BLAKE
File under: 'Eclectic'

Dedicated to murdered Italian peace activist Vittorio Arrigoni, 'Stay Human' is being released on 208 Records in 2012.

Released on Bandcamp 24th December 2011, 'The First Snow' contains fourteen new tracks recorded at home including cover versions of Fleetwood Mac's 'Dragonfly', Ryan Adams' 'When The Stars Go Blue' and 'The Coventry Carol'. Free to mailing list members via download code. To join the mailing list and receive your code, click here.

The Best of Blake 2003-2010 on Rockhopper Records. 20 tracks including 'A Better Way', 'Ordinary Person' and 'She's Not All That'. Reversable front cover - choose your favourite! Released 27th August 2010. Also available as digital download from iTunes.

Released on 27th July 2010, Blake's first double album. Download from iTunes here or order CD direct via Paypal below (Vinyl replica CD-R.)

Released 11th January 2010 on Eden Records and subsequently re-released on 20th May, due to problems with the distributor, on my own Rockhopper Records label. Digital download available from iTunes and Amazon.co.uk. Features twelve brand new tracks including the single 'Ordinary Person' and 'I'm Not Thinking About You'. Buy the CD from CD Baby or buy below.

(Digital download only release.) This album is a collection of unreleased material from 2002-2008. The earliest tracks were recorded with the embryonic Karmatruffle (then known as The Dandelions) while our drummer Jamie was still at school! One third of the tracks are instrumentals (I'm a sucker for them) and it includes my favourite recording, 'Hungarian Love Song'. Download available now from iTunes or HMV.

This is Magda's favourite so it must be alright. I honestly thought the cupboard was bare after Carruthers, but I still hadn't managed to find a place on an album for 'Falling' which, apart from the first four bars to the track which eventually became 'Final Whistle', and was actually a mistake, was the first thing I recorded in my new studio with the DP01. Also, I was listening to Mark Lamarr's alternative sixties show in the car one evening and I heard a track (I forget what it was now) that was so groovy it inspired another burst of songwriting. My wife, however, has still not forgiven me for making her pose for the cover shot (eight months pregnant!). Read Phil McMullen's review here. Digital download available from iTunes.

I realised soon after releasing 'Final Whistle' that I wasn't quite done. I badly wanted to re-record 'She's Not All That' and 'A Better Way' - two of the tracks I originally recorded with Karmatruffle for our single on the Ectomusic label - as the record company owned the copyright (unlike on the album, which was released on my own Rockhopper Records). And the songs were still coming out. I felt I handled the production better on this one. Many of the tracks were actually built up from four track demos I'd made on cassettes over the previous three or four years. There's more of a theological bent, too, although the familiar theme of unrequited love does rear its mournful head at various points. Digital download available from iTunes.

After the band split, I was determined to record all the songs I never got a chance to play with Karmatruffle. I had a huge back catalogue of demos by this point. The album title refers to the fact that I realised my time in the pop world was running out (the missus was making noises about babies). However, what were the chances that I was going to pull it out of the bag like Villa did in the 1982 European Cup final? Not that good, to be honest. I bought the digital Tascam to record on because I just couldn't get my head around Cubase - I needed knobs! Download available from iTunes.

I knew Karmatruffle were on a hiding to nothing in the end because we lived so far from each other - I had to drive from Melksham to Reading just to rehearse, it was ridiculous. I started the band with Magda in Cheltenham just as a laugh to play Bevis Frond covers, but things got out of hand and before we knew it w'ed been signed! We recorded the album over three weekends in the autumn of 2005 at a studio in a beautiful little village in the Cotswolds. We put our ten best live tracks on it (not including the three that we'd recorded for the 'She's Not All That' single). All on analogue. It worked! Digital download available from iTunes.

Recorded with my previous band Karmatruffle by Pascale Giovetto (My Bloody Valentine, Oasis) in 2004-2005. Released on Pascale's Ectomusic label. Features 'She's Not All That', 'Let It Go' and 'A Better Way'.

Solomon's Tump was recorded in a tiny bedsit in Cheltenham in 2003. My then girlfriend had decided to dump me for a soldier (hence the bedsit), so I plumbed the depths of my despair by writing songs about how crap I felt. It was marvellous! I used to drive out to this iron-age burial mound and sit on top of it and ponder. I recorded the album using an analogue 8 track Tascam recorder and a cheap microphone. I re-recorded three of the dodgier tracks again with my newly purchased Tascam DP01-FX for its official release in 2006. Download available from iTunes. New remastered version with alternative mixes and five bonus tracks, including the original 2003 versions of 'Round and Round', 'Beautiful Person', 'Humankind' and 'Lost The Plot', now available from Bandcamp.com for free (or name your price) in your choice of high quality format.