Wednesday 16 December 2015

Revbjelde EP feat. Dolly Dolly now avaible to download right now.

Buccaboo by Revbjelde is a 6 track, digital only release featuring guest vocals by Luke Daniels (former BBC Folk Musician Of The Year), spoken words by Dolly Dolly, trumpet by Stuart Henderson, hammered dulcimer by Richard Bentley, zither & didgeridoo by RoyGoss & moog treatments by Lewis Riddlesworth. Plus an array of electronic / acoustic instrumentation performed & produced by Alan Gubby.

I've contributed spoken words to the track THE ABBEY on the new EP by Revbjelde. Alan (Buried Treasure label boss) asked me to write something inspired by the Abbey ruins in Reading, Berkshire. The site where "Sumer Is Icumen In" (also called the Summer Canon and the Cuckoo Song) a medieval English rota was first written in the mid-13th century.


New Dolly colaboration with My Demon Sister forthcoming. Glamour Graygun Remix avaible to listen now.


Hooray! For Dollywood (Glamour Graygun Mix) - My Demon Sister EP - Out This Winter on Artificial Fire Recordings


Wednesday 18 November 2015

Delaware Road LIVE review


Photo: Alan Gubby
The Delaware Road live gig reviewed by DJ FOOD and Shindig! magazine HERE

Photo: Victoria Forbes


" -  a night of radiophonics, tape loops, vintage synths and spoken word we braced ourselves for an eight band line up held together by a narrative from Dolly Dolly. Seated at a table under angle poise lamp to one side of the stage for the entirety of the gig and looking for all the world like a broadcast announcer of old he was a revelation, holding the audience captive between acts as the night and story unfolded. Written by Dolly aka David Yates and label manager Alan Gubby, the tale of The Delaware Road is loosely based on two members (‘the man’ and ‘the woman’) of a sound studio reminiscent of the Radiophonic Workshop. The clues are all there, the BBC being referred to as ‘the corporation’, and the tale includes shades of The Stone Tape Theory, the occult, the swinging 60s, orgies and demonic powers released through sound recorded on cooper wire."


Tuesday 3 November 2015

DELAWARE ROAD trailer featuring Dolly Dolly


DELAWARE ROAD


A rare chance to see Dolly Dolly and many others preforming live this year on Saturday 14 November 2015 in Reading, Berkshire. 

BUY TICKETS HERE


London. 1968. Two pioneering electronic musicians discover a set of unusual recordings. Fascinated by the seemingly occult nature of the tapes they conduct a studio ritual that will alter their lives forever. 
 
The Delaware Road is a psychological thriller & an audio-visual treat for fans of archived electronica, far out jazz & haunted folk grooves. 
 
Compere: Dolly Dolly
 
Live: Howlround, The Dandelion Set, Ian Helliwell, The Rowan Amber Mill, Robin Lee, Loose Capacitor, Tim Hill, The Twelve Hour Foundation & Revbjelde.
 
DJs: Jonny Trunk & The Séance (feat. Pete Wiggs from St Etienne)
 
Tickets £15 advance, £13 concession; £16 on the door.
Price includes free poster & advance download code for 'The Delaware Road' compilation album on Buried Treasure Records.

INSTADOLLY

Why not follow Dolly Dolly on INSTAGRAM?

*All the cool kids do.


A photo posted by David Yates (@dollydollydavid) on


A photo posted by David Yates (@dollydollydavid) on






*Apparently 

NEW MUSIC MIX from KIT RECORDS


The ever lovely KIT RECORDS very kindly asked me to make them a music mix. Which I did. 

This is what they said:

" We love the work of English surrealist musician, spoken word artist and beekeeper Dolly Dolly (sometimes known as David Yates). Bunches of words, unnerving tangles of the stupendous, gruesome and mundane, wind through scattered atmospheres, radiophonic ploinks and the occasional piano ballad. David’s mix ties mournful folk and sound experiments together into one mesmerising, scary whole."

This is what I said:

" This mix could quite easily double up as the soundtrack to a 70s children’s television programme or one of those ‘folk’ horror films from the same period. Here Musique Concrete becomes the unlikely bedfellow of pastoral a Capella English folk. The juxtaposition seems to highlight the strangeness of each. For reasons I can’t really explain this mix reminds me of a weird school assembly.
Have a listen and see if you agree."


You can go to the website  and see the tracklisting here or keep it a surprise and listen below:




 

TIMGLASET MAGAZINE


The first issue of the Swedish/English magazine TIMGLASET is now out and ready for you to buy!

Contains an exclusive (and slightly pornographic) weird tale by Dolly Dolly called (S)EXIT and an interview with frequent Dolly collaborator, the English abstract painter and electronic musician Time Attendant.

Worth the cover price alone!

GET YOUR COPY HERE


Monday 2 November 2015

XPYLON



Once upon a time there was a radio show, then there was a series of live gigs and events. Eventually, there was a record label. They were all called Exotic Pylon. There was one man who was the creator, curator and driving force behind all these things: a man called Jonny Mugwump. Jonny is as close to a raging Darwinian force of nature as you could ever meet. He's a whirlpool of creativity and enthusiasm. He was the pied-piper and we all followed him, sucked in by his strange gravitational pull towards an event horizon of his own making. Once you were there inside the Pylon universe, anything could happen.

