The CCQs - live @ KunFest 2025 [10.05.25]

 

Zdroj - live @ Punctum, Prague - 21.06.25

https://punctum.cz/event/126-a2-sl-zdroj-no-pavarotti-hubert-kostkiewicz-strza-w-kolano

 

'We Are Fugazi From Washington D.C.' screening with Brendan Canty & Ian MacKaye @ MeetFactory, Prague - 18.06.25

https://meetfactory.cz/en/program/detail/we-are-fugazi-from-washington-dc-live-talk-the-band

 

Sunn O))) - live @ Archa+, Prague - 14.06.25

Photos by Pavel Tjutin

 

The CCQs - live @ Kamina Boat, Prague - 05.06.25

 

Cikada Collektiv - Northnumb release: text, music & film @ Acid Coffee, Prague - 29.05.25

 

The CCQs - recording session @ Depo Hostivar, Prague - 24.05.25

 

A/C / Keiko Sei / eastworks @ Punctum, Prague - 22.05.25

https://www.punctum.cz/event/ac-keiko-sei-eastworks

 

Collection

 

DJ Matous

 

Northnumb invite

 

The CCQs - live @ Kunfest 18 - 10.05.24

Hollow Western [arrange page]

 

Blue Sreem Of Death - Copenhagen session [more pictures]

playback of 'Tall Tales' listening selfie

how does it work.

oh... yeah, that one

cover?

lapvox1

lapvox2

final adjustment before a take

kaoss on the desk

micro terror

close mic position

backed-off mic position

using pedals

multitracking

bass amp used as a guitar amp

cables ‡\°—±·°fi›‹€⁄€‹›fifl‡°·∏؈¨Áˇ‰´„ŒÅÍÎÏ˝ÓÔÒÚ¿˘¯Â˜ı◊Dz¸¸˛Ç◊ı˜Â¯˘¿ÆÚÒÔÓ˝ÏÎÍÅŒ„´‰ˇÁÔÒÚÆ’”∏Ø”’”∏——‚Ø·ˆ¨Áflfi›‹€⁄`¸ÍÎÏ˝Óı˜Â¯˘¿

the ukulele was used as percussion 

micro terror II

bass amp on a hard stone floor

Røde Microphone

close-up

lego

workstation

 

Blue Sreem Of Death - Copenhagen session

 

The CCQs - rough mix settings

 

https://audio.com/unimbued/audio/some-kind-of-painter-bass-drums-raf1

Live Recordings - My Attorney [album]

 

The CCQs - live @ Potrva, Prague [23.11.24]

 

Recorded live @ Potrva, Prague on Saturday 23rd November 2024.

Written & performed by The CCQs.

Live sound by Michal Kočan.

Photo by Shyrooken instagram.com/shyrooken

The CCQs are:

Bára Dočkalová - acoustic guitar, vocals & keys
Andrew Gardiner - vocals & synth
Tomáš Holý - drums
Tomáš Obermajer - bass

credits

released November 27, 2024

licens

The Essence of Sham - Sham [album & sleeve notes]

 

Marking a departure into an altogether more mature sound, The Essence of Sham displays the boys' ability to transcend the limitations of of their own musical ability, as well as the large quantity of Polish lager consumed during the sessions, to offer more developed soundscapes and textures.

The process of writing and recording remained the same: improvised fragments were slowly refined into songs that - once recorded - were quickly forgotten. Long, rambling takes were then edited down at a later date to the results offered here. Several tracks from the debut album appear again, allowing the listener to decide which - if any - version is their favourite.

At times the guitar featured as many as four strings (although all still tuned to the same pitch as one another), demonstrating the group's desire to develop their sound. The partner of one of the members was so overawed by the results that - upon arriving home from a tiring business trip to hear the recordings booming through her kitchen at deafening volume - she immediately burst into tears and locked herself in the bathroom.

There can therefore be no doubt, then, that this is the true essence of Sham.

• • •

Andrew Gardiner - lead vocals, electric guitar, lyrics
Mark Warmington - drums, backing vocals

Recorded at Resident Studios, Willesden, London
Tracked between Spring - Winter 2016

Recorded, edited and mixed by Andrew Gardner ≈ unimbued.com
Cover image by Shyrooken ≈ instagram.com/shyrooken  

credits

released January 1, 2017

Up The Riz - Sham [album & sleeve notes]

 

Finding themselves sharing a city for the first time since their days in school-hood band Pond, Mark and Andrew reconvened to rehearse weekly in North London.

