it's hard to believe that it's a year since we started logos. it all began in april 2010 during the sessions for darren francis' spoken word album hate ashbury*, the follow-up to his god thing project. things took a different - and very unexpected - turn, and before we knew it we'd already created the first tenatative logos tracks. at that time logos was named sick sick sixties, which we still think a good band-name though too much of a hangover from hate ashbury **, but logos - a name df had used for audio projects in the past - worked better for the music we wanted to make. the first logos track - gehenna now - was completed on 18th and 19th april 2010, with canticle, hollow hills of london, and everybody gets elves following before the end of the month.
we've come a long way since then. we've released our first album gehenna now, finished our second album ascending a line in the sky to sothis which will be releasing very soon, got very excited about our third album shamania, and along the way also managed to record another 20-odd tracks which will be finding their way out in one form or another. how to celebrate? let me count the ways. let's start with another logos free track of the week, our second album ascending a line in the sky to sothis, a logos q&a to give you an insight into our morbid practices, and some entirely new music. after that? let's see.
* = which - as a consequence of logos - was never finished, but df intends to do so ere long.
** = this will make more sense when df puts out hate ashbury, which will be coming this year. 'fucked up industrial hippy music' was the remit.
we've uploaded another free logos track for you to download, an alternate version of hollow hills of london. this version completely restructures the track and massively truncates the eight minute introduction to the original.
we've decided we're going to keep previous free tracks of the week up for a little longer (the original plan was that as soon as we uploaded a new track we'd take the last one down) to enable people to download them if they've not had a chance to yet.
things have been rather quiet on planet logos this month - publicly at least. aside from our being busy with personal (non-musical) concerns, we're finalising the mix of our second album ascending a line in the sky to sothis, which we intend to have out by the end of this month. we're also about to release our second logos free track of the week, which will be an alternate - and much-shorter - version of hollow hills of london. more news on both of these very shortly.
we like to plan ahead. even before gehenna now was released, we already had our next two albums worked out, with a third in draft. we'll post more news on album two shortly. it's all done save that a few tracks need a better mix. album three is fully worked out, albeit four tracks (out of thirteen) only exist in our heads at the moment. more news on that once album two is out of the gates.
in the meantime we've re-named a couple of tracks. thursday to wednesday has become thursday to wednesday [into the void] and sunday to tuesday has become sunday to tuesday [no one calls]. both these distinctions will make more sense when you see and hear the track listing for the album they're intended for (number three, in case you're wondering).
following the recent alternate mix of everybody gets elves, which you can download for free at our logos free track of the week page, we've re-worked several other gehenna now tracks. the first is a new version of hollow hills of london, which restructures (and truncates) the eight minute introduction to the original.
if anybody else fancies having a go at remixing some of the gehenna now tracks, drop us a line.
1. hollow hills of london 2. everybody gets elves 3. tectonic states 4. those three bones 5. heaven can wait 6. gehenna now 7. volo ergo sum 8. dunwich beach, september 2001 [a fragment]
all tracks by logos. alessa otto: everything. darren francis: everything else, and voice on hollow hills of london.
all tracks recorded at dfl studios, aylesbury, bucks, spring and summer 2010. cover design by darren francis, sun artwork by jason oliver. this album is dedicated to debb, there until the final cut x
we've now finalised (honestly, this time....) the track listing for our gehenna now album, as follows:
1. hollow hills of london 2. everybody gets elves 3. tectonic states 4. those three bones 5. heaven can wait 6. gehenna now 7. volo ergo sum 8. dunwich beach, september 2001 [a fragment]
total running time is a little under 1 hour 20 minutes.
we need to do some final mixing/tweaking to a couple of the tracks, then it's done, at which point we'll post a link where you can listen to the whole album online and - should you desire - buy a copy. initially it'll be a digital release only (your choice of file format) but we'll make cd copies available before long too, for those who prefer a more tactile medium for their music.
a great deal has happened on planet logos since our last update. we're finalising the track listing for our first album, and re-working those chosen tracks. it's currently (1) hollow hills of london, (2) everybody gets elves, (3) heaven can wait, (4) gehenna now, (5) volo ergo sum, (6) tectonic states, (7) manunkind, and (8) dunwich beach, september 2001 [a fragment]. it may be different a few days or weeks or seconds hence, mutable until we've got a play-list that'll fit onto a single disk. as well as re-working those tracks, we're also working on some new music and expect to have some new tracks for you all to hear very shortly.
we now have a profile at soundcloud - http://www.soundcloud.com/logosuk. amongst other things, this allows us to place player files for individual tracks wherever we want and we've started by posting all our soundcloud tracks directly on this blog. you'll see them all to the right of this post. this allows you to listen to our tracks without needing to navigate away from this page. note that all the tracks we've posted on soundcloud so far are re-worked and re-mixed versions of older tracks. give them a listen.
it never ceases to amuse us; four months ago we'd never made music, started doing this by accident and people seem to much-like what we do and - some of the time - we much-like what we do. sliding each which way by day by day, from an intellectual folly to a pill-count to a sound stage to a drunk diversion to something in which we can lose ourselves to an emotional black hole. all just grist for the mill.
* Edit, October 2010: We've taken the soundcloud audio files of here for the moment, since all the soundcloud files are out of date and we've not had time to re-load them; we'll put them back up once we've finished mixing the album.
logos in its current incarnation was founded in aylesbury, bucks, april 2010, though the name has been used by darren francis for musical projects for some years.
we have recorded three tracks so far: gehenna now (18th-19th april), canticle (21st-22nd april), and hollow hills of london (23rd april). more tracks are on their way.