I saw the cool seismic readout from the earthquake that occurred in Norway on the 26th March 2026 and thought… hmm? Whatever happened to Metasynth?
Its not gone, but its tricky to set up, so i made this… ok so it’s not the same, I doubt I will make whole albums with it, but, its a start.
Work in Progress.
If you want to make sound from an image, then try this:
https://markfrancombe.com/image_sound_lab/index.html
We have now struck a deal with Skull Print in the UK, and you can now buy 5 different Electricity T-Shirt designs.
Either from our Bandcamp page, (why not buy a CD at the same time?)
Or our new Big Cartel shop, which offers many different coloured shirts. Don’t know WHY you would something other than black, but you might? (Actually you can have coloured shirts from the Bandcamp shop too, it just doesn’t have the clever drop down option, so you need to tell us you want a pink one somehow.)
CLICK A SHIRT BELOW TO GO TO THE BIG CARTEL PAGE!
It has been available for presale for a while as previously discussed, but this week I came over to Portsmouth to rehearse with Cranes, and help Alison with the mailing of all the preorders! We spent most of Monday and Tuesday stuffing vinyl into mailers (Alison had sent all the CDs last week) and one Tuesday Matt drove us down to Cosham Post Office.
Due partly to brexit the poor woman in the PO had to key in every address on each order, and we only got half the records shipped. But today, Friday we took down the other half and Ali waited there while they got it done.
Alison had done an amazing job of preparing all the addresses and organizing this mammoth task, but today, on the day that the record is actually released into shops, and available for download, we shipped all the pre-orders.
It’s very typical Cranes to do all of this ourselves, by hand. Ever since we were dropped by BMG, Cranes has done everything in a kind of DIY kitchen table kind of way. But now I think we have to find some better way.
The rehearsals this week started very badly, but 3 days later we were really starting to get somewhere. There still a long way to go, and some songs we haven’t even played yet, but we were all enjoying it by the end. This time around isn’t about success or sales or survival, it’s about fun, and being able to have a go at something a second time which frankly, we were lucky to do once before!
So, on Thursday, we released John Peel Sessions 1989-1990, a limited edition mini-album from two sessions we recorded for BBC Radio’s John Peel. The first session in July 1989 and the second in March 1990 at BBC Maida Vale. The album has been mastered at Abbey Road.
Its been a bit of a secret, and although we haven’t made an official announcement, that the original band of me, Matt, Jim and Alison are working together again, but I guess the cat IS kinda out of the bag.
The last week has been pretty busy as I knocked together a quick video for the first track that was released on “Launch day”. (EG Shining) see below.
I dont really understand the way things are done now, but the album will be released on June 3rd 2023.
It is available for pre-order from here:
https://cranes.bandcamp.com/album/peel-sessions-1989-1990
it was pretty fun and quite “hands/on” at least for Alison and me, who worked all day preparing bios, texts for social media and graphics for the various shops in the UK (all part of a chain called Dinked) that would be releasing the “special edition” version on silver vinyl.
Finaly the moment came at 5oclock when our bandcamp shop would open for pre-sales, and the Dinked shops would add the record onto their pages and we madly started posting the announcements on Facebook, Instagram and Bandcamp, where we would actually be selling the record from. This is called ‘releasing a record’ nowadays. After a tiny moment where people were saying “link doesnt work”… “Cant get in” we realized that the Bandcamp had not been set to Public… we did that.. and immediately, my phone plinged, and flashed an vibrated. I had forgotten that every time I get a sale on bandcamp, I get a notification… normally it doesn’t happen very often! (See note below)
“Our first sale!” I posted on our private Cranes Whatsapp channel. And went out into the darkness and across the garden to close up the chicken house, still clutching my phone. SUDDENLY the garden was lit up by a crazy flashing strobe light, my phone plinging and vibrating constantly… I looked down and notifications were flying across the screen KER-CHING” (this is what bandcamp send you wen you sell) KER-CHING! KER-CHING! KER-CHING!KER-CHING!KER-CHING!KER-CHING!KER-CHING!KER-CHING!KER-CHING!KER-CHING!KER-CHING!KER-CHING!KER-CHING!
In one hour all the Silver copies we had for sale were sold out, (90) and by midnight all our black ones… Dont worry we have more stock now, we are going to print enough for everyone.
So that was fun. Lets do it again?
