shanx.co.uk » Music

Barefoot On Spotify and iTunes (to buy, ahem!)

David — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 12:35:11 +0000

The Nightowlers Videos

David — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 19:14:49 +0000

A couple of videos of The Nightowlers acoustic duo songs. See last.fm to download some of our original tracks

The Nightowlers

David — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 14:24:24 +0000

The Nightowlers is the late-night mini acoustic folk/lo-fi duo project of David Michael Shanks and Lynzi Wang. Coming about in a shared kitchen in London during scrake of dawn procrastination sessions, the sound is maybe somewhere in and around Damien Jurado, Cat Power and Nouvelle Vague. With no expense spared, all songs were made and recorded using a found acoustic guitar and a laptop.

2 free songs for download over at our new last.fm page.
Please do leave some feedback here, or on last.fm if you have an account.

The Nightowlers
http://www.last.fm/music/The+Nightowlers

When cabin fever sets in over Christmas holidays: Valen comes to town

Dabbling in Video

David — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 22:18:25 +0000

Christmas toys have given rise to the opportunity to make a few videos to accompany some of my music. Early days of testing the Kodak Zi8. I hope to have some more story driven videos and better recordings come January.

Spring Clean, Summer Upgrades and Some New Music

David — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 16:24:43 +0000

Summer is in the air, the ironic melodic synth pop of The Magnetic Fields‘ appropriately titled album Holiday is on the jukebox album and shanx.co.uk is upgraded with a new look.

The summer weather and Norway’s “Light at Night” at 1 in the morning allowed for some outdoor low-fi (because we know no other way) music with Stefan as part of our “David and Me” project. It was a beautiful evening – “one for the mind and not to be recorded” as a wise man once said. We were visited by a curious beaver, some deer, jumping fish, a skunk (we think) and passers by.

Musically speaking for “David and Me”, melody and simplicity take precedence with bedroom noises from melodicas, ukuleles, glockenspiels and rhythm eggs also making appearances. Magnetic fields and Herman Dune are strong influences. Mostly though, the driving force is some sort of ode to our favourite, sadly departed all-too-young St.Thomas. We hope summer will be kind and give us some recordings of our songs to put out. For now, some roughness (we like roughness!)

- The Willow Tree -

David and Me – Sulking

While on the music front, Billy Spring Band have been busy in the studio recording rough demos for a full 8 or so songs. We have quite a mixture of songs now ranging from a “skrangly” Neil Young rock sound to a smooth jazzy tune all the way to a waltz! Check back here in the upcoming weeks for some rough demos. BSB now have, in addition to our Myspace, an online home with the kind collective of bands @ Snotpope with whom we share practice rooms, studio and equipment. Find it by clicking my banner design below.

Digitally, I’ve been particularly impressed with WordPress 2.8 publishing platform’s features that make running a blog a LOT easier and much more intuitive. Plugins, themes and widgets can all now be installed and activated directly through the WordPress Online Site Admin interface. The sidebar widget housing your e.g. Twitter, Flickr and Last.fm feeds can be adjusted seamlessly using drag and drop thanks to AJAX. Gone also are the cumbersome days of downloading your plugins/upgrades as zip files, unpacking them and uploading them via FTP. One standout plugin is the WordPress InstantUpgrade plugin by Zirona. Once set up, WordPress is upgradable in one click – no more worries about file permissions or overwriting important files.

Watch this space for more music from David and Me and BSB. And, above all, god sommer!

A Sunday Evening Ditty – Reaction to…

David — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 00:31:18 +0000

“Reaction to the things that have recently come before”

click play below to listen

A short, first-takes, Sunday-evening song
mp3 download

Revivalist Music

David — Sat, 24 May 2008 13:20:22 +0000

I found some videos of my old band Barefoot from Glasgow . Head over to the my music section to check them out. You can also find more Barefoot songs at our Myspace

Take a pen and paper…and selected short stories

David — Tue, 13 May 2008 18:46:49 +0000

Recently it felt like it was time to draw…. Below is a little video snippet compilation of these drawings set to my own song Depth of Winter. Remember you can leave your comments at the bottom of this post.

Onward Upward Struggle by David Shanks

And here are some of the drawings on Flickr for a more considered look.

I will also be having the photo below published in the Swedish magazine Utblick in conjunction with an article on the Troubles in Northern Ireland.