Without My Mama

I wouldn’t be here now, without my mama. I would never have learned to type, without her. I would never have gone to University, without her. I would have been homeless, without her. I would never have had my first computer to make beats with, without her. I would never have had a sound-card to put into my first computer to make beats with, without her. I would never have received my first hip hop tape on my tenth birthday, without her. I would never have received a bass guitar for my sixteenth birthday, or a high quality sound-card on my twenty-first birthday, or the SM58 she gave me for Christmas later that same year, without her. I would never have taught myself how to draw, how to act, how to write, how to listen to music, without her. I would never have had an old, beaten-up acoustic guitar to play with, or for there to always be an old keyboard in the house to get sounds out of, without her. I would never have sat uninterrupted for hours as a little boy, exploring pictures, images and maps; with my pens and the paper she made sure I had, always. I would never have been corrected on that one Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy lyric I misheard, without her. I would never have learned about global warming and vegetarianism in the late ’80s without her. I would never have rocked a De La Soul t-shirt, aged ten, without her. I would never have had a BMX, or a second-hand Millennium Falcon for Christmas when I was almost too small to carry it around the cosiest family room, my wonderful grandparents, her parents, watching on and encouraging me; without her. I would never have had Chuck D and KRS-ONE as my first real teachers, without her. I would never have learned of the importance of Leonard Cohen, before almost anything else about music, without her. I would never have been able to have access to encyclopedias, to huge, heavy books about art, music, science, philosophy and technology, without her. I would never have been able to plant a Hawthorn tree in the garden which stands so tall, to this day; without her. I would never have been taught at such a young age about the magic of cats, without her. I would never have been able to interact with Ring-tail, Black & White Ruffed and Black Lemurs without her. I would never have camped above the Devonshire coast, or sailed in Poole Harbour, or know the difference between a Yawl and a Wayfarer without her, or know the difference between my tiller and my painter, without her. I would never have been driven to A&E with food poisoning and a head full of LSD25, without her. I would never have made snow sculptures, or sand castles, without her. I would never have made endless mixtapes, and burned CD’s and demos and compilations for her, without her. I would never have listened to Sufjan Stevens’ Seven Swans in the car on the way home from Bodiam Castle that one summers’ afternoon, without her. I would never have been taught how to use a 35mm camera, or how to use a dial-up modem, or a 5.25″ floppy disc, or a food blender; or how to make a nice cup of tea, without her. I would never have won horticultural prizes for my Sunflowers as a little green-fingered gardener, without her. I would never have had permission to go to Reading festival, just turned sixteen, to see Gravediggaz, Ice Cube, Cypress Hill, Gang Starr and Jeru, without her. I would never have spent endless months in my bedroom, getting baked, making beats and perfecting my raps, without her. I would never have been able to recover all of my possessions after i fled Deutschland, without her. I would never have found so much strength, from somewhere, in such dark hours; without her. I would never have known love, unconditional love, without her… and, no matter how long this rubble-strewn road carries on into the far distance, I know in my heart, that I will never truly be without her. I love you, mama. I will always love you, with all my heart.

James Reindeer

17th April 2018

Croydon, UK

Field Reports from The Western Lands: Personal Thoughts

This album has been a long journey for me up to this point. It was begun, what seems a lifetime ago, in collaboration with the almighty Nimrod, and envisaged as a spiritual successor to ‘It’s Not Who You Know, It’s Whom You Know’, paying homage to the themes and tones of that now-legendary release, whilst attempting to delve further into those concepts, ideas and thoughts and to expand upon them.

I wanted to approach this album as if it were my first and last, very much in the same way that fbcfabric and I approached our debut together. It needed to be a complete and fully realised ‘snapshot’ of the western world as we were attempting to capture it. Nimrod worked as the consummate professional composer, providing the melodies, textures and tones to complement the moods and ideas of the lyrics themselves.

