For those unfamiliar, Broken Shoulder utilises looping guitar lines, field recordings and noise to weave soundscapes that appear both minimalist and fully-formed, Debnam possessing an exceptional ability to balance beauty and chaos. Which is how his songs manage to span the entire spectrum of moods, from pretty tenderness to needling dread, and blend a careful expertise with experimental, improvisational fluidity. In doing so, Broken Shoulder acts not only as a solid counterpoint to the frenetic Fighting Kites sound, but also as a pertinent soundtrack to contemporary life—bridging between the human and inhuman, organic and digital.

Just as with Shaw and Fighting Kites, we’ve given Debnam the space to reminisce about his music, taking us through the anthology and giving a little insight into the how the songs came to be.

Shark Island (Crow Versus Crow Session)

I had no idea when I recorded this session quite how important a part of my life the Crow Versus Crow radio show would be. Huge thanks to both Mr Audio Antihero for arranging this and for introducing me to a show that would in turn introduce me to so much good new music and uncover a whole scene that I was not really aware of. And big thanks to Mr Crow for letting me do a session. It has always been an honour to have my stuff played on his shows alongside a lot of excellent music.

This version of Shark Island is a classic example of what I feel is a later version of a song being better than the original. In spite of it being played live there seems to be less obvious fluffs in it than the original (a large portion of which I should say was also recorded live), and there seems to be a more defined structure, whereas a lot of the original was improvised and consequently there was a fair bit of searching for where the song was supposed to go.

Oak & Mirrors (Crow Versus Crow Session)

Oak & Mirrors is named after the ceiling of a pub I like. The song first appeared on the Tape of Disquiet release and was my love letter to the first Tortoise album or at least this bit (the middle section) was. I always thought this would be fun to do with a band, but then maybe the Tortoise rip-off would be even more obvious than it already is. Guess it would sound better to call it a tribute rather than a rip-off, but if the cap fits…

Don’t Get Caught In The Treads

I’d been trying to get this ‘field recording’ of my keys rattling whilst I walked over some loose drain covers in Kawasaki into a song for a while and finally managed to do so [on the Bern Yr Idols Audio Antihero Compilation], combining it with this nice little Papa M-like guitar part. What can I say, I wear my influences on my sleeve. Think I must have got a new bubbly noise maker before I recorded this, as I seem to be enjoying using it a lot on this track. Perhaps a little too much actually. I like the occasional extra-loose drain cover sound the most on here.

Eating Flowers

Can’t deny that as much as I might pretend otherwise, I really love playing these kind of big riffs. And I think I like it even more when they are slightly fluffed as this one is at times. It was probably recorded at very low volume though. I’m also enjoying hearing that £20 Argos acoustic guitar. That was probably the most fun to play guitar ever. And excellent value too! If you only listened to the start and the end of this song, you’d probably never imagine it was the same piece.

I’m shocked about how many things surprised me listening to these songs. Perhaps that says equal amounts about my memory and my creative process. I miss some of that gear I was using back then. Some items have been returned to their owners, some have broken.

Morning Is Broken (Resonance FM Session)

This session was pretty terrifying. No pressure, just LIVE ON THE RADIO! It was a lot of fun though and the host pointed out something I’d never noticed before which was that in times of tension and stress (the interview), I clutch my broken shoulder. Not sure how exciting for the audience my interview was. Actually can’t recall any of it apart from the shoulder clutching. I’ve always loved this song.

There’s an unintentional Stereolab rip-off that was only noticed the next time I listened to the Stereolab record. And of course the song is much longer than it normally is. That’s one of the perils of live-looping and general panicky performance I guess. Fame-wise, it was probably all down hill from here. I can hear the fear in the playing, but hopefully you can’t. The key to not getting found out is when you make a clanger, just repeat it, as if that’s what you meant to do.

That’s a real bass guitar being used in the session but you’ll probably be shocked to hear that the marimba at the end is actually a keyboard! WOW!

Family Banana Coaster

Perhaps this title is internet searchable but the ride is now gone. I never rode the family banana coaster. It looked a bit tame. I would have been more interested in an adults only banana coaster. Although having written that, I can now understand why such a name would never be used for fear that it would be misconstrued. This bass riff had sat on my loop station for ages since a Fighting Kites rehearsal where we were trying to write some new songs. It never worked for FK but I always loved it so was delighted to finally have a chance to give it an airing.

