Not long after the release of Oldsolar's 'Many Visitors Have Been Gored by Buffalo' we were invited to record a track for a tribute album to Glaswegian singer-songwriter Frankie Miller.



We weren't huge fans of his music, but to be included on an album that also featured Edwyn Collins, The Proclaimers, Billy Connolly and the BMX Bandits seemed too good an opportunity to pass up.

We chose to cover the song 'Gladly Go Blind' and were given 5 hours in Glasgow's Ca Va Studios to record it.

At the time, Ca Va was one of the most beautiful studios in Scotland. The large cavernous Studio 1 was a million miles away from the bedrooms we had recorded our debut album in. It gave us both a taste of what music could sound like when recorded with pro-gear by people who actually knew what they were doing. :-)

You can buy the song here.

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Around about this time I encouraged one of my best friends, Richard Vernon, to start a record label. He called it Autoclave Records and, over the next few years, the label put out some great music by Oldsolar, The Gena Rowlands Band, The Out_Circuit and Calamateur.

The first release on Autoclave was The Perfect Backswing EP by Oldsolar.



After having had such a great experience at Ca Va, we went back there to record the first song on the EP, 'Pick Me Up', which I think was the closest we ever got to making a pop song. :-)

The second track 'Tomorrow', a gorgeous wee song, was all Mark's work and got played by John Peel.

'The Edge of Minnesota' and 'Revisit' were instrumental tracks a bit more reminiscent of the songs on 'Many Visitors...'.

Here are some of the reviews it got:

"...equally high quality are Oldsolar, the Glasgow lo-fi outfit, 'The Perfect Backswing' EP (4/5) sounding like Belle & Sebastian on morphine with a bag of old skool synth bleeps that they found at the back of a cupboard. Sweet." - The List

" 'Pick Me Up' shows that they can hack a pop tune with the best of them...the 'bonus' tracks on this EP are more like the Oldsolar we know i.e.haunting, atmospheric and resolutely uncommercial." - Is This Music?

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I was busy as Calamateur this year as well, putting out a mini-album and an EP.

The mini-album had with the catchy little title 'Tiny Pushes Vol.1 - How to be Childlike'



The original idea was to put out an album on a 7" single, recording 10 very short songs using my old cassette four-track.

For those of you who don't know what that is, it means if I record guitar, vocals, bass and keyboards (or any other combination of four instruments) it means that's it - there's no room for anything else, unless you start bouncing tracks around which results in much poorer sound quality.

So I wrote some little songs on the guitar, made up drum parts using a Playstation 1 and used excerpts from an old tape of my sisters and I singing Sunday School songs with my Dad when I must have been about 4 years old.

I really like this mini-album but I suspect I have a lot more affection for it than anyone else does! It is truly lo-er than lo-fi and the phrase 'for completists' only probably applies :-)

Unfortunately (though looking back now, maybe it wasn't actually a bad thing) I didn't have the money to make the 7" records so I opted for the free download option instead.

You can download the whole mini-album by clicking here.

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In the late summer of 2002 I moved from Glasgow to Inverness, and towards the end of the year played my first ever solo gig - something I'd been putting off since starting to write songs 7 years earlier!

I supported a singer-songwriter called Dana Lyons at the Maple Court Hotel in Inverness. The gig was organised by Rob Ellen of Medicine Music, who was very kind in getting me quite a few support slots over the next few months.

I remember being extremely nervous and practising furiously, then at the gig itself keeping my eyes closed the entire time I was playing!



Later on the next year when I was given the chance to play at Greenbelt (the best festival in the world for those of you who're wondering) I decided I wanted to have a CD to sell which would represent what I was doing live more than my two previous, more left-field, releases would have done.

So I recorded some acoustic tracks and put them out as the Son of Everyone EP.



The songs on this EP were much more your conventional singer-songwriter fare. I was writing about faith, doubt, relationships, hopes and disappointments - themes I'm still writing about today.

Here are some of the reviews it got:

"Not many EP’s clock in at forty-five minutes, that’s a whole album in old (vinyl) money, still fewer can fill each of those minutes with interest. More remarkable still is that Calamateur is the work of one pair of hands, those of Andrew Howie....writes as though guided by voices, massaging his words through a voice as swoonsome and melancholic as the finest American roots singers...ideal for late night listening, even at lunchtime. 4/5." - Logo Magazine

"... the 8 tracks here are nothing short of brilliantly absorbing...with reverberant haunting vocals and occasional augmentation by keyboards, the stark production only adds to an impressive set of eerie 'folk' tunes." - Is This Music?

"...not only ludicrously long at 45 minutes...but it still manages to be bloody good with it, coupling alt.country strumming with tortured lyrics." - James Smart, The List

2002:

After the release of 'White Light Unknown / Inhabit' I was approached by a couple of cool little indie labels. One wanted me to record a 7" single for them and another asked me to record an EP.

