March 2012

Ja genau!

SO, Berlin is where I write from this morning. I can hear Woodpecker singing in the shower, rejoicing after successfully booking the flights for our next adventure to Russia. Yikes. I am very excited but in true scaredy cat fashion, a little afraid.

Tour so far has been extreme. Each night I learn more about performing and these songs that I have written. Seeing Woodpeck play every night is to say the least inspirational, not that she would appreciate my saying so. Humble head she has.

 

 

Today we are taking Woodpecker to the toyshop to look at some sound toys, she is excited, I would like some kind of lunchtime beer in preparation for the show later.

Before we embarked on this tour Woodpecker and I recorded and filmed some live sessions in my house. Mr Nathan Gregg captured some lovely footage of the songs that we have both been working on but are as yet, unreleased. These songs have also been enjoying some airtime on Simple Folk radio…new songs new things, new times. Hear here. Video’s will be up soon…post tour.

Right, we are finally ready to leave the house. Guten tag Berlin!

February 2012

YEESH, a lot has been going on. All things EURO TOUR 2012 are in flight. I have been fiddling around with some samples and a midi foot controller in order to take all aspects of the Whale’s Love Life EP in to the realm of live performance. This has also led to some experimentation, and in turn new songs.

 

Whilst on tour Woodpecker and I have decided that we wanted to keep in touch with the world and report back on our fun, frolics and euro times. So, if you would like a post card from our time away please facebook us your address and we shall be sure to send you a little something from the road.

 

December 2011 – New Cheer’s Eve and a freebie download type thing.

Well, here we are. The eve of New Years Eve. New Years eve eve. Safely installed within the depths of London I am entertaining the idea of a new year in a new City.

London so far has been kind to me, my new home is one of the most beautiful spaces that I have ever been lucky enough to rest my bones within. I have been recording some new songs using the acoustics of this amazing space, which will, at some point this year be available for ears outside of these walls.

SO, 2012. Things that are definitely happening…the European tour with the rather wonderfulWoodpecker Wooliams is pretty much all the way to being routed and organised, flights booked and diaries filled. This is pretty darn exciting, I am looking forward to trying out new ways in which to perform, as I gather up the nuts and bolts of my songs past, present and future to create a more substantial whole performance.

Other definites will be the release of some sort. This I am pretty, very, loads excited about. The songs thus far have come from my time away in the heat of a summer in Spain and the transforming Spring that led up to it. Recording starts, well as from now…the plotting and the production plans have begun in earnest so fingers crossed for a spring/summer release.

And perhaps another slightly unrelated definite is the promise I have made to myself, to complete the challenge of a triathlon.  This is a ten year promise that I have been keeping with myself, and one I hope to be able to keep to this year. Training begins as soon as my New Years dancing shoes get shelved…

To everyone who may glance at this, Happy New Year, and all the very best for 2012.  Here is a freebie if you fancy…a song that I have reformed in part, for a very special someone, Sam Cooke’s Cupid, have a listen if you please.

October 2011

NEW THINGS! The The Whale’s Love Life EP and Video

Tentatively I am, well I have, put my latest set of recordings on to Bandcamp for you all to hear. I say tentatively because these recordings are all my fault! The Whale’s Love Life is an EP written, recorded, arranged and produced by my own fair hands. The five songs on The Whale’s Love Life were an experiment. I wanted to combine my love of field recordings and the idea of recycling sounds with the way in which I have been recording music for myself and with others for as long as I can remember.

I would also say that sharing these recent recordings is the most revealing of all of my public offerings. These songs were a labour of love, songs that I have written in the last two years that are perhaps the most sensitive, and in the main, the most personal of all my writing.

I chose to record all of these songs in the same vain, and with a borrowed hydrophone the majority of these songs include underwater recordings or re-recordings of sound samples and excerpts from the five songs. Perhaps this is a theme, it was certainly considered when I approached the recording of the EP. All five songs are written somewhere within the borders of the idea of the submerged. In some cases it is a memory or a feeling, in others, an expression of emotions that had been, until now, left hidden.  Again, this is another reason for my apprehensive unveiling of these new recordings. Each song has many layers: instrumental, vocal and sampled sound. I have recorded myself in the bath – underwater, beneath a wind turbine – within the wilds of the South Downs and in the shelter of a tree in my local park as a light autumn rain drizzled above.

Hopefully the sounds captured find their way of combining with each song to further entrench it’s meaning, stealing for a second the precise moment from which it was first conceived.

The title song from the Whale’s Love Life has also been accompanied by a very beautiful video from the rather wonderful Chrissy Hazell. I am a very lucky girl indeed to have such a friend who can translate so effortlessly, but also add so much more to the intended meaning of my work, with her delicate use of colour illustration and image capture.

In the coming weeks I shall be working to bring these new offerings in to my live set and getting ready to play out again…this is perhaps the most exciting development of all, combining these songs with my usual style of writing.  Even more exciting is that there is an abundance of new material that borders both these approaches to writing ready to record and prepare for a new album and some exciting live plans. Hoorah for November!

To hear all things Fiona Sally Miller old and new you can now listen and download here at Band Camp.

October 2011…

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Today, I am in my mother’s sitting room. Lottie, the second of my mothers dogs is huffing intermittently to the sounds of the next rooms too loud television blaring out “Coyote Ugly”.  Apparently it is amazing that I haven’t seen this film, especially considering my “condition”. Two sets of speech marks down, and I have already talked for too long about things irrelevant to my music.

The facts are: I have been away for a little while, in Spain. In the Costa Del Soul. This has been the perfect antithesis to my three years in Brighton. Every day was accompanied by sun, drama, cicadia’s (or are they crickets), a rather delicious 20 cent desert called the Volcano, swimming, a fascination with swim strokes, being outside and writing.

Whilst sunning myself and exploring the various and plentiful places in which you can swim in this area of Spain I started to write again, and write for my own purposes. To document, to recall and let go of stories and moments that have passed. Now that my degree is complete I have been given the space in my brain and schedule to let things occur naturally as and when they happen.

These songs will undoubtedly be recorded in the coming weeks very much in mind of this time…unfortunately I will not be able to recreate the weather conditions that set the scene. But, a lot of this time and the space it afforded me to take stock will appear in the fabric of these new offerings.

Two more incredibly important happenings occurred during this time:

1. My nephew arrived in to the RH12 area of the world, beautiful and perfect in every way.

2. My other big brother celebrated his first wedding anniversary. These major events came accompanied by a desire to sing songs that have already been written but which (hopefully) mean a great deal to all concerned.

Here are three songs that are significant for one reason or another to some very important people in my life:Mustang Sally (which was recorded last year for my mother, as I was the name sake of the song), Winnie the Poohand The 59th Street Bridge Song (feelin groovy)

Now, I must away to sleep soundly as one only can when sleeping under their mother’s roof . The next step is the big move to the even bigger smoke, I think that I will always feel like Tom Hanks in Big. Somehow I have an adult’s body and noone finds silly string that funny in the big City, well some probably do but there is always the risk that they are only being ironic.