The level of expertise on display was limited, since Mark had not played the drums in over ten years, and Andrew had never played the guitar before. The six-string in question belonged to Andy Warmington (Pond, My Attorney, Steve: From Fragment and Blue Screem of Death), and was upgraded to feature three - sometimes two - strings, which was put through the Resident Studios' Marshall 4x10 stack at maximum volume. This caused some consternation amongst the lads in the office, who were trying to run a respectable business.

Sessions were noisy affairs, often fuelled by green cans of Lech lager. Everything was improvised and spontaneously performed, eliciting some pieces that were possible to repeat... with the edited highlights of the live recordings forming the results of this collection.

Listeners should note that the opening and closing songs of Up The Riz feature in the band's sophomore effort as different, more evolved versions.

• • •

Andrew Gardiner - lead vocals, electric guitar, lyrics
Mark Warmington - drums, backing vocals

Recorded at Resident Studios, Willesden, London
Tracked between Spring 2014 - Winter 2015

Recorded, edited and mixed by Andrew Gardner ≈ unimbued.com
Cover image by Shyrooken ≈ instagram.com/shyrooken  

credits

released September 1, 2015

Email to Pavel [extract] - 16 Apr 2025, 09:52

I will return back to Prague with hand luggage filled with inexpensive Chinese microphones, made in the 2010s.  They will be used for recording the overdubs for my Prague band's forthcoming homerecorded album.  

I'll also bring an old Kaoss Pad KP2, because I suspect it may come in useful for more experimental ventures.

The stuff that is still sitting in enormous boxes in my Prague apartment hallway (because it's too difficult to open with only one arm) includes the following:

Berhinger mixer

Boss RV-505 Mk2

Rokit KRK 8 (pair)

The rationale behind this is to reclaim some form of creative practice, that is beyond the little I occasionally noodle at on Logic after a day at work.  I want to really commit to a routine of making and refining things.  To be present with my thoughts regarding music.  What music is, how to approach it in novel ways, to find means of expression through sound that goes beyond the mundane.  The interactions I've had with you and Simon over the last two years have brought this issue to the surface of my mind:  the time you ditched synthesis completely to read Nietzsche (or was it Plato?) being one particular example of how one can change course with regards one's influences, actively shaking up the established routines in search of some new way of working.

It is interesting the stories we tell ourselves, about ourselves.  Stories which we then tell others, in the hope that they will believe us.  I think for a long time I considered myself a 'professional musician and producer', which was sometimes true, but also 'frequently unemployed' may have also applied - something I was at pains to leave out of the story I told people about myself.  

It doesn't always have to be negative, either.  Recently, I realised that rather than being a 'lapsed creative' - someone who used to do creative, artistic things but that had somehow become sidetracked by work - I was in fact a 'teacher'... someting I wasn't entiely comfortable admitting until the last year or so.  The history, geography and literature delivery at Duhovka finally feels valid in its own right, rather than being classified as some compromised deal I have made with capitalism, in order to be able to afford my rent.  

And it is relentlessly creative: real-time improvisation and manifestation of intellectual material in linguistic - and, you guessed it - worksheet form, with a live audience (Kvinta B, for example) providing an unpredictable and constantly evolving landscape for learning... which is far more engaging and satisfying than any concert.  The audience participates in the event, because they are the learners and therefore play an active role - rather than the passive one concert goers adopt at gigs.

The big 'but' remains, though:  despite the frequent joy of teaching (and finally appreciating it), the story I tell myself about myself still contains traces of a creative longing that goes beyond the snap, crackle and pop of the classroom.  And this is something I am fighting through treacle to honour.  

Like many, I self-sabotage my own output by giving myself excuses:  "I can't mix because I don't have monitors," or "I can't record because I don't have microphones," or "I can't edit this evening because I've eaten too much pasta and want to fall alseep to The White Lotus,".  All of these excuses are pathetic:  things can be mixed on cheap wired earbuds, samples can be captured on crunchy mono feeds from smartphones, and pasta hangovers are perfect for powering through the night on an editing marathon.  However, to fully remove such thoughts, I have gone ahead and purchased monitors anyway.  There can be no more excuses.

