News
Another Debut EP Review and Some More Radio.
Thanks to Russ at Russell's Reviews for reviewing my debut CD The Man From Another Place 'The Loneliest Cowboy EP'.
"The tracks here suggest they were written as incidental music for a film and as such seem a little weird as stand alone pieces. They are mainly tinkling little piano pieces. Its an interesting listen but I'd much rather hear them in a context such as that. They have some wonderful titles including A Recluse Goes Ice Skating, Iys and The Loneliest Cowboy. The High Llamas are an obvious comparison, the way they melded Beach Boys harmonies into something brittle and pretty. Guess Who's Back In Town is like said band doing a Christmas record, while Spelunking (Part 1) takes the same template and robotically funks it up. An interesting little EP."
Also thanks to Jeff at KDHX in St. Louis for playing my track 'The Loneliest Cowboy' on his radio program 'Afternoon Delight'. He played my track right after a Brian Wilson one and then followed it with an Elvis Presley one. Coincidently I learned a useless fact about Elvis today, his favourite aftershave was Brut.
EP Gets A Good Review From Canada's Premier Music Website CHARTattack.com
Another good review for my debut EP The Man From Another Place 'The Loneliest Cowboy'. This time from Canada's premier music website CHARTattack.com. I welcome all comparisons to Daft Punk as their first two albums were a huge influence on me.
"It would seem Edinburgh, Scotland's Daniel Hirst did indeed name himself after the creepy little person from Twin Peaks. One of his top MySpace friends is the David Lynch Foundation For Consciousness-Based Education And World Peace.
Rather fittingly, these five instrumental tracks would be the perfect backdrop for a weird, circus-like dream. "Guess Who's Back In Town" sounds like a cross between Jenny Omnichord and Saint Dirt Elementary School. Album closer "Spelunking (Part 1)," might be the lovechild of Daft Punk's "Harder Better Faster Stronger" and Air's "Kelly Watch The Stars." The title track does sound like the theme song of a lonely cowboy crossing the desert, but its playfulness betrays the standard cowboy image. Perhaps a rodeo clown riding a horse across the desert? The Loneliest Cowboy is an interesting debut"EP makes two different 'Top 10 of 2009' charts
Thanks to Otis Fodder from the excellent band The Bran Flakes for playing The Man From Another Place track 'Guess Who's Back In Town' on his radio show 'The Friendly Persuasion'. Which features (in his own words) "the spinning styles of exotica, lounge, plunderphonics, spoken word, electronic, noise, phonography, ambient, international, library, product, outsider, incredibly strange, and pop. Sounds you will not hear on your boring top-40 commercial radio station". It features on The Friendly Persuasion #238 and can be heard at www.otisfodder.com.
Also The Man From Another Place 'The Loneliest Cowboy EP' made the top ten in the best EPs of 2009 in both the Hands and Arms Records and Series Two Records yearly charts!Another Good EP review.
Another good review for my debut EP The Man From Another Place 'The Loneliest Cowboy' from the website www.americana-uk.com.
I especially like the "waltzes into your ear throwing triple lutzes " bit. Thanks to David!
"describes himself as musician/producer/daydreamer and all those three facets are on display on these five short intriguing pieces. The title track is the sound of a wistful Western daydream with billowing horns, the rhythmic clip of the piano and with lazy banjo and vibes all it needs is Randolph Scott resting on his pommel looking at the high country and thinking about what could have been. Then the perfectly titled 'A Recluse Goes Ice-Skating' waltzes into your ear throwing triple lutzes to cover the slow glide of a shy man.
These are perfect soundtracks for widescreen short films: 'IYS' opens whole vistas, a slow trot into Monument Valley, a revisiting of classic westerns before spaghetti was on the menu and changed the tone to knowing. 'Spelunking (Part 1)' however is different - it introduces a whole new grammar of synthesised beats and rhythm in the place of melancholy melody; the banjo reappears as do the aching horns from the 'Loneliest Cowboy' to close with a kind of lament for the space cowboy."
Some French Distribution and Some More Radio Play.
If you live in France and you would like to purchase a CD copy of my EP The Man From Another Place 'The Loneliest Cowboy EP'. You can now purchase it from the fantastic Paris based independent music shop Hand and Arms records.
http://handsandarms.com/supplier.php?id_supplier=556 Also thanks to Arnie at Radio Bremen in Germany for playing my track 'The Loneliest Cowboy' on his show - which I believe was a round up of some of the amazing music released this year!Excellent EP review from subba-cultcha.com
A short but extremely complementary review from the excellent website subba-cultcha.com in their December Singles/EPs reviews for my EP The Man From Another Place 'The Loneliest Cowboy'. Any review that compares my music with Burt Bacharach and mentions the song 'Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head' is a big, big compliment to me. I would like to add that I am available to score 'Amelie II' if they make it :)
"MAN FROM ANOTHER PLACE - THE LONELIEST COWBOY
Pianos are the new guitars, man. Burt Bacharach would be proud of this unintentional amalgam of "Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head" and "The look of love". Instrumental charmingness that would make for a brilliant score to Amelie II (CM)"
Another Good EP Review & Some More Radio Play!
