Harry Flowers: Lounge Bar

Hola Florecillas

I've got wyverns in my attic. They took up residence there the spring before last and I've been trying to drive them out ever since. They have grown comfortable in my eaves. Little baby wyverns have hatched and are taking tentative flights between the terraces. They are elegant things, these wyverns. There's a strange intelligence in their eyes. Familiar yet foreign. Creatures of rare beauty.

They're a bugger to get down on tape, though.

I have these twelve songs now. Barely thirty minutes of music between them.

I'll try to finish them off one of these days. The Library of Babble takes up most of my energy now, all those fragile translations...but the record is almost there. I can almost hear the songs now.

Just a few tweaks, a nudge here, a prod there, and maybe these wyverns will take flight for good.

hf

Well into Autumn now, working hard on my 'Spring' record - ten new songs written between March and early June this year. Seems appropriate to finally breathe life into 'em now that everything else is withering beautifully away.

Working title is WYVERN & WORM.

It's part of my 'New English Psychedelia' kick, a re-imagined 1966. Picture yourself standing in the middle of the village green with a revolver and you'll catch a hint of the vibe; only it's more pet than sounds, more sunshine than superman, and certainly more art than garfunkel.

Should the Weird unwind favourably, I'll finish the recording by Christmas, and the mixing by Candlemas for a (northern) Spring 2010 release...whatever 'release' means. Letting go?

Until then, blessed be my brothers and sisters!!!

Yours in song,
hf

A warmish April afternoon. Nimble nimbus. I am spring cleaning, taking a broom to my fusty studio and writing new material in the gaps. New English Psychedelia. There's a mini-epic-in-the-making, a gentle bittersweet little thing, an old song in new clothes, and some other bits and pieces, coalescing, blurring into focus and out again. Spring. Take it slowly. Take it easy. Just take it...

hf

There you are, then.

SHE READS FAULKNER, my ode to Shell circa 2000AD, and my offering to all y'all for 2008. Please feel free to leave your comments telling me how great I am.

Dissatisfied with the reedy, thin sounds of the original tracks, I've had each and every one of 'em remastered and have now uploaded the new versions onto the site. They are warmer, nicer, more pleasing on the ear... If you happen to have downloaded the original tracks, I urge you to commit them to the aether and download the new ones instead.

Also new this month are the EP front and back covers for all you committed HF completists out there... c'mon, there's gotta be some...

Anyway, that's four EPs in the can. If you haven't been paying attention they were

INCARNATE (2005)
THE DABBLING MUSE (2006)
DISCARNATE (2007)
SHE READS FAULKNER (2008)

Some of you might know about a couple of pre-incarnate efforts that have yet to see the light of day, but more on those later.

As for my next trick, well...



...





hf

Not the best time of year to be releasing a new record, but there's not much of the year left.

Appropriate, though, that a song like this makes its appearance at the darkest hour, the nadir; my burnt anthem to everything going wrong...

hf

I know what you're thinking:

"Well, it's okay...but it could use a little salt"

Here it is, then.

hf

Yes she does.

It's like any literary relationship, really: eventually you just don't know what to say. That doesn't stop you from talking. Every conversation's a page-turner, but these are diminishing returns. You're just grasping at metaphors. At the end of the night you're struggling for a suitable coda, surrounded by the loose pages of a hundred rough drafts, none of them quite fit to print.

If this doesn't make any sense, then I'd guess you've never been in the quite the same situation with quite the same individual.

She was quite the modernist.

Never mind. She'll be right.

hf

Time for another round, I reckon. Another true story, I swear.

Lord, am I another year older, or is it only just a day? It seems so long ago...

hf

Opening gambit. New song, new album. All the stories begin and end here, in the lounge bar...

hf

It's been awhile; actually, this record has been eight years in the making.

It took one year to write all five songs, six years to forget all about them, and then another year to record them all (in between bouts of doing other things).

The first song will be released (like a panting dove) in a matter of...time.

hf