The Fragile Brain

This EP was my way of making sense of my dad’s death from dementia in April 2022. The tracks represent various stages of this from watching him in his hospital bed in the week before he died through to contemplating what the dementia had done to his brain and coming to terms with his death.

My dad's dementia meant that he lived a 'Groundhog Day' existence believing he had only been in the care home for a week and was getting out “any day now”. My mother died shortly after he went into the home, but in his mind she remained alive right up to the end.

During his time in the care home I recorded all my calls with him; snatches of which you can hear on the track ‘Atrophy’.

I cannot praise the home enough for the incredible care he received. Not only did they keep him in good physical health but showed incredible empathy for him as they did for all their residents.

Any profits made from the sale of this EP will be donated to Dementia UK. You can find out more information about dementia through the excellent www.dementiauk.org website.

Cuts is a collection of the tracks I have created over the years which use bits of audio I have collected; sometimes as part of a field recording and sometimes from old vinyl. The first time I put something together was for the track 'Blues Man' in 2018. It was built from a recording of the self-confessed 'blues man' who appeared on my train while it was waiting at the station. It was selected as a Fresh Fave on the excellent peer review site and music resource, FreshOnTheNet, set up by Tom Robinson; who also played it on his Saturday night show.

I then cut up a drunken night in my college bar, recorded on a professional Sony Walkman in the 1980s for 'Warm Apple Cider', put a spam email put through a text-to-voice programme on 'Attention! Attention!', collaborated with the exceptional writer and contributor to Radio 4's 'Thought For The Day', Rhidian Brook during lock-down on 'Soap, Lemons, Paracetamol', and used the wonderful voice of James Dodding on 'St. George', taken from the BBC's 1970 LP ‘Movement, Mime And Music: 2 - Mimes To Music’.

The most recent tracks use Alvin Stardust from his COI Green Cross Code ad, and 'No Musical Talent' which took dialogue from a scratchy 'Learn to play piano and organ' vinyl 7" which was uncovered when I was clearing out my uncle's house after he died.

These tracks have all floated around on my profile as one-offs but making 'Tiny Minds' and 'No Musical Talent' made me think that all these tracks were cut-up siblings so I decided to bring them into this collection.

The band Skylon is a musical collaboration between Dorothy Bird, paulfcook and Luke Moore.

The Postcards EP was the culmination of a year of remote recording between London, Liverpool and Berlin.

They have been played on Tom Robinson's BBC Introducing mixtape, Dave Monks BBC Introducing Merseyside, Gary Reddin's Mersey Radio show and ExileFM shows TrustTheDoc and the Monday Night Ride Out.

See more on the Skylon website

Floating Caves is a set of six tracks that I hope will transport the listener to another place.

'I' was the starting point which inspired me to record the other five tracks which feature, amongst other things, time-stretched vocals on 'III', Omnichord on 'V' and eBow on 'VI'.

Michael Crowther - vocals on 'Floating Caves III'

Huge praise to Valhalla for their cavernous reverb and delay plugins. Check them out here:valhalladsp.com