An EP for free

Incidents/Accidents EP
available now from Bandcamp
December 23rd, 2012

Five new versions of five old songs.

1. Friendly Fire (alternate version)
2. Five Little Secrets (alternate version)
3. You Can Hold On Once (alternate version)
4. More Good Propaganda (alternate version)
5. Question Marks (alternate version)

Pay what you like for the first 100 downloads!



Whilst on the surface 2012 has been a quiet one for me, in reality I've been as busy as ever. I was working on the new album from January to September, built a webstore in March, spent most of April and May in the post office and ended the year actually playing some gigs like the real musician I was in 2011. Rejoice!

Now the dust has settled and 2013 is taking shape, and with the spectre of new releases looming on the horizon - two further digital EPs are heading your way in February, and there's a small matter of the new album in May - I figured it was about time to introduce these five stripped back, re-recorded versions of five old songs to the world; the Incidents/Accidents EP is available now through Bandcamp, free for the first 100 of you, and a shiny pound from then on.

No you're right, that's not much money but fuck it, it's Christmas.

All five of these songs originally saw the light of day between 2007 and 2009, with a couple of songs featuring on the This Is Not What You Had Planned mini-album and a couple on the split EP with Oxygen Thief and Jim Lockey. This time around though, it's as basic as a song can get - just me shut in the tiny vocal booth at White House Studios with three microphones and a guitar for these stripped-to-the-bone live versions.

.. And merry Christmas etc.
Thank you to those of you who came out to the final five shows of 2012. Each and every one was great in its own way, from the massive York show (still can't get used to security barriers) to the crammed hometown Reading one, highlights being the entirely-acoustic Oxford show with Dive Dive and Francis Pugh & the Whisky Singers and introducing Retrospective Soundtrack Players to the After Dark 80s club night. 'Easy Lover' and 'Uptown Girl' all over.

There'll be news on the two new EPs in the first week of January, so keep your information centres peeled. Have a merry Christmas and a great end to 2012 - what a year, even if it looks a bit like I've done bugger-all.

xx

Coming to a sweaty venue near you..

new shows: Portsmouth, Reading, London and Devizes

Well howdy,

So it turns out, I have some shows coming up. It's been something of a rarity this year, what with gigs in 2012 being put on the back burner to allow me, in theory, to get some kind of life in my life/work balance. I think I hate the phrase "life/work balance" but it does come in useful when you want to describe the balance between life and work.

Anyway.

Shows.

This is not an exhaustive to-the-end-of-the-year list, because I do expect a couple more to be confirmed, but here are the some which I am definitely, absolutely going to be playing at:

OCTOBER 
Sunday 21st SOUTHSEA/PORTSMOUTH Edge of the Wedge
w/Retrospective Soundtrack Players & Oxygen Thief
£5 adv - tickets here

NOVEMBER 
Saturday 17th READING Rising Sun Arts Centre
w/Retrospective Soundtrack Players
£4 adv - tickets here

NOVEMBER 
Sunday 18th LONDON Brixton Windmill
w/Retrospective Soundtrack Players
£4 adv

DECEMBER 
Friday 14th DEVIZES The Lamb
w/Beans on Toast
£5 adv - tickets here

Let the good times roll.

i'm still powering KEXP

Hello October. The lack of September news was not a reflection on there not being any activity on the music front here at BM Inc., but more that there was no news that would set the world on fire. Any little snippets of info went through Facebook and Twitter, etc.

There have been some show announcements that I'll post up here tomorrow (or you can see now on the gigs page), but I wanted to do a brief post about Seattle radio station KEXP. My guitar case proudly displays KEXP stickers from 2010 and 2011 summer fundraising drives, and when summer 2012 rolled around I didn't have the money to spare. When the "fall" (hah) fundraiser rolled around this week, I still didn't have that much, but I've bitten the bullet and done it. I am proud to power KEXP in 2012.

KEXP 90.3 Seattle is a publically-funded alternative rock station with regular live music sessions, which then are made available through a massive streamable archive. They highlight the very best of the Seattle music scene (who gave us more than their fair share of excellent acts over the years, and anyone who knows me well will know I'm definitely not talking about Nirvana), as well as alternative music from the States and often great music from UK acts who you don't always get to hear, perversely, on UK radio stations.

I'm proud to power KEXP, and not just because I enjoy scrolling through their annual reports to see my name amongst the thousands of donors every year.

