julie byrne Archives - Various Small Flames

Advance Base – Plastic Owen Band

Jon Doyle — Fri, 07 Nov 2014 18:55:30 +0000

Advance Base is Owen Ashworth (formerly known as Casiotone For the Painfully Alone) and is one of my very favourite songwriters. I loved pretty much everything he put out as CFTPA, and also loved his debut as Advance Base, A Shut-In’s Prayer. He makes literary, lo-fi, “depressed” pop music, or as his bio puts it, “conjures dreamy waltzes, heavy-hearted ballads & electro pop torch songs from Rhodes electric piano, sampler, & drum machine. Advance Base songs deal with deceased racehorses, estranged siblings, disappearing loves & all things long lost.” If that doesn’t sound good to you then I’m not sure we could be friends.

Ashworth has just released Plastic Owen Band, a new “album” of covers, demos, compilation tracks and rarities produced between 2011 and 2014. The covers include Creedence Clearwater Revival, Bill Withers, Neil Young and even Casiotone’s own ‘Natural Light’.’Natural Light’ is classic Ashworth, a low-key, yearning song for a lost love. It is has lines like this:

“I got some news on you from a friend
you’re in Charlotte again
teaching Spanish at high school

he said you’re going by Joy
you cut your hair like a boy
& you don’t talk to your old friends

I found a picture from before the fight
we’re in natural light
& you’re sitting on my lap
like everything’s alright”

There’s also a remix of Advance Base’s ‘Summer Music’ (featuring Julie Byrne, who we wrote about here) which appeared on the aforementioned A Shut-In’s Prayer. It’s a great illustration of how a change of name has not meant a change of direction (or quality for that matter).

“There’s no comfort in sympathy
she’s upstate with her family
I’m still at the same address
I still believe I could love her best”

It also has a bizarre video in which Ashworth reveals himself to be a little fuzzy blue guy, a longlost inhabitant of Sesame Street.

Plastic Owen Band also has some rather nice instrumental tracks that show that Ashworth’s talents extend far beyond song writing. Advance Base has an album of them here, if you would like to hear more.

You can grab Plastic Owen Band on a pay-what-you-can basis right now.

P.S. If you’re not familiar with Ashworth’s work then please put that right immediately.

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January 2014 Roundup – A Mixtape

Jon Doyle — Tue, 04 Feb 2014 19:46:00 +0000

Lately we’ve been trying to do roughly a post a day here at Wake the Deaf, which is a huge increase in output compared to our usual lazy standards. Because of this, we thought it might be a nice idea to gather up all of the artists we feature in a month into a handy little mixtape for your listening pleasure. Perfect if you haven’t managed to keep up on what we’ve been writing day-to-day.

Our January 2014 mix is a little light on numbers as during the first fortnight or so we were busy with our year-end lists and whatnot. But there are still thirteen great tracks for you to check out. As always, there’s a variety of genres so you should find something you like.

January Mix from Wake The Deaf on 8tracks Radio.

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Julie Byrne – Rooms With Walls and Windows

Jon Doyle — Thu, 23 Jan 2014 17:59:09 +0000

Julie Bryne’s Rooms With Walls and Windows goes some way to capturing nostalgia as something tangible, the finger-picked guitars and crooned vocals playing like the soundtrack to some sepia tone memory where the sun is shining and the windows are rolled down and towns are passing by in a pleasant haze. Gentle but deceptively nuanced, the songs are shot through with a sense of memory and loss that is both hopeful and sad. It’s rather lovely.

You can get the LP from Orindal Records.

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