The looper and mixer, combined with the Kaoss Pad brought from Portrush, are more for the sort of live jam / ambient experiments you have introduced me to through Retrospektiva, Noise Kitchen Open Jam and the Library performances.  I need to find fresh new ways of entering into this world of texture and ambience.  It is especially necessary given the very mainstream and MOR nature of my Prague band, which makes music I enjoy playing - but wouldn't choose to listen to myself.  I am a closeted avant-garde artist, living the fake life of a melodic singer in an anthemic rock band.  That is the story I tell myself.  But is it true?  Time to find out: and so to Thomann to spend a month's salary on things that will help me remove all doubt.  Perhaps in time I'll discover that both realities are true, and will just have to live with it.

You mention music you're listening to.  I seem to have settled on late-night BBC Radio 3 stuff for now: weird classical and orchestral pieces.  This stuff seems to transcend the usual 'here is a beat now here is another layer of something on top' composition that occurs in so much music.  Thanks for the Scriabin recommendation, I'm listening now.

I'm beginning to wonder if recorded music should embrace the values of conceptual art more than the cold, predictable stacking of Logic stems.  Final mixes should be committed to tape and buried in the ground.  Smoke should be blown over the tape heads during mastering (like Lee Scratch Perry did).  Things need to be put through spaces and re-recorded multiple times to create new, composite atmospheres.  Everything should be in mono.  AI should then be used to make a glitchy, incorrect stereo extraction, before putting it back into mono again.  Maybe I'm being too conceptual and pretentious.  When I ran the half-marathon, I listened to so much Modeselektor that just making four-to-the-floor dance music would be equally acceptable!

the slide leads down with screws drilled in the sides of it

everything is great and I'm not enjoying it, 

the slide leads down with screws drilled in the sides of it.  

so what if some music producer - sorry - 'engineer' died?  

you take a may bank holiday when you can... 

midweek and alone, staring out the open window, 

strong lager on the window cill, cool air drifting in  

such a shame to waste so much when so little's been paid. 

all the times when things were good  

this is an unhealthy obsession 

fuck it all in the bin or high up on the shelf 

leave all bad programming behind, 

accept transistors and wirings of the mind. 

bend backwards to meet it: as you let go.  

you ever feel like you're falling asleep? 

yet again 

yet again.  

makes you think 

makes you think 

footsteps audible.

Soft Leisure Forever - album & sleeve notes

This collection of music began life as an attempt to sequence several new pieces of work together to form an EP-length release.

It soon snowballed into a much larger project that is now presented here: one that features lots of short-form, laptop-based pieces woven together to form a single continuous mix.

Some of the material here uses samples taken from other projects I have worked on in recent years, including Future Loss, My Attorney and Sham.

In the cases of 'Gmm Mr' and 'PO Box', different versions appear on my previous release 'Mustek', which is available here: unimbued.bandcamp.com/album/mustek-2

The hope is to provide a soundtrack to the rather tumultuous and fractured nature of pandemic living, during which this was made.

• • •

Everything by Andrew Gardiner ≈ unimbued.com

Recorded at Colerabbey Studios in Prague, Czech Republic

Tracked between Spring 2020 - Summer 2021

Cover image by Shyrooken ≈ instagram.com/shyrooken

• • •

Tracklisting

1. Jam Piece - FP1mEXTRACTION ALT2
2. Mike's Beat - RAF1
3. Video Game Documentary - SLOWD1
4. Land Of Kings - voice&guitar [blip] [Dec16]
5. PO Box2 - rmx2heartbeat - EXTRACTION TYPE3newSLOOW - FP1
6. Riff - FP2
7. Pulse - loop2
8. Vinyl Beat [Prague edit] [bent1] - FP1
9. SynthTime3 - RAF1
10. Ambient Album Mashup - Edit3 - WIP1
11. Each One Worse Than The Last - FP3mPITCHSLOWdeclicked
12. Ambient Works3 - unimbued mix - FP1m [edit]
13. Audio Unit Experiment - FP3 - SLOWdeclick
14. Click2FIDDLEFREE - FP1_1
15. SoftSynthClick8 - RAF1
16. loopy keyboard blip
17. Finger Tap - June 2016
18. Gmm Mr - FP6m - SECTION B ONLY
19. TIE Fighter - FP1deverb
20. Synth

