Red Tide - Out Now!

Red Tide is an EP featuring tracks from a long outstanding album project, Skálá, which is an album I wrote and recorded during my visit to Iceland in July to September, 2010. I basically locked myself away in friend Svavar Knútur’s cabin/holiday house in the remote north of Iceland for the best part of three months and got to work. 

During my time in Iceland I took time to explore the magnificent yet barren country and became transformed by it's wonder; both in it's people and places. I traveled to different towns with Svavar, playing shows with him and sharing stories with some of the warmest human beings I have ever come across. 

I wrote and recorded over 16 tracks while in the cabin in Skálá (a place near the tiny town of Hafsós), however I never managed to finish recording everything and vowed to finish overdubs when I returned to Berlin that year. However, on my returning to Berlin, I found myself on tour with the Melodica Festival and it took me some time to find an apartment and become settled. I was suddenly in survival mode and had gone from one extreme (totally immersed in landscapes, isolation and creativity) to the other, where I found myself in a cold city, low on funds and low on energy. Thus, the album project came to a halt, but slowly I began to chip away with overdubs at home, finishing songs such as Red Tide, Guardians, Man Kingdom and others. After a while, I landed a job as a teacher at an international school (still there today) and found my time even more limited, but as with all great things, time is gold. So let me present you with all I can present you with right now, until the album is finished in all it's glory. And remember, Red Tide is a special collection of songs, not all of them will end up on the album and if so, you may hear them completely differently, such as Guardians, which I may re-record. 

This is now, and I always see music as a photograph, made in the moment and perfected later. But sometimes it's just nice to hear the progression towards the end result. - J.B

Red Tide was officially released on the 24th Dec 2011. You can preview/download the album now on Bandcamp. A new master of the album will be released in March 2012 and will then be available on iTunes, and folk who buy the album now will also receive a copy of the new mastered version in March. The digital EP also comes with bonus digital photographs and album artwork. 

Watch the video for 'Refuge' shot in Iceland while on tour in August 2010.

Life in Reverb now available!

There are so many quotes about time “Time waits for no man.”, “Don’t count every hour in the day, make every hour in the day count.” and so on, but one of my favourite quotes on the subject of time is “We may be through with the past, but the past isn't through with us.” by Paul Thomas Anderson. So it proves often true with artistic projects.  

Life in Reverb is my first retrospective album. A massive collection of home recordings and demos made between 1998 - 2005, starting with my first home recordings in Melbourne. I was 26, and in 1998 I began writing and recording my first solo album (Rising the Strays) on two 4-track Tascam tape machines. The first part was made on a machine I borrowed from the University I attended in 1998, the other machine was borrowed from a friend in 1999. It was just me and my Maton acoustic guitar, and my new experiences on paper.  

The past was certainly not finished with me and gradually over time, the early music I made in Melbourne slowly made its way back to me. When I put this compilation together, I didn't posses a single copy of 'Rising the Strays' or even a copy of my 2002 EP 'Songs from the Blue Parade', however Adam Dempsey did. Adam kept everything. He sent me rips of both albums and my dear friend and ex girlfriend, Sarah Corner, gave me copies of some of my other demos before I left Australia in 2010.  

I once had the attitude that no one should hear this era of my songwriting and recording career, that it was a somewhat embarrassing evolution, full of lengthy lo-fi melancholic songs that were better left on some CDRs buried under some books somewhere, to remain forever lost. I was yet to learn the art of audio production, however, back then I was more concerned with capturing the 'vibe' than the quality, and you can often hear this in the recordings...tape hiss and background noise is often present in many of the demos. However, time has a funny way of making you appreciate your roots. I am now 39 years old and this collection boasts 39 songs. That was not planned, funny that.  

It's hard to recall over 12 years of musical evolution and development. However, this is not the start of my recording work, I was fascinated with writing and recording back in Western Australia during my teenage years and early 20's and recorded my own songs using 2 tape deck machines, and I would bounce tracks together that way. But we don't have to go that far back, because my musical journey really began when I arrived in Melbourne, and this is just the first chapter. I recorded a plethora of material during my 12 years in Melbourne, both as a solo artist and with bands such as 'The Dirty Royals', while working on other projects like The boats and Glass Mountain. There is a lot of music in the vaults but not all of it needs to be heard because the recording process is often a songwriter's rite of passage.  

This retrospective album is a collection of audible photographs of a life between 1998 and 2005. A life that was discovering a new city, new friends, new love and new experiences. It was the most important part of my journey in Melbourne because it was the period where I was growing the most as a musician. After 2005, I made new choices, my life took a different turn and I became a different songwriter. But during this era (1998 - 2005) I was hungry and in love with my musical freedom. I was a dreamer and certainly a little lost, but mostly lost in discovering the unknown terrain of musical exploration. - Jona

Life in Reverb is now available on Bandcamp currently as a digital download only. The 39 track album is €17 and includes a PDF booklet of liner notes / credits, album cover and bonus photographs. 

Melodica Hamburg

A surprisingly popular Fickr pic taken by Bjørn Giesenbauer of me performing at the recent Melodica compilation #2 CD Launch in Hamburg last weekend. To order the CD please follow this link. 

Retrospective Double Album 'Life In Reverb' out in November

Hey folks,

It's been a while since I have had an official release. However, this release can not be called new, nor can it be called old, as I have put a lot of work in mastering over 30 tracks of old home recordings made during 1998 - 2005. The recordings go as far back to my first unreleased acoustic album made on 4 track machines in different homes in Melbourne during 1998 and 1999, and also includes the EP 'Songs from the Blue Parade' released in 2002, among many other demos and home recordings made up until 2005. I have come to a place as a songwriter where I feel it's important to archive my music, because even the music I was once somewhat embarassed of is still part of my evolution as an artist, and sometimes we need to put things to bed in order to move forward. 

Life In Reverb comes out in November. 

Changing Of The Hours

My album Skálá was written and recorded in a friend's holiday house in the north of Iceland last year and is still being finished for a European release in 2012. Here is a recent mix of the song 'Changing of the Hours' from the album, as a sort of preview and a thank you for your patience. bless ~ jb x