The coy, sepia-toned obscurity of the photograph above epitomises The Tenant's pathetic attitude to public life. The Tenant makes music out of necessity, self-publishes it out of vanity and markets it hopelessly. Oof! – feel that killer instinct.

See the Catalogue page for ordering information and the odd download.

Go to Clone Guilt's 'myspace' page for streaming audio.

See below for sleeve notes.

Contact The Tenant directly through perkyn [at] cloneguilt.co.uk.

The Tenant does not currently perform live.

1. The Bloch
2. The Genocist
3. Surfer’s Deception
4. Tape Machine Death pt 88
5. Your Foaming Curse
6. Bruges Cleft
7. Voice of the Wivenhoe Pylon
8. The Last Extra Mature Cheddar Before Christmas
9. By a Crow in Shacklewell
10. Song for Tarmac
11. Theme for The Tenant

Clone Guilt presents thirty minutes of four trackery recorded between 29 July 1997 and 2 February 2010. All songs written and performed by The Tenant with these guests:–
S.J.B. composed and played rhythm guitar thirteen years ago on the basic track for Surfer’s Deception.
A.J.P. composed and played acoustic guitar on Christmas Day 2002 for Song for Tarmac.
Ismene Plankton is the voice of Your Foaming Curse.
All contributions released without permission.
Theme for The Tenant is an interpretation.

The Tenant thanks The Ideal Form, The Beale, The Seventeenth Century & Red Atlas.

The songs:

The story of The Bloch is a cautionary tale: the song suffered several re-writes, clearly brought about by the muses’ misunderstanding of the name, and thinking it had something to do with writers’ block: it doesn’t. The song itself is actually about that time capsule we buried at school after watching Blue Peter: our neatest handwriting, our most colourful drawings, and three years later they built an outhouse over the spot where we buried it. So twenty years on from that, what endures? Well we all worry about this, what could be more dull? A lucky escape for you then, when we missed each other by mere seconds on the corner of Gray’s Inn Road and Elm Street: I was going to tell you all about it.

The Genocist’s mangled title is not half as mangled as the animals that were harmed in the making of it. The audible tape wobble is their souls trying to get out. Yes, it’s true: animals have souls – even midges! That’s what I sing to the world while I’m mixing the gravy for my sausages.

Surfer’s Deception is the centrepiece of The Tenant’s album, Burn The Diary and the Fraud who Wrote it, except it wasn’t finished in time to appear on it. It was written in 1997. The original words were exposed as the biggest lie of adolescence and had to be drowned. The new text will have to be burned.

Your Foaming Curse is an exciting musical departure in being the first Tenant song not to feature bass guitar. It wrote itself: the synthesizer was left to make its own noise, this dictated the guitar part and allowed Ismene Plankton to breeze in and improvise a vocal. She hasn’t worked since.

If you’ve listened this far and found the whole thing a little backward looking, then the failed 80s teen road movie of Bruges Cleft will immerse you completely in the snakebite of Camden via Bruges circa YOUR teens.

Part 88 of the ongoing Tape Machine Death series and Voice of the Wivenhoe Pylon are very old found sounds representing early skirmishes in the war between Man and Machine. Who won? Why, you did, listener!

I found The Last Extra Mature Cheddar Before Christmas while putting the final list of the CD together. Slight it may be, but I could not resist its fragrant temptation.

By a Crow in Shacklewell is the heartbreaking story of 6 years’ tenancy near this small parish. An overdose of Alice’s medication results in a disturbing loss of scale and perspective: my most terrifying nightmare. An attempt to walk it off only summons disgruntled ghosts, crying incessantly about their lot. It’s a tired cliché that the principal advantage cassette recording has over digital is precisely its restriction: serendipitous decisions are forced by deteriorating tape and limited tracks. But at its worst, the ultimatums delivered by the cassette can induce crippling, decade-long indecision when so little is at stake. This song and The Bloch are the thematic links to the album’s title. Have I said too much?

Song for Tarmac straddles the Lea Valley like the pylons on the marshes.

Theme for The Tenant did some serious time on myspace back in 2006/7. Poor thing. Here it is restored to its rightful place after waiting around for a few years. It remains my favourite song by The Tenant. And doesn’t that party sound like a blast?

Where the first Tenant CD, Sick Cure for Bomber’s Scapegoat, was a political record disguised as low-fi arty narcissism, Sixty Miles Bad Faith is unapologetically introspective; indeed it is low-fi arty narcissism disguised as mid-fi arty narcissism. Now show me yours.