• • •

Guest Appearances

Jam Piece: Brian Magee - electric guitar, Michael Farrelly - drums
Mike's Beat - Brian Magee - electric guitar, Michael Farrelly - drums
PO Box: Stuart Stone - drums
Riff: Michael Farrelly - drums
Click2FIDDLEFREE & SoftSynthClick8: Ryan Fleming - guitar

• • •

Songwriting Credits

TIE Fighter: uses a MIDI score composed by Clint Bajakian, for the 1994 PC CD-ROM video game 'Tie Fighter'

Gmm Mr: uses samples from 'Gimme More' by Britney Spears & 'The Beginning Of An End' by Spectres, available here: wearespectres.bandcamp.com/track/the-beginning-of-an-end  

credits

released September 1, 2021

Vocal drones - Beginning [part 1] - RAF1 by Blue Screem of Death

 

@unimbued

Mustek - full sleeve notes

After leaving London, I spent some time in Portrush before moving to Prague in the Czech Republic.

During this time of transition, I continued to sketch very slight compositions using a wide variety of source material that happened to cross my desk at the time.

These included a recording of a classical string quartet concert that I had attended in Belfast, some drum and guitar samples I had recorded during rehearsals for my punk side project Sham (based in London, with friend Mark Warmington), field recordings of dogs barking and metal sculptures being thrummed, extracts from Future Loss sessions that were bent into textures, demo recordings taken when testing certain pieces of studio equipment, and remixes of existing material using the source stems (for songs by Britney Spears and My Attorney).

All of which yielded quite an esoteric and loose collection of music!

I have attempted to present the material in the way one might sequence a mixtape: with plenty of sharp contrasts in genre, and embracing the random nature of some of the music.

Watery Vibezzz, Sur

The title is courtesy of Brian, after I shared it with him over WhatsApp.  It was originally much longer, but as an edited piece it is ideal as a prelude to the album proper.

Bow On Your Head [rmx]

The story of this track originates at an evening at The MAC in Belfast's Cathedral Quarter, when I attended a concert by the RTE Contempo orchestra, back in February 2017.

The evening was excellent.  The composer spoke before his 'Bow' was played, and even if I felt some of his comments were a bit on the nose, it was inspiring to hear someone speak about composition in a novel way.  Contempo performed it flawlessly, and my ear was drawn to some of the bizarre sounds Fennessey had scored into the piece:  lots of squeaks and weird swooping noises.  Having recorded the show on my dictaphone, I set about cutting the most beguiling moments out and chaining them together.  After a day's intensive work, the remix was done.

I wrote to the quartet with a copy of the remix - sadly to no reply - and have included the email below:

Adrian,

I was in the audience at your performance of 'Bow Your Head' by David Fennessy, at The MAC in Belfast on Wednesday.  It was my first time hearing a quartet attempt something so contemporary - a real educational experience for me, rich with sonic textures that totally transported me.  The Bartok pieces weren't bad either!

Hearing you guys discuss the music with David was just as inspirational as the music.  I loved the way the he had to start from an origin that felt true to him specifically, and then work his way up to what we would understand as "typical" quartet motifs.  I also loved that he was drawn towards that indulgence of what the four instruments can do just through bowing:  some of the sounds you guys conjured up were truly spectral.  I also enjoyed hearing about the tuning arrangements, and the thinking behind them.  The sound of a downtuned cello is something to behold!

I took the liberty of taping the performance on my digital recorder, and - inspired by the music - edited together a brief collage of sounds from the piece.  I've elected to concentrate on the more ambient portions, looping and modulating the various layers as required.  I thought I'd share it with you guys as a way of thanking you for such an exhilarating show (and if you could pass it on to David then I'd be most grateful).

Good luck with your next shows, I look forward to seeing Contempo again sometime.

Kind regards,

Andrew Gardiner 

Gmm Mr

This was partly a tribute to Danja's production style on Britney's Spears' crowning achievement:  the Blackout album.  

I found the stems online, as they had been made available to numerous DJs for label-sponsered remixes.  Somehow it ended up looped and sync'd to Spectre's 'The Beginning of an End', which I had sped up in iSotope RX to beat match with Britney.

Sound Unhealer

This began life during a Future Loss rehearsal at The Bank, when we were recording I, Realia and Kept Alive around 2015 or so.  

