Anton Barbeau - Magic Act

Anton Barbeau's new album Magic Act is almost here! 12 semi-psychedelic pop gems waiting to be pulled from the rabbit's hat. Lend a hand?

Project visual Anton Barbeau - Magic Act
Successful
91
Contributions
08/01/2015
End date
€4,503
Out of €4,200
107 %

The publications

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<p> One of the songs on Magic Act is an oldie called Swindon. The recording of it that&#39;s going on the album is nowt but a ball of fun, with cellos and Karla, Khoi and Morris singing they heads out. Larry Tagg&#39;s bass is... well, you&#39;ll hear it soon enough. For the moment, I&#39;m hoping you might dig this acoustic version recorded possibly even today upstairs on the only 12-string I could find. Yarp!<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="embedly-embed" frameborder="0" height="405" scrolling="no" src="//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/media.html?src=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fembed%2FIaz_VGIo5ZY%3Fwmode%3Dopaque%26feature%3Doembed&amp;wmode=opaque&amp;url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DIaz_VGIo5ZY%26feature%3Dyoutu.be&amp;image=https%3A%2F%2Fi.ytimg.com%2Fvi%2FIaz_VGIo5ZY%2Fhqdefault.jpg&amp;key=ff2702755d9749cda571c6d6c2f3eb46&amp;type=text%2Fhtml&amp;schema=youtube" width="540"></iframe></p>
<p> First of all, I want to say thank you to all who&#39;ve contributed to the campaign so far. Every little helps, as she says whilst gently smacking herself in the advert!</p> <p> &nbsp;</p> <p> I&#39;m off to the UK in a few days to film a video for High Noon, the lead-off track from Magic Act. Laima Bite will direct, and Colin Moulding will appear doing lip-syncing on the bass guitar. I&#39;m thrilled about this, to say the least. XTC are one of the life-changers on my musical map.</p> <p> &nbsp;</p> <p> Most of the songs on the album are mixed, but a few are still dragging they waggy tails. I always have that feeling of &quot;Must release this record NOW before the walls of time crumble and all soup is lost! I&#39;m letting myself slow up a little now. In terms of &quot;success,&quot; I can honestly say I don&#39;t have any indication that the timing of a single Ant release has really made a big difference. So, might as well enjoy the recording process without putting un-needed pressure on. Maybe it&#39;s typical of my way, but it feels like there&#39;s a mix of hi- and lo-fi going on here. Honestly, if I could make super-slick records, I probably would. But it seems that all my years in the basement toiling over a hot 4-track cassette machine have had much impact. One thing, &quot;sound quality&quot; aside, is that there aren&#39;t really any moments on this record that don&#39;t feel Right. You know, it&#39;s easy to add a second acoustic guitar or keep a tambourine in cos it&#39;s good enough. There are so many bits and bites of this record that feel like they were meant to happen only once and I feel lucky these moments have been captured.</p> <p> &nbsp;</p> <p> It&#39;d take too long here to explain, but this is an album that tells the stories of its own making many times over. Besides the obvious XTC-connection, Swindon is tangled deep into the story of Three Minute Tease, for example. The song Hop, Skip a Jump that closes the album comes from the earliest session I did with Morris in Berlin, before Andy joined the band. Yet the song is the very sound of my time in Cambridge. Around and around. But maybe another time I can bore you better with more not-very-sordid details.</p> <p> &nbsp;</p> <p> For the moment, hi and hello and thanks and all such. I&#39;ll try to post a song or vid or something as well, but I&#39;m still getting used to the KKBB interface. Words will have to work for now!</p>