WE WILL create music with a sense of wonder: like the sound of
stars flying off the end of a wand or, if it were possible,
the sound of plucking a spider's web encrusted with dew drops.
Nothing less will do.
WE WILL convert the most magical aspects of life and nature into songs -
these include
i The evening wind blowing through grass in sand dunes
ii Shooting stars whizzing through the night sky
iii Cats, dogs, birds, and all the weird and wonderful creatures of the land air and sea
iv The sight of the Moon and Mars side by side, sitting on a lawn far from home, serenaded by crickets, frogs and cicadas
WE WILL set all our joy, memories, sorrow, disappointments and twilight
fantasies to melody.
WE REFUSE to be the loudest band ever.
WE REFUSE to be the tightest band ever.
WE REFUSE to be the sexiest band ever.
THE A-Z of Mediocre Rock Success will remain a total irrelevance to us.
POTS AND pans, comb and paper, banjos and garden gnomes are our shields
against the grey rock demons.
WE WILL create music to insulate and protect us and like-minded souls
from the horrors of line dancing, mullets, angst ridden foul metal music,
irritating ring tones, reality TV scum jesters and, most of all,
grim Red Bull fuelled townie Friday-night-fight cave dweller goblins.
Sound policies for a better world.
More about Soft Hearted Scientists and 'Wandermoon'
Soft Hearted Scientists describe their music as "kitchen sink psychedelia." They might be onto something: This is the sound of flower children with a mortgage. "Syd Barrett could get away with singing songs about goblins and gnomes," says singer/guitarist Nathan Hall. "Our brand of psychedelia features council tax and second hand cars as well as the usual psychedelic feelings of transcendence."
It also features the real-life locations that inspires the songs, from Nash Point Lighthouse to Garwnant Reservoir Forest Centre near Merthyr Tydfil, Bakewell Woods in Derbyshire and Ogwen Bank near Bethesda. "That's where it occurred to me that mountains might have a consciousness, a sense of judgment, and that it would take a lot to impress one," says Nathan. "That was one straaaaange day."
The album -- the band's fourth -- is named for Nathan's word for elevation and escape. "When the drudgery of life is biting I escape to beautiful places like Nash Point Lighthouse or a John Steinbeck book like Travels With Charley or the film 'Stand By Me.' They are all Wandermoon. It's everything important in life reduced to a single word."
The result is a joyous album about escape; a companion album named False Lights, concerning everything they're escaping from, be it urban overload, the media, paranoia, is planned. "Wandermoon is very much about the feeling of being on the run from the city to West Wales, shedding that skin of stress and feeling elated and removed from day to day reality but knowing that you cannot escape for long before the gravity police catch up with you -- jobs, bills, coalition governments, Jeremys Kyle and Clarkson -- all the things that can test you to your limits," says Nathan. "By the end of the album we hope people will feel they have been on a short holiday to a place they cannot put their finger on exactly, but a place they want to revisit."
Formed in Cardiff in 2001 as a duo-plus-guests, the band has grown to a four-piece comprising Nathan plus multi-instrumentalists Dylan Line and Paul Jones, bassist Mike Bailey and occasional drummer Frank Naughton, who produced Wandermoon. When he's not around, they have their own ways of making percussion: "We've used everything from stamping and ping pong balls to face slaps," says Nathan.
Their unique sound is reflected in an equally unique manifesto. Its commandments include: "WE WILL create music with a sense of wonder: like the sound of stars flying off the end of a wand or, if it were possible, the sound of plucking a spider's web encrusted with dew drops. Nothing less will do." On this album, which culminates in the hallucinogenic, ten-minute Westward Leading, it's something they've achieved.