I remember that my keys had somehow ended up going through an Orange head, which was plugged into a large 4x10 stack.  I had adhesive tape on the keys which allowed me to keep a note going, while walking over to the amp and adjusting the tone controls to make the waves of sound.

Brian Magee played the repeating guitar sample that runs through the first third of the song.  We were just fiddling around on something and this happened.  Brian stopped playing, but my Casio-Orange amp combo got the better of me and I indulged in a bit of knob twiddling.  Even though I claim to be above such things.

The file hung around on my computer until I doubled down on the editing in 2016 while living in Acton, London... but it only presented itself as an option when I started compiling this disc in 2017.  Along with 'Reaktor Room 4', it's the oldest piece on the whole album.

Matisse Guitar

While living in London, I linked up with Pond drummer Mark Warmington.  We rented a rehearsal room near where Mark lived, in Willesden.  He practised his drums - not being able to play an acoustic kit in his own home.  I - for reasons unclear - sat on a high stool with Andy's old Les Paul on my knee, when it rarely had more than three strings and was always randomly tuned.  Sometimes there was screaming, other times it could be haphazardly atmospheric.  

We called ourselves Sham, and recorded most of our rehearsals.  It was in listening back to these, that I spotted a drum break of Mark's that I particularly liked.  I decided to loop it, and then cut my guitar feed from the same song as the break, and sprinkle it in over the top, all mixed up and fallen at random.  Just like the Matisse cut ups that I saw at the Tate Modern in 2014.  

Therefore the guitar is all higgeldypiggeldy, and has been left where it was arbitrarily dropped onto the arrange page without thought.  A delay has been applied to Mark's drums, and is designed to intentionally concertina into the raw feed.

Windy Ears

I'm always trying to off-load some piano scrap or other, and this was no exception.  The only thing that distinguished it from others was that it had been done to click, allowed some more subtle programming to find its way in.  

Easter Test Run (Parts I, II & III)

At around Easter of 2019, I was back in Portrush and had the chance to set up and test my Future Loss synth rig, to make sure everything was working.  

It included my old second-hand Casio CTK, with everything going through Brian's delay and reverb pedals, with Luke's Boss octivator at the end of the chain, before things went into the Kaoss Pad 2, and then into the PA desk, which could sweeten the signal further with on-board reverbs.  

I improvised on a few things and recorded the results.  Taking the audio, I began to slice it up and form layers with it, not dissimilar to the cut up technique used on 'Windy Ears'.  I was also checking out onboard customisations of the CTK effects, which are editable.  

Three clear sections emerged, and I edited them into a suite together.

Shrine

Arguably my favourite on the whole album, this is simply me thrumming my thumb along a corrugated steel sculpture by Ota Janeček that was in a religious alcove, with candles around it (hence the title).  I used my Roland handset to record it.

The Autumn Room

Another improvised piece that happened to be done in my studio in Portrush, with the rhythm piano being overdubbed with more delayed textures.  As the only thing to feature me singing on the whole album, it sits at the fulcrum of the playlist.

Big Solly

This utilises the vocal talents of my dog, Sally.  The guitar comes from exploring Logic samples that were filed under chord name.  I chucked a few of them around into a loose order, and then had Sally sing over the top.

Feedback

This came from messing around with guitar feedback during the Sham sessions in Willesden between 2014 and 2016.  

When Mark went to the bathroom, I would try to get the most possible feedback out of the Marshall 4x10 stack, with the Orange valve head on top of it.  Sometimes the feedback was ferociously loud and wild.  I would try to let the guitar hand still, very close to the amp, to allow the sheer force of the sound coming out of the 4x10 to influence the guitar strings.  A lot of fun!  

Then I got to work on bending the sounds, especially lowering the overall resolution to that of an early Nintendo soundtrack.

Each One Worse Than The Last

One of the newest tracks on the record, this is my attempt to make repetitive music sound interesting... something my friend Grilly has recently experimented with.  

There is a lot of automation on this song, with the repeating motif heading off into the distance, before returning to the foreground.  I think the drums are artificial, and I've double tracked them (but manually nudged so as to be slightly out of sync with each other) to give them more presence.

