The McCoy Blog » music

Lost days of sound exploration

Rich — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 09:51:43 +0000

Way back in the day, before I got involved in all this interactive & graphical design I was a fine art student and spent my days making films and noise. I would make electric guitars and other electric noise making devices out of all sorts, old tape players with the reading heads removed and placed into hand units, guitars out of old speaker box’s and all sorts of joyous nonsense.

I pretty much stopped when I got kids and a way to feed them during the day as the only time to make a lot of noise was in the evening when they where asleep, and sleeping kids and feed back loops don’t make good sleeping partners.

The other day I was playing with my 2 year old son with iTunes showing him some Pan Sonic and I found a track I had recorded back in the early 1990′s that was made with a home made guitar & tape device and recorded live.

The track is more of a sound scape then a song, I would hesitate to call it music, I may work it together with my other lost art of film making one day when life is less busy and hectic, I may not, who knows.

Anyway here it is: Rich McCoy – Downstream

Maybe one day I’ll get back to tinkering with sound again and rediscover those lost days with an added maturity and experience, maybe not, its fun and I enjoy it, and maybe a select few sonic adventurers will get a kick out of it too.

The Wedding Present 'Take Fountain'

Rich — Fri, 02 May 2008 23:41:26 +0000

I had a bit of an odd time with this band, I used to love them when they where played on MTV’s 120 minutes back when I was 18 and even video’d them but it took me a good 20 years to get around to buying anything by them and when I did eventually order the George Best album from Amazon it turned out to be a misaddressing and the album actually contained a powerpoint presentation of the dangers of alcohol abuse by the drinks manufacturer Diageo, Ironic really considering what killed George Best. I read that this album was originally recorded under the name of David Gedge’s current band Cinerama but on listening to it he decided it was to dark and released it under the his old bands name instead, to be honest I don’t care its just sublime whatever the name on the cover.

David Gedge is a fine writer of words, I don’t know if he writes anything other the songs but he should, no songwriter I have ever heard can write about the frustration and complexity of emotions involved with love and relationships in our time, no other singer can then deliver them with the fragile awkwardness of emotion as him either. When you couple this with a rich orchestral sound and heavy overloaded guitars and fine production values, there is left a spinning silver disc of joy and melancholy fit for inducing introspection and release.

In summary

You can probably tell that I rate this as one of the most complete and beautifully crafted pieces of music that has ever graced my heart, quite why it is so underrated I will never know.

Akron / Family 'Love is simple'

Rich — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 19:02:37 +0000

There I was sitting at my desk waiting for a client to get back to me about a project I was working on and i decided to drop by the Young God Records web site as I do every now and again and I found a video on there of a live performance form the additional DVD that comes with the limited version of this CD.

I had seen the previous album around a lot whilst I was lining in Australia but avoided it as it was always recommended by folks who’s tastes I found a little out of tune with my own, anyway the live performance blew me away, it was loud and noisy but with a real melodic and metronomic hypnotism about it but most of all you could tell that the sounds I was hearing where being made by folks who where having a heap of fun making them. I ordered the CD form the record label as I often prefer to do, as I think that you get a much better service over ordering from the likes of amazon. Another good label to order stuff direct from is Southern Records, anyway it eventually arrived from the USA and I slipped it in the side of my machine and immediately fell in love with the sounds I was hearing, a perfect mix of folk, noise, psychedelia and voodoo, I can think of no better suited label then Young God for them as the musical spaces remind me so much of the latter period Micheal Gira’s – Swans & Angels of Light. My eldest has the title tracks on her Ipod and looking at the amount of times she listens to it makes me a proud father.

In Summary

An album that never fails to put a smile on my face and I cant wait to see them live.