This is almost like a real song with a verse and chorus and everything. Except there’s a dropped beat in the loop which makes it sound all pleasantly awkward.

Other Tropisms (The Wrong Rock Show Session)

Thanks to Jamie, this session made me huge in South Africa. Well, maybe not exactly, but it was once again lovely to be asked to do something for people to hear who would be way out of my normal path. It’s funny that the session was a split one with Jack Hayter as although we share a birthday we are musically pretty different. This doesn’t stop me from enjoying his tracks on this session though.

Listening back, I’m really pleased with the version of Other Tropisms on here. This is another one where the version recorded after the actual release turned out to be better than the original. Learning how to play stuff live focuses the mind a little, but at the same time restricts in an interesting way. The title came from a video I found I think in the Prelinger archive. Naturally I used it to make a ‘promotional video’ for the song. I can’t imagine how many extra sales it resulted in. I quite like it though. Should probably make some more videos.

Who Is Samuel Cocking? (The Wrong Rock Show Session)

Who IS Samuel Cocking? I know who he is, but maybe not many people do. If you visit Enoshima you might see his name. I’d like to say the song is a tribute to him, but, like many of my titles, the name has very little to do with the actual song. It’s just a result of me finding it amusing. I am easily amused.

I’d kind of forgotten about this song and am enjoying listening back to it. It has a big sound of the Japanese summer on there, an insect buzz that sounds like static, and has the sound of the crows in Yoyogi Park too. Perhaps the same crow that tried to attack me at a later date. I felt like screaming to it ‘I’m a long term vegetarian and animal lover, leave me alone!’ They may be very smart creatures but haven’t yet been able to pick up on my thoughts telepathically.

The bicycle bell also comes from Yoyogi Park. I like it when that chimes in. There’s also something that sounds like an approaching storm, but I suspect that might just be wind on the mic with a lot of echo on it. Spooky, eh? Had forgotten about the guitar twiddling at the end. It probably is faded out before a massive clunky wrong note, but quite like the way the guitar appears to be running late, has a quick look around and then pops off again.

Uff/Magow (WVUM Session)

Another session, another radio station, another country. I believe that this particular session has some added personal significance for Mr Audio Antihero but I’ll leave him to spill the beans on that if he wants to. This time the session was a double header with Benjamin Shaw, reuniting the Southern Records warehouse dream team, this time in musical performance rather than the packing of music product. I’m pretty sure these tracks were recorded live, as was my preference when doing sessions, perhaps because I was brought up on the idea of Peel Sessions. Sadly, I did it in my living room rather than a BBC studio. But they sound pretty good I think.

This session also featured a decent version of ‘Morning Is Broken’, a title which I always thought was quite amusing to me, but most people probably presumed was me just making a mistake with the title of the hymn. I kind of miss the days when I used to make little songs like these with maybe even tunes and structures, but deep down inside, I think my heart was always set on ploughing a big old drone furrow, even if people would prefer it if I hadn’t.

This version of Uff/Magow never made it to the broadcast but I’ve put it on here because it’s quite different to how the recorded version sounds. To be honest, that first album is a bit of a mystery to me now. I can’t remember or imagine how those songs came about, with their structures and parts. This version features a nice little guitar freakout at the start which is always fun to do, and the sharp cut into the song itself works quite well for once. I wonder how many times I had to try that before it worked well enough to use. The name of this song is another one of my secret titles that has a lot of meaning to me but almost certainly no meaning to anyone else. This song was always a lot of fun to play live and listening to it makes me want to go and pick up my guitar again. Actually, I probably should as I’m supposed to be recording a new thing featuring only guitar, but instead I guess I have to go to work. Hmmmm, slick ending to this song too. Well done me!

Ultimate Donko (WVUM Session)

This version of ‘Ultimate Donko’ features another extended guitar ‘work out’ at the end that was usually elongated when I played this song live due to the fact that I had to try to subtly fade out the main loop with either a finger or a toe whilst continuing to play. Seemed to work out quite well this time though and I’m pleasantly surprised listening again.

