So, a “new” album appears. I say “new”, as these songs have never had an official release, but they have been around for a long time.
After “Music For DXing” came about in 2003 I created another set of five “doing” songs called “Music For Geocaching”.
Geocaching is a hobby, a kind of treasure-hunt using GPS. I was a big fan of it in the early noughties and the intention was to “release” the music by burning it to CD-Rs and placing it in geocaches across the country and maybe across the world if folks helped out.
Since geocaching is an all-ages activity it seemed in poor taste to put out a record by an artist called “Spunkle” in such a family-friendly arena, so the finished set of songs were planned to go out under the name “The Waypoints”, and all manner of stuff was prepared for this, including an email account.
For reasons now forgotten however, none of this happened, and the tracks only saw the light of day on compilation CDs for trusted friends. In the meantime, other bands called The Waypoints came into being and that name was lost.
Sometime around 2007, which would have been 10 years since the start of Spunkle, I started to use the name Deep Grass to think about and write/compose/express myself through music.
So much had changed for me musically that it seemed as though I was no longer making music that came from the same places as I started in with Spunkle, although when you are just a one-person outfit it is hard to know why some music suits a certain identity and some doesn’t.
But I had also started First Fold Records with Stuart Tonge and Ben Sadler, and “Music For Geocaching” had been earmarked as a potential release, although at five songs it ideally needed more material.
So work began on “Side 2” of “Music For Geocaching” and six further songs were created, of which…nothing happened at all.
Again, I can’t really remember why, although I do recall working very intensively on this set of songs and sometimes when that happens you get too hung up on ideas and need to step away for a bit.
At the time other things were happening in my life which took all of my time and attention, and when I came back to look at “Side 2”, it all seemed too far out.
A couple of these tracks got reworked for the one-and-only (to date) live appearance by Deep Grass in 2011, but mostly they’ve lingered on hard drives ever since.
Until now.
Why now? Well, whether it is middle age, hiraeth (go and look it up, it’s my mot-juste for 2020) or just the lockdown for you-know-what, I’ve been drawn to what I have done and what I want to do and it seems that whilst I can’t get out and about I want to try at least and close some of the gaps in my output.
Tiny though my audience is, I have always primarily made music for me, and so I also wanted to get as much organised as I can and get it in a format that may stand a better chance of survival than an outdated operating system or a spinning hard drive.
Moreover, I wanted to bring some of my creativity back to life and put together some of my hard work to try and give it the best chance of living on.
“Music For Geocaching” marks a sequel to the Spunkle of old and the Deep Grass of new. It’s a little intense at times and plays havoc with your hearing on headphones as I loved all those panning options, but it means well and might just find a place in your collection.
You can get it on Bandcamp FOR FREE but you can also see an experimental “ten minute preview” on Instagram in a new format I am experimenting with. If you don’t follow me on Instagram, get on with it! @jsnowdendavies