FRONDS is Dylan Tidyman-Jones, the lanky, leather-wearing guitarist/bassists/drummer/keyboardist for the on-the-rise The Mallard. For those expecting something similar to The Mallard’s stringy, tattooed garage, think differently, Tidyman-Jones (an admittedly close friend) delves in to a layered, billowing sound, poking outwards with the sharp, tang of a drum machine, gentle hand claps, and the feeling that you might just drift away on a breeze.
Someone Else Talking finds us harassing a musician long enough that they cough up the fascinating gems that are their current inspirations. Be it music or food or film or folly, we want to know what’s getting these people up in the morning. And because we want to know, you get to read about it.
Dylan Tidyman-Jones is many things. The drummer for the one time one-woman show The Mallard (and a performing guest at our 5th Anniversary Spectacular), a sensational guitarist and musician in his own right (check out the amazing Up On The Good Floor for proof of that), and, to our great delight, a veritable fountain of musical knowledge. Fresh from a trip in to the spiritual and natural world we pinned down the lithe Tidyman-Jones and dragged a few musical bits from him.
Expect a new album from Sir Tidyman-Jones in the relatively near future.
I spent most of last week visiting friends in Yosemite. It was the perfect antidote to the last six months (spent in the city with my face pressed into the glow of my laptop). We climbed up and swam in the devil’s bathtub, explored caves, walked through moonlight in the forest, spoke with deer about the navigation of portals, drank beer, and laughed together under an open sky.
There were all these healthy-looking German families everywhere, pointing up at waterfalls and granite peaks. When we crossed paths, they would smile, nod fondly, and admonish their children to clear the way. In gratitude, here are a handful of soothing tracks from 70′s Deutschland. If I’d brought my device with me to the wilderness, these would have been the soundtrack.
Cluster – Es War Einmal from the album Sowiesoso
Can – One More Night from the album Ege Bamyasi
Neu! – ‘Leb’ Wohl’ from the album NEU! 75
Harmonia – Watussi from the album Musik von Harmonia
Popol Vuh from the soundtrack for the film Aquirre the Wrath of God
Someone Else Talking is a new column for Sound on the Sound in which I harass a musician long enough that they cough up the fascinating gems that are their current inspirations. Be it music or food or film or folly, I want to know what’s getting these people up in the morning. And because I want to know, you get to read about it.
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The Mallard has been a staple of The Daily Choice for years now, and everything she does is immediately squeezed on to my to-listen-to list. Her music and her set-up have progressed greatly since I first started listening to her, and I’m more than excited that she, with her impressive new cohort Dylan Tidyman-Jones, will be lighting up the stage of a certain special Sound on the Sound 5th Anniversary show with their sludgy take on garage rock in just a few weeks. The Mallard is close friend, and neighbor of mine, so I thought it only appropriate to kick off the inaugural posting of Someone Else Talking” with her fantastic discoveries.
Without further adieu, The Mallard:
I don’t own an I-POD and I walk everywhere in San Francisco, it’s the time I let my legs become metronomes and I walk to the beat of a song, though often they’re riffs or beginnings of melodies that I let churn in my head until I put some lyrics to or rearrange or until they either become an annoyance or a song. This is probably why I don’t have any songs in 3/4 or 7/8.
I also listen to only a few bands at a time. Sometimes too much, Noah can attest: “Jesus Christ on a fucking crutch* Greer, do you only listen to Thee Oh Sees and Ty Segall?” I want to figure out their tricks and patterns (because that’s all songs are.) Once you hear them enough times, you can begin to predict the patterns. I can only assume that those bands are also listening to a few other bands too much. Then those patterns are getting stuck in their heads as they walk back from the liquor store. So here are songs that I listen to too much, my roommate are sick of them, I’m not.
*Noah does not have such a dirty mouth, I added the bad words for comic effect.
Semi-streets – Sic Alps
I think the perfect way to walk to this one is on piles and piles of crunchy leaves.
2 Mora Mora Land – Lightning Bolt
This is a great “running away from scary things” kind of song.
An Inquiry Perpetrated – Thee Oh Sees
You should wear your loudest sounding shoes or boots while walking to this one. (I’ve also been listening to Hounds of Foggy Notion a DVD of songs they recorded in fields and by highways in San Francisco).
Full disclosure: my good friend Greer McGettrick, the one woman show that is The Mallard, plays bass on Mr. Tidyman-Jones album, and ’tis she who passed it along and she who raved about its truly brilliant sound. Confessions aside, Dylan Tidyman-Jones is an amalgam of influences. There’s a hint of burbling late-60s pop in the pot. I taste perhaps, a smidgen of Wes Anderson’s stylized New York on the back of my palate.
Yet it doesn’t pander to it’s roots. This is clearly, and wonderfully the work of Dylan Tidyman-Jones. It is intimate, in the way a one-man show almost always is, as if it had been recorded in a sun-room in the back of a long, quiet house. In its own way it is also expansive, as Tidyman-Jones creates a sound that seems to reach out in to the atmosphere, fingers touching at the celestial bodies that hover there.
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