Cat’s Forehead

Another big old riff, probably played almost silently again in my living room to avoid annoying the neighbours. The Crow Versus Crow session version is a lot more sedate and delicate because it doesn’t have the bassline but in this version I seem to remember that if you isolate the bass part it sounds like it could be a Slowdive song! I was having computer trouble whilst recording this and couldn’t listen back whilst recording in real time so I put loads of reverb on the bass and hoped for the best. Really like how it came out. Like most of my favourite Broken Shoulder songs there’s probably too much going on but it just about hangs together and almost sounds kind of triumphant. At least to my ears anyway.

Give yourself a pat on the back reader/listener. You made it to the end of the album!

Shark Islands: A Broken Shoulder Archipelago is out now via Audio Antihero and Old Money Records and you can get it from the Broken Shoulder Bandcamp page.

The post Broken Shoulder – Shark Islands: a Retrospective appeared first on Various Small Flames.

This extended as far as the line-up, with the original duo of Neil Debnam and Daniel Fordham releasing a self-titled EP before going on to become a trio with the addition of bassist David Stewart. After showing off their heavier sound on 2009’s Vlaams Tapes, they eventually added Luke Johnson to bring further dimensions and directions to the music. Because, far from being hyperactive pick and mixers, Fighting Kites utilised every element with consideration and care, crafting detailed and evocative soundscapes that eschewed the cheap crescendos so common in instrumental music in favour nuance and depth. The project culminated in 2012 with a self-titled album on Variant Records, the quartet enabling them to show off their richest, most intricate sound yet.

Post-Fighting Kites, its members have spread far and wide. Neil Debnam performs under the name Broken Shoulder and also founded the excellent Kirigirisu Recordings in Tokyo, Luke Johnson runs a band for adults with learning difficulties, The Gorgie Go-Getters, while David Stewart and Daniel Fordham went on to form The Drink, putting out two highly acclaimed albums on Melodic Records. While Fighting Kites is no more, the talents and energies that made it so are still very much at work in the world.

Still, in the spirit of a farewell tour, Audio Antihero can’t let sleeping dogs like, delving into the archives to share some of the stuff we might not have heard the first time around. As we saw with the Tempertwig release back in March, resurrecting the dead can be far more than an exercise in nostalgia or morbid curiosity, with some gems waiting to be unearthed from relative obscurity.

Mustard After Dinner – An Anthology of Fighting Kites collects material from a variety of sources—self-releases, compilation appearance, sessions, live recordings and even a collaboration with our good friend Benjamin Shaw—displaying the full range of the Fighting Kites experimental sound across twenty-two tracks and serving as something of an evolutionary tree for the band.

To get a better picture of the anthology’s scope, we invited the band to give a little context to each release, explaining how the project evolved over its lifespan.

Self-Titled EP

I worry a bit about how appalling my memory is: friends recount in great detail incidents from years ago of which I have absolutely no recollection. But this is so far in the past that for once I don’t think I have anything to feel bad about on the memory failure front. Here are four (it was going to be five but I ran out) things I can remember.

1. Fighting Kites was just Neil and me then. Gigs were a shambles of inept looping, instrument swapping and nervous breakdowns. To be honest it was a great relief when Dave said he would join in. Luke, a little bit later, was icing/cake.

2. We recorded (some of?) it in my bedroom in a house I shared with friends in Muswell Hill. It was very cold in that house in the winter. The cellar was full of old, crappy furniture which one of my housemates used to like to burn on the fire to keep us warm. I think we recorded the drums for Kita Senju and Slowly Slowly downstairs in our dear friend Michael (aka Woah! Melodic)’s room. He had more microphones than me.

3. The crackling sound at the beginning of Anthony Gankin is (I think) the sound of me scrunching up a plastic bottle, put through some effects. I was very pleased with it at the time. I still think it sounds great.

4. Slowly Slowly took its title from the slogan on a risqué t-shirt that our friend Richard Medina bought when we went with him to Barcelona once. Fortunately the internet doesn’t seem to have an image of the t-shirt, so I can’t share it here. You’ll have to imagine it.

