bbdigi002 - Teenage Delay (... a Best of Bubblegunner Recordings)

bbdigi002 - Teenage Delay (... a Best of Bubblegunner Recordings)

Now available to download remastered from the original 2004 release totally free of charge.

Features: Machine Rock, Dr Dobrovolski, Fahrenheit, Kingbullit, Mr Robot and Swingbot.

Essentially, this compilation combines the projects released by the Trans Pennine label Bubblegunner between 1999 & 2004.

http://bubblegunner.com/bubblegunner_downloads.html

Bbdigi002 – Teenage Delay (a Best of Bubblegunner Recordings) by Various Artists

The Players:

The AFL

Gareth Finney & Fraser Cooke

ADK Citrus/ Neber Leon

Gareth Finney

Dr Dobrovolski/ Swingbot/ Dr Doublevodka

Paul Dobson

Dobrovolski & Citrus

Paul Dobson & Gareth Finney

Fast Lady

Paul Dobson, Gareth Finney & John Tomlinson

Kingbullit

Fraser Cooke

Machine Rock

Gareth Finney, Paul Dobson & Andrew Burgess

Mr Robot, Fahrenheit

Paul Dobson & Gareth Finney

 

Bubblegunner.

It started... at a house party.

“Do you think my flat mate fancies my girlfriend?”

That night two friends (to be) found themselves half cut on cheap vino, talking ALOT about Kraftwerk, discussing how good the LFO album “Frequencies” was and in general skirting around any sense in music in favour of expressive silly rebellion.

Did I say we were sat against a fireplace?

His name is Paul and my name is Gareth.

What happened was “Bubblegunner” started.

Over the stereo pushed up neighbour complainingly loud we decided to “do” music together. Or at least Paul would help me “do” music. We had the same references so, fuck it, what could go wrong... as someone famous (I think) used to say “onward, ever onward”.

You see, Dob (Paul) had the talent. Labels were looking at him and he had “previous”.  By that I mean loads and loads of back catalogue.  But thing is, he’s understated in a typical Barnsley fashion “oh I (kinda) do electronic music”. Had he been born 200 miles south or even 35 miles west he’d have been cagouled into electronic fodder, signed to Warp, remixing Depressed Toad and sporting a silly moustache these days!

Anyway, Warp records loss (Maximo Park, what’s all that about!) MY GAIN. I appropriated by limited talents with his and with Dobs arsenal of software, VST’s and reaktor we set to work.   

ADK Citrus, the band MUSHI MUSHI and two Dr Dobrovolski albums... WE’RE OFF.

Fuck it, let’s start a night... our club night “Surgery” happened at the Raynor lounge (former home of the brilliant Warp night Blech). Get in! We’re the upstarts treading on toes!

Fuck it, let’s do t-shirts.

Fuck it, I’ll open a record shop!!!

So I did with the flatmate that fancied my girlfriend.

A little while later...

Bankruptcy  and no girlfriend kind of forced me back to my family (rural Cheshire!) but never out of reach of the bubblegunner collective. Some people get connected in various ways. Mine was Buxton, Bakewell – Sheffield!  The scenic route!

We needed something though. No shop, no house, no home in Sheff!

A BAND.

Machine Rock.

So in came Andy. Cheshire born and bred, land locked in Congleton but a veteran of hardcore and a couple of years younger than Dob and me. So new blood!

Machine Rock played Sheffield exclusively. We never did any other gigs in Manchester, Leeds, London etc... we only wanted to play to a Sheffield crowd. Sounds a bit mad but genuinely true. Plus there might be the chance that ex-girlfriends or even better ex-flatmates were in the audience!

The most productive phase for bubblegunner was when Dob moved to Manchester and we all shared a flat. We christened the studio “Studio Electronique”! Intentionally preposterous, but full of tunes. Mr Robot, Fahrenheit, more Machine Rock, Swingbot and a piss take we did one night on AGAIN too much cheap VINO.

FAST LADY.

Take into account all of our recordings had been unreleased up until that point, while we were working on several “demo campaigns” to various labels. “Doing it the industry way!” Play gigs, get a following... signed. It’s that simple!

First demo sent: Fast Lady to V/Vm Test (James will get it)... He loved it... and everything else got shelved. So new recruit John, Dob and myself headed off into our own little cock rock adventure ranging from being the biggest laptop rock band in Colchester, 3 out of 5 star reviews in Uncut to supporting Zodiac Mindwarp in London. Minimum input/ maximum output!

Like I said though. Everything else got sidelined

That is, until now.

This compilation is the story of Bubblegunner from 1999 to 2004 and is about the friends we made as much as the music we made.