Together we created a certain palette from which to work from, so to speak. Taking cues from the pop and rock, hip hop and classical worlds, we sought to combine traditional songwriting techniques with more unorthodox methods of sound design, field recording, compositing and manipulation. The aim consistently being to generate a complete, fully-formed image with which we would mirror the complexities of the human experience in the west.

To ultimately realise the project the book was necessary to allow the listener access to the complete lyric transcriptions, giving them every chance to take in and analyse the layers of details for themselves. But also to introduce auxiliary ideas into the whole, which are not committed into the songs themselves, and also to imbue the experience with some of the incredible artwork of Mildew, who went above and beyond with his incredible portrayal of interpreted imagery from the lyric pages.

Finally, ‘There is a Tape Recorder Inside the Sun’, a thirty minute auxiliary drone piece on cassette tape to accompany the whole, and one which extrapolates ideas from the track with the same name on the album into an extended eclipse, a protracted nuclear flashbulb shimmering in a halo of atomic fire. A dream that coexists with the waking ‘reality’ of the album itself.

To have completed this creative journey with the invaluable assistance of Anette Records has enabled us to present our work in the most elaborate and considered way, to be able to release these works on the hallowed double-vinyl format, accompanied by book and cassette tape really is the perfect path to immortalising this illustrious creation which we have birthed within such turbulent times.

jamesreindeer

Croydon, South London, UK

April 2nd 2018

Field Reports from the Western Lands – The Album

 

After almost a decade in the making, Reindeer’s first official full-length solo debut, Field Reports from the Western Lands, arrives appropriately in the spring of 2018 as a testament to our current blazing backdrop of social and political catastrophe; Reindeer’s anguished vocals backed by Nimrod’s sonic landscape of breathtaking post-rock tones and loops beckon you home to neon-lit ruins—Reindeer himself leading you by the hand through sprouting black monoliths out from a cracked, dying world.

A conceptual sequel to the fbcfabric & reindeer It’s Not Who You Know, It’s Whom You Know, this 16-track limited edition double vinyl in 4 parts utilizes various ‘field recordings,’ from environmental sounds throughout his travels in Europe and North America to dialogue samples of President Truman and Robert Oppenheimer, taking you on an experiential journey through the fallen Western World of murky dreams and alluring weightlessness—no, this is not an album that’s going to offer you any definiteness; rather, it endeavours to move you through the cavernous entrails of your own confused feelings via hallucinogenic impressions, spectral mirages and tones, carrying you from track to track through the chemical skies and radioactive rubble.

Not to mention that this album also includes a hauntingly gorgeous lyric booklet with original drawings by Reymundo Perez III (AKA Mildew of Papervehicle), and a digital download code as well, the entire package reminiscent of Reindeer’s notoriously complex and involved hand-crafted ‘Fragments from the Field’ packages containing forged documents from a seemingly eternal, glitchy atomic field.

Like a dreamer awakening to find the horror of his prison cell, except the horror is that the bars are nowhere to be seen—just the harrowing knowing of their existence—so it is to be submerged into the shifting, pulsating aural landscapes of this corroding lyrical maze, but with Reindeer guiding us through, his voice a blooming light amongst the wreckage.

Available 30th March 2018, Anette Records No.13

EU Customers Pre-Order Here

NoAm/MX/RoW Customers Pre-Order Here

All the love

VI.VI.VII

chanting of the ever-circling skeletal family

Fractured visions of an open prison coming into focus, unsustainable materials to the expendable horizon.

…Worn fingers rattle the worn keys as a grey nothing sky has light drizzle fall over slate rooftops in an ‘unusually warm’ late October…

…/// The Minister for Information hangs disembowelled from a subsiding flagpole as gaunt workers are herded into pits, jet-washed with petrochemicals and set fire to.

The President is on the screen, dribbling and mangling his sordid words, his foetid maw undulating sickly between the pop-up advertising bubbles for additional content, fundamentalist Christian worship centres, arms expos and (your very own children being molested by ingrates).

Sacks of body parts are being unloaded from container ships as jaded shoppers are encouraged by halfwits in NBC suits with cattle prods to browse for white goods between the carcasses of refugee starvation victims.

