Old Flame's Mixtape on Bandcamp

Created, recorded in layers between cassette decks circa February 1988 in the Comm Ave Adjacency. All tracks © 1984-1988 Kevin R. Seward. As dubbed from ancient mixtape, edited in Audacity.

And now, too many words:

With an old but cool and handy Arp brand mixing board borrowed from a bandmate, with its built in analog delay and a grey guitar compressor pedal on pretty much everything, these recordings were built up passing take after take from stereo cassette deck to another at mostly +3 to 5 dB recording levels. It was a crazy, mucked together pop version of what I’d been doing circa Bengal Burlap with a couple of cheesier cassette recorders (the best of which was a cassette boombox and it just got nuttier and more make-do from there). Drum machine, bass, guitar, layers of voice, stray lines of sax and penny whistles and I dunno maybe jingling keys, these were grandly shmushed together pop recordings.

Why? Well, why not.

And about this time I was rather young-ish and headlong in love with someone with whom I thought I’d be sharing love forever. Or at least for the rest of my life. As my actual clinical functioning heart has outlived all such intoxicating abstraction, seemed a waste not to impose these old crazed bits of pop whatnot on the world at large. (I would here solemnly pause to caution the young and/or impressionable, but who ever reads these notes much less takes them at face value.) And so impose I do.

There are, in theory, more of these sorts of things. There were before leading into this. The recording of “Veteran’s Day” (on Winter Palace, as released on Bandcamp—along with the original, perhaps definitive dub of “Music And Candlelight”) is very much a fine precursor. Later pop is over the top in other ways. Something else of the in-between might come out eventually.

But this vintage will always be as special as a certain sunny day one basks in for weeks and months and years afterward. Because it was a certain sunny day. Or as much so as bucket brigade delay, stomp box compression and piled on layers of buried-in-the-red cassette recording would allow. Not really so bright, perhaps oddly dark and squeezed together.

And a caution to young and old and in-between to be not so erstwhile. Ever.

But again I speak much as the long ago Chaucer did (with some niggling differences in circumstance & talent), recanting way too late.

Last Shiny Thing now on Bandcamp

Circa '07 collection of instrumentals and songs. Includes glockenspiel, Alesis Air Synth, feedback (no surprise there), Nashville tuned acoustic guitar, slide whistle, kalimba, Yamaha VSS-30 mini sampler, sleigh bells and such.

Not Brite now out on Bandcamp

Ghosts Of New Jerusalem -- now on Bandcamp

Hungry Ghost Editions now out on Bandcamp

Hungry Ghost Editions gathers up instrumentals from the mid-1990s.

Nothing To Do on Bandcamp

Now on Bandcamp, Nothing To Do, a whole big slew of songs from the mid 1990s. Tray card tells the story.

Mood Wring Reenactment is on Bandcamp

A whole slew of songs circa 1993 are now out, released as Mood Wring Reenactment.


Included are Francis Bacon, Sad In All Directions, Lifted--nineteen songs in all.

High View To Low on Bandcamp

Lonesome Yodel, Busker's Holiday, Middle of May, Breathe And Sway, 10AM and many more tunes are out on Bandcamp.

Tray card with handy track listing:

Winter Palace release now on Bandcamp

Winter Palace, Veteran's Day, Music And Candlelight and Listen are now on Bandcamp. Also Provisionally Yours, Instrumental For Plug, so on . . . 

Six Songs In July on Bandcamp

"Mary Magazine", "Running Scared", "Justine" and such like are on Bandcamp.

It had to happen sometime. And that sometime is now.

ye olde J-card

Wither Thou Goest

Wither Thou Goest


A big production, even for its time of reverbosity.
Had meant to post it. But a glitch in the one of its kind master recording inspired notions of digital fixing, which mostly happened and slightly didn't. Accelerating only the procrastinating process.

So now's it posted with the rest.

Meantime, mostly non-songs are continually going up in the less archival Tumblr version of audiokayness. Stuff of Berna, Gleetchlab and Monotron & so on.

Falling Upward

Falling Upward


This ol' tune is being hosted over at the Internet Archive.

Indeed, tho' it's hard to say for sure, I'm not so certain how long the Ovi hosted stuff (pretty much everything else here) will hold up as things seem in flux over there.

So, if you're just dropping by & have more than a few curious bones in your body, you may want to poke around while the audio players are up and the links are still good . . .

pinned down again

This is a pin I homebrewed circa 1982 to commemorate a fave post-punk band, Orange Juice.

The fine construction/New World craftsmanship is easily seen . . .


Their "Breakfast Time" (b-side to "Simply Thrilled Honey"), their work in general and that of other bands on Postcard Records was some influence on my own more rusticated inventions:

Instrumental for Plug


Something in the mood of another Orange Juice song, "In A Nutshell", might be heard in these:

Be Here Soon


A Love For All The Ages

Waiting With The Lost

Waiting With The Lost

When You Go Away

When You Go Away

Almost Gentle, Child Star

Almost Gentle (Also on Box.)

There's also an alternate recording of Almost Gentle.
Both versions are on Mood Wring Reenactment.

Either way, another unreliable narrator song. Was going for a little John Donne action, too, with the schizoid marriage of opposites--violent and "almost ready to love". Wouldn't want to drape any more words on this stark frame.


Child Star

Too Far, Broken Promises, Say When, Musica Musica

Too Far



Broken Promises




Say When




Musica Musica

Provisionally Yours, Someone In There, At Night

Provisionally Yours


Somewhere around the spring of 1985 I had the presence of mind to go shopping for an actual guitar amp.

Through the Auto Trader I found a Fender Twin Reverb for sale. The owner was an electrical engineer who lived in Eclipse, worked for GE and gigged in country bands. He was looking to sell the Twin and get a more reliable Peavey combo instead. I liked the amp, he showed how to check speaker polarity with a battery and that was it.

Soon after I was putting that tremelo & reverb to heavy use recording the likes of Provisionally Yours and working up my Howard Devoto impression.


Someone In There



At Night



This was recorded some years after being written. I like it musically and like the arrangement done here. Even tho' this meant to be a classic unreliable narrator kind of tune, the lyrics still spook me.

Literal minded folk (of either a dark or a protective frame of mind) be warned--this just ain't your song. Go behave.

Wheel's Reinvention, My Sweet Plaything, Fried Chicken Blues

Wheel's Reinvention



My Sweet Plaything



More spookiness of the unreliable narrator variety.


Fried Chicken Blues



Another scary tune . . one that pushes some of the already dark lyrical impulses of the Blues clear 'round the bend.