Whether you’re professional or amateur, tour-famous or bedroom-idle, every musician has them. They hover around like a foul scent and rear their ugly heads each time you’ve forgotten they exist. If you’re a music type, I’ve no doubt you’ve got a batch lying around, too.
I’m talking about unused songs and recordings you have no idea what to do with. A jam you tracked one night but never finished. A memory you should probably try to let go. Move on with your life, buddy!
Yet, now and then, you pull one out and give it a listen. Each time, the reek of unfulfilled potential makes you sick to your stomach. You like the tune enough to vouch for it, but know it’s never getting uploaded to Spotify. It’s regrettable because, given the right resources, you believe it had the potential to be an absolute belter.
Listen to the album while reading the text.
You’ll denounce yourself as an unforgivable procrastinator before engaging in several sleepless nights, dreaming of ways to make the useless useful again. After all, you created them, and you’ll be dammed if they wind up as corrupted files on a stagnant hard drive. Furthermore, you’re a musician; categorizing creative output, no matter how raw the performance, is an essential part of the posterity drive.
But, what do you do with these useless old bastards you still love so much? If you’re famous, you’re in luck because, eventually, some label will happily package them up as bonus material. You know they’ll find their place eventually, even if you must wait until death.
If you’re not so famous, like, “Who the hell even are you?” kind of level, you might upload them to Bandcamp, which is precisely what I did with my latest release, Items Unsold.
I’m Loic J Tuckey. You won’t know me, and that’s completely understandable. If you’re interested in getting to know me, the following few paragraphs are for you.
Math Rock Instead Of Math Classes
I began playing guitar at the age of 15 to get out of maths classes. I started my first band when I was 16. When I was 21, I formed a post-punk band called Wooderson; we toured, did the circuit, and put out some records. After that, I played in Che Ga Zebra, a math rock band, and Bonetti, a stoner-glam rock band. These days, I play under my own name, messing about with bluesy, Americana-influenced vibes.
At that time, I was part of a DIY music collective and record label in Sheffield, UK, called The Audacious Art Experiment. We worked with international artists, organized shows, recorded albums, and put out records, all from a converted concrete industrial unit outside the city center. Lovely stuff.
This concrete block also serves as a studio and the place where I’ve written and recorded more music than an unknown musician would care to admit. After finishing in those bands mentioned above, I became more interested in recording than touring, choosing to swap the democratic band dynamic for improvised jams and studio sessions with musicians of different genres around the scene.
Following those sessions, I’d continue to work on tracks alone or bring in more people to help me complete their development. I can rest easy in knowing that most of that work is happily categorized through a series of records and EPs.
Even so, there are always a few little stragglers that just won’t fit anywhere. Not appropriate for your latest sound or lacking the necessary files to continue working on the song.
Organizing The Dysfunctional
Ultimately, that’s what Items Unsold is: a collection of studio jams and demos recorded sometime between 2013 and 2020. Each tune has been salvaged from the wreckage of a broken hard drive. Some songs were recorded using only room microphones, while others benefited from slightly more advanced studio treatment.
In most cases, the raw files were lost, ensuring the tracks could not be worked on further, resulting in a batch of half-written, under-produced studio sessions. As unappealing as that may sound, these hard drive relics are still endearing to me, not least of all, as they remind me of going into the studio with honest intentions.
It’s also cathartic, isn’t it? To organize the dysfunctional, to collate the uncategorizable. And to put little projects to bed for good. It leaves the mental space to focus on other ideas. Perhaps a second EP of burdensome tunes. Or even a complete, well-considered, perfectly executed, 12-track album.
Which is what I’ll be uploading to Bandcamp in the coming months. And the story of making Beyond The Sun Road is entirely different in tone, so it’ll have to wait for another time. For now, if you dig muddy, unbalanced mixes of half-improvised krauty, bluesy, experimental jams, you’ll enjoy Items Unsold.
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