Jodie's third solo album is now both out and about. Digital download from Bandcamp, check it out below. Glacial ambience that's strangely calming whilst retaining a good healthy undertone of something not being quite right.
20 tracks. Pay-what-you-want.
If you like it, do please tell people about it. There is no better way to be heard these day than to self replicate digitally through the internet until you pupate and explode through people's faces. Alternatively, you can just retweet it or something. Either or.
Probably not any new Quimper until next year. I mean between the EPs and Jodie's album it's probably enough to be getting on with. I know I mentioned doing a sort of "annual" of tracks that didn't make the EPs, but we're a bit bored of them now and they probably were left off for a reason. If, by some miracle, we find ourselves to be the next Haircut 100 or Fast Food Rockers or something and record labels are clamouring 20 years hence to reissue our back catalogue until we are a dry husk, we shall at least have some bonus tracks.
(there is a very nice alternative version of Thin Theatre I should put up at some point though)
First of all, a massive THANK YOU to all that bought/downloaded/wrote about/generally gave a damn about Little Legs For Little Eggs. We would still be here if you were not, but you make the whole thing much more fun. ACCEPT OUR KIND REGARDS.
The wayward sprint of Thomas Egg is not over yet. There is news. News of egg. News of the new year. More when our hirsute utopian associates are ready to reveal themselves
WHAT'S NEXT?
Jodie's long awaited third solo album, that's what. Possibly as soon as this weekend.
Speaking of Jodie, she's recently done the cover art for Night Heron's new album, which you can listen to below. If you like the Cleaners/wistful psych tinged indie, it's worth checking out.
And I think that's about it for now. As always, you can find our music below. Bye-bye!
And lo, Werdwolfen did stumble forth from the pit once more, undulating horror emanating from every damned pore as it came closer, ever closer to the light.
Or something.
Sometimes, only sometimes mind, we are Werdwolfen. This is one of those times. We have recorded a new session of EIGHT new tracks (don't worry, they're short) for the latest Halloween special on Phantom Circuit. Have a listen below, and seeing how we have quite a few more listeners lately, below *that* I'll try and explain what exactly Werdwolfen is.
Werdwolfen is stupidity, basically. The idea was always to write and record songs as quickly as possible, preferably whilst drunk. Back in 2010, Jodie, our friend Holly and myself recorded a Christmas album, which was never really released properly, I just put a zip file on a blog I used to write. It was a somewhat chaotic affair which I think ended up with me smacking myself over the head with a Roses tin for percussion at one point. For some reason, a few hundred people downloaded it, and it sort of fell into obscure "what the fuck was that?" territory to be vaguely remembered by a handful of people. One of which was the host of Phantom Circuit, who played a few songs back in 2010 and was such a glutton for punishment he invited us back to record a couple of sessions since.
There aren't currently any Werdwolfen albums or EPs to download/buy. Which is probably for the best for all concerned. If you do have a burning need for Werdwolfen in your life, check out the Phantom Circuit archives for sessions and songs.
We are Quimper. Quimper are mostly Jodie Lowther and John Vertigen. Jodie tends to do most of our artwork, videos/animation and singing. John tends to do most of the music. Though we swap around when we feel like it.
What?
Strange claustrophobic little songs about strange claustrophobic little things, mostly. We've released various musical*things* over the past five years, mostly via the recently departed record label we used to run (Soft Bodies Records). You can find all of our music on Bandcamp (quimper.bandcamp.com) and our videos on Youtube (www.youtube.com/user/Quimpervideos)
Where?
The Associates, John Osborne, Wim Mertens, Severed Heads, John Smith, Broadcast, Pierre et Gilles, Martin Dupont, Legendary Pink Dots, Sandie Shaw, KPM, Bruno Schulz, David Lynch and lots of other bits & bobs.
Why?
Because it really used to annoy people. And more recently because it's fun.
Eggs with legs! Little ones! It might be they take longer to get to where they need to go but they'll get there in the end.
Little Legs For Little Legs is the third in our series of EPs. Or singles. Is four tracks an extended play? I suppose it doesn't really matter these days. Four new songs! All recorded in the last two or three months. It's a bit different from the last couple and fans of our more "pop" material aren't going to find another j-pop-smash-hit-in-a-parallel-world banger here (well, sort of), but I hope you find something you like. It's probably our favourite of the three so far. It is pay-what-you-want, so you can download for now or if you're feeling generous, you can throw us a couple of quid. We like money. We can do terrible things with it.