5 February 2010

Side A
01) Bass Introduction    [1996]
02) Theme for The Tenant (analogue mix)   [2006]
03) Derailed at True Crossing (analogue mix)    [2000-06]
04) Microwave    [2000]
05) 2000 Cakes    [1999]
06) My Medal    [2003-06]
07) Dance! Dole Scum    [1997]
08) Wade thru the digital shit    [2004]

Side A
09) Tape machine death pt 69    [1998]
10) A foot in the sand; sand in the shoe; a tunnel of 6 million feet
     [2003-04]
11) Schroeder's hands got smashed    [1997]
12) Faculty Berk, 1880    [2002-06]
13) Hank & Chip don't play    [2000-03]
14) Bloody Cheek    [1998-99]
15) Bruised Paul    [2004-06]
16) Tape machine death pt 46    [1997]

Burn the Diary and the Fraud who wrote it is a 44 minute cassette album destined to be redundant as soon as it was created because, although there are people listening to tapes still, The Tenant doesn't know any of them. If you are one of those people that The Tenant does not know, this album is for you! Sixteen "songs" comprising the first instalment of The Tenant's notebook cleansing programme and as such, devoid of overarching concept.

This album repeats material heard on The Tenant's CDs mainly to give The Tenant a chance to hear them on his cassette walkman.

1) My Medal
2) Derailed at True Crossing
3) Bruised Paul
4) Faculty Berk, 1880
5) —

See Catalogue page for downloads.

Sick Cure for Bomber's Scapegoat is a CDR EP presenting five songs recorded over five and a half years on analogue tape; a process resulting in simultaneous accretion and deterioration of sound. The point at which to stop recording is a race of the imagination against the poorly-spliced magnetic tape across the finish line.

The question 'what does your music sound like' causes me much trouble. I don't have a clue about how to describe it: it sounds like it was a recorded on a four track. That's because it was. The songs would doubtless sound completely different if recorded with any kind of budget. If you listen around to modern music, it's clear that 'stuff that sounds like it was recorded at home' is a genre within itself. Sick Cure for Bomber's Scapegoat unapologetically falls into this category with no detriment to the listener's pleasure. And that doesn't mean it automatically sounds like early Jad Fair.

Forthcoming is a collaborative EP entitled 120 days of Olsson. This employs some 21st century recording techniques, which makes it even harder for me to explain to people what it sounds like. I don't even understand how some of the noises got in there. For the sake of convenience, these two EPs herald the first steps towards the creation of an entirely new form of music: "pogrock" - a proggy, rock music pogrom destined to usher in the age where the last major-label CEO is hung with the guts of the last A&R man. I won't be held accountable for any deaths.

As for the record at hand:

"My Medal" is concerned with repetition, brutishness and folly. I approached the turret that is partially visible behind the trees in Clissold Park expecting to find a historic castle that would connect my present experience of North London with its mediaeval past. What a fool: the sign outside proclaims: "Indoor Climbing Centre".

"Derailed at True Crossing" is both the oldest and the newest song on the EP, conceived in the final summer of the twentieth century, it was also the last to be completed. Its troubled gestation is unconsciously mirrored in its erratic structure. No musical idea is returned to throughout the course of the song, except the electronic drone. Melody is picked up and then discarded. Trains to the city from the south and east coasts triangulate its musical foundation. The peaceful gardens I sat in when I started the song were hazy recollections by its completion.

"Bruised Paul" concerns a number of walks. Before being ordained priest of St Paul's, John Donne preached at Lincoln's Inn. The cobbles are comparatively modern, but another world is glimpsed on the notice-board. Sample notice:

The song also includes a guitar solo.

"Faculty Berk, 1880" fails to resolve its opening thesis through the use of language, but contests it through the use of the most impudent of instruments: the kazoo. Despite this, it is not a comedy song; it is a tense battle: the mechanical rhythm resisted being turned to song for a good three years. Man triumphed over machine in the end, but the struggle is still evident in the tone of the verses.

Across the EP, the lyrics are intended to be subtler than saying "the 'pro-war left' can kiss my arse" and suchlike. Those kind of sentiments have no place in pop music. That's what blogs are for*.

Technical details:
Recorded on the cheapest equipment to hand at a cost of innumerable weekends and days off. Bass guitar is the only instrument to be featured on every song.


15 July 2006

*Note, this text first appeared on the now defunct Clone Guilt blog.

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