list and make a supermarket think it a masterpiece. Luckily, he has the words to match the delivery. Those poems that we know as Enablers songs sound different here, ‘A Blues For Us’ in particular. Backed by music, the poems sound urgent and raspy…even threatening. Here in the back room at Bar One they sound slower, more meditative, sombre, without losing any directness. We’re treated to nearly an hour of poems and stories from an upcoming collection, as well as those already available from Lancashire & Somerset.

There was a general feeling in the room of being lucky to have seen this, and to have seen it here like this. I’d put these guys on again in a shot, them both being engaging and inspiring performers as well as genuinely lovely people.

This new version of ‘Twinklebox’ is accompanied by a second track that’s also a soundtrack of sorts. It’s the first in a series of piano pieces based on the individual aspects of (and unlikely similarities between) the ‘End of the World’ part of Haruki Murakami’s Hard-boiled Wonderland & The End of the World, and the architecture and atmosphere of Darley Abbey Mills where I have my studio.

It’s a close-mic’d piece, a technique I picked up at Nils Frahm’s studio when mastering ‘A Lullaby Hum For Tired Streets’ there. I’ve finished writing the other pieces, and am scoring the strings at the moment. I hope to release them as an EP or part of an album later in 2012.

The ‘Twinklebox | Old Dreams’ double soundtrack single is available only as a download. Head over to Bandcamp and name your price.

After seeing them live numerous times, and falling for their Basic Text/Snug Session recorded earlier this year, Time Travel Opps is proud to be putting out these five tracks in a limited run of 50 cd-rs in thick natural card wrap-around hand-numbered packaging + insert.

There are the obvious comparisons to draw as the band share their love of open tunings, gang vocals and youthful abandon with Cap n’ Jazz, Algernon Cadwallader, Monument etc. But there’s more to these guys than just that. There’s the northern angular sound of This Ain’t Vegas, and even darker early emo such as Native Nod. Tom’s voice is pure Derby. No put-on accents. And it has what the lyrics it sounds out have – a serious passion and pride for friends, place, and being in a band – and a brilliant one at that.

The Papayer EP is a split-release with Basic Text. It’s their first release, and our tenth, and will be available from Papayer at shows and on their Bandcamp page.

Twinklebox from Aaron Bradbury on Vimeo.

Written, directed and animated by Aaron Bradbury, with music by Richard Birkin and sound design/recording by Robin Newman.

Following on from Loetzinn and The Fool Looks At The Finger, Aaron and I wanted to do something where neither the music nor the images came first, but instead grew together into something as yet undefined. The result is Twinklebox.

It was either a gadget shop or the now defunct (at least in Derby) Stuff & Co. where we found these music boxes. I can’t remember whether we got excited because of the idea of Twinklebox, or whether the idea came being excited by these toy objects. Either way, that’s where it really started to take shape. Aaron would draw a music box, and I’d write a melody, which would change the character, which would change the melody. And so on.

The soundtrack came together totally naturally once the character had been developed, although there was an abrupt change when Aaron fell for a short recording of piano chords I’d improvised on a grand piano at a student’s recording session. He loved the sadness and the build, and the rhythm created a natural way to cut the animation to the music. So I re-wrote the melody around these chords, stamped it into a long sheet of card and fed it through the toy music box.

You can view all of Aaron’s visual work along with some of the composition and recording process here.

The film has already had thousands of views, been shown around the country on BBC Big Screens, opened for films at Derby QUAD’s cinema, and spawned a techno 3D brother in the form of Lumitone.

The soundtrack has been expanded and released as a digital-only single that you can read about and listen to here.

Swells of ambience, strings, folk songs, field recordings, and a haunted barbershop quintet. Ambient folk songs and post-rock music inspired by Derby at night.

Side A: After Catalunya | Four Million Silhouettes | A Lullaby Hum | Francis Thompson
Side B: Every Other Second Day | Five Fields | So Long Magic Helper |
Houses, Empty As Holes | Emilelodie | Isaac’s Dream Of Tired Streets

“Derby is a small city in the middle of England. About three-hundred thousand people live here. I live in the middle of it, and walk around it a lot at night, after band practices, recordings, or box socials. The usual.

There are lots of shortcuts and detours. Narrow streets lit dimly if at all where it doesn’t take much more than a squint and a bit of imagination to imagine past days. I’m prone to these flights of time travel fancy.

I made this album while thinking of these things. Wrote it while living them. If you can, I’d don some headphones and listen to it walking around your city at night, perhaps taking a detour or two along the way.”

- Richard

Reviews:

“It is an eclectic mix of ambient, folk and post-rock and it is one that I deeply, deeply enjoyed.”
- Fluid Radio

“This album of varied style and influence is equally impressive in all it’s forms, with the larger whole held together through a strongly unifying aesthetic.” – Collective Zine

“Ahhhh close my eyes and I’m transported from this dingy office into green pastures…I can see it very much appealing to fans of Epic 45, Hood, Declining Winter and all those experimental pastoral indie good guys.” – Norman Records

“A quality production full of many surprises and exquisite tracks which will undoubtedly be on my top 10 list of 2011.” – Saravan Music

Listen:

12″ 180g vinyl, Ltd. 250 | Free Download (w/ optional support)

His short stories are explorations of existence via his unique Carver-esque tellings of ordinary people that find themselves in sometimes real, sometimes distressing, sometimes magic, and sometimes downright bizarre situations.

Nath currently resides in London, where he’s starting to pick out the new stories he wants to tell there.

When performing live, Biff uses loop pedals to build the songs gradually while singing. He’s joined by Dan Bridgewood-Hill and/or Anthony Saunders on violin and drums.

Biff also collaborates with animator Aaron Bradbury at Luniere, contributing music to stories about inanimate objects and broken toys brought to life.