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Pillowfish comprises songwriters Tom Drinkwater and Helen Bell, performing on 10-string bouzouki, viola, violin, guitar and voices.

“a distinctive originality … intriguing songs are twinned with constantly moving melody lines … stimulating, inventive and rewarding” – Rock’n'Reel magazine

Pillowfish

<a href="http://pillowfish.bandcamp.com/track/whisky-in-the-dark">Whisky in the Dark by Pillowfish</a>

<a href="http://pillowfish.bandcamp.com/track/addiction">Addiction by Pillowfish</a>

<a href="http://pillowfish.bandcamp.com/track/the-ice-sculptor-isotope-14-version">The Ice Sculptor (isotope 14 version) by Pillowfish</a>

New studio version of ‘The Ice Sculptor’ – Free Download

The Ice Sculptor

We’ve recorded a new version of ‘The Ice Sculptor’ – one of the songs from our acoustic first album Common Knowledge. The new track has an expanded studio arrangement – rather than just being a rendition of what we can perform live in the duo – and a reworked lyric.

The new version of the song was recorded as a experiment in trying out new equipment and techniques prior to recording the next album.

Here’s a preview clip:

We’re offering the full track as a high quality download in a variety of formats, which you can burn to CD or play from your computer or portable audio device. To download it, enter your email address in the box below:

email:

Lyric Reworking

Helen: “The original version of this song featured an ice sculptor carving a figurine of an angel from ice, but after performing the song for some time I became uncomfortable with the fact that it was somewhat twee, and also that the song could possibly be misconstrued as having religious undertones.

“The theme of the song is impermanence, and I felt that the image of an angel – an immortal – contradicted this idea. So, in the new version, the figures that the sculptor is carving have been changed to isotopes of carbon. The ‘isotopes’ lyric was initially tried out on a whim, but actually I feel this relates better to the idea of mortality and decay. Now the song is centred around the radioactive decay of carbon-14, and the impermanence of carbon-based lifeforms.

“It still remains, as it was originally intended to be, a defence of and tribute to all practitioners of performance art.”

You can read the reworked lyric here.

Cover Art

The cover picture is a 3D virtual model of a fanstasy-ice-sculpture carbon-14 atom in the process of decaying, which was built by Tom in the virtual world Second Life during an extended moment of extreme geekiness. In this instance the beta particle being emitted by the nucleus is depicted by a blue dragonfly, and all the other particles have dragonflies on them too, which may not strictly be atomically correct.

She’s So Dark – Live

Click to view in high definition on Vimeo

Click to view in high definition on Vimeo

 

Live video of She’s So Dark from a gig at the Black Swan, York, earlier this year.

Live Second Life Gig – video

Just found this video that someone made of one of our Second Life gigs and posted on YouTube:

Make sure you hit the ‘HQ’ button to see it in better quality.

The Second Life grid was kind of crashy that night and logging people out all over the place, so it’s a shame there aren’t that many in the audience – but on the other hand it’s often much easier to take SL video without too many avatars slowing everything down…

Pillowfish hi-def video on Vimeo

Our first high definition videos are now up on the HD video site Vimeo – live recordings of our songs ‘Wider’ and ‘Narcissus’.

View them on our Vimeo channel here: http://www.vimeo.com/pillowfish

Virtual Worlds Conference Video Streaming

During a recent Second Life / Real Life conference in London last month we played a video gig at the Blarney Stone in Virtual Dublin, which was broadcast on a big screen in the Bedford Pub in real-life London as a demonstration of the technological developments in virtual music at the conference ‘icebreaker’ event.pf-vid-stream-blarney21

Live performers in London also performed as avatars in Second Life, as well as some other SL performers.

There’s a write-up in the Metaverse Messenger, on page 19 of the Oct 28th issue.

New Web Browser Video Streaming

Having recently started streaming video as well as audio into Second Life, we’re branching out – using the live video website UStream we did our first video gig that was accessible via web browsers last week.

The Ustream interface includes an interactive text chat feature. We’ve embedded the whole lot – video and chat – onto a page on our website, so you can either watch it at http://www.pillowfish.co.uk/live_video_ustream.html – our ‘live’ page, or on the UStream site at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/pillowfish-live-gig.

You can see the schedule for these gigs on our online gig list, and there is also a Facebook group that you can join if you want to receive news and updates about them: http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/group.php?gid=86224170455.

The next scheduled event is on Sunday 19th Oct at 9pm BST – hope you can make it!

Whisky in the Dark photos

We have a new photo stream on Flickr- and we’ve got it started with some pictures taken by Jeaninne Mathilde at the Whisky in the Dark single launch party – you can view them at http://www.flickr.com/photos/pillowfish/.

Whisky in the Dark single release party TONIGHT!

Our new studio track Whisky in the Dark is released today as a download.

You can download it by signing up to our email list on the downloads page…

The release party is being held tonight at 8pm BST at Therapy, on second life. Thanks to Raven Skall for hosting us!

Whisky in the Dark single cover

“Seven Stolen Stars” on Proper’s Folk Rising 2 Compilation

Folk Rising 2 - Released Monday 7th JulyOur track Seven Stolen Stars is included on the Folk Rising 2 compilation of folk and folk-influenced acts signed to Proper Distribution. Since almost the entire English folk scene (and beyond) is distributed through Proper, there’s quite a selection. The CD is to be released on 7 July.

You can hear our track, and all the others that will be included in the compilation, on their MySpace:

http://www.myspace.com/propermusic

Why we play on Second Life Part 1: The sound is better

Having started performing in SL as a publicity/promotional exercise, we found that actually there are a number of ways in which playing gigs on second life is superior to most real life gigs available to not-totally-famous-yet acts.

In fact SL has been so much better for us that we’ve stopped taking the crappier gigs in RL, and as a result our RL gig list looks quite empty at the moment, but it’s just not worth our while doing rubbish RL gigs when we can do good ones in SL.

This is the first of a series of blog entries each outlining one way in which SL gigs are good and explaining why we no longer see SL as just promo, but actually an integral part of our music making.

Why we play on Second Life Part 1: The sound is better

Sound quality is important to us. The tone of the voices and instruments is a big part of our music, and we like it to be discernible to the audience. Clear sound to hear the lyrics is also important for our wordier songs, and of course, when we can hear ourselves properly, we play better. Read More >>>