The first year of the radio show on London's Resonance FM was a scattershot affair. It was if the contents of Jonny’s brain were jammed into a blunderbuss and shot into the mic. As the years went on, he was joined by various ne'er-do-wells playing live, who filled the tiny studio to the brim, often times spilling out into the station's carpark outside. Paul Snowdon (Time Attendant) began to co-host after a while. You would think this would have had a stabilizing effect on Jonny and the show (Paul Snowdon was and remains the single most laid back man in creation), but no. They spent many a time broadcasting throughout the night, widely improvising madcap electronic soundscapes to anyone who happened to tune in at 3am. The show was as eclectic as they come. Anything and anyone came and went. It started to become a hub for eccentrics to ply their wares or just hang out while Jonny somehow seemed to hold it all together by the skin of his teeth.

It seemed only natural for the show to move into the live arena and there then followed over a year of live gigs in London. They were, like the radio show, ramshackle affairs where anything could happen from one show to the next. There was never anything uniform about Exotic Pylon. It was never pin-downable. It was always on the move. Always moving. Always exciting. There were nights where magic would happen. Where you would see combinations of acts that could’ve only been programmed deep inside Jonny’s hyperactive brain. There was nothing like it. And I don’t think there ever will be again.

The record label became a combination of all that had gone before. Each release was completely unique. There was no through-line of sound. No label aesthetic. The one thing they all had in common was they had nothing in common. From torch songs to folk, from electronica to spoken word. All human life was on the label (assuming the human life was slightly lop-sided and walked with a limp).

The one thing that united everyone on Exotic Pylon was a sense of comradeship. We were all proud to have been involved in some way or another. We were all members of the same invisible college. Almost without exception we all kept in contact with each other once the label had died. It may have disappeared but its spirit has remained.

So, with that in mind, we present XPYLON, a compilation of ex-Pyloneers. Each track is brand new and exclusive to the release. There are supergroups, individuals and collaborations, all of which evoke the heady days of the once great Exotic Pylon.

AVAILABLE TO BUY HERE




Every year, one in four of us will experience a mental health problem. But hundreds of thousands of people are still struggling.

All proceeds from the album are going to Mind, the mental health charity.

Mind believe no-one should have to face a mental health problem alone. They will listen, give you support and advice, and fight your corner.

Thursday 14 May 2015

NEW ALBUM RELEASE - 16th May 2015


This album came about via a death.

The elderly have a habit of popping off when you least expect it. One minute you’re having a chat about the weather, the next they’re face down in their soup. It’s a sad fact of life that death is not dignified. It’s rarely pleasant. What is nice, however, is when you get left nice stuff after they’re gone. Some people get whole estates, some people get houses, some people get priceless Ming vases. Not me though. I got given a cassette tape. The widow handed it to me and said ‘He knew you liked jazz and would’ve wanted you to have it’. The tape was unmarked. The only clue I had to it’s contents were three words written on the paper inlay. They are now the name of this album. As far as I could make out it was filled with A and B sides of old 45s from the 1960s and early 70s. Some I recognised, some I didn’t. I would listen to it obsessively in the evenings. The soundtrack to my life. I don’t think I listened to anything else for a whole month. It became a ritual. Cassette tapes make a lovely rattle when you shake them. They’re the most physical of storage mediums. Every time I took it out of it’s clear plastic case I would give it a little shake. It became as much a part of the sound of it as the actual music. You could press the FF and REV while the PLAY button was on and it would feel like you were recomposing it with it’s own noise. By sheer coincidence I was given a couple of other tapes while I was making this album, a handful from the chap who runs our local Oxfam shop. I was chatting to him about the project. He couldn’t sell them because they were home recorded and unmarked. I’d not been given a cassette for over twenty years and all of a sudden I had a drawer full. It was serendipity. The vocals were collected over ten or so years as I magpie-like snaffled anything that ticked my fancy or just made me laugh.  I sampled the tapes, cut-up everything up, looped them and sampled them all over again. They started to sound as if you'd fallen asleep listening to the radio in the middle of the night and had a partially strange repeating dream. Perfect. The whole thing seemed to fit together quite nicely. I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed making it.

Since sampling the original tape for this album it has sadly died. Cassettes a have habit of popping off when you least expect it too. One minute you’re listening to a drum solo, the next it’s wrapped around the spindle, crunched and snapped and dead. Sad really.

Anyway.

You can buy it from the Dolly Dolly Bandcamp page on 16th May 2015

Dolly Dolly

EXCLUZIVE DOLLY DOLLY TRACK ON EKOPLEKZ FACT MAGAZINE MIX



 DOLLY DOLLY featured on EKOPLEKZ's FACT magazine mix

 Dolly Dolly & Gloria Gloucestershire – Contak (unreleased)

FREE DOLLY DOLLY AUDIO BOOK


Complete reading of the text from the short story (S)EXIT printed in TIMGLASET magazine.

ADULTS ONLY


Tuesday 17 March 2015

NEW EP


Prufrock is a collaboration between multi-instrumentalist Steve Christie and artist Dolly Dolly (David Yates). After playing on Dolly Dolly’s debut album Antimacassar the pair decided to work together on the short series of tracks included on this EP. Dolly recorded sounds from his garden bird table, a grandfather clock, a 91 year old lady who recited a poem from memory, but sadly died two weeks after the recording was made, a group of adults with learning difficulties and a walk though Old Town Hastings towards the sea. Steve used an old school Steinway Grand Piano, a Lowrey DSO-1 Heritage Deluxe organ, a 19th Century Pipe organ, a cello, a violin, a recorder, and a bit of computer, and mastered it on an ex-BBC Pebble Mill Studer B67 tape machine. The project has been over a year in gestation and the pair are currently working together on a full length album.

DOWNLOAD HERE