Thanks to everyone who has been watching the video and leaving encouraging comments about my hats and sandwich eating. I'm also very grateful to Electrozombies for popping the video up on their site today, with a handy link to the song on Spotify. Here's another photo that you might see in the video if you look close enough…

…and I really wish I still had that cardigan.

Thanks to Mix It All Up, who have featured Biarritz on their site. 

Dramatic? Check. Alternative pop with a darker side? Check. Listen? Here.

What's that, you say? The splendid Dark Outside label is releasing BLACK ARROW and ETHER/ORBIT together on a special dual colour cassette?


That's right! Tapes will be limited to 100 copies, so make sure you set your alarm for launch and bookmark on Bandcamp ready for blast off tomorrow, Friday 14th January, at 6pm (Greenwich/Galloway Mean Time). You can also get an additional nudge via the mailing list, which is a good idea, as they often sell out quickly.

I've been sending demos and oddities to The Dark Outside broadcasts for a number of years now and I always look forward to listening and taking part, so this is a really wonderful way to commemorate that. A little bird (possibly near a transmitter) told me that The Dark Outside celebrates its 10th birthday this year as well, so if you're partial to generating or absorbing noise, field recordings and music of a dreamlike nature, then keep a look out for a possible broadcast later in the year.

Speaking of commemorating things, BLACK ARROW made an appearance on this list of Stewart Lee's Cultural Year, commemorating a year of things listened to on a music-specific physical device. Good stuff. Keeping the turntable warm.

Well, back to it. These synth won't play themselves! Or will they? MIDI is a magical thing.

P. S. The thumbnail image of Angela Lansbury holding a cassette was found via the very enjoyable Museum Of Portable Sound page.

BLACK ARROW is out today! Thanks to everyone who's taken the trip with me and to everyone who sent me a picture of their record too - I've enjoyed seeing a little piece of space on synths (thanks to Simon Pott for the main picture), sound setups and beyond (with the Take Hart music looped in my head)!

It's also been nice to be able to chat to people about the release and hear it played elsewhere, so a big thank you to The Dark Inside, SonOfMarketing, SoundGym and We Buy Records podcast for providing a place for space despite the heaviness of everything right now. With that in mind, I've collected together a few things I've been reading and they will be travelling through space and time shortly via my mailing list, so get involved if you'd like something to read that will briefly let you orbit the Earth. See you in the digital ether!

A huge thank you to SonOfMarketing, who have featured my forthcoming EP BLACK ARROW on their site, alongside a description of the project. You can read about it and stream the excerpt here.

In case you missed it (or I did), I was delighted to talk to the audio production platform SoundGym about budgie heads, flamingos and also non-bird-related matters, like how I like to work through songs and recounting my time imitating PJ Harvey at college. The bird is the word (and also a bit of a nerd) here.

With conversations forming around algorithmic bias and the skewed payment models of larger streaming services, what viable alternatives are on offer for musicians and listeners?

Journalist and filmmaker Hazel Sheffield explores one such option, Resonate, which also includes a few of my thoughts on sustainability, streaming and inviting audiences to participate, rather than consume. Read it via The Independent.

A few days ago on Twitter and Facebook, I asked the question, “if a song is broadcast in a forest and no-one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”

If you’re curious to know the answer to this and read about the noises in the darkness which make up The Dark Outside, then there’s a nice introduction to it over at The Quietus.

I’ll be contributing this year, having submitted a couple of tracks from an as yet unheard EP and you can too, if it passes the squirrel test...