A very nice review of The Man From Another Place 'The Loneliest Cowboy' EP from Losing Today magazine. Thanks to Mark the editor!
"The Man from another place - 'the loneliest cowboy' EP (meerkat). The much anticipated debut from the mysteriously named the Man from Another Place whose real identity I'm sure we've managed to reveal in a previous despatches though for now we'll settle for Dan of Edinburgh. We first stumbled across TMFAP while doing a spot research on 88 tapes way back sometime last year - in fact there have been frequent sightings of TMFAP in these pages since - mainly due to the fact that we here are positively smitten by the stuff. Best described as a porch lit moonshine swigging get together of Oddfellows Casino, Go Team, Mike Post, L'Augmentation, the Heartstrings (check out the rather out of step and out of time 'guess who's back in time' - simply exquisite) and Morricone types with Burt Bacharach as their host. Better still the author himself described the aural odyssey within as 'soundtrack music from a lost film'. listening to the five tracks featured 'the loneliest cowboy' there's a sense of being awash by a veritable cornucopia of styles and moods, one minute it's the souring reflective nature of Post's most memorable TV themes, the next extensions of Morricone's playfulness as revealed via his soundtrack for the Spaghetti western epic 'once upon a time in the west' specifically the scenes featuring 'Jason Robards' 'Cheyenne' character - none more so is this the case than on the flotillas of inebriated banjos that find themselves lolloping with crisp lazy eyed mischief across the title cut abridged with the winter-esque brush strokes of sighing brass fanfares much nodding in the direction of Brighton's much admired Oddfellow Casino's debut full length. Elsewhere there's the sweetly bitter swansong reprise like lilts of the Post meets Ronald Binge's 'sailing by' or the gorgeously smoked library sound lull of the marimba drenched 'IYS' to send you into untold chilled raptures. All said our current favourite moment (it changing each and every time we hear these tracks) is the parting 'Spelunking (part 1)' which finds itself operating in worlds previously advanced by Stereolab in their 'dots and loops' phase albeit as previously noted in past appraisals given a tightly grooved Studio 54 facelift and then tweaked by a flirty Giorgio Moroder. And with that there's not a lot more I can say other than to recommend you get this into your life as soon as. Joint single of the missive. Any questions. Thought not. www.themanfromanotherplace.com "
Also thanks to Sher at Homegrown Radio in New Jersey and Jonny Mambo at WCOM in North Carolina for both playing 'The Loneliest Cowboy' EP on their radio shows.
EP Makes The Best Of This Week's Releases In Organ Magazine
My Debut EP The Man From Another Place 'The Loneliest Cowboy' was featured in the best of this week's single releases in Organ Magazine.
"THE MAN FROM ANOTHER PLACE - The Loneliest Cowboy EP (self release) - Pleasant tunes, soothing, filmy, melodic instrumental pieces, touches of Burt Bacharach, Brian Wilson - the quality of it all, the same sense of melodic adventure, rather than any obvious sound-alike reference... Rather gorgeous actually, all quietly restrained and accomplished orchestral brightness. Tingling and alive, five fine tracks, all of them as food as each other and everything just right in every way - www.themanfromanotherplace.com"
Note From The High Llamas.
I got a nice little note from Sean O' Hagan of The High Llamas. Someone whose music has had a big influence on me. Especially their 'Beet Maize & Corn' album which is my favourite.
"Beautiful music . Life in Edinburgh must be good enough to produce these smiling sounds . Hi from the Llamas"
Debut EP On The Radio.
'The Loneliest Cowboy' and 'IYS' from my debut EP The Man From Another Place 'The Loneliest Cowboy' were featured on one of my favourite radio shows last night. Thanks to Arnie at Radio Bremen in Germany! You can listen to his excellent show 'Zeiglers wunderbare Welt des Pop' here.
Debut EP Released
I am pleased to announce the release of my debut EP The Man From Another Place 'The Loneliest Cowboy' on the excellent Meerkat Label. It contains five tracks, slightly different versions from the tracks you can hear on my MySpace page. The mixes have generally been improved and a few extra bits were added. It was professionally mastered by Dave Blackman who did a fantastic job. It is available as a limited edition CD from my website and as an MP3 download from both ITunes and Amazon.
