Blue Powder
Original music of a somewhat alternative, indie nature. Crossing styles and genres, definitely not pop. Sometimes serious, sometimes less so.
News
Accident & Emergency
The fifth studio album takes a bit longer than its predecessors courtesy of a few small distractions crawling around under our feet. Fourteen songs about babies, breakups and being beaten up. It’s all in there capturing that time in our lives when the Tories finally left power and our cosy simple life was shattered by the arrival of the nappy bin.
The full story can be found in the Coming to be Packed in Boxes chapter with links to streaming services on the albums page
Utter – New Beginnings
After we called our third album Sheer, there was little doubt that our fourth would be landed with the title Utter. Whilst we all wait to find out whether the pattern continued with album five, why not read about Blue Powder’s set of songs charting our experience of life, love, work and disaster in the early 90s, before the arrival of those pesky kids….
Sheer – The End of University Project
We’ve split up and left uni. Or have we?
Steve and Tush continue to meet for a clandestine jam and writing session in Orpington every Wednesday evening after work. And then we head back to the Uni for an ambitious weekend, in which Chris attempts to record an entire album in just a couple of days. Read more at Sheer.
Revisiting The Long, the Short & The Tall of It
Maybe you’ve always wondered what the actual lyrics were in “(I Need You Like a) Frontal Lobotomy – the whimsical number from Blue Powder’s live set back in the 80s. Well it’s track 6 on The Long, The Short & The Tall of It, Blue Powder’s second album from 1990, which has been remastered and is released this month as part of a retrospective of their first 20 albums from Plastic Surgery to Packed In Boxes.
You can also read all about what this slightly bonkers song was all about in the accompanying book, Coming To Be Packed In Boxes, being serialised alongside each remastered album in the history section.
Discredited Sessions Picking up Momentum
Steve and Tush have been having great fun sharing the material in a dozen or so elemental tracks that will ultimately come together in a future album Discredited. Drafts exist, and are being put up, torn down, and variously poked prodded and re-moulded. It’s been great bouncing creatively off each other.
Biography
Blue Powder – formed in 1987 in a cold student room somewhere in Bath, England. Having lived in opposite rooms for a year and largely ignored each other, the band seeded as soon as more effort was needed to meet up than to just shuffle across the corridor. Steve had a Fender Rhodes and a mike, Tush had a guitar, Duncan was a great bass player, Clodagh hit the backing notes, and Gavin hit the drums. It was an eclectic mix of writing with little direction, but nevertheless some ability to play a variety of notes and chords have a bit of fun. Chris had access to the uni radio station, and tore it apart to build a Heath Robinson recording studio from a four-track and gaffer tape. Battles of the bands were fought, and zillions of guests were dragged from the corridors to appear on the first album, Plastic Surgery (1988) to improvise on sax (Bill), thrash extra guitars (Richard), form a backing crowd or string quartet (countless).
More guests appeared singing and writing on the second album with a gentler approach, bringing yet more variety of styles. We continued to raid the uni radio station, and begged borrowed and stole anything from pianos to synths to timpani (that just happened to be in a cupboard we found). We found our feet and played a few gigs around the town.
By the early 90s, the core of Steve, Chris and Tush returned to Bath to record a 3rd album in a weekend, this time with a different Robin. Huge fun, if a little rough around the edges. The next decades chart the evolution of music tech as opportunities arose to incorporate (and over-exploit) sequencing and then early DAWs to share ideas between the disparate band members now living in different countries. The tech gets cleaner over the years, as can the gradual appearance of a new generation of musical offspring on a variety of vox and instruments.
The latest album, our 19th, is our first foray into Christmas music. All sweetness and light on the surface, and slightly subversive underneath. And only at one point did Chris suggest that it sounded like Cliff. My, how we laughed.
Steve Chowne
Autumn 2022
Latest Albums
On the Nature of Loneliness
Plastic Surgery (2024 Remaster)
The Long, The Short & The Tall of It (2024 Remaster)
I Got You Nothing (for Christmas)
