Listen Up - Lonely Like the Titanic Edition
April 29, 2020 with Jack, Jerr, and Ace
Hiding From the Landlord
by Various Artists
Half a century (and ten days) after the Titanic sank, a boy name Finbarr was born in Belfast and twelve years after that, his family moved to escape the Troubles. They settled in the county that had been a transit point for so many in previous generations. A few years later Finbarr formed a band called Nun Attax, which morphed into Five Go Down to the Sea?
Five Go down to the Sea? enjoyed success in the Cork punk scene, but in 1983, the band moved to London to escape the bleak economic scene in Cork. In all, the band released four records, but never secured a decent contract. In 1985 they threw in towel. His final band was named Beethoven. He drowned one summer day in Hyde Park, London
“…a compilation tracing the musical pursuits of Cork’s (via Belfast) Finbarr Donnelly… (f)rom the post punk of the first band via the discordant indie of the second to the chaos of Beethoven’s short lived existence…” - from liner notes
Bobby Joe Hope
by Jon McKiel
Roughly 1.035 centuries after the CS Mackay - Bennett arrived in Halifax bringing bodies from the cold Atlantic back to shore (and just over two score from the time Five Go down to Sea? called it quits), a fellow that might have been in Halifax in 2015 (hard to nail the bio stuff down online) received a less gruesome, but still ghostly arrival from across the waves (or maybe from down the road, not sure - but Nova Scotia is almost an Island, so I’m going with that), carrying sounds from an unknown source.
In other words, in the autumn of 2015, Jon McKiel bought a used TEAC A2340 online.
It came with some reel to reels and on one of those tapes was some unfinished music from an unknown person.
So, Jon named the tape the Royal Sampler and started jamming with it. in 2019, Jon took the Royal Sampler and some snippets of his own to Crousetwon, NS, which is not far Lunenberg. It’s really lovely in that area. If you’ve never been… consider checking it out. Here’s a link.
In addition to the natural loveliness of the area, Jon’s friend and collaborator, Jay Crocker had a studio there. Maybe he still does. And in that studio, Jon weaved together the unfinished business of the mystery dude from the tapes with his own impulses and compositions to come up with this album.
Seems there was also some recording done in Sackville NB, which also looks lovely, even though it doesn’t exist anymore. As of this writing it is still has a website, though. Seems it merged with a neighboring village and is now Tantramar, NB. Either way, Sackville, which used to be a a big railroad town until freeways fucked that up, is now home to a music festival called SappyFest and has been designated North America’s first “Wetlands City”. That’s pretty cool.
Another cool thing to come out of Sackville is this record, which is pretty and lovely and gentle as well as creepy and dark at times. Familiar at times, alien in other moments. A bit of perfected pop, a bit of weird. Nice strectches with multiple layers to get lost in. At at times, he even ratchets it up, but…
皮長山寝室バンド - Lonely Leary
“Lonely Leary is a dynamic rock trio from China.We incorporate fast drums, muddy baselines and rough guitar noise in a pursuit to create a relatively violent sound” - Description from band
Ain’t much else I can say about this outfit. Can’t find any bios or history online (at least in English). So just hit “play” and let them speak for themselves.
If you like to do some reading while listening, here is a short piece on those Chinese survivors, and a slightly longer piece on this story.
Also, James Cameron, who made the blockbuster film Titanic is also executive producer for The Six, a documentary about these survivors