Altrock | Fiercely Independent Records https://fiercelyindie.co.uk Record Label Fri, 19 Aug 2022 13:44:33 +0000 en hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=7.0 https://fiercelyindie.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/cropped-Logo_no_text-32x32.png Altrock | Fiercely Independent Records https://fiercelyindie.co.uk 32 32 Moths to Ashes https://fiercelyindie.co.uk/2021/02/17/moths-to-ashes/ Wed, 17 Feb 2021 20:57:39 +0000 https://fiercelyindie.co.uk/?p=4529 It’s summer 2019, the summer before the pandemic and I have packed up and sold Beliefspace Studio. The ghosts of my former life still haunt me and I cannot bear to be in the studio space any more. I seldom plug in my electric guitar, the instruments sit unplayed, the FX pedals gather dust and my interest in music wanes … for a while.

Then I rediscover my love of electronics and begin building guitar pedals (there’s four of my builds in the picture of Nick below). This rekindles my interest in guitars and, before I know it, myself and Nick are waxing lyrical about pedals, music, antiquated analogue recorders and underrated bands.

Nick from Moths to Ashes
Nick laying down guitars on ‘In Embers’

It isn’t long before one of us has the idea of putting together a few songs recorded on a four track cassette … collaboration via Mail! Nick already owns a Tascam 424 MkII so I look for one, buy it … it’s broken … F*** it!

Meanwhile I fire up Pro Tools and start dabbling with Guitars/FX and suddenly I find myself writing material again. I pretty quickly finish the first version of ‘In Embers‘ and apprehensively send it to Nick, at this point I’ve never put my own vocals on a recorded song!

Somewhere along the way we name a song ‘Moths to Ashes‘, the song doesn’t make the cut but the name seems like a good fit for the band, as the ideas of transmutation are pivotal to our project.

We’ve heard many stories of musicians having a tough time with lockdown but, fortunately for us, creativity explodes. I still think of that time as being a type of enforced “Woodshedding”, it’s not long before we have a bunch of songs and so the project gains momentum. Ultimately these songs are weeded down to ten for the debut album ‘In Embers‘ (12th March 2021) and a bonus track exclusively available of the taster E.P. ‘Tides‘ (26th February 2021).

Moths to Ashes was born out of my former life, out of the ashes of a mutual friend’s suicide, out of the ashes of darkness, derision and divorce. ‘In Embers‘ contains ten guitar-driven songs about addiction, madness, the occult, isolation, longing, inhumanity, lust, anxiety, disfunction .. but ultimately, it’s about dealing with those things, finding the light (again) and embracing it.

Stu from Moths to Ashes
Stu recording guitars on ‘Forsaken’

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