Reaktor Room 4

The oldest piece on the album, this began life in Acton, London.  I'm not sure what the source is;  I suspect the original audio may have been from a Sham rehearsal, where I happened to catch some extended guitar noise on the Roland.  

So named after the Chernobyl disaster - but done so before watching the HBO series.  I'd had a picture of the control room for years on my wall at 12 Whitby.  

PO Box [rmx]

This comes from a song called 'PO Box In Hammersmith Palais' by My Attorney.  It is still slated for release on the band's long-lost fifth album Electrical Spells, and a studio recording of the song made in 2013 shortly before Ian's death forms the backbone of this composition.  

At some point in the preliminary mixing of the track, I began to experiment with Stuart's beat that he was attempting to double-track.  Removing all melodic links to the original piece further helped this composition stand up in its own right.

It then devolved into a beat workout, with a mixture of programmed beats and drum moments from Stuart.

It Must Be Broken [ambient]

This is the guitar feed from a Sham session, that I've subsequently treated.  I believe it was slowed down in Isotope RX - a piece of software I've increasingly used since moving to Prague.

No Days Off Forever - full sleeve notes

This is the sister disc to 'London Doesn't Need You', since the songs come from the same period of time, and uses many of the same techniques and sample material in its construction.

Tracks include the now-familiar hallmarks of my music from this period: a blend of ambient samples from the city, heavily programmed delay patches, mixed with old snippets of piano from the church studio, as well as new compositions that were done using Ella's piano in Kew Gardens. There is also a soundtrack for a short film that was never used by the people who commissioned it, and has instead found a home here.

This marks the end of music I made while living in London, and after this I would return to Portrush to collect much of the material together, and refine it during the start of 2017.

Swazzi Hold

I honestly have no idea how this was made.  I think it was part of a much bigger piece, which was then discarded.  The audio was then put through a filter which cut off much of the signal if it dipped below a certain frequency, giving it this amputated, incomplete feel.

London - December 2

Samples here include tenants in the pub accommodation I lived in waking me up at night by singing Bible songs, an exhibit in the Tate Modern that featured some audio, recorded conversations that were heavily bitcrushed, all of which were put through the Delay Designer.  I will never grow tired of the ways a single natural piano take can be manipulated and played with until it sounds otherworldly and orchestral.

Day 84

The title comes from a period in mid-2014, when I worked for eighty-four consecutive days without a day off.  This included teaching English and working 24 hour weekends in a particularly wretched pub in Richmond.

The material used here is another exercise in using stock material from Logic’s library, adding it to piano from the church, and trying to see if anything interesting comes from it.  

The preset bass guitar was pitch shifted down extra low, to create a woody-sounding effect, and not at all like it was from a library bin.  I was pleased to finally include the cello scraping sound that Sarah Gill recorded when I was taping the Rebecca Jones overdub sessions in 2007.  The piano from the church (intentionally operating in triplets compared to everything else, which is in 4/4) was double tracked through a pitch shifter, which created new, uneasy harmonies.

B-Movie Drop Out [suite]

This was the rejected soundtrack for the follow-up to the fashion film, which can be read about more here.

It used Stuart’s glockenspiel from the My Attorney LP5 session, the old Farfisa organ from the church, as well as piano from the church and a recycled Four Lane Ends Metro station sample.  

The edits are in odd places:  this was because I was working to the cuts of the moving image.  In total, the film demanded three distinct bits, with music for the credits - so these four components make up the “suite”.

MIA Sri

I came across smartphone video footage of a Sri Lankian dance routine one night on YouTube, and tried to manipulate it into something that resembled the chaotic and colourful rhythms of M.I.A.’s songs.

Leyborne Park Love Scene

The audio book of Carrie Fisher’s memoirs came out just after her death, and it was fascinating to hear tales of my favourite on-screen heroes having a genuine romance behind the scenes.  It seemed for a moment to make the original Star Wars film as real as it had been in my childhood imagination.  

I used a sample of it to accompany a piano moment I had recorded in the Kew Gardens address of the song title.  It was put through Logic’s Ringshifter - a powerful tool that can bend anything until it’s virtually unreconisable from its original state.

End Sequence

This is more of Ella’s piano, heavily processed.  I had the closing moments of some epic video game in mind, listening back to this.  Living in London for me always had a video game element to it:  staying one step ahead of the sudden drop, with no extra lives.  “Your Princess Is In Another Castle”.