Sondar Records

31/10/2024

It's alive!

Bloodsucker now available on all major streaming platforms. Wishing Darren every success with his wonderful new single.

Stream and Save Bloodsucker - Distributed by DistroKid

29/10/2024

Have you heard about Darren James' new single?

Available on all major streaming platforms from Halloween. It's a good one. If you're at interested in Alternative Rock give him a listen.

You know what would be really great? Give Darren a listen, a like and add 'Bloodsucker' to your playlist on Thursday. The more of us that respond, the more Spotify might spread the word to new listeners. I think he's too good not to share.

Thank you. You're a star. 👊

28/10/2024

New single by Darren James is getting noticed!

27/10/2024

Read all about it!

Wow - great advance comments for the new Darren James single. Bloodsucker is available to stream on all major services from Halloween. Because you're reading this, you can jump the queue and listen here: https://www.sondar-records.com/darren-james

26/10/2024

Here's an interesting question for you. (Don't jump to the end, take a guess and see how close you get).

How many new tracks are uploaded to Spotify every day? The answer might be surprising.

The reason I mention this is because it sometimes seems there are overwhelming odds against ever being noticed. Too much noise for our individual voices to be heard.

I released 'Green' with no promotion, no advertising, no fuss. And still people discovered it, playlisted it and are now voting for it. I've not gone viral, Taylor Swift and Ed Sheerhan won't be looking nervously over their shoulders, but something I created is making a connection with fellow human beings. Isn't that what music is all about?

Oh yes, the answer to the question. Spotify uploads well over 100,000 tracks every 24 hours. Every single day.

Which makes the welcome 'Green' has received so very special to me. Thank you everyone.

(The singer/songwriter chart changes weekly. If you'd like to listen to the song - and I appreciate that very much - there's a permanent link to the main streaming services here: https://distrokid.com/hyperfollow/garycarey/green-2 )

24/10/2024

If you haven't discovered Darren James yet, find out the essentials on the Sondar Records site. There's a bio, selected photos and links to some great reviews. Plus you can listen to (and download!) singles and album tracks.

We'd love you to get to know him

https://www.sondar-records.com/darren-james

22/10/2024

“Are you going? Are you going to the tea party?”

The Sensational Alex Harvey Band were always their own type of party. In the mid Seventies they were the number one live draw, with a highly theatrical stage show. Yes, they played covers (they had a hit with a wicked parody of Tom Jones' Delilah), but sources ranged eclectically from Jaques Brel to Lieber and Stoller. Their rock theatrics drew from an older vaudevillian tradition. Guitarist Zal Cleminson's pierrot facepaint has been as influential as his riffs. Maybe they were too varied. Their original songs in many ways are precursors to modern alternative rock and metal. A more focussed approach could have established them better in the market. Instead they found their particular niche by falling between stools.

Boston Tea Party took them in to the charts and on to Top Of The Pops. It's an unlikely hit, bizarrely a favourite of Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York. And almost certainly the only record to refer to George Washington's (mythical) wooden dentures.

"Fire in the mountains, flames upon the heath
As the President spits out the news, he's biting them wooden teeth".

Part of their appeal to me is that underlying breadth of interest. Alex might look like Dennis the Menace's disreputable uncle but there's intelligence and hard-knock experience. Alex and Zal were a unique double act, a mix of menace and mischief with a dynamic no one else has emulated.

For many of us Boston Tea Party was our invitation to their world. Musically, it's insidious rather than outright catchy. The verse pedals above a throbbing C # - the bass note stays the same while the chords change above it. For the chorus the pedal note drops two whole tones to A. I haven't found another song anywhere that uses quite that move.

If you're new to the Sensational Alex Harvey Band get a flavour of them here: https://youtu.be/VO8pa_T9m1Y?si=xrAuHeUmRIlc8XxH

For a taste of where they could have gone had circumstances been kinder search out ‘Anthem’. It's on their third album, but there's a live performance on YouTube that, despite murky video quality, still thrills the heart.

17/10/2024

Time to crank the amps and turn it up loud up for Halloween!

Bloodsucker: a song about betrayal, being dragged over the coals, taken for everything, used, bled-dry and discarded by someone in a trusted position.

Written and recorded by Darren James and engineered / produced by Ryan Griffiths, Cardiff.

15/10/2024

“Hey, dig those crazy guitars daddio!”

Have you ever seen any of those low budget 60's B-movies cashing in on the teen craze? They usually had a lead actor in his late forties sucking in his stomach and trying valiantly - but unsuccessfully - to act like a college kid. The clothes, dialogue, plots and acting are unfailingly ridiculous. I love them!

One of the obligatory scenes is the party on the beach or round the pool. While the lead actor destroys any remaining shred of credibility with his dancing, girls in bikinis shimmy and the band plays cheesy guitar riffs. That's the mood we wanted to re-create here.

The Bumbling Billberrys was a one-off project with friends. Two and a half days of sheer fun that produced a quirky EP. All of the songs put a smile on my face, this is an instrumental where I indulge myself with some guilty pleasure guitar playing. It starts with a main theme which I imagine as something girls with beehive hairdo's and bikinis are dancing to. (Hey, it's a free world. Let me imagine…). Further along there's hints of spaghetti western, surf music and cut-price psychedelia.

It's fun. Nothing more, nothing less.

Oh yes, the title. The Dallas Tuxedo was a very early British built electric guitar. The one pictured was owned by the late, great Peter Green.

This track is on my Spotify playlist ‘songs I’ve written with artists I love'. I'll give a link to Dallas Tuxedo, but if you check out the full playlist I'm sure it will put a smile on your face, too.

