A Part of You, A Part of Me

In an earlier post I mention a project I'm involved with by Thai artist Tokin Teekanun called A Part of You A Part of Me. The idea was to get different musicians and songwriters to create a piece based on something personal, then get different artists and filmmakers to make videos to accompany the music. There will be two live shows for this project and it's an event not to be missed if you're in Bangkok! Plastic Section is performing on June 9 at SOL Space gallery, listed on the poster and Ben Basement Tape.

For the project, my song "Clumsy" inspired a video made by experimental filmmaker Namfon Udomlertlak, who also starred of the amazing Thai indie film Eternity.

Solo Plastic

I will be playing the The Space next to the Chao Praya River in Bangkok on Saturday night, April 28. The night is presented by Panda Records and will also feature performances by amazing Thai musicians My Post Life (Pok Stylish Nonsense), Bear-Garden and Gene Mahasamut จีน มหาสุมทร, as well as the closing of an exhibition by renowned photographer Jasper Haynes. For more details, visit: here 

Swing!

Earlier this year I did some recording with Pok Pongprayoon (from amazing Thai band Stylish Nonsense) on bass, Benji from German band Beeline on drums, and an amazing European musician based in Bangkok named  JD Cailouet on keyboard. We recorded live (including vocals) direct to 4-track cassette, with Pok engineering the recording, and the results sound great!
One song was one I've been kicking around for a couple of years called "Dream Song," while the others were all new numbers. They include a tribute to New York Latin soul legend Joe Bataan (called "Joe Bataan"), a song called "Swing" about October 5, 1962 (Love Me Do and Dr No released on the same day!) and a track called "Venice of the East," about the  dirt, desertion and disaster brought on by last year's catastrophic flooding in Thailand (get ready for 2012!!).
All in all we recorded about six songs in one day, and I hope to get together with some of the guys again soon to record a couple more for the next Plastic Section album. Watch this space for some exciting new sounds!
Here are some beautiful photos taken by Kik Wongchalard during the sessions..

Live EP

The Plastic Section album has a couple of tracks recorded live at Nospace Gallery in Bangkok with Bank Redtwenty on drums - but there was a whole bunch of other stuff recorded at that gig, including some songs that weren't included on the album in studio versions. I decided to put together a 4-track EP with unused songs from those sessions, available for free here!: Plastic Section Live at Nospace

Sound!

The Sound Project website gave a nice mini-review of Plastic Section's latest release:

http://www.thesoundproject.org.uk/

Live photo

Here's a nice photo taken by Pattrayu Wattanapanich during our recent gig at the groovy Harmonica in Bangkok.

"Bob Dylan" revisited..

March 19, 2012 was the 50th anniversary of the release of Bob Dylan's self-titled debut. Even though it's a straight folk album of mainly traditional songs, I always thought it somehow had a rock 'n' roll feel to it - you could tell that not long before becoming a folkie that Dylan had been bashing out Little Richard and Link Wray numbers.. I got hold of Bob Dylan when I was about 12 years old, quickly learned all the songs on it, and have played many of the songs in many different bands and contexts over the years, usually in punk blues renditions.. I hadn't heard the original album for a long time, but decided to record a kind of tribute, or 'version' of the album for its 50th birthday. Check it out here! Another Side of Bob Dylan

Harmonica

Last Saturday night, Plastic Section (with The Banker on drums) had a fun gig at Harmonica, Bangkok's grooviest new bar/venue. We were filling in for Happy Band, who couldn't make it, and supporting the great Neuter Lover. Thanks to those that came and we hope to play there again soon!

Album online!

Hello hello! Still working on hard copies.. but for those digital folks out there, the Plastic Section album is now available for download here. You can get some tracks for free, or pay a mere $5 AUD for the whole album! Any money made will go towards making a vinyl version. Enjoy!

More music

I'll be randomly posting music from my various bands over the years on soundcloud, and you can downlaod the stuff free too if you like! Check it out here:

soundcloud

A few years ago..

I first started Plastic Section in Sydney a few years ago as an outlet for my home recordings, which was usually stuff that didn't quite fit with my garage rock band The Section. These days, the music I play and record as Plastic Section is like a more minimalist version of what I was doing with The Section (ie; raw rockabilly rhythm and blues inspired craziness) - but my earliest recordings were more in the style of glitchy lo-fi pop, using half-working keyboards and rhythm boxes, very cheap microphones and strangly shaped Japanese guitars...

For anyody interested, the results can be heard on my mini album, "A Simple Day," which can be sampled here:

A Simple Day

There are also videos for some of the songs, including Circles (later re-recorded by Basement Tape) and A Simple Day.

Live!

We had a great time playing at Fat Fest yesterday, thanks to the great crowd for being kind to us!

Fat Festival

Plastic Section will be performing live at Fat Festival in Bangkok on Saturday February 11, 2012 at 8:30pm, with Bank Redtwenty on drums.

We will also have special, limited edition hand made advance CDR copies of Plastic Section's 14-track debut album, availabe at the Panda Records booth at the festival.. see you there!

Here's the album cover (folded out):

More music

I've uploaded two songs from the upcoming Plastic Section album, dig it!

I've Got A Gig

Combination Special

More details about the album coming soon..

Music!

I'll be uploading Plastic Section songs to SoundCloud and posting links here, as well as links to YouTube videos and other stuff.. So to get the ball rolling, here's a song I recently recorded for an interesting project called A Part of You A Part of Me, created by Thai artist and filmmaker Tokin Teekanun: Clumsy!

Intro..

My name is Ben Edwards, and I'm a musician from Sydney, Australia, currently living in Bangkok, Thailand. I play guitar, sing and write songs with a Bangkok band called Basement Tape. Basement Tape have been together for about three years and have played hundreds of gigs at clubs, galleries and festivals, as well as support spots for international bands such as The Whitest Boy Alive and Tahiti 80. We have so far released a mini-album through Panda Records and a full-length album with Spicy Disc, as well as several self-released EPs.
I've set up this blog mainly to document the activities of my other music project, Plastic Section. I originally created Plastic Section as a sort of conceptual band for recording songs on my own and playing solo gigs. More recently, I have recorded and performed Plastic Section material in Bangkok with various friends and musicians from around the world. I plan to keep the band as a shape-shifting project where the music and songs retain a similar feel and concept, but where my musical collaborators might change at any time.
Plastic Section's sound is mainly rooted in weird rockabilly, old raw soul and rhythm and blues, rock n roll, punk and early 60s mod power pop, with odd detours into glitchy psychedelic strangeness.
Plastic Section is a lo-fi, DIY project - I write, record and produce all the music, make the videos and create the artwork for gigs and album covers.