You can hear the EP here. Artwork is by Jodie.
Future Happenings
A few of you may know our work under the guise of Werdwolfen. Something new will be happening under this name very, very soon. As soon as later this month, come to think of it.
Not sure when the next EP will be. Possibly something before Christmas, but we always do a shameless Christmas cash-in so there's that to think about. Expect activity, anyway.
Gigs. We want to play live! We want to escape and live. We're still working out exactly how to do this. Some of you might have seen us when were were all projectors and panic. It was alright when it worked, but this time we need to do more of a show. We'll keep the panic though, that was fun.
As always, thank you very much for your support. This year has probably been the most fun we've had with Quimper since we've started. And we've only just started...yes, we've technically been around a few years now, but y'know, little legs for little eggs. We'll get there in the end.
Our next EP nears completion. Four tracks. Probably a little different than the last couple but still the same idea. This lot are a bit more off.
A couple of people recently have asked why we haven't done an album yet. The idea is that when we do a full length release it will be somewhat elaborate. A collection of videos & animations and some sort of live show that'll mean mobilising people to help perform our songs. We don't just want to stand behind a projector again. It'll be a show. All of that will require a fair amount of effort on our part and (at this moment in time, at least) I'd like the support of a label with some resources that can help us promote such a thing and give it a physical release.
Now we're not really the type to go round the houses cap in hand to labels and whatnot (it's just embarrassing for both sides), so we'll keep self releasing/promoting EPs and until someone takes an interest in us *or* we slowly gain more of an audience so we can completely DIY the thing in a way that does it justice. Either way, don't hold your breath. Though with every EP we do, new faces seem to pop up to say hello and more people are kind enough to pop their hand in their pocket so yeah...who knows?
In the meantime, our new EP should be out in a couple of weeks. And we're doing something else whilst wearing a different hat for Halloween. More on that nearer the time.
Apart from all that, Jodie illustrated this lovely Dorian Grey cover that you can see above and I've set up an Instagram that'll mostly personal but you'll see some Quimper related stuff (including a small preview of a track from the next EP) now and again.
Busy couple of weeks over at the Quimper disco gulag which has basically been a toxic biohazard for the past week seeing us in various states of unwell. On the upside, Soft Bodies Bleed Out has bled out, and thank you to anyone and everyone who partook of it's precious life fluids. Probably one of the fastest downloaded things we'd ever put out so it was lovely to go out on a high. Most everyone involved in Soft Bodies (at least recentlyish) is still very much producing music, so I'd urge you all to track down their latest happenings. Should be new things happening from Squadron Scramble and Petunia Liebling MacPumpkin fairly soonish for starters, and the Cleaners From Venus/Martin Newell musical should be out early next year.
Meanwhile, we're finishing up the next Quimper EP. Four more tracks that should be out end of the month/beginning of Octoberish. I think it'll be called "Thomas Egg Has Little Legs". We're planning our next video, which'll be less of a music video and more something with a soundtrack. We also have a "surprise" lined up for Halloween. That'll be...well, it'll be something.
Soft Bodies Bleed Out is the fourth and final Soft Bodies Records compilation.
Soft Bodies started in 2013 with the release of Soft Bodies Don't Bleed. Jodie and I didn't really know that many bands back then (well, good ones, at least), so half the bands on there were figments of various friends imagination. It did alright and pretty much set up the next few years. We worked with godfathers of DIY, we worked with complete unknowns. Noise, pop, drone, jazz, indie, synth weirdness...whatever. If it was interesting, we would be interested in putting it out.
We did pretty well over the last few years and it was a lot of fun, but we have limited time these days (you could probably tell as releases had dried right up) and what with increased activity with Quimper and Jodie's solo stuff it was probably a good time to put it to bed. Which brings us to Soft Bodies Bleed Out. One last compilation before we put the lights out.
We've just reduced Drizzle Maw & Domino to £0.00. Or $0.00 if you're so inclined. I think we're going for a pay-what-you-want thing for anything we do that isn't physical, and seeing how we seem to have a fair few new listeners of late, I thought we'd price the older stuff to match.
Drizzle Maw is a collection of demos for an album that never ended up happening along with various other songs from the same time. I say "demos", but the songs were more or less complete (and some of them were actually complete). It's probably one of the better things we've done.