– Daniel Fordham

The Resonance FM Sessions

Alright, I’ve no idea when this is from – see above re memory – but I do sort of remember doing it. Mainly I remember being terrified beforehand. Live radio! (I’ve done more terrifying things since, but not many.) It’s your first taste on this anthology of what I think of as the fully-evolved version of Fighting Kites, once we had Luke and Dave on the team. There are some occasional wonky spots from me – those nerves – but I think we give a pretty good account of ourselves here.

– Daniel Fordham

Northern Territory

No idea why it has this name but I remember Neil and Dan being particularly euphoric when the idea was dropped – is the very last thing we recorded as a band. It was recorded on a dark and wet December night in what would become New River Studios in North London, just a few weeks before our last ever gig at The Victoria on 21 January 2012.

It was a strange time as both Neil and I had said we would be leaving London – and as a consequence the band – so the recording session had these blue undertones and, when we finally managed to get it recorded, which took a lot of doing as we had to get it in a oner, I felt a punch to the gut because it was over.

I love the track, especially the chugging final section, which was super fun to play live and an indication of where we were heading had we continued. I know Dave was talking a lot about Hawkwind at the time – particularly Masters of the Universe – and I’m sure some of that bubbled over into Northern Territory.

– Luke Johnson

The Vlaams Tapes

In the summer of 2009 Fighting Kites went on an international tour. Admittedly it was a one date tour, but that still counts, right? We made our way to Kortrijk to play at Farm Fest which was relocated from the farm to the city centre and renamed Vlas Fest. In order to mark this exciting occasion we recorded a mini-album of rehearsal studio jams, homemade noise fuckery, a few live recordings and one super structured and meticulously recorded piece (The Hedgehog Incident) which, if I recall rightly was ‘commissioned’ for an internet kids TV show or something like that.

The concept was to make something a bit like the Faust Tapes, with some proper songs and some sketches and ideas stitched together into one semi-coherent whole. There were 50 copies made from brown paper and each featuring a unique photo, printed from some slides Luke found at a car boot sale. If you look closely you can find little riffs and ideas on here that would later bloom into whole songs on later recordings. This release also has a couple of our best song titles I think. The show in Belgium wasn’t our most successful. It was pretty hot outside and even hotter inside the venue which probably affected both our performance and reception. But the experience was awesome, I had a great time and will be eternally grateful to the Vlas Vegas guys for having us. Later on in the same trip, with me and Dan enjoying the feeling of being international musicians and after having enjoyed some of the delicious local refreshments I sleep-walked off the top of a bunk bed and broke my shoulder.

– Neil Debnam

Grey Starling (Live at Ryan’s Bar)

Grey Starling was a live staple of ours ever since its inception. The first incarnation of it can be heard on the Vlaams Tapes as the freeform jam Hat Luxury/Winkelplezier. This track was also informally known as Chicken Strut because Neil thought his guitar part sounded like a chicken pecking, which it does, however, when it came to our album proper we felt we couldn’t steal the track title from The Meters, hence we settled on another little pecker, the Starling, and made an offering to the nautical pun gods by adding Grey.

The track is taken from one of our live sets at Ryan’s Bar in Stoke Newington – a tiny 80 capacity basement that we could hire for free and programme with some of our mate’s bands. These gigs were some of our best and also the most fun to play. We’d spent a long time being at the mercy of other promoters trying to get the odd support slot here or there, so when we decided to start organising our own gigs it felt pretty exciting and reminded us that everything is better when you do it yourself, Fr.

– Luke Johnson

This Christmas (I Just Want to Be Left Alone)
w/ Benjamin Shaw

Oddly I do have quite vivid memories of doing this. Recording the band, live and as I recall in fairly rudimentary fashion (although Ben made it sound great, as is his habit), at the rehearsal room we used near Manor House. And then of me recording the horns and the all-important sleigh bells at home on my own when I was supposed to be “working from home”. My Christmas present to myself. The sax line borrows the opening melody from another well-known Christmas song: see if you can spot what it is.

– Daniel Fordham

Mustard After Dinner is out now via Audio Antihero and Old Money Records and you can buy it from Bandcamp.

The post Fighting Kites – Mustard After Dinner: a Retrospective appeared first on Various Small Flames.