Flipron

The new album is mixed

flipron — Wed, 02 May 2012 11:00:40 +0000

We’re delighted to be able to tell you that the new album is mixed & we’re really pleased with the results. David M. Allen has done a fabulous job helping our vast mess of music & ideas & noises settle pleasingly & coherently into the songs we’d recorded. Mixing can be a pain, but the fact that these mixes were such fun to do is testament to the work that Rat (Scabies – our producer) & everyone else has put in has paid off. We now have a couple of weeks to argue over the order in which the songs present themselves before we take the album to be mastered ready for production. In that time we will also argue over what the album is to be called & what sort of cover we’d like, so we can get a proper brief to mysterious pen& ink legend Dylan Schoone. We are beginning to simmer with excitement. Making albums is fun.

Squoinky Organ Mania-Further Updates

flipron — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 22:24:16 +0000

Glad to report that the squoinky organ mania recorded at Joe’s house & the bass lines recorded at mine were usable. Rat & I got plenty of editing done yesterday in the Scabies Attic, with some occasional assistance from Wilfred Millar. Neville Staple’s singing & ad-libs have worked with a special magic that couldn’t possibly come from anyone else. It was wonderful to hear them properly in the context of the music. Driving back to London on Mondayto begin mixing with David M. Allen. I’m fermenting myself into an emotional brew of giddy excitement, dread & terror, eagerness & concentration. I’m hoping I don’t peak too soon with the concentration & have total, bell-like clarity of musical vision perfectly calibrated in my brain on Saturday, leaving a burnt-out husk of a musician sleeping & coughing unhelpfully all through the next week.

New Album Update

flipron — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 10:48:32 +0000

It is now nearly all recorded. Yesterday we drove to Coventry with engineer James & the ‘Orchard Studios Mobile Facility’ & recorded some fabulous vocals by Neville Staple, extraordinary frontman-toaster-singer with The Specials which will feature on one track. We’re very excited because we have never recorded a proper collaboration before & Neville’s contribution is so fantastic & different! Tonight Joe & I record some squoinky organ mania at his house, then tomorrow I’m off to Rat Scabies’ attic studio to put together the last bits of my field recordings & the all the other bits & pieces we’ve been working on. Then, next week, Rat & I are spending a few days with David M.Allen to mix it all. I’ll try to get some photos of it all….

New Album Studio Update

flipron — Sat, 03 Mar 2012 18:02:41 +0000

We have recorded all the drums & bass for 12 songs & almost all the piano & organ parts. Some guitar has gone down too. It’s looking like we might make it 11 songs rather than 12. We don’t want it too long, & any decent album should easily fit onto one side of a C90 cassette. We’re very excited about one song, which was a last minute inclusion. This song had bass, drums, piano & keys recorded even before the lyric was finished. It’s proper pop!

Anyway, that means we have a b-side recorded if we choose a physical release single.

So, just guitars, mandolin, lap steel, accordions, vocals, backing vocals, harmonica & bits & pieces left to do. Then we need to mix it, get it mastered, singles chosen, videos produced, artwork, copies pressed, promos pressed, press & plugging sorted & we’ll be able to release it!

As David Bowie once said to me: “Who the hell are you?! Get out of my house!”

news about the new album

flipron — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 23:36:53 +0000

There are currently 16 songs that are on the shortlist for the new album. We’ll probably put 12 on the album. There are 5 which are just about Flipronshaped enough, (with a few tweaks,) to take to the studio. So, we have to work through 11 more & choose the best ones. Sort of. The best ones will be obvious enough really quickly, so we’ll crack on with the best 7 in time for the first sessions in early February. So you see how really, really interesting rehearsing for a new album really iszzzzzzz…zzzz eh? Only marginally more interesting is the news that there are songs ‘about’ blackberries (the fruit); comets; clocks & travelling beyond the solar system; the end of civilisation(s); lakes; leaves & petals & pigeon crap & sunlight; ancestors; auctions; history; carelessness; obsession; the peculiar weight that certain small words can use to tilt the meaning of a sentence from one place to another; songs about physical scale & time scale. Not limescale as yet, -but who knows? We live in a hard water area.