The limited edition CD obviously sounds a lot better than the MP3 version and you also get the chance to hear the EP as I intended it to sound with pretty much no gaps in between the tracks. The limited edition CD also contains some nice new artwork by me.
You can purchase the CD and the MP3 downloads here!
Debut EP To Be Released On Monday!
I am pleased to announce the release of my debut EP The Man From Another Place 'The Loneliest Cowboy'. It is going to be released next Monday (October 19th). It will be available to buy as a limited edition CD or as an MP3 download from Itunes and Amazon. Finally got my hands on the finished CD today. It was professionally mastered by Dave Blackman who did a fantastic job. The CDs were then reproduced from a glass master and I have to say the finished product sounds great. Here is a few low quality photos I took with my phone.
It's Finally Finished - I Have The Master!
After months of messing around, doing new mixes, writing new sections, scrapping pretty much most of the new sections and generally getting distracted by things going on in my personal life. I finally finished my Debut EP. At the weekend, I received the Master Copy from my Mastering Engineer.
Morricone Youth Radio Show
I forgot to say thanks to Devon at East Village Radio in New York for featuring The Man From Another Place track ‘a recluse goes ice skating’ again on his excellent Morricone Youth Radio Show a couple of weekends ago. You can check out his show here!
Me, Me, Me - A Short Film.
Last Week I got a chance to see the short film "Me, Me, Me"which features two The Man From Another Place tracks as inter-scene scoring ('Mr. Hill' and 'The Girl Who Can'). It is excellent short comedy film by writer/director Geraldine Geraghty. It has been entered into a few film festivals around the world. It has so far has been accepted into Palm Springs (June 23rd- June 29th) and it is being shown at the Short Film Corner at Cannes which I believe is happening right about now. So if it ends up at a film festival near you go check it out!
Very Nice Review!
Thanks to Christopher at the excellent 'Even In The Future Nothing Works' blog for a nice review of The Man From Another Place's Demo EP. You can read it here!
"Reminds me a lot of Belle and Sebastian, Kings Of Convenience, Todd Rundgren, retro sounding Josh Rouse... and to top it off these are just instrumentals. Some can put in an album that has the lyrics with music and they will say something like hey this would sound much better if you left it with music only. Would be neat to see another side of this band to see how this stuff with sound with vocals and if it didn't turn out the best they could leave them without. Either way this is a masterpiece that is catchy and pleasant and leaves you nodding your head in excitement and undoubtedly wanting more. It is fair to say i haven't quite heard an album like this in my life. The experience reminds me of when i first discovered Kings of Convenience while being much younger or the first time i heard Sondre Lerche. I am very ecstatic and amazed at this masterpiece. "
On the radio in Germany...
Thanks to Arnie at Radio Bremen in Germany for featuring The Man From Another Place song 'Mr Hill' on his radio show 'Zeiglers wunderbare Welt des Pop' last night. He plays some really good music - you can view the playlist and listen to the show here!
On the radio in New York...
Thanks to Devon at East Village Radio in New York for featuring The Man From Another Place track ‘a recluse goes ice skating’ on his excellent Morricone Youth Radio Show. He plays a cool mix of soundtrack music both old and new. You can listen here!
'Mr Hill' on the radio!
Thanks to Liam at Different Class Radio for playing The Man From Another Place track ‘Mr Hill’. He has a cool radio show where he plays a whole mix of stuff. Check it out here!
New Song - 'Mr. Hill'
I have uploaded a new song on The Man From Another Place myspace player i've just finished, it's called 'Mr Hill'. It's also going to be appearing briefly in a short film (more details to follow). Have a listen and leave some feedback if you fancy!
Podcast Action.....
Thanks to Steve at Dalecast for featuring The Man From Another Place track ‘the loneliest cowboy’ in his latest podcast - Episode 531 (It also appears in Episode 516 & 518). You can listen here!
In the pipeline.
Just finished an instrumental remix of a track titled ‘Hollywood Parties’ for the French artist Jean Emmanuel Deluxe. The track will hopefully be released on the excellent French label ‘Martyrs of Pop’ later this year. Some of music of mine will be appearing 'briefly' in a short film entitled ‘ME, ME, ME’. The film made by writer/director Geraldine Geraghty is being entered into various film festivals around the world – more details to follow.
Demo EP first review.
The Man From Another Place's demo EP has been reviewed on the excellent 'This is Pop Music' blog. Thanks to Eric! You can read it here!
