UK Decay

[werewolf]

STEVE SPON SOLO PROJECTS ##COMING SOON! NEW ALBUM BY NOSTRAMUS## DOOMSDAY DOT COM....NOSTRAMUS Is this the end of drum and bass as we know it? A sound concept tapestry with a strong musical current, including samples which expose media hysteria amongst both dark and light themes. Nostramus comments on the phenomena that shape our early 21st century; times where fear is founded for some, and a plaything for others. More info. Tracks – 12 Label - Diamond Seed Productions, Year - 2011 Price - £10.00 inc shipping* Available soon Digital Download – Available soon, Sample clips on Soundcloud here ALL CD ALBUMS AVAILABLE FOR £10.00 INC SHIPPING!* EARTHLIGHTS REMASTERED.....NOSTRAMUS Described as '21st century pagan drum and bass', the 'Earthlights' album by Spon's alter ego Nosramus was released in 1997 by Recordings of Substance in the UK and Shadow Records in the US to critical acclaim. Now remastered in 2010. More info. Tracks – 10 Label - Diamond Seed Productions, Year - 2010 Price - £10.00 inc shipping* Buy CD Digital Download – I Tunes, E Music, Amazon Sample sound clips here [/color] DARK AMBIENCE PROJECT.....THE HIDDEN CORE A feast of sound-scarped nightmare visions and eclectic journeys. Culled from the darker psychotropic-fueled imagination of The Big Eye, Bud Brothers and Nostramus's Steve Spon. More info.. Tracks – 13 Label - Diamond Seed Productions, Year - 2011 Price - £10.00 inc shipping* Buy CD Digital Download – Available soon Sample sound clips - Available soon STEVE SPON PRODUCTIONS : ELLA JO'S ALBUMS LIMITS OF MILKWEED.....ELLA JO Ella Jo provides melodic nutrition for a runway to the stars. This album’s sound-scape provides a rich feast good enough for a Space Shuttle journey. In the Universal Soup of Life, it makes a seriously good sound track. More info.. Tracks – 10 Label - Diamond Seed Productions, Year - 2008 Price - £10.00 inc shipping* Buy CD Digital Download – I Tunes, Amazon, CD Baby Sample sound clips here ALTER EGO.....ELLA JO Following the Soul’s whisper, Ella Jo gives clues in this album as she reflects on a hard world, but refuses to be beaten. Here there are tuneful explorations of serious issues, interwoven with the joyous stuff of dreams. More info.. Tracks – 10 Label - Diamond Seed Productions, Year - 2008 Price - £10.00 inc shipping* Buy CD Digital Download – I Tunes, Amazon, CD Baby, Sample sound clips here ATTITUDE IS EVERYTHING.....ELLA JO This album is like a porthole where beauty is borne of trouble, and passing through it is a cleansing, uplifting experience. Work well crafted will always channel human experience into sweet depths, for those brave enough to share it. More info.. Tracks – 10 Label - Diamond Seed Productions, Year - 2010 Price - £10.00 inc shipping* Buy CD Digital Download – Available soon Sample sound clips - Available soon * January 2011, Subject to slight fluctuations owing to currency conversion rates. CD's available from Kunaki USA priced at $9.80 plus $4.20 shipping, total price $14.00 (UK = £10.00, Euro 10.80) Delivery to UK and Europe around 8 to 14 days. Payment via PayPal and most major cards.

