Musics I done

Sunday, November 30, 2014

Learning about Simon Lord

Last year, I made a mixtape of one of my heroes, Simon Lord.

I was a huge Simian fan, I bought everything they put out. I would make pilgrimage to vinyl exchange on Oldham road to look for a promo copy every time they released a single, as the promos had all the b sides from the different editions on one cd. 

When Simian split up, they had a very clever message on their site that played one of two songs: Simian Mobile Disco's 'boat race', or Garden's 'reason for your smile'. Simian split into these two projects:  Simon Lord did Garden, Jas Shaw did SMD; James Ford was in both.

I tried keeping up with both parties, but was a lot more drawn to Garden's post-psych-folk style and after acquiring the first few SMD singles and compilation appearances, i never got around to buying their debut album.

So my understanding of Simon Lord's career was that he was the folky guitarist of simian, and Jas was the electro genius. I lived the last decade of my life under this illusion, and ignored any evidence to the contrary, like his band The Black Ghosts, who released two albums, or the fact that his Lord Skywave album was so clearly electro. 

My previous mix was done with this mentality; over-emphasising his work with simian and garden, and relating him as predominantly a folky. But in the course of researching it, I found a lot about him I didn't know and investigated further: I bought both BG albums, and discovered Lord had recorded an acoustic version I their entire 2nd album; I trawled beatport for singles and rarities; I even discovered an entire project I had never been aware of, called simply 'Roberts and Lord'. I bought every track I needed to for a follow up mix designed to show off the other side of Lord and correct the bias of the first one.
So this 2nd mix not only portrays Lord as more eclectic - he's had two albums out on different labels, under different names, this year - but I also wanted to highlight another facet of him: his status as a frequent collaborator in all sorts of ways, as a producer, vocalist, or remixer. 

I hope you enjoy them both.

Simon Lord - a balanced retrospective by Dj Gallowslutt on Mixcloud

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