This was very exciting news for me and was definitely a step in the direction I wanted to go in. But, after a lot of initial enthusiasm on their part, followed by a lot of waiting around and frustration on mine, it all came to nothing.

So my second release as Calamateur was again self-released and couldn't have sounded more different to my debut 7".



The Autocity EP was a collection of four long, and fairly disturbing, sonic soundscapes that dealt with the cheerful subject of car-crashes. Yes, it was only my second release but I was already making concept records!

In the months preceding the recording of these songs a close relative of mine had been involved in a car-crash, a young guy I'd known since early childhood had been killed in a motorcycle accident, and Channel 4 screened a 3-part documentary series about car-crashes (from which I stole much of the spoken word material you can hear on the EP) so I'm guessing all of these played a part in the songwriting process.

I remember one person who listened to the CD and said they felt nauseous by the end of it. Another gave the genius one-word summation - 'Shite'.

Either way, it was never going to be a chart-topper :-)

It was, however, played by John Peel again and was also played on Late Junction, Radio 3's late night, laid back music programme. (note - if you want to get large royalty cheques for very little radio play, write really LONG songs)

Here are some of the reviews it got:

“...4 pulsating tracks on a 3” cd which somehow mimic engine noise, while samples of crash death statistics interplay in a cursory warning on the evils of the automobile...so spooky that it seems it would soundtrack a space shuttle crash..." - Is This Music?

“...a lovely thing to look at...very pretty beautiful sounding stuff and well worth a punt..." - Norman Records

“...beautifully packaged 3"CD..." - Rough Trade

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Not long after the Autocity EP came out I was asked by Scottish indie music magazine 'Is This Music?' for an exclusive track for their cover-mounted CD.

I chose a track I recorded at the same time as the EP, called 'Orion'.

 

I've been reading a lot of end-of-year and end-of-decade lists recently and so thought I'd make one of my own.

I've been making music as Calamateur for nearly 10 years now and this is the first in a series of blogs in which I'll be cataloguing all the music I've been involved in making throughout that time.

2000:



The first Calamateur release was the 7" single 'White Light Unknown / Inhabit', released in early 2000.

It was a pretty lo-fi affair: recorded using Mark Russell's (of Oldsolar) reel-to-reel 8 track, then mixed to Minidisc (a real no-no!) and, with the whole mastering process by-passed (because I had no idea what it was at the time!), it was then sent off to the Czech Republic to be made into 200 pieces of thick black vinyl.

I really had no idea what I was doing throughout the whole process, but clearly remember the excitement I felt when I opened the newly-arrived cardboard box and found 7" singles with my music on them inside.

And that was nothing compared to how I felt when I heard John Peel playing the single on his Radio 1 show.

Here are some of the reviews it got:

"...possessing the kind of delicate use of vinyl grooves that deserves one of those sit down and contemplate it all moments in life....trembling as if touched by something altogether magical..." - Losing Today

"...astonishing debut single...” - Jockrock

“...gradually grows into a beguiling, bleary eyed, late night glory. seek it out, great things could follow."- Track & Field

“…a thing of great beauty..."- The List

(note: I re-recorded 'White Light Unknown' for my latest album, Jesus is for Losers. If you want to hear the original 7" version it's on the Bonus Tracks EP you can get by donating here.

'Inhabit' is on my new 'Commissions 2008-2009' EP which you can get here.)

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2001:

In 1997 I met the wonderfully talented Mark Russell and we started making music together.



Using his amazing collection of guitars, synths and samplers we slowly found a sound all of our own and started playing live in and around Glasgow.

After a while we decided on a name, Oldsolar, and with the help of a new independent Scottish record label, Mint Blue Records, put out our debut album, 'Many Visitors Have Been Gored by Buffalo' in early 2001.



I'm still hugely proud of this album and of all the music I made with Mark.

Listening to it now brings back a whole host of great memories - recording in Glasgow tenement flats & old church halls, playing live downstairs in the 13th Note, disturbing our neighbours by mixing songs too loud in our Easterhouse flat, and learning loads along the way about music gear, playing live and being in a band. Turns out I wasn't that good at that last one though....

I don't think you can actually get a hold of this album anywhere online at the moment but if you give this man an email he might be able to get you a copy.

Here are some of the reviews it got:

"...a thing of real beauty...gorgeous, a million miles away from the tired rock that the west coast sometimes seems happy to churn out." - The Big Issue

"...a stunner of an album that applies electrodes to the sonic parts others have neglected for too long...a wonderful record..."

"...very beautiful music which gets more intriguing with every listen..." - The List "...a frequently beautiful record..." (7/10)- NME

"...this is incredible stuff, the kind of tear inducing drone that would have Coldplay crying into their lager top. It's also beautifully produced and on evidence of this (their debut album) these two blokes from Glasgow have a lot of dreamy, drony potential..." - Sleaze Nation - The Sunday Times Culture Section