Like, hang loose man! Get your groove on to some far out tunes. Are you diggin me? https://open.spotify.com/track/7nnngvg4FC2SydW9ivXqPV?si=3ba8c6381be145c4

14/10/2024

Anyone remember the classic Roger Corman series of Edgar Allan Poe films? Usually starring the great Vincent Price. I loved the swirling, spookily psychedelic opening credits and that's the inspiration for this first promo clip.

Nothing to fear from Darren James' Halloween single - only that it's scarily good!

08/10/2024

"It was the third of June, another sleepy, dusty Delta day
I was out choppin' cotton, and my brother was balin' hay…."

When I first heard this song it was like nothing else in the charts. The sound is sparse and swampy, voice and acoustic guitar close and intimate with unpredictable strings swooping, sighing and groaning in the background. And the story a blend of everyday detail and unspoken mystery.

Verse one introduces us to three characters, gives us their connections, where they are and what they're doing. We know the date, the weather and way the mother talks. Then it caps it off by breaking the news of the su***de of Billie Joe McAllister. All in only six lines.

As the conversation continues around the dinner table we hear the unconcerned reactions of the family.

"And papa said to mama, as he passed around the blackeyed peas
Well, Billie Joe never had a lick of sense, pass the biscuits, please
There's five more acres in the lower forty I've got to plow
And mama said it was shame about Billie Joe, anyhow"

The reveal that there was a secret relationship between Billie Joe and the narrator comes in the most understated way possible:

"And mama said to me, child, what's happened to your appetite?
I've been cookin' all morning, and you haven't touched a single bite"

It's wonderful writing. As listeners, we're allowed to read between the lines. If you know the song, you'll be aware that Bille Joe and ‘a girl who looked a lot like you' were seen throwing something off the same bridge the day before he jumped. That's been a source of speculation since the song was released. Bobbie Gentry has said only that it was something symbolic (and hinted in one interview it may have been a wedding ring). To be honest, I think it's more powerful not to know.

I mentioned the strings, which were added later to the original guitar and vocal demo. Arranger Jimmie Haskell felt the song sounded like a film and scored his arrangement to intensify the atmosphere and emotion. Often overlooked, the four violins and two cellos are a key element.

A bleak, unconventional song about su***de, by an unknown singer, is not an obvious recipe for a number one hit. Yet that's what it was. Covered by artists from Dolly Parton to Sinead O'Connor and adapted into a full-length film. The song that inspired Tony Joe White (another of my favourite writers) to become a songwriter.

Maybe my biggest take-away is the recognition that to capture the imagination you need to allow room for the imagination. Tell us a strong story and we'll provide the subtext.

You can find my favourite live performance here: https://youtu.be/cJZ_ViDADOE?si=jiEDOhbm7MuCRyr2

05/10/2024

Delighted to have my track 'Green' added to the DAILY TOP HITS Spotify playlist! What a great way to start the weekend.

You can also listen to it here: https://open.spotify.com/track/4H6FNYeksSoJG0Hg7EuEbh

04/10/2024

Bloodsucker. Artwork approved for the new Darren James single, release date Halloween. Watch this space.....

01/10/2024

A mere three weeks after the Get Back sessions The Beatles were back in the studio. The concentrated jamming and recording together had got them musically tight, and they'd experimented with combining unfinished songs, fusing Paul's ‘I’ve got a feeling' with John's ‘Everybody had a hard year’.

The long medley on Abbey Road takes that to the extreme. Eight separate songs sequenced into one musical experience. Over the years it's been recreated by various artists as a kind of suite. To my ears the flow seems perfect and inevitable.

But in an earlier version there was a ninth song. One which was rejected and nearly lost.

John Kurlander, recording engineer, described the moment. “We did all the remixes and crossfades to overlap the songs, Paul was there, and we heard it together for the first time. He said, ‘I don’t like ‘Her Majesty’, throw it away,’ so I cut it out…..I said to Paul, ‘What shall I do with it?’ ‘Throw it away,’ he replied”.

However, John Kurlander didn't like to throw anything away. After the Beatles left the discarded song was literally picked up off the floor and spliced back on to the end of the spool, separated by about twenty seconds of leader tape.

Listening back at a later date everyone thought the album had ended with the final chord of ‘The End’. But the tape was left running, and suddenly the rejected song burst out of the speakers. This time it worked. A quirky throw-away deftly undercutting the preceding climax.

The crashing guitar chord that opens ‘Her Majesty’ is actually the final chord from a rough mix of ‘Mean Mr Mustard’. The song cuts off without the final note, meanwhile, because it was intended to segue into ‘Polythene Pam’. The final album by what was at that time indisputably the best band in the world ends with accident and imperfection.

My own take-away is that this shows two of the traits that made the Beatles great. First, the confidence to instantly discard what doesn't work. Second, the readiness to accept chance and randomness, and to value feel over perfection.

There's another take-away, too. What we do isn't always right for the moment. Not always perfect, not always complete. But context is everything. In time, we can find our place.

You can listen to all 26 seconds here: https://youtu.be/Mh1hKt5kQ_4?si=f3-7xt3mB2CoKktF

01/11/2023

Finally got my music desk organised....

13/10/2023

Friday 13th! Now, we're not superstitious here at Sondar Records...but if you want an excuse to stay home today and listen to JYM on repeat... We'll say no more 😉

11/10/2023

Great to see Attic Radio featuring Darren James on their YouTube channel. 'Attic Radio is an internet station that plays all kinds of music but avoids the "vanilla" and the predictable.' Thanks guys - you've got excellent taste! Much appreciated.