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When not playing bass and banjo with folksters Marry Another, Carl Chapman is The Bastard Child who likes to take sonic explorations. Welcome to his world!
Six years ago my wife and I had separate music shows on local Community Radio. One of the programme features of my wife’s show was local unsigned bands. One of those bands was once Marry Another. One of their tracks was/is the wonderful ‘A Vignette’.
Marry Another are a 6 piece, folk(ish) band from Bury making rather good tunes. They’re still together now, recording and playing live with a new album scheduled for release early 2013 (watch this space). You really should check them out:
LTW Note: Press play and the Myspace player will pop up. Remember Myspace? It still exists!:
Marry Another’s bass player, Carl Chapman, likes to dabble in the experimental a little. His two EPs, ‘Homemade Mash’ and ‘Speeches’ are, as the former would indicate, mash-ups of several well known (and even more lesser known) songs creating very listenable tracks. No, it’s nothing new, but, it is done very very well and worth a listen. I’ve picked up on a few great tracks that I’d never heard before. I’m always caught in awe at this type of thing as to me it shows great insight and vision and originality. Check out ‘Revolution’ and ‘Changes With Miss Jackson’s Band in particular at over 20 and 15 minutes respectively, the later with the sample of the Outkast ‘nearly hit’ acknowledging said lady.
The real party-stopper though is the album ‘Welcome To My World’. Thanks for the invite Carl, but, I don’t really want to go there! It’s sometimes scary, it’s sometimes weird – I love it! It’s a home-made album, quite literally, with the initial tracks recorded on mini-disc and tape. Playing everything on the album, TBC has created something rather wonderful.
Whether it be the raw guitar work on ‘Vomit’ (apparently named so as it made his friend do the same after listening to it), or, the melodic acoustic guitar on ‘Suited And Booted’, you can’t help but raise an eyebrow and force a smile. “This song is like no other, I wrote it on my brotherâ€. I rest my case.
‘Whale (Boss)’ is quite captivating – strange keyboards from start to end, and ‘Straight Jacket Inferno’ is perfect summer music with its quite superb guitar work whisking you away to some sun-drenched Mediterranean island.
‘Up For 17 Hours’ is just frantic and mad. Repetitive to the point of insanity, it makes you want to run outside and howl at the moon. It embeds itself in your head and won’t set itself free. ‘Circles Are Jealous (Bass Groove)’ with its Teddybear’s Picnic styled bass line and Tubular Bells type guitar has freestyle to an art.
Many would say that ‘Welcome To My World’ is just some bloke messing about in his bedroom, and to some degree they might be right. But, beneath the surface is actually the same bloke doing something rather nice and entertaining away from the possible constraints of the main band. Oh, and just look at that album cover – bloody marvelous!
Check out The Bastard Child and download the album and two EPs from their Last.fm page – you can take them free or give a little something – “Spread The Loveâ€
Words by Paul Scott-Bates. More writing by Paul on Louder Than War can be found here.
