Endland Words & Music

26 September 2020

Following the Endland publication by And Other Stories last year I’m happy to make these spoken word plus music versions of a few of the stories available for free. They were produced in collaboration with a group of amazing musicians who’ve created soundscape musical material to accompany the readings.

The complete Endland is also available as an audiobook via Audible here. The +soundtrack audio versions shared here form part of the audiobook – while the rest of the stories get a more straightforward treatment. Do check it out. And enjoy the pieces here…. been slow off the mark sharing them what with one thing and another…

The Endland book places material from my now out-of-print, 1999 publication Endland Stories alongside more than 20 new stories, many of them previously unpublished. The new collection, a definitive Endland, with a special introduction by Jarvis Cocker, was released by And Other Stories in November 2019. Reviews have been pretty wild – Washington Post was the most recent one to cross my radar and had so many good quotes I’m reluctant to even start.

Here are the tracks:

About Lisa, with music by Bel Helicopter/Connor Kelly. Connor’s an old friend and in fact both the voice and the music for this one were done back in the early 90’s though effectively unreleased until now. I seem to remember we once did a live reading/performance of this material – possibly at The Spitz on Commercial Street, before the complete Covent Gardenifaction of Spitalfields – but not totally sure.

Shame of Shane with music by Graeme Miller. Graeme’s another old friend, a member of the long-gone Impact Theatre which was a huge influence and guiding light for Forced Entertainment back in the 80s. Graeme’s an incredible artist – his audio walk Linked for the site of the M11 Link Road is still running and is well well worth taking up if it’s available these days. He’s also got some unexpected strings to his bow – who knew that the Moomin’s movie soundtrack from 1985 was by him and collaborator Steve Shill – it’s released on the Finders Keepers label. Graeme has a new a video work with binaural sound called Wild Track circulating at present. Really worth a look if you get the chance.

Last of the First 11 with music by Kaffe Matthews. Kaffe was developing her electronics and other sound approaches back in the 90’s and collaborated with Forced Entertainment felllow-travellers Desperate Optimists (Joe and Christine Lawlor) who are now busy making films. Kaffe’s gone on to all kinds of electronic and generative music projects and our paths have crossed a few times in London – she and I did separate collaborations with choreographer Meg Stuart at Siobhan Davies studio some years back. Kaffe’s Bandcamp is here.

now not moving, with music by John Avery. Folks following Forced Entertainment’s work will know John’s music – the electronics in Real Magic were a collaboration between the two of us, and independently (without interference from me!) John created soundtracks for almost all of the Forced Entertainment performances from the early 80s to the mid 90s. You can find a lot of that work from John and other of his soundtrack pieces over at his Bandcamp here.

The Children of the Rich, with music by Aisha Orazbayeva. You may know Aisha’s violin recordings used in Forced Entertainment’s Real Magic and in the group’s recent online lockdown venture End Meeting For All – Aisha’s music is featured in episodes two and three. People may also have seen me and Aisha perform together here and there – we’ve been collaborating on improvised violin and text performances for a good few years now including gigs at LCMF and CPT in London, nyMusikk Festival (Oslo) and Bach to the Future (Antwerp). We also have an EP of our work together titled Seeping Through – you can find it here, whilst Aisha’s own solo work is here at Bandcamp.