Domino is a collection of Quimper songs that were featured on various sessions, compilations and other strange places.
Bit of a gap between blog entries as we've been busy finishing up the final Soft Bodies compilation. It's entitled "Soft Bodies Bleed Out" and will feature various people who have (or would have) either been on or around the label at various points in the past and now non-future. It should be interesting.
In other news, Wake Up Gastone has turned out to be one of the more popular things (relatively speaking, of course) we've done in awhile. And that's despite not releasing a video, a promotional campaign which was a shrug of the shoulders and a "meh" and a very much last minute release. Thanks TONS to anyone who listened, helped spread the word or generally gave a damn. Even *more* thanks to anyone who bought a copy.
The next EP is about 3/4 finished, should be ready towards the end of the month though if Soft Bodies Bleed Out ends up coming out then, we may delay it a bit so we don't drown you in Quimper songs. We're planning a new video but we quite fancy doing something a bit more involved than just another music video. That'll probably be ready when it's ready, but should be worth the wait.
We have also found a bunch of videos we did for our live shows a few years back. We (well, Jodie mostly) did videos for each song that were projected as we played, and considering most of our audience isn't even in the same country as us, let alone city, not a great deal of people have seen them. Hope to do something with them at some point as well. Think there's even a couple of songs that never made it to an EP...
That's about it for now. I shall leave you all with the inevitable plug for our latest EP. Ta!
Scott Walker has been omnipresent lately (at least in some circles) due to the BBC Proms event last night. Scott Walker is one of those artists that I tried to get into for a very long time. Friends would buy me his records. They would be put on at parties (rather sedate parties). Heads would nod sagely as his baritone voice sung of lost loves and melancholy and I couldn’t help but think “Can we not just put the Betty Boo album on again?”. As time goes on and you get a little older you stop pretending about many things, and one of those things for me was that I had any love for Scott Walker beyond Jackie. And even then Marc Almond and Momus did it better.
Sooooo…since no-one reads blogs these days unless they’re in easily digestible list form, allow me to present three songs I’d rather listen to than Scott Walker.
Vanilla – No Way, No Way.
Yes, yes. The video is terrible and it’s the very worst of the Spice Girls bandwagon jumpers but it’s long hanging fruit. We’re here for the song. And the song is even worse. It is musical dog-food. Poundshop dog-food from the good old days of Poundshops selling health hazards instead of brand names. Gloopy, gelatinous horror that leaves only the taste of ash. A queasy mess staggering home stopping only to vomit up the refrain of “no way, no way” at the most inopportune moment. It is grotesque. Nothing on The Drift can compare, Scott Walker could not dream of creating something so painful. Even if he had a can of dog-food and a stick for percussive use and locked himself in a darkened room for a week with nothing but an open mic for company. Not enough. Not nearly enough. Steely Dan – Do It Again.
I know an awful lot of Steely Dan fans. Damn near everyone who was on Soft Bodies seemed to like them. You could understand it with the more traditional songwriter types, but then you’d also have people doing ambient/noise/harsh bastard techno being fans. The Dan bridges the void. At least with most people, I have and probably always will be of the opinion it’s MOR bobbins….AND YET, I’d probably rather hear Do It Again than the Seventh Seal.
Slade – Run Runaway
In 1983/84, Scott Walker started to reinvent himself with Climate of Hunter. And so did Slade by morphing into Big Country for a bit. Scott Walker would never have thought of that, and thus he found himself outplayed by Wolverhampton's finest, disappearing from view until the mid 90s, wondering what could have been.
Righty-o, enough sacrilege. WE HAVE MUSIC OUT. Please do download and/or listen to it if so inclined. Ta!
We have a new EP out today. It is called Wake Up Gastone. It's the second in a series of four track EPs we intend to put out for the rest of the year. Listen here! Now! Here! Now!
Four songs. Couple of instrumentals, another pop number with Jodie on lead vocals and a piano/vocal thing with more Jodie vox. It is, as all these EPs will be, completely FREE unless you want to give us some money. We are not proud. We WILL take your money!