Advertising space on the new border wall is going fast; hundreds of miles of pop princesses, beautiful alabaster white skin, baby blue eyes; just enough curves for the fat white rich rapists, just enough teen for the family values witch trial grand wizards’ ongoing abuse pageants. White bread privileged teens calmly loading assault rifles in their COD approach to small town high school blood bath under a beautiful spring morning sky.

Islamist fanatics greedily saw off the head of an embedded journalist under flickering generator lights in a Machiavellian tunnel complex, just hidden from the grasp of western intelligence agencies.

National Security computer mainframes loaded with sex tape revenge porn snuff jail cell execution double features and enough petty drug deals to sink the whole schooling system. Financiers writhing in bad debt print-outs folded into paper boats to float out into oil fields running tidal over native reservations.

‘…Our lord and saviour, Jesus Christ, dunked in a vat of urine by a homosexual…’

Greasy Hollywood mogul fingers stuffed into the mouths of disassociating rape victims. Hideous death dream of the one thousand year casting couch in flames. Left-wing protestors hosed in acids, beaten with clubs and violently arrested, as Klansmen march unhindered into the White House, shaking hands with the most sadistic reaches of Government.

Glass mirror towers to the heavens harbouring greedy, ruthless, white pieces of shit, sulking behind rosewood tables, idly fondling their secretaries, their tumours and their colostomy bags.

A series of photographs of the future Prime Minister gleefully fucking herself with the trotters of a dead pig, surrounded by her drunken school peers, egging her on, showering her in cocaine, while a cavalcade of poor and homeless types are boarded up into a derelict tower block, forced to starve and subsequently burnt to death…

…towers of asbestos insulation walling in flames///

Snapshots from the terminal field, broadcast via propaganda outlets, parading as fake news, acting under the auspices of shadow government agencies, operating behind fields of advertising agencies, marketeers and board room executives…

…all signs are pointing to a global scheme to make sure the rich outlive the poor. Bottom line beyond the bottom line. The workers will work and die at the factory. They can be directly reprocessed at the factory. This eliminates many costly steps in their exploitation.

Buy all of this garbage and believe all of this nonsense; whatever you want to think the agenda is, it is not.

Welcome to Annexia.

jamesreindeer
26th October 2017
London, England
VI.VI.VII

fbcfabric & reindeer – It’s Not Who You Know, It’s Whom You Know – THE FINAL CUT

Might we gladly present, in conjunction with the almighty Mism Records: fbcfabric & reindeer – It’s Not Who You Know, It’s Who You Know- THE FINAL CUT; the definitive edition of the critically acclaimed indie rap classic.

Carefully reassembled from the original album sessions, this release is spread across three twelve-inch vinyl records, split into six movements, and contains 89 minutes of music, over twenty-three songs, presented complete for the first time.

A luxury edition to be sure, and contained in high quality black card sleeves within a hand-sewn outer fabric case, replete with embroidered name tag and high quality A5 doube-sided credits insert, with all the pertinent facts in the case.

Limited to just 100 copies worldwide, the album is immediately destined to be a collector’s item, and is exclusively available direct from Mism Records themselves.  The release date is 9th October and the the pre-order is live.

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fbcfabric & reindeer – Interview for DEAD Magazine

…recently unearthed from the archives, and now for the first time in English, fbcfabric & reindeer in interview with DEAD Magazine, 22nd August 2008…

> Your “bio” on Buttercuts (records) doesn´t give too much info – still one can read that you both started making music together in 1999. Where are you from, what is your musical background and where did you meet?

fbcfabric : I started writing music in 1995. My musical background is quite simple really, I was crap at everything at school and pretty much fell out with a bare minimum of qualifications and no direction whatsoever. I tried college, and failed, so I started writing music at home. I’m not actually sure why I started writing, it just seems to have happened. And thats that. Can’t play any instruments, can’t read or write music. Nothing that I write has any proper musical structure – I just stop changing it when it feels right.

