Monday 7 March 2011

Je Suis Le Captain

Blog  #1

I wish I was sending this from a ship like a real captain, but alas I am not that cool.  The closest I've come to captaining a vessel was a canoe on a sixth form adventure weekend but unfortunately I capsized it and my crew of one and I went drifting down the freezing river rapids in South Wales (I have absolutely no idea which river) for several hundred metres until gratefully rescued by some macho instructor-type.

And now some years later I find myself being the captain of nothing other than my own little musical project: Captain What.  I thought up until a few seconds ago that I had coined the genre 'bedroom pop' to best describe what I do, but a quick Google search later and, unsurprising I guess, I did not.  Still, it seems fairly apt; It's pop music, I make it in my bedroom, it's unassuming, it's dreadfully English.

I've been 'working on my album' for quite some time now, but after my band, The Library Suits, my day job and a recent personal roller coaster have taken generous allocations of my time I've not been left with an awful lot.  Still, I'm getting there - I'd say 90% written, 50% recorded - and many plans.  Although of course the trouble about working alone is that there is no quality control and no one to pick up the baton when it gets metaphorically dropped.  So I take each plan with a pinch of salt so as not to get too disappointed when only a small percentage come to fruition.

The latest idea that's exciting me is that of performing the stuff live with other people;  playing acoustic all the time just doesn't really cut it, not least because the 'pop' element doesn't translate and it becomes very much in danger of being all a bit depressing.  I've recruited/convinced a couple of lovely gentlemen to join me and have a plan that involves a backing track/triggered samples.  Completely out of my comfort zone and not quite in the DIY ethos that I've tried to live by, but I hope it might just work.

I'm terribly unorganised and shall be trying to use this blog as a tool for remembering what it is I need to be doing as much as it will be for letting a modest percentage of the world know what's been and what's next.

I must try and do better.

Captain Matt
www.facebook.com/captainwhat
matt@captainwhat.co.uk

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