A Home From Human Bones
'Little Mouth' is on streaming platforms for the first time, plus all the latest messages from your friends in Los Campesinos!
It’s nice to be writing to you again so soon. The reaction to our first newsletter was fantastic, and this already feels like a really satisfying way for us all to keep in touch. Some bits and bobs below, we’ll see you in the comments!
Little Mouth
‘Little Mouth’ is a kind of lost LC! song, recorded back in 2013, a short while after NO BLUES. We were approached by a Cardiff acquaintance to write a track for the film Benny & Jolene and we actually did it (which tbh surprises me to this day).
Do LC! fans know this exists? Well anyway, if you already did, it’ll be easy to have in rotation now that it’s on all your usual streaming services! Tom gave it a bit of a beefing up before its remastering, and it’s lovely to hear Kim’s vocals right up front for a welcome change.
Click here to be redirected to your preferred streaming platform or here to buy the track on bandcamp. You know the drill, please do add it to your playlists and stick it in your group chats.
‘September’ the Music Video
Hi Rob Campesinos! here,
Some of you may be aware that I have a solo project called Sparky Deathcap, and that recently an old track of mine from 2009 went 'viral'.
Firstly I'd like to apologise. I recognise that my song, September, now soundtracks roughly 75% of all videos online and, as of last week, fully dominates the wellness/travel/table magic and industrial smoothing markets.
If you're getting sick of it, I don't blame you. But I'm here to tell you that the best way to register your disgust is to either stream it 24/7 on Spotify or watch the brand new lyric video that I made for it on Youtube.
In fact, I did everything in my power to drag the September numbers into the toilet with this carefully crafted, algorithm-defying video.
The main spine of the video is constructed from a reel of old super 8 video I took in Berlin, around the same time the song was recorded. The algorithm hates the pleasant colour saturation and natural grain of a hand-developed, analogue medium.
Then I spent hours upon hours drawing a sequence of frame-by-frame animations of, amongst other things, me playing guitar, a man eating a burger in a pool and starlings flying around a park in the evening. What's not to hate, computer?
Then I mixed in some newer footage of the ocean at twilight, a clacking typewriter and a U-Bahn train accelerating away. I can already hear the servers barfing up complex binary chunks.
I'm pleased to say that, thus far at least, the video appears to have been every bit as unpopular as I'd hoped.
But I need your help. To really confound the craven data-scraping robots that compile the viral charts, I need you to like, subscribe and also comment something along the lines of 'wow great video Rob you've done it again'. (But in your own words of course. Instead of 'great video', you might want to say 'this film is a work of art, and you sir, are a genius.')
With your help we will defeat the matrix.
Yours in the supremacy of humankind,
Rob Campesinos!
Stay tuned for more Sparky Deathcap news, including a merch store going live before the next newsletter drops…
‘Seaside Painter’ by Muriel
Tom - I’ve known Zak for a little while now, we became good friends via Will at Mec and bonded after one of those hurried conversations where you list bands you like: Songs:Ohia, Florist, Sun Kil Moon, Lomelda, Silver Jews, Smog etc. I’d seen his Garageband noodlings on Instagram and always liked his music, so when he started discussing the album he was making i was really excited to be involved and couldn’t help go into producer mode, even if it was just reassuring him that his ideas were good: “does this song work?” (yes!), is that too many choruses” (no!), “can we record in my tattoo studio?” (yes!). The songs were performed and recorded beautifully, and have a unique quality that they got by working in that non-traditional setting. Once the rough mixes were in place, I can’t remember if Zak asked or if I just started adding some extra ideas, but I went ahead and sent some additional parts and ideas. Zak was worried the songs were sounding too clean, so I was delighted to take on the task of messing things up a little, a special skill of mine. Bits of piano, some strings, and a few ambient ideas too, drones, static, tape loops, and a few other elements just to try and blur everything a little and add some extra depth. And it turned out great! We’re all very happy, and this here is the first single from an album that is due out later in the year.
Mass Projection #2
Matt - This mix was inspired by listening to late night radio. Listening to the radio was a formative part of my childhood (and is largely responsible for my unending love of UK dance music and R&B), and I'd usually try and stay up as late as I could to listen to whatever weird music was on after the mainstream shows (or at least, what constituted "weird" for Swindon's premiere local radio station, GWR FM). There'd almost always be some kind of R&B / slow jams set, so this mix is a callback to that - woozy, after-hours vibes, with some slightly deeper cuts and personal favourites. Funnily enough (and in a nice bit of serendipity), a number of these songs are more recent discoveries on the radio - mostly the Minimal Effort and Onra shows on NTS, with a few tracks I found via Hanif Abdurraqib's excellent playlists too.
‘HON,Y…’ 15th Anniversary Prints
Did you see these prints we dropped on the 15th anniversary of the release of ‘Hold On Now, Youngster…’? There’s just 50 left, with no reprint happening, so cop it while you can. When it’s sold out we’ll be adding a new poster to the store.
All your usual merchandise bits available on the store too.
Notes
There was a QT going round and round on Twitter recently along the lines of “What is the best live music photo ever?” and if I tweeted I would have tweeted this
Neil with his Maccers in the pit at the No Age after show, October 20 2008 I’m excited for Tears of the Kingdom in the next couple weeks. Is there anywhere online you can still get a really expensive ‘collector’s edition’ version or whatever they’re called?
Who’s gonna be getting tickets for All In?
Still planning on repressing all the studio albums. It’s taking longer than we’d hoped (everything always does!) due to the intricacies involved in there being different rights holders etc, but the wheels are in motion.
Thank you for being here, we’ll write again soon.
are you guys planning on touring any time in the next like, year or two? if so, whereabouts?
class