"In 1990 there existed a television drama called Twin Peaks. In that show was a character called The Man From Another Place. However, after the show's cancellation in 1992 many years have gone by, but that doesn't mean this obscure bit of television knowledge has gone completely forgotten. Just recently a musician from Scotland has released his first EP, The Loneliest Cowboy, under the name The Man From Another Place. What resides inside this 5 song, 16 minute EP is an exploration of the styles of some of the great pop composers of the 20th (and even 21st century). Clearly evident in TMFAP's music is the influence of Burt Bacharach and Brian Wilson in their prime. Not to say that the songs are not unique in their style, but TMFAP isn't afraid to show his appreciation for the classics. He describes his songs as "Soundtrack Music To A Lost Film" and I think that is both a good explanation of the premise for the EP, but also a visual guide. The music really could be put to film, as the piano chords repeatedly belt out a melody in a relaxed 4/4 tempo, strings and horns play a melody over it creating complex sounds that are both beautiful and intriguing. The Loneliest Cowboy brings tons of ambition and a well needed new face to the world of orchestrated pop. This EP is on par with all of the best pop albums I've ever heard (including SMiLE and The Night And I Are Still So Young). With such a great EP, I hope The Man From Another Place can release a full length album with this much enthusiasm and creativity. I recommend this highly."
Demo EP on the radio.
Some of The Man From Another Place's demo EP was played on the radio last night in Germany, Thanks again to Arnie.
First Review!
The Man From Another Place's first review. Thanks to Mark, editor of 'Losing Today' indie music magazine!
"http://www.myspace.com/themanfromanotherplace - stumbled upon this while researching stuff about the '88 tapes' set on Kesh, absolutely gorgeous, based somewhere in Edinburgh the mysterious the man from another place applies the same deft pristine melodic caress to his craft as a certain Brighton musician known as the Brigadier. Four gem like treats feature here, amid the irrefutable affection for Bacharach and Van Dyke Parks best served we feel on the sophisticatedly smoked 'iys' there's some crafty nods laid in the general direction of Morricone especially on 'the loneliest cowboy' which sumptuously adopts the stylised individualistic character scores applied to the chief protagonists of 'once upon a time in the west' in this case notably Jason Robards 'Cheyenne'- inebriated banjos, slyly twinkling noire-ish arrangements all bedecked with an affecting and alluring porch lit prettiness - how can you resist. 'Spelunking part 1' is lavishly decorated with a tasty cosmic disco wrap much reminiscent of 'dots and loops' era Stereolab albeit spruced and tweaked by a mellowing Giorgio Moroder while 'a recluse goes ice skating' is as the tin says, just close your eyes and the image you get is undeniably the genteel floorshow of soft sheens of beguiling gliding pirouettes arcing among airy tear stained 60's styled kitchen sink montages. 'Nuff said - more please."
About
The Man From Another Place is the musical pseudonym of the Edinburgh based musician/producer/composer known to his friends as Dan.
His first official release is an E.P. entitled 'The Loneliest Cowboy'
What People Are Saying!
"Wow."
- Kramer(Record Producer - Daniel Johnston, Robert Wyatt , Palace Brothers & many more)
"Beautiful music. Life in Edinburgh must be good enough to produce these smiling sounds "
- Sean O' Hagan (The High Llamas)
"Really cool stuff"
- Eric Matthews (Composer, musician, artist and record producer - Sub Pop Records etc. etc.)
"lovely stuff"
- Robert White (The Milk & Honey Band)
"'The cowboy' it's great"
- Edwyn Collins (Singer/Songwriter & Orange Juice)
"Beautiful"
- Daniel Wylie (Singer/Songwriter & Cosmic Rough Riders)
"really liked the cowboy track"
- Scott Bennett (Singer/Songwriter & Brian Wilsons' Band & Brian Wilsons' Collaborator on 'That Lucky Old Sun')
"Your sound all at once keeps me warm and gives me chills!"
- Mary Edwards (Composer/Vocalist)
"Your music is like a warm bath in Brian's "Friends" era! Love it,"
- Wim Oudijk.(Songwriter/Composer/Producer)
""The Loneliest Cowboy" is a great song."
- Jeffrey Foskett (Musician/Vocalist-Brian Wilsons' Band)
"this is fuckin' top notch. i love it!"
- Brent Randall (Singer/Songwriter)
"I like what I'm hearin'"
- Domenic Priore (Author)
"Thanks for putting banjo back into songs."
- Johnny (The Aluminium Group)
"Damn its good"
- Matias Tellez (Singer/Songwriter, Sony records)
"Wonderful music you got there. Now, let's find that lost film!"
- Brent Cash (Singer/Songwriter)