Of all the Norwegian music blogs that we read, Acuvi.org is by far our favourite. It gives us great pleasure, then, to feature in the latest mixtape posted on the site:

http://acuvi.org/2012/04/23/mixtape-the-unearthed/

It’s called The Unearthed, and you can hear Other People in Part 1. Do make sure you give the whole thing a listen – it’s mostly nice and mellow, but there are some great upbeat tracks as well. Our song fits in perfectly with the general vibe of the thing, even if we say so ourselves.

Thanks, Eira!

Well, hooray for Facebook. As of yesterday, all pages were automatically switched over to the brand spanking new “Timeline” thing. Naturally, this includes our own page:

http://www.facebook.com/thehomeguard

Well, doesn’t that improve everything beyond recognition? Of course, by “improve” I mean “ruin”, and by “recognition” I mean “comprehension”. But perhaps I’m being too quick to judge – maybe there are fantastic ways to exploit the Timeline and spread our music far and wide. The problem is, I can’t find any. Are there any? Anything at all to justify this shambles?

Anyone?

Every so often we Google ourselves to see if anything we weren’t aware of turns up. And on that note, iHeart is an ambitious website that is on a mission to merge as many US radio stations as possible, while still offering listeners plenty of flexibility (it says here). It turns out that our music is available there:

http://www.iheart.com/#/artist/The-Home-Guard-326076/

At least, our first album is, anyway. Enjoy.

Just to let you know that we featured heavily at the beginning of last week’s Reputation Radio show, and you can download the podcast directly here:

http://nervetonic.podomatic.com/enclosure/2012-02-10T10_48_29-08_00.mp3

Stay up to date with all the best unsigned and independent artists from around the world by subscribing here:

http://www.podomatic.com/profile/nervetonic

Thanks as always, you crazy Rep-Heads!

We’ve mentioned more than once that our next album is being written in a completely different way from our norm. Rather than penning full songs from scratch, we’ve come up with riffs and beats that we’ve fitted together, jigsaw-style. This has led to much experimentation, and as a by-product a further concept has arisen: to play the same section more than once in a song but in a completely disparate genre each time.

When you finally get to hear the whole album, you’ll likely notice this technique dotted around throughout. To give you an example here and now, though, here’s a short disco-inspired sequence in demo form:

http://www.thehomeguard.info/demos/Pistols_at_Dawn_disco_section_(Demo).mp3

Then we asked ourselves the question, What would the same thing sound like if we were playing a sort of ballad? This is our answer:

http://www.thehomeguard.info/demos/Pistols_at_Dawn_ballad_section_(Demo).mp3

So, same chords and recognisably the same section, but different beat, bassline, instrumentation, melody, etc. Anyway, these are brief snatches from a song we’re calling Pistols at Dawn, the opening track on our forthcoming album. We’ve previously uploaded other snippets from the same piece, and just for fun, here’s another, complete with some vocals:

http://www.thehomeguard.info/demos/Pistols_at_Dawn_dark_section_(Demo).mp3

Make of those lyrics what you will. We’ll also leave to your imagination for now just how all of these bite-size chunks will fit together. Is Pistols at Dawn coming across as a very fragmented piece to you? More than likely it is, but that’s the challenge we set for ourselves. Can we make a prog-esque album that actually sounds relatively accessible? Probably not, but that’s the aim…

As 2011 draws to a close, here are the videos for last month’s new releases in downloadable form (optimised for iPhone, apparently):

http://www.thehomeguard.info/free/The_Home_Guard_-_Nevermore.mp4

http://www.thehomeguard.info/free/The_Home_Guard_-_I_Want_to_Tell_You.mp4

You’ll need to right-click each link and “Save Target As…” to download, otherwise they may try to play in your browser.

Meanwhile, many thanks to all of you who helped these cover versions to travel by blogging about them, adding them to your YouTube favourites, sharing them on Last.fm, posting on Facebook etc. etc. We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: you may not realise it, but tweets like this go a very long way indeed.

Roll on 2012!

We promised another cover commemorating one of our musical heroes this week, and a decade on from the death of the “Quiet Beatle”, here’s our little tribute to George Harrison:

The mp3 can be downloaded here by right-clicking the link and choosing “Save Target As…”:

http://www.thehomeguard.info/free/The_Home_Guard_-_I_Want_to_Tell_You.mp3

George always seemed to struggle to get his own compositions taken seriously by John and Paul, but this little cracker from Revolver has long been one of our favourites. We’ve obviously taken quite a few liberties with the instrumentation and arrangement, but we thought the song would work well if done in a more upbeat fashion. We tried to rock it up, and may have accidentally glammed it up in the process.

We’re also aware that after release, George regretted the lyrics in the chorus, stating openly that he got them the wrong way around; we’ve been arrogant enough to “correct” them to what was originally intended. Comments, criticisms and other observations are all welcome, especially if you can manage not to use the word “Philistines”. (I knew her brother. No, wait…)

For the truly die-hard Beatle fans, we’ve slipped in an ultra-obscure reference to a significant moment in the history of the band during the solo. See if you can spot it. We’ll send a free copy of our new CD (when finished) to the first person who gets it right. We sincerely doubt anyone will!

A big shout out to our favourite slightly unhinged Internet radio station/band promoters/champions of new music extraordinaire, the good people at The Reputation Introduces, for making us their band of the day.

http://www.facebook.com/thehomeguard/posts/166053610158941

Thanks, guys! Fellow musicians, make sure you get in touch with this lot – you won’t regret it.

Is it really 20 years since Freddie Mercury died? As hard as it may be to believe, today marks that very anniversary. To commemorate it, we’ve put together our own version of Nevermore (from Queen II):

You can download the mp3 for free here (right-click and choose “Save Target As…”, of course):

http://www.thehomeguard.info/free/The_Home_Guard_-_Nevermore.mp3

It all began when I was lent a nylon-stringed classical guitar and started experimenting with different picking techniques. But what to record? Nevermore is one of those short hidden gems that Queen used to bury on their albums, and its relative obscurity is what made us think it was ripe for covering. A few Mellotron strings, atmospheric effects and vocals later, and this is the outcome.

In truth, our version bears little musical resemblance to the piano-based original – besides the main melody and lyrics, of course – but hopefully it’s a vaguely fitting tribute to possibly the greatest singer and frontman of our generation.

We’ll be commemorating the passing of another of our musical heroes next week, so be certain to check back on Tuesday for another new download.

Everyone seems to be getting in on the app business these days, and now Bandcamp have climbed on board with their shiny new Facebook tab, as you can see here:

http://www.facebook.com/thehomeguard?sk=app_204974879526524

They seem to have kept it nice and simple – a plus in our book – as all it does is make our Bandcamp site available without leaving our Facebook page. This means that fans can listen to full streams of our songs and download them if they like what they hear, with all transactions taken care of automatically. When you think about it, this should be the absolute bare minimum for any music page, and we wonder why it’s not actually built into Facebook ‘out of the box’. Still, Facebook’s loss in Bandcamp’s gain.

If you’re a musician but haven’t added your tab yet, go here for instructions:

http://blog.bandcamp.com/2011/10/21/facebook-app