I met reindeer through a mutual friend who was writing with him at the time. It would have been the three of us working together now had that friend not decided to call it a day.

reindeer : Yeah, we met at a run-down college in South London in 1999 through a mutual friend whom I had been working with for a few years previous. I started producing and writing lyrics in 1992 but it wasn’t till 1997, when I got my first decent computer, that I recorded my first vocals over my own beat. Like fbcfabric I have no musical experience in my background other than a strong compulsion to buying the most experimental music I could find from an early age.

> Touring, you are playing with a band – how much are those people involved in your songwriting?

fbcfabric : They are involved in the respect that both Reindeer and I love them all dearly and their judgements are worth listening to, but at the start we were simply converting songs written by me to play live, so most of the creative decision was already made. These days rehearsals are very different because we are all working together on fresh material, so everyone has a say. My role in the band is simply to suggest what I think might sound good; we are all good enough friends for them to tell me to be quiet when I’m wrong.

reindeer : We wrote the album as a duo but when it came to playing shows we really wanted to expand the sound with a whole band. Instead of audtioning for members we simply turned to our close circle of friends, like our long-term collaborator Michael Rea amongst others. We consider them to be the most talented set of individuals, all doing great work in their own right. So when it comes to creating new material they are also the best team for developing new ideas, as well as simply finding ways to perform the album material.

> The sound of the album – in my opinion – benefits the most from the “deepness” of the mixing, giving the same importance to drums, field recordings, voice and instruments / samples. Since I haven´t heard anything else from you but this album: how did you find this mixture / was it something you archieved working on the album and knowing its main themes?

fbcfabric : Its an overly simplistic answer, but I really cant think of a better way to describe it; I just try to make things sound as similar as possible to how I feel it should be heard. I have a strong dislike of overly ‘clean’ music. It’s like that sound of a distorted guitar recorded so well and so crisply that all of its meaning has been removed and you are left with this empty container where a guitarist once put their feelings. In my opinion, an instrument and even what is played on it is only a very small part of the picture. The important stuff is what you might not even consciously hear. Its all about the environment around the instrument and its player; the atmosphere.

reindeer : It might be that because nor fbcfabric or I are actual musicians that we are able to stand back from any individual instrument and consider the whole. Music should reflect the world it is part of and for us this is having the actual world within the music. If someone is playing a guitar on the top floor of a building looking out over the city, then I would want to hear the room they are in too, the breeze and sound of the street blowing in through the window, their fingers on the fret-board, their breath, the sound of the person shouting next door.

I’ve always loved listening to music on headphones, riding on the bus, the train or walking down the street and hearing the sound of the world around me mixed in with the music in my ears. So then, to record the sound of the street and then mix that in with the music in order to then go outside, hear both the music, the street and the street in the real world around you. Fascinating.

> Your album is split into 4 sections, feeling very much like a concept-album – did this concept write the album, or did it just fit the overall mood / content of the finished songs?

fbcfabric : I actually put together enough material for about two albums, and together we picked parts that would fit together to create what we wanted as a whole.

The overall mood of the album was decided long before we even started. I was always going to be a dark affair considering the hands it was in. Reindeer and I have never been known for our blinded-by-happiness outlook – its always been a matter of reality for us. The filthy truth is that we are all fucked, like it or not. We aren’t being all moody over here in a corner for effect. Neither of us walks around telling everyone how worthless their lives are. I like buying cool things like everyone else, but I suppose the difference is that I know that I am filling a void in my life with these material goods. I sedate myself with things I don’t really need, but these things make me feel good. I have no idea why they do but they do, and frankly, I want to feel better.

reindeer : As much time as we spent talking about the music we spent talking about how we feel about the world in which we live. The album was always going to be an extension of the two of us as inviduals and friends struggling in confusing times. The album was always going to be dark because we were in a dark place, but at the same time it is very much about communicating and reaching out, trying to explain how it feels. Being able to create a sense of not being alone in the storm.