New Years Day

flipron — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 23:27:11 +0000

Today in Glastonbury they were ringing a ‘full peal’ (I think) on the bells of St John’s church. ‘Ringing the Changes’ on New Years Day. A lovely English sound. I thought I’d go & stand outside to record an mp3 of the bells in the pouring rain, under an umbrella. I recorded everything as I walked up the high street towards the church, the rain, the cars swishing past on the wet roads, drunk people trying to dive under my umbrella, footsteps. Usually I’m just staggering around like a twat, swearing to myself, in a hurry to collect my kids & trying not to tread in dog poo whilst writing songs in my head at the same time.
When you walk up a street recording the sound through which you walk, you find yourself listening differently to the world around you. I noticed sounds that would have passed me by otherwise, -drops of water falling from windowsills splashing on the ground; fragments of conversation, birds calling; dogs barking; torn plastic bags flapping on fences; empty crisp packets skipping along the pavement on little whistling gusts; shouts in the distance; dry, raspy little farts escaping from the bottoms of pensioners whizzing past on mobility scooters. OK, I didn’t record any farts today, dry, raspy, little or otherwise, but it’s all a fabulous, crazy kind of music that’s so easy to miss. Anyway, we MIGHT hide some churchbells & stuff that I recorded in the new Flipron album. (Apart from the usual backwards Satanic messages that we use to hypnotise teenagers into wayward misdeeds.) Happy New Year folks! x

Beaudelaires Advice

flipron — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 00:12:54 +0000

Have a fabulous festive season! Thank you for your support, encouragement & good humour over the past year. We’ve had a fabulous time. From recording a single in the freezing February gales to the sunshine of Texas in the spring to the Glastonbury Festival mud. We shall leave you with a suitable quote from Beaudelaire:
‘It is time to get drunk! If you are not to be the martyred slaves of Time, be perpetually drunk! With wine, with poetry or with virtue, as you please.’

Elvis was my personal trainer

flipron — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 21:54:15 +0000

Elvis was my personal trainer. 68 Comeback Elvis. He was responsible for me being in appropriate shape for my chosen life. -Musician I suppose. We spent all our time together. We had fun & we found things funny. We were close, almost as brothers. All was well, except that Elvis was in trouble with the law. -Not big trouble, but modest, unspecified trouble. We were in a rather cold Los Angeles, on the edge of the Mendip Hills in Somerset. We got into a scrape with a couple of gentlemen from the LAPD & I ended up injuring one of them with a knife. Elvis & I escaped on foot, running through the late afternoon light out through the suburbs towards the hills. Running was hard for me, but Elvis did better. He ran along by the river & I lost him. I decided to swim downstream, which led up into the hills. This was good, except that the river went through the open-air TV lounge of a friend’s house. They’d had the river taken up so as not to be in the way of the TV. I had to crawl across the floor & over the street to where the river came out of a pipe. Elvis & I met briefly, things were going well for him. He was running & was going to be free. I started running up into the lovely green country of the Mendip Hills. Running got even harder & the police were not far away. I missed Elvis.
Jesse’s dream last night 21/22 December. I wonder what it means…. xxx

Joe Flipron -100 Favourite Albums

flipron — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 22:31:51 +0000

Joe says:

Here, at last, is my attempt at 100 favourite/important albums for me. Apologies if a few too many titles reveal the frustrated indie kid in me and hark back to the days when I was capable of growing a “sensitive” floppy fringe and flounced around in my favourite green paisley shirt and suede jacket….(actually, I think I may still have the suede jacket….)

New Order, Brotherhood,
New Order, Substance 1987

New Order ,Power, Curruption And Lies
Joy Division, Unknown Pleasures,
Joy Division, Closer
Byrds, Notorius Byrd Bros,
Byrds, Sweetheart of the Rodeo,
Byrds, Younger Than Yesterday
The La’s,The La’s
The Stone Roses, The Stone Roses

Rolling Stones, Let It Bleed
Rolling Stones, Exile On Main St
Rolling Stones,Sticky Fingers,
Rolling Stones,Some Girls
Marvin Gaye, What’s Goin On
Big Star, Radio City
Big Star,3rd/Sister Lovers
Dusty Springfield, Dusty in Memphis
Aretha Franklin, Queen of Soul
Beastie Boys, Paul’s Boutique,