Steve Spon's solo projects...a brief biog Since the demise of UK Decay and then IN Excelsis back in 1985 Spon has continued producing music for himself and others. As the resident engineer/producer at '33' Recording Studios he worked for a decade on a wide variety of different genre's. He helped produce many post-punk bands in the eighties and nineties, including Click Click, Karma Sutra, Passchendale, Party Girls, Irritant, and Crowe Jayne. He also produced numerous commercial recordings for the '33 Jazz' label, as well as co-producing many underground dance tracks for the emerging DJ culture. Bass lines and drops that Spon helped produce rocked many a dance-floor at that time. The surge in technology in the art of music production during the late eighties saw Spon honing his music production skills. In 1990 he teamed up with ex Click Clicker's Derek 'E' Smith and Graham Stronach to form a new band called 'The Big Eye'. Described by the band at the time as 'a kind of Techno–with-Guitars', TBE played a handful of live shows, produced a couple of EP's and an Album, (both on vinyl and CD) over three years, for the London based Hydrogen Dukebox label. Most of these are now out of print, and like a lot of Spon's past material, are very rare to track down. Spon latched early onto Jungle – the emerging Drum and Bass genre of music. During the early nineties he crafted a collection of tracks of his own. His material aimed to create a more thoughtful and 'intelligent' spin to counter the frantic naivety of the early hardcore rave sound. During this period the classic 'vocal-lyrical' approach had taken a back-seat to the repetitive and minimalist sound scape. This suited Spon's eclectic and original use of samples to create mood shifts that mould deep, optimistic and relaxing sonic journeys. This was Spon's first major 'solo' project with guest vocalist Prince Malachi, MC13, Caroline Nische and Natasha D, the proposed album was to be called 'Earthlights' under Spon's new artist name; 'Nostramus'. This was released in July 1997 by London label, 'Recordings of Substance' and licensed to the US 'Shadow Records' label. 'Earthlights' went onto sell a respectable 6000 copies world-wide and tracks from the album were seen on many a 'chilled–d & b/electronica' type compilation album. In 2010 Spon re-engineered and re-mastered 'Earthlights' for the Diamond Seeds label (there is a link to further information and sound clips of the album here) Spon continued producing and re-mixing for others up to the end of the nineties but aside from a limited edition Exodus Festival album, 'Bomb Babylon' (a DIY darker, pertinent and bombastic affair – that, in Spon's own words was, “unfinished”), there was no further Nostramus release until the 2003 'Hero of Bamboostick' EP on Jolt Records. Presently Spon is putting the finishing touches to a 'proper' Nostramus follow up album, (release expected in spring 2011 on the Diamond Seeds Label). The working title for this album is 'Doomsday Dot Com' and unlike the 'Earthights' album, Spon has introduced his guitar sound on a few of the tracks for the first time with Nostramus. Another project has involved re-mastering some of Spon's more esoteric and subliminal work from the nineties. He has produced an album called 'Dark Ambient', containing largely ambient and beat-less material, but with brooding, sometimes menacing sound collages. You wont find much guitar in this mix, but UK Decay/IN Excelsis listeners will be familiar with some of the darker sonic dream sequences, a style used in the 'Werewolf' introduction, or 'Unexpected Guest' for example. These sounds are embedded within this album. The artist name for this project is, 'The Hidden Core' or THC for short! This again is available on the Diamond Seeds Label. Spon's production work with Ella Jo Early in 2004, a singer songwriter Ella Jo knocked on Spon's door. She had been looking for him since the '33' studio shut down in 1998. EJ promptly readied her old battered guitar and promptly sang him a handful of songs that she had wanted to record for a good number of years. She also explained that she had spent several years backpacking to far slung places across the world on her own. This obviously impressed Spon enough embark on a musical relationship that would last until the present day. The end result was a collection of three classic albums incorporating many differing styles ranging from Pop, Neo Folk, Acupela, Avant Garde, Gothic, Drum and Bass and Electronica. Arguably the Ella Jo sound is perhaps not what one would expect from the guitarist of UK Decay at first listen but it shows off Spon's deftly touch on music production. Ella Jo's music is eclectic and shows an inner wisdom that only someone with her wide travelling and life experience can reflect. It journeys through genre's and styles with utter contempt for the narrow marketing niche, instead celebrating the oratorical rhythms and cadences of modern everyday life from a female perspective. Although driven by Ella Jo, Spon has contributed musically to all three of Ella Jo's albums with keyboards, bass, drums and other orchestrations as well as producing the overall sound. On the third album 'Attitude is Everything' he played guitar on a couple of tracks with UK Decay bass-man Ed Branch also contributing. We could sum up Ella Jo's music as pure, captivating, elevating and an enigma to the preconception and cliché’s of a male dominated business and listener ship. She avoids overplaying that card here, transcending the open minded listener, male or female, to a greater purpose; a true artist. More details on Ella Jo's three albums here. LINKS Discog: | Steve Spon at discog | The Big Eye at discog | Nostramus at discog | Steve Spon - Nostramus Interview: | "Where the worlds of drum ‘n’ bass and post-punk and goth collide, stands a man like Spon" | Nostramus at Wordpress: | Nostramus World | Nostramus at Myspace: | Nostramus at Myspace | Nostramus at Diamond Seeds: | Nostramus at Diamond Seeds | Nostramus old site: | Nostramus old site | Nostramus at Facebook: | Nostramus Facebook page | Ella Jo Interview: | Diamond Seeds talks with Ella Jo about her groundbreaking trilogy of Album’s | Ella Jo at Diamond Seeds: | Ella Jo's home page at DS | Diamond Seeds Productions: | Diamond Seeds home |