(By the way KEXP, if I don't get a 2012 sticker with my donation, I want my money back).

saturday stage times PLUS xtra mile tv tomorrow morning

hey everyone
quick news-splurge. for anyone attending this Saturday's free show at the Wheelbarrow, note I'll be on at 10pm, with the excellent Dave Giles opening the show at 9pm. good times.

also, tomorrow morning at 11am there'll be some me-related 2000Trees highlights (as well as stuff from Crazy Arm, Future of the Left, Sonic Boom Six and more) on Xtra Mile TV. the site is www.xtramile.tv, and if you share this on facebook you get entered into a prize draw. i'm not one of the prizes.

as far as i'm aware, the me-related stuff on Xtra Mile TV from tomorrow is a short interview conducted with me by Chris T-T, and also I tried to do a song. we may have been interrupted by quad bikes and nesting birds - i don't quite remember.

cursed again

bonjour, bonjour!

hello from my sweaty bedroom (not normally sweaty, but it's tiny, and in this heat it is indeed a hotbox or sauna or somewhere in between depending on what next door are doing) where I bring some great news.

Gigs this fortnight
indeed, the lesser-spotted Ben Marwood is actually leaving his/my damn house and playing some shows for you kids down south the next couple of weekends. there'll be the road test of some new material here and there, but mostly it's just an excuse to make sure you buggers don't forget about me.

The two:

AUGUST Sat 25th
LONDON Wheelbarrow, Camden
w/Dave J Giles, free entry, 18+

SEPTEMBER Sat 1st
READING Rising Sun Arts Centre
w/Aubrey Dye-Welch and band, plus Burnt Tomorrow
£5 entry, £4 adv (ticket link)


The return of the mack, if the mack is my first album
This month we celebrated the first anniversary of the original run of my first album going up in smoke courtesy of youths (yuck, you with your nice hairs and positive outlooks). The first anniversary in the US would've been the paper anniversary, but here in the UK it is the cotton anniversary.

All that has little to do with how Xtra Mile have re-pressed (after a year of selling the 150 super-limited-but-definitely-very-official replacement CD-Rs) the first album Outside There's A Curse, which is now in a very sexy jewel case, and you can own one via all the normal means (the interweb, the big old-fashioned shops desperately trying not to just be DVD and electronics stores) but also they're now in the webshop either as a standalone item or in one of the bundles, including the one where you get a t-shirt, album, mini-album and split EP all for not much money.

AND also since this is the cotton anniversary, I'm pretty sure my t-shirts are made of cotton, and fittingly you can now buy the t-shirt along with a CD-R copy of the album for just £1 extra whilst stocks last. Good link!

So there, all is rosy. Stay positive! See some of you these next few weekends..
b

falling asleep standing up.

so the olympics has been and gone, and i feel like now might be the time to break the blogsilence that i maintained whilst it was happening. i don't have a lot to say about it, but i note the following points.

it is possible to fall asleep standing up on trains
on the monday of the very first rehearsal, i got up at 4.45am in order to get to London. after the last rehearsal, I fell asleep around midnight on the train home. standing up. leaning against the border of an open window. thankfully i was blocking the door so someone had to wake me up at Reading in order to get off the train. this is good news because whilst i can't remember where the train was going to, i know it was way beyond Reading.

i can be proud to be British
Danny Boyle's opening ceremony gave me a warm feeling in my soul, and i thought perhaps i was ill or something, but i realised it was actually National Pride and not a disease. this is pretty odd because although this land has a lot going for it, we're reminded of its failures every day. media outlets remind us constantly that the NHS is understaffed and shit and getting worse, police are understaffed and shit, our politicians are rotten, are newspapers will hack your phones, we're unemployed, we're unemployable, and our national football team sucks eggs. Well, fuck off. Aside from Hull, this land is okay by me.

the daily mail is still written mostly for your local UKIP MP
i'm not going to say too much on this, because i think this article sums it up pretty nicely, but really - Britain gives the world some excellence, and the Mail gives it some casual and pretty desperate racism? but screw it, even that didn't dampen the fun.

and that it's good to catch up with friends (duh)
first things first: i'd like to congratulate Frank Turner on his constant hard work earning him the opportunity to play in front of X million people watching at home and the Y thousand people in the stadium. this man works hard, punk-rock hard, and in a decade in the industry i don't think i've met anyone like him. and let's not forget that his, and Xtra Mile's, choice of extended backing band was entirely excellent, because frankly Emily Barker and the Red Clay Halo and Jim Lockey & the Solemn Sun are two bands who deserve a zillion times more plaudits than they earn, but give it time.

me, i accepted this gig entirely blind, with no knowledge that it was the Olympics, just a knowledge of the dates I'd need to be around for, and whose company i'd be keeping. in truth, that's why i accepted it - to hang out with FT, Charlie at Xtra Mile, the cast and crew of Sleeping Souls, Jim Lockey & the Solemn Sun and Emily Barker and friends is one of life's little pleasures for me. I may never tackle this industry, but at least i can show my grandkids this moving gif i made of ben marwood, aged 31, shuffling on a slippery hill in awkward embarrassment:

i'm off to practice my carnivale dancings for Rio 2016.