Tiny Pushes Vol.1 (How to be Childlike) – remastered

Here’s a just-released, re-mastered, lo-fi oddity from my days of making music as Calamateur: Tiny Pushes Vol.1 (How to be Childlike) – a 10-track mini-album originally put out in 2003.

Here’s 10 random facts about it:

1) The album was recorded on a Tascam four-track cassette recorder. I borrowed a second four-track recorder from a friend to make the final mixes.

2) My original plan was to release it as a 7” single (an album on a 7” single being, to my mind, a pretty cool and unusual idea) but I didn’t have any money, so released it as a free download instead (another fairly unusual idea back in 2003).

3) The album contains samples of Victoria Williams, Sister Helen Prejean and Douglas Coupland.

4) The recordings of children’s voices at the start and end of the album were made by my Dad in the mid-1970s. The voices belong to me and my two sisters.

5) I recorded ‘Tree Song’ in ’96 or ’97, using an alarm clock that had a built-in tape recorder, which is about as lo-fi as lo-fi can go.

6) The drum sounds on ‘Simpleton’, ‘Hopescotch‘ and ‘Open Your Eyes’ were made with a Playstation One game called Music 2000.

7) I wrote ‘Everyone Is The One’ while watching the film Con Air at my girlfriend’s flat. Nicolas Cage’s performance must have struck a chord.

8) For track 8, I stuck a microphone out of the window to record the rain outside. A car drove down the street and made a three-point-turn, giving the song its rather unimaginative title.

9) The ultrasound scan on the album artwork is of my niece. The ultrasound scan of her twin is on the cover of Tiny Pushes Vol.2. They turned 16 this year.

10) The second half of the song ‘How To Be Childlike’ was performed by a young girl named Sarah. She was visiting the flat I shared with Mark (from Oldsolar, the band I was then in). She played with Mark’s collection of musical instruments for half an hour, I recorded it all, then randomly edited the recording down to 1m18s.

As I said, it’s an… oddity 🙂 Get it here.