Beastie Boys,Check Your Head
De La Soul, 3 Feet High and Rising
B52′s, B52′s
Spiritualized, Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space,
Spiritualized, Let it Come Down
Go-Betweens, 16 Lovers Lane,
Go Betweens,1978-1990
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, The Good Son,
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds,The Boatman’s Call,
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, No More Shall We Part

Kinks, Village Green Preservation Society
Smiths, Hatful Of Hollow,
Smiths, Queen Is Dead
Smiths, Strangways Here We Come
Blue Aeroplanes, Swagger
World Party, Goodbye Jumbo
Beatles, Rubber Soul,
Beatles,Revolver
Beatles, White Album
Beatles, Sgt Pepper

Beatles, Abbey Rd
Beatles, Let It Be
Small Faces, Odgens Nut Gone Flake
Faces, A Nod’s as Good as a Wink..
Ray Charles, Live in Concert
The Doors, The Doors
The Doors, LA Woman
Burt Bacharach, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid soundtrack
The The, Infected
Echo and the Bunnymen, Ocean Rain

Echo and the Bunnymen, Songs To Learn and Sing
Beck, Odelay
The Specials, The Specials
The Specials, More Specials
The Maytals, Monkey Man
Funky Kingston, Various
Atlantic Soul, 16 Soul Classics, Various
Iggy Pop, Lust For life
David Bowie, Ziggy Stardust
MC5, Kick Out The Jamms

Teenage Fanclub, Grand Prix
Gram Parsons, GP
Gram Parsons, Grievous Angel
The Flying Burrito Bros, the Gilded Palace Of Sin
Nick Drake, Pink Moon
The Beat, I Just Can’t Stop It
The Coral, The Coral
The Strokes, The Strokes
The Zutons, Who Killed The Zutons?
Talking Heads, More Songs About Buildings and Food

Talking Heads, Stop Making Sense
XTC, Black Sea

Ride, Nowhere
The Rutles, All You Need Is Cash
Young Gifted and Black, Various
Bob Dylan, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan, Highway 61 Revisted
Bob Dylan, Blood On The Tracks
Van Morrison, Moondance
Van Morrison, Astral weeks

The Sundays, Reading Writing and Arithmetic
REM Green
REM Reckoning
Lloyd Cole and the Commotions, Rattlesnakes
Pulp, Different Class
Pulp, His ‘n’ Hers
Talk Talk, The Colour Of Spring
Talk Talk, Spirit Of Eden
Television, Marquee Moon
Supergrass, I Should Coco

Supergrass, In It For The Money
Lee Scratch Perry, The Upsetter
The Cure, Standing On A Beach/Staring At the Sea
Billy Bragg, Talking With The Taxman About Poetry
Billy Bragg, Workers’ Playtime
Stevie Wonder, Talking Book
Booker T and the MG’s Green Onions
Curtis Mayfield, Superfly
Francoise Hardy, Song About Love

The Vevet Underground (3rd album)

Jesse Flipron My Favourite 100 Albums

flipron — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 22:15:52 +0000

People are always asking what our musical influences are, so I thought I’d think of my favourite 20 albums & write them down. But 20 is not enough for a list, barely even a snack. 50 still rules out too many. 100 is a reasonable number. Making a list like this is fun, or it should be. But it ends up feeling like you’re making all the records you love fight each other for survival. Yes, these are records that I LOVE, – I’ve grown up with them, or I’ve found them in recent years & they’ve amazed me & continue to delight me. They’re in no particular order, just as they sprang to mind, then some reluctantly chucked out to let others in. Some are obvious choices & show little imagination on my part, some may be less familiar. The Beatles are not included. (-It really, really isn’t ‘news’ to mention that I like Revolver.) Also, it’s not songs. That’s a different list. This is albums.

