Snowman Made of Mud

Bio:

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Snowman Made of Mud is a musical project that has been active from 2003, birthed from a lack of musical talent. Consisting of a 22 year-old Scottish oaf named Paul Ferguson, an aforementioned lack of talent, lots of modest equipment, and a near constant stream of grand unachievable ideas, Snowman Made of Mud is musically something of a derailed train tumbling down a hill into a pool of lava.

The concepts that guide Snowman Made of Mud are simple: 1) Ambient music (in the Brian Eno sense) 2) Tension + Release 3) unlimited tonal palette.

In Snowman Made of Mud's long bumbling journey, several other projects have branched out. These include the electronica-oriented Cluster..8.., Asphixiator which deals with pure noise, drone and field recordings, and Tzitzimime, which is experimental doom metal (and is yet to fully manifest).

This page currently includes some recordings from several of these other projects, simply because Snowman Made of Mud has been on hiatus since late 2006.

And now a story: Imagine, if you will, a young boy who wakes up on a snowy day, gets dressed and goes to school. All day long he's looking out the windows of the classroom, looking forward to getting home and building a snowman in his back garden. At lunchtime he enjoys a snowball fight with his friends. His face is red and stinging, but he endures he discomfort. The bell finally rings and he runs out f the school, jumping into the waiting car. His mother tells him she has to pop into the shop on the way home to buy some milk. Fifteen minutes later she returns to the car with a full carrier bag. She tells him she needs to get petrol (gas for the Americans). Twenty minutes later they're on their way home. They arrive at the house at last, and the boy runs round the side of the house, opening the gate, only to find the snow in the garden has all but melted to nothing. He runs into the house in anger, his mother is unpacking the groceries. He exclaims to her "This is no good! Snowmans are not made of mud..."

Member Since:

March 18, 2007

Members:

Paul Ferguson: noise, voice, instruments (specifically bass guitar, guitar, keyboards, toys and percussion), programming, temporal experimentation, generative digital noise, visual designs

Influences:

Frank Zappa, Pink Floyd, Magma, Caravan, Camel, Hatfield and the North, Gong and Gong-related bands, Ozric Tentacles, Yes, King Crimson, Porcupine Tree, Blackfield, Bass Communion, Steven Wilson in general, The Flaming Lips, Tom Waits, Primus, Les Claypool in general, Rush, The Mars Volta, Isis, Jesu, Sunn O))), Asva, Earth, Orthodox, Thrones, Boris, The Melvins, Big Business, Pelican, Tusk, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Silver Mt. Zion, Fly Pan Am, Do Make Say Think, Polmo Polpo, Hangedup, Sackville, Constellation Records in general, The Locust, Talking Heads, Paul Simon, Mr. Bungle, Secret Chiefs 3, Trey Spruance in general, Fantômas, Mike Patton in general, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, Miasma and the Carousel of Headless Horses, Khanate, Stephen O'Malley in general, Gorillaz, Merzbow, Lustmord, Brian Eno, Sigúr Ros, Opeth, Meshuggah, Captain Beefheart, Big Country, Love, The Beach Boys, Brian Wilson in general, Henry Cow, Robert Wyatt, Alan Parsons Project, Robert Fripp, Captured! By Robots, Old Man Gloom, Neil Hamburger, Gregg Turkington, The Nice, Emerson Lake & Palmer, Kayo Dot, Oxbow, Swans, Angels of Light, Akron/Family, Aphex Twin, Björk, Wolf Eyes, Music that sounds like it's made by flailing scarecrows on fire falling out of tall buildings being shot at in slow motion, Shigeru Ban, Norman Foster, Mark Rothko, Casper David Friedrich, Hayao Miyazaki, Jim Henson, Rolf Harris, Resident Evil (the games not the movies), Nintendo, Final Fantasy, Valve, Boss DF-2 Super Feedbacker & Distortion, Phillip K. Dick, Star Trek, Star Wars, Stargate, Babylon 5, Battlestar Galactica, Firefly, David Icke, ideas that are without purpose or reason, barcodes, modern life, Igor Stravinsky, foley artists, people who live in the countryside and are mostly self-sufficient, people who have jobs that are utterly pointless and yet get paid to do them, the ever-present loud buzzing noise in my brain, the horror of modernity, the terror of antiquity, the slow/fast march of time, broken machines, moments of clarity, moments of confusion, extremely unsettling situations, various extremes of reality, mytholgies and mystic religions, religious blasphemy, holism, reductionism, objectivism, situationism, futurism, modernism, brutalism, romanticism, absurdism, surrealism, dadaism, pseudo-science, anti-humanism, humanism, headaches, anger, longing, sorrow, disgust, loathing, rage, mortality, death, everything that has ever happened, everything that I have ever experienced and felt and continue to experience and feel and A BILLION OTHER THINGS THAT CANNOT BE APTLY QUANTIFIED

Sounds Like:

Synthesised scrapings, bleepings, growls, smashing, crashing, bashing and buzzing. Sometimes like the bits of the Mars Volta that idiot Mars Volta fans moan about and edit out. Sometimes a bit like a bunch of drums being hit in the wrong order, at the wrong time, at the wrong velocity. Sometimes like a chord progression played on a piano that fell down the stairs. Sometimes like a dustbin being cut into with a chainsaw. Sometimes like a corpse convulsing in a septic tank. Sometimes like a giant burning robot made out of tinfoil. Sometimes like a Mark Rothko painting melted down and poured over a bowl of Rice Krispies left out on the counter since 1974. Sometimes like two owls being drowned in sewage. Sometimes like a beautiful enormous butterfly crushing buildings with the mere flutter of its wings. Sometimes like a giant set of wooden teeth gnashing wildly in mid air for no particular reason. Sometimes like a skeletal horse vomitting blood. Sometimes like a brick through a stained-glass window. Sometimes like when you find a dead siphonophore floating in your swimming pool. Sometimes like a bucket full of bibles dissolving in the ocean of truth. Sometimes like the entire human race replaced by robots without even noticing.

Record Label:

timidelfdesigns/unsigned