Hard cash is not the only way you can support us though, there are far cheaper and probably more effective ways. The only reason Quimper has any sort of audience is because people have been very lovely about telling other people about us. Our relationship with what's left of the music press mostly consists of us both wishing the other would go away. Our relationship with most people mostly consists of wishing the other would go away, come to think of it. The absolute best way you can support us is by spreading the word of Quimper. Tell your friends. Tell your enemies. Tell podcasts. Tell blogs. Tell labels they should release our records. Tell the next person you see in the street. Tweet like a bastard. Poke people on Facebook. Can you not poke people on Facebook anymore? Then poke people in the street. Demand your local radio stations play our songs. Go forth, become our dervish hordes. SMITE IN OUR NAME.
Or, y'know, just tell yer mates that we're quite good. One of the two.
If you haven't heard our last EP, the fine people at the Gated Canal Community show played a couple of tracks from it on one of their recent shows. Link below.
Hopefully should have another EP ready for late August/early September. Possibly with a video. We've also been talking about playing live again, I think we've got a better way of doing it than just hiding behind (or in front of) video projections. The downside is that it's a way that involves me running around in a dog mask and hedge trimmer. Early days, anyway.
There's a lot of talk at the moment about the possible impending demise of Soundcloud. Once upon a time it was a useful tool for easily hosting music, it's long since devolved into a bloated mess that gives birth to a myriad of bots, scammers and assorted bumpf that now makes up the majority of "listeners". I'm not really sure it's potential passing should be mourned, it's time has passed, but there is a pile of stuff hosted on there could well be lost forever. It does make you think about the permanence of what you create. Maybe it's why vinyl is still so popular. CDs can rot, tapes aren't exactly known for their reliability and digitally hosted songs can potentially disappear. Vinyl may well not have the best sound quality, but that's probably not the point. You do wonder how many of these records are actually played. They're to be stored, collected and saved, the familiarity of the tried and tested. Etch yourself in history.
We keep toying with the idea of releasing something on physical media. The only Quimper songs that have been available physically were on the first Soft Bodies compilation. CD just seems a bit flat, and we see-saw on tapes. On one hand few people have tape players and I'm damn sure hardly anyone plays the bastard things. On the other the more people moan about tape releases the more appealing releasing one looks. Eat our hipster tape. Choke on spool/etc. Ah well, we'll see.
Sunday evening has given way to Monday morning. Gah. Time for disco.
Dear mercurial reader flitting from webpage to webpage in a desperate attempt to fill the void, gaze upon a montage of images from the video for our first music video, Overgrown. The song has aged very badly, but the video hasn't. It was directed/created/animated by Jodie, who tends to do everything in Quimper that involves visuals, art and talent. I think the extent of my involvement was spinning a wee circle thing and wiggling my hand around. I may have even propped up a puppet and/or bit of wall at one point.
You can have a look at the complete thing below. Yes, the drums are awful. We were new, we knew not what we do. Or did. We still don't.
Mastering = Vocal Preset on Everything
Work continues on new material. About 12 new songs that are very close to being done. We'll be releasing them as EPs which will remain pay-what-you-want. As soon as we bother to finally sort out our social media then we'll see about finding someone with a pleasing lack of sense and taste to release something physical that you can put on a shelf and forget about. We've had more downloads of our stuff than we've got Twitter followers. Which isn't exactly difficult I know, but that's cack handed even by our dubious standards. We must connect to you all like a big octopus of digital commerce. Bloop.
Sometimes people release music that doesn't make me want to vomit. In fact lots of people release music nowadays that doesn't make me want to vomit. I spent a rather long time in an indie hellhole so my natural response to new music was to reach for an icepick and go stab-mental. And I never had an icepack handy and so a vast swathe of terrible landfill guitar bands were free to roam free and leave their musical droppings all over the place. A terrible tragedy that could have so easily been averted with a bit of foresight. Oh well.
But enough of what could have been. Let's see what is.
April Larson - You Stand in a Valley Between Dunes
There's been quite a few albums inspired by Dune, Bernard Szajner's Visions of Dune probably the best I've heard, but it's got a bit of competition from April Larson's new album. It's a bit less ominous than some of her other work, in fact I'd probably even call it rather beautiful at times. Sometimes. Other times it sounds like something nasty is ready to nip out of an impossible angle and rip reality apart, so there's that. I'd buy it if I were you, best to be prepared.