> The last song of the album is called “and then John Peel died” – why was this incident so important to you to even use it as the silent exclamation mark of your first album?

fbcfabric : John Peel was essentially the only person within mainstream media who was outside of the cultural foodchain. A man who made decisions purely based on what he liked, and not what he was told to like by those in power (read: labels rich enough to hire expensive radio pluggers). Now, thats not to say that his taste in music was particularly great, but the fact that he had a genuine taste in music was unique. We have all said something stupid like “I don’t like House music”. John Peel would have listened and decided afterwards. Something we could all learn from.

reindeer : Mainstream music media always seemed so false. In listening to the radio it never felt like the DJ was actually playing the songs they wanted to. John Peel was different. Whenever I tuned into his show there really was a sense of a man just playing whatever he felt like, irrespective of genre or corporate backing. But I think in growing up in the UK and wanting to make music, wanting to be accepted as artists; the one voice you could count on to tell you whether you were doing good work or not was John Peel. So, in completing our album and never getting the chance for him to tell us how bad he thought it was, a regret to be sure.

> what are your future projects?

fbcfabric : Cake.

reindeer : Tea and cake.

6|6|7

distant images of a concourse going away no.1

insidious dreams beneath, the whole world out of reach… distant images of a concourse going away… fingertips losing touch as the dust sweeps up the moment to be lost and forgotten; or held endlessly dear…

the insurmountable depths of an instant, when all is cast away, deep into long doubt and regret… all that is fleeting and precious, all that will be gone… dreams of the undoing coming on…

slow moaning drones, building their steady rising… all is hurled headlong into the storm, the turmoil, the affray; endless nights of disarray… harrowing knowing on the brink…

the heart pounding, roaring with the cruel agony of ‘alive’ …let the fear creep in, let the waves of anxious nervous energy cloud the rationale; staggering  backwards into the bear-trap…

the collapsing aperture going away. the solemn swansong a funereal drone sounding out long over a mist-shrouded frozen dream… lungs, heart, brain of the machine…

see the snapshot glimpses of a bitter dawn, reflections in the shimmering shards of the newly broken…  sorrow slowly coming on… the long trawl into a murky grey… ‘let it not end this way…’

6|6|7

hallucination dreams from the abandoned desert camp no.3

dead end horror of the centipede gods, hallucination wrapped in ill reason… colombian necktie sky explorations, tasting the poison preachings of the hypocrite madmen; prarie dogs at the throats of the roaming lost and ashamed…

licking the screen, decimated… bleeding out across the valves… lost ideals float downstream on rivers of dusty pollution… there is a policeman inside the sky… an endless dead gaze fixed in satellite orbit…

inside the imperial sarcophagus, a low moaning through the fractured blast-walls… wide-eyed cannibal populace eating themselves alive… waves of misery, misunderstanding and desolation…

‘…i am shot with wounds which have eyes that see a world all sorrow, always to be, panoramic and unhealable, and mouths that hang unspeakable in the sky of blood…’

6|6|7

base camp vantage point thought saturations no.2

morning prayer and holy water purification; futile ritual motions in the radioactive field…  frozen omens in an endless nuclear winter… dead eyes staring out into the steppe, fever dreams; flickering lights on the consoles long since fused and gone out… slow imbalances shroud conjurings in the long cold…

rogue drones whine hopelessly lost in the chemical heavens, casting blurry shadows over the myriad demolished cities of the western lands… recruitment posters hosed in bodily fluids, smartphones piled-up by the thousand; hammer-smashed… gold and nickel, magnesium and iron…

base camp vantage point thought saturation… ever-receding dissonant resonance signals going granular… dark portent, grim knowing… notebooks filled with slowly mutating equations… unworkable geometry of the brave new world… standardised procedures dead in disconnected head-sets…

a broken promise through a long stare in the half-light…depopulation, fire-bombing… citizens reduced to shadows down blast-wall corridors… empty beds, shattered windows, our breath in the air as we boil the remaining rations… board member mahogany tables in flames…

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