John came on board and in turn became Bud Stricken, Frazer always did “breakbeats” so we got him involved and there were loads of others. Least of all forgetting the originals: Warren (Woz AKA Karate Battle Droid), Gillo and the rest of the Clarke Street massive.

This release also marks the 10^th Anniversary of being sat in front of “that fireplace” and although we’re all older now, we’ve all got families and we don’t “do” what we used to “do” that much anymore! The tracks on this album/record (whatever format is getting picked up these days!) to me sound like some of the best times I’ve had.

So that’s it. Bubblegunner.

Hope you enjoy the record and you never know maybe stick it on in the background, maybe at a house party, definitely on a neighbour complainingly loud stereo and maybe you might feel like starting something...    

http://bubblegunner.blogspot.com/

bbdigi001: machine rock by Machine Rock

(Now available to download)

http://machinerock.wordpress.com/

(Originally released in 2001)

Machine Rock by Machine Rock

It all started back in 1999 when I moved to Sheffield. I’d done dance music for years and by the time I got to the home of the Cabs, Warp and all things Bleep I was a bit frazzled and getting a bit bored with music. Seemed to me it had all gone a bit drum and bass back then!

Back in the early nineties I was in a band called the PCM and we did ravey stuff. Releasing a couple of tracks but never getting near any radio play. It wasn’t always about that though... we used to beg steal and borrow so we could press stuff, mainly so we could go out and hear it played. At the time we used to harass a lot of the techno dj’s (SS, Slipmat, Daz Willot etc) around Stoke on Trent and Manchester with our white labels.

So, I get to Sheffield and literally as I’m turning up... Warp head south! Thing is though, with Sheffield I was always inspired by people like the Cabs, league etc and the thing that kept me going when I turned up was that the Allseeing I ruled the place at the time.

You would see NY Sushi flyers everywhere, you had the best club in Le Citrus @ the casbah to go out to, nights like Abysynthesis at the National centre brought a brace of the Sheff electronic gliteratti together and Add N to X were still kicking and screaming.

All of a sudden you saw this totally inclusive scene that someone who had always hidden behind pseudonyms like myself could “possibly” get in... didn’t happen but had a fantastic time J

My entry point into the rich tapestry of Sheff was to open a record shop in the Forum. V&M had the dance side covered so I funnelled every bit of credit I could muster into Indie(!) Didn’t work and we shut after 6 months... but those 6 months were some of the most exciting times I’ve ever had.

You’d meet friends through friends and that’s how I ended up with the Dr! Dobrovolski to be precise. He’d some serious equipment up in his attic studio and whilst we tinkered in mushi mushi, adk citrus what we did ended up for me turning into Machine Rock.

Paul (the Dr) introduced me to other forms of software, I’d been brought up on cubase or octamed and now it was all Reactor or Fruity. It was out of these experiments that I managed to muster 3 tracks that were the first crop of Machine Rock.

Shame though... my time in Sheff came to pass. Bankruptcy and a broken heart forced me back to the parents’ place where with an old office pc I pushed every bit of CPU into what became machine rock by machine rock demos.

The set was basically the first 6 songs on this album, 4 of which were recorded in Sheff and then tidied up in Congleton & Manchester. With the help of mates Dr Dobrovolski and a new recruit Andy B we took these tunes and planned playing them live. The thought of playing electronic music live was something I couldn’t get my head around. When we did get something that sounded audible there was only one place to play.

So back to Sheffield we went. Pete Dogdrill booked us into the Casbah in various support sets (one of which was Snow Patrol!) and aside from a nightmare gig supporting a band called Ugigami at the Grapes for the most part we went down okay.

Well that was it wasn’t it... we’re off.

Machine Rock by Machine Rock. Hope you like it.

http://bubblegunner.com/machine_rock_downloads.html

Free tune from the Mrock archive> One of the tracks we've just remastered.

(Link now removed)

Get yer sen over here for all the new V2 detailage:

http://machinerock.wordpress.com/

Quick introduction to the new Machine Rock blog. Long time coming but here it is.

Machine Rock have now gone all AV! The old set up V1 so to speak is still kicking about but this is where you will find all the new V2 machine rock info. From forthcoming performance information to the new finalised format of what “mrock” will be.

We’re a  bit bored of bands these days so we’ve morphed into something a bit different!

This is also the replacement for the old bubblegunner site and will be be updated by all members of “the ROCK”!

Loads of exciting announcements soon on the remasters series. Most of which will be free to download. Plus there is the visual side of the set up which should be really ace.

All on the way

We also want to keep this a bit of an open forum for stuff we like and whats going on around machine rock at the present time.

Updates will follow… but safe to say the lads journey back to Sheffield this Saturday for the Dr.Dobrovolstag should be on these pages soon