So a sort of Flipron musical inspiration ingredients list. Part 1. (Part 2 -Joe ‘s top 100 will be along sometime soon…)

Side Trips- Kaleidoscope
Different Class -Pulp
Highway 61 Revisited – Bob Dylan
Bringing it all Back Home -Bob Dylan
Safe As Milk – Captain Beefheart & his Magic Band
Piper At The Gates of Dawn – Pink Floyd
Relics- Pink Floyd
Forever Changes – Love
Beacon From Mars – Kaleidoscope
Nuggets – various
Astral Weeks – Van Morrison
St. Dominic’s Preview – Van Morrison
The Velvet Underfround & Nico
The Velvet Underground (3rd)
Loaded – The Velvet Underground
Let It Bleed – Rolling Stones
Exile on Main Street – Rolling Stones
Tres Hombres – ZZ Top
Strawberries – The Damned
Funky Kingston – Toots & The Maytals
Radio City – Big Star
Rattus Norvegicus – The Stranglers
Hunkydory – David Bowie
Ziggy Stardust – David Bowie
Love Songs – Giant Sand
Ramp – Giant Sand
Chore of Enchantment – Giant Sand
Liquid Acrobat As Regards The Air – Incredible String Band
The Big Huge – Incredible String Band
Secondhand Daylight – Magazine
The Best of Them -Them
Lost in The Ozone – Commander Cody & His Lost Planet Airmen
John Barleycorn Must Die – Traffic
Sopwith Camel – Sopwith Camel
The Miraculous Hump Returns from the Moon – Sopwith Camel
American Beauty – The Grateful Dead
Ogden’s Nut Gone Flake – Small Faces
Into The Purple Valley – Ry Cooder
Psycho Sonic – The Sonics
Parsley Sage Rosemary & Time – Simon & Garfunkel
Our Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart – The Byrds
Let Love In – Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
Eat to the Beat – Blondie
Unhalfbricking – Fairport Convention
Stray Cats – Stray Cats
The 49 minute Technicolour Dream – various
Odessey and Oracle – The Zombies
Searching for the Young Soul Rebels – Dexy’s Midnight Runners
High Voltage – AC/DC
If You Want Blood -AC/DC
Face To Face – The Kinks
Something Else – The Kinks
Village Green Preservation Society – The Kinks
Angel’s Egg – Gong
What’s Going On – Marvin Gaye
This Years Model – Elvis Costello & the Attractions
Scott 2 – Scott Walker
It’s the Ones Who’ve Cracked That The Light Shines Through – Jeffrey Lewis
The Land of Grey & Pink – Caravan
Last Splash – The Breeders
Innervisions – Stevie Wonder
World Shut Your Mouth – Julian Cope
Camper Van Beethoven (The 3rd LP) – Camper Van Beethoven
Retrospective: The Best of Buffalo Springfield
Alice – Tom Waits
Marquee Moon – Television
Leave Home – The Ramones
Golden Hits of the Shangri-Las
Greatest Hits – Hank Williams
Tropicalia – Beck
Everything is Possible – Os Mutantes
Greatest Hits – Leonard Cohen
I’m Your Man – Leonard Cohen
Modern Lovers – Modern Lovers
Stand Up – Jethro Tull
Bryter Layter – Nick Drake
The Country Roots of Rock ‘n’ Roll – various
The Best of Barber & Bilk volume 2 – Chris Barber & Acker Bilk
The Madcap Laughs – Syd Barrett
Hallowed Ground – Violent Femmes
One Nation Under A Groove – Funkadelic
Deja Vu – Crosby Stills Nash & Young
Singles Going Steady – Buzzcocks
The best of Asha Bhosle The Golden Voice of Bollywood – Asha Bhosle
There’ll be no tears Tonight – Eugene Chadbourne
Philosphy of the World – The Shaggs
25 O’Clock – Dukes of Stratosphere
The La’s – The La’s
Circuses & Bread – The Durutti Column
The Very Special World of Lee Hazlewood
Explosions in the Glass Palace – Rain Parade
Barafundle – Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci
Vintage Hawaiian Music; Steel Guitar Masters 1928-1934 – various
SF Sorrow – The Pretty Things
It’s Monk’s Time – Thelonious Monk
Nancy & Lee – Lee Hazlewood & Nancy Sinatra
John Martyn – One World
Tijuana Moods – Charles Mingus
Paris Was Made For Lovers – Michel LeGrand
Rain Dogs – Tom Waits