Note, yes its very sad, there I have being very busy making 12 albums over the last 20 odd years and cranes got more sales in the first 10 minutes than i have ever had. but.. I admit my stuff is mostly just weird buzzing noises, and as such not terribly commercial, Im ok with that, really… but it would of course be remiss of me to not post MY own personal bandcamp link, now wouldnt it, THAT woudnt be pushy would it?
Heres the video for the track I made for the Loopers Delight Compilation.
I’m super proud! I wrote to Derek Walmsley the editor, to tell him about Tim, and nagging that they should do an obituary. I suspect it was too late, but he asked if I would like to do it , as a letter. (I suspect so they didn’t have to pay) and I was happy to oblige!
If there was one band worthy of inclusion in the music magazine The Wires “Epiphanies” section, it should be Cardiacs.
Shunned by the music press for 30 years as being too clever, or quirky, and yet beloved by a huge range of fans across the world and lauded by big stars such as Radiohead, Blur and Faith no More.
There isn’t really any fan of Cardiacs that hasn’t come to them by way of some kind of Epiphany, you just dont/cant like Cardiacs… a bit. You either totally love them, love everything they do, from the stop/start time signatures, the prog yet punk yet ska sound, the virtuosity, perfectionism and professionality of the playing, the crazy, “just out of the asylum” shouty circus freak image and the weird unexplained, carefully created backstory of a sinister organisation that manages and controls them… or… you hate them and don’t get it at all.
My journey with Cardiacs started at a pub in Guildford (details like when or where or guildford, might be inaccurate here, its a bit hazy) when they were supporting the punky Hippy band “Here and Now”. Me and my friends had driven from Petersfield for Here and Now, only to find they had cancelled and the support band stepped up for the the full show.
Cardiacs.
We stood open mouthed at first, then we jiggled about a bit trying to keep in time with the off kilter rhythms and song structures (R.E S. remains a test of the noob Cardiacs dancer… do you get the extra beats in the chorus right? or look an idiot, stopping on starts and starting on stops?).
By the end, probably during the anthemic and perfectly crafted stadium rock of “Is this the Life?” we, my friends and I were swaying, hands in the air with tears streaming down our faces and grins from ear to ear.
A quick chat with Tim after the show and the last 9 months of me and Nicks video course at Portsmouth college of Art was sorted.
We turned up at a Surbiton Town hall, not a long time later with 2 U-matic video cameras and recorded the whole gig from 2 angles. We made a quick edit, simply synching up the 2 cameras with the desk recording and Tim came down to see.
He tutted and groaned and laughed and considered, and over the course of a month where he came down to supervise every change, every small edit, in a friendly, but firm way. He liked the final result. He was happy and it was deemed finished. But, something was not right, the quality of the cameras (not really good enough in low light) the camerawork (it’s hard to keep a steady shot in a mosh pit) and the audio recording (too dry through the desk but with Nick and me carefully mixing in some live atmos from the camera mikes)… something was amiss.
But we had passed his audition for bigger things as he revealed to us his ideas for “Seaside Treats”. And offered us the job of producing it.
Seaside Treats was to be a mix of performance based pop videos shot in an old Church Hall in Kingston and weird homemade VHS tapes. The details of making it are very hazy, we didn’t really “have a plan” just a location. We knew which tracks would be shot and scoured the hall for shots and angles. It had a stage, and Tim had thought that they would just set up like a band and we would kind of “re-shoot” the Surbiton gig.
But, we weren’t having any of that.
While “A little man and a house” was at least shot ON the stage, but not straight on and with no instruments, “To go off and things” was shot under the stage in cramped conditions along with old packing boxes and rolls of carpet and RES was shot in front of an old kitchen hatch where no doubt many cups of tea and biscuits had been served after weddings, funerals and AA meetings.
And with that, my journey ended rather quickly, with my friend and colleague Nick going on to make “Too many irons in the fire” and a few more things from the VHS outtakes, including the very odd Consultants Flower Garden. I got suddenly busy with my band Cranes and I all but forgot them, which sounds a little hard to do. I bumped into Tim once at that little club in Oxford Street where all the Camden Indie bands hung out, can’t remember the name, and we chatted a bit, but, I was not completely sure if he recognised me. Very shorty after that, after that fateful MBV concert that I might even have been at, Tim was struck down, and the rest is a very very sad history, that just ended a few days ago.
What a waste!
There was never any band quite like Cardiacs, and I doubt there ever will be again.
Rest in Peace Tim.
My mate Alex just found these batter quality versions of the Peel sessions.
I found all my old thOnk experiments on a minidisk, so I made an album. Its noise really… but weirdly good on headphones… if you like that whispering tickling thing… except noisy.