Severed Heads - Donut
Fun though it was to see Severed Heads play the "hits" last year, it's good to see something new from them. Nostalgia can only power a reanimated corpse for so long. You need something new to give it true new life, otherwise it'll just collapse into a pile of goo. And between this and Beautiful Arabic Surface / Cheerio Inner Moon from last year, they've very much been moving forward. Donut is about as far removed from the previous single as you can get, a borderline demented jaunt into easy listening. I have no idea what they'll do next. Long may that be the case.
Look at it. Isn't it beautiful? Two disco space pilots stand side by side with a giant monolith of an arcade cabinet. And it is a giant. Darius was played over a three screen set up. Unheard of at the time, unheard of even now. Though to be fair, arcades themselves are pretty much unheard of now.
The Darius series of video games were made by Taito, and normally consist of a lone pilot shooting a seemingly endless wave of robotic space fish. There is chrome. Much chrome. There is also music, and that's what I'm going to be enthusiastically flapping about today.
Taito's "house band" was Zuntata, who wrote a great many soundtracks for Taito's games. That was pretty unusual was a company to have a house band in itself, but Zuntata would also perform live on occasion and their scores were very atypical from yer usual video game soundtrack. Anything from experimental electronica, fusion, synth pop and gawd knows what else. In fact the best way to get across their sound is probably just to play you some tracks...
VISIONNERZ
From Darius Gaiden. Probably my favourite Zuntata track. A haunting sprawling joy of a song which is at extreme contrast to the robot bastard death fish action that's happening on screen. One of my favourite things about it is the fact it doesn't actually stop when you finish the first stage. It continues on into the second whilst evolving all the time. Lovely.
B.T. Dutch
From G-Darius. An ominous little number that builds into a relentless march. Industrial sounds, samples and whatnot clunk along unevenly. A wonky march for a fairly wonky game. Polygons for the eyes, polygons for the ears.
Hinder Three
From one of the more recent Darius games, which has gone through some revisions and updates and can now be found it it's final(?) form on the Playstation 4 right now under the name Dariusburst Chronicles Saviours. One of their more unhinged tracks, a chattering nonsense that gives way to fanfare before returning to gabbering. Queasy. Very queasy. Not enough songs are queasy. We need more quease.
There you go. Music to shoot robot fish to. Get shooting.
I am Johnny. You may know me from chart unbotherers Quimper, barely active art sloths Werdwolven, various music blogs from back in the day and until very recently, the owner of Soft Bodies Records. I took a pillow to it while it was sleeping, it didn't feel a thing. More likely you haven't a clue who I am and are quite confused to why you're even here in the first place.
Paragon Night Scene is basically a place for us (Quimper) to put all our bits and bobs on display and to keep anyone interested in our latest projects and happenings updated and informed. I shall also ramble about things that I like. It's a blog. It'll do bloggy things.
Things That Have Happened
Midnight Snack
Our last EP and video have been out a wee while now. You can see the video above, click on Jodie's big green face and ye shall be anointed. Thanks to anyone who downloaded/shared/played on their podcast or just generally interacted with the EP/video. Extra special thanks to anyone who actually bought it and sent some money our way. We tend to do pay-what-you-want downloads and it's always a nice surprise when someone gives us a bob or two.
Juliana 99
Seeing how Soft Bodies was on it's last legs, I thought I'd sneak out a glorified solo album before it shuffled off into oblivion. It's a combination of fairly recent(ish) stuff that either didn't fit Quimper or was going to be used for something else (but wasn't). You've got some aborted soundtrack work in there, a couple of tracks for when I decided I was going to do a "dance" EP (ie, I got drunk with a drum machine and some samples and regretted it in the morning) and a couple of other things. Er, enjoy?
Things That Will Happen More EPs
We should (hopefully) have another EP ready for the end of July/beginning of August. The plan is to do EPs every few months and try and enough people interested in what we do so that either it's viable for us to put out an album ourselves, or we get someone else interested in releasing it. Another video is planned, but probably not in time for the next EP.
More Jodie solo
Jodie has finally got another solo release ready to go. More details on that when the label it's coming out on are ready to spill the beans. And they are fine beans. If you liked Circles & Holes and Klepsydra, you'll go full ham for this.
Soft Bodies Bleed Out
The final Soft Bodies release will be one last compilation featuring various SB related people and a few new faces. There should be a new Quimper song on there somewhere.
That's pretty much the plan for the forseeable. As always, all plans are subject to change due to boredom and...well, it's normally boredom.
