Start Here

An overdue hello...

Welcome to anyone reading my posts here for the first time and thanks to all for subscribing to my Substack. If you’re a new reader, I can tell you that you are joining a number of other subscribers from 60 different countries all over Planet Earth, and if you’d like to help me further in my bid for World Domination, and you’re not already a subscriber, then please don’t forget to:

This post is really for anyone who is a new subscriber, I have noticed a significant uptick in my numbers so I figure I should do a bit of a “Hello", a bit about me and what I write about here. It’s overdue of course, but there you go.

I started this Substack a couple of years ago now, to replace my old blogspot page, which is still available to read here:

https://colinedwin.blogspot.com/

I started to find blogspot becoming a bit difficult and jumped over to here. In truth, I am still feeling my way around Substack, but it feels a lot more user friendly, easier to post on and much more interactive than my old blog used to be. Talking of interactive, you can even leave me a voicemail:

https://www.speakpipe.com/colinedwin

I do listen to every message, even if I don’t always reply, so if you have a burning question, or perhaps something you’d like to see me write about, feel free to leave a voicemail on the link above.

In case you don’t know me, I tell can tell you musically speaking, I am primarily a bass guitar player, but I also like to play the double bass as much as I can. I also enjoy programming rhythms, remixing and working with sound design and I have always been fascinated by the recording process. If you follow me here, you’ll be able to get updates about my musical ongoing musical activities.

I have been playing the bass since I was fifteen years old and despite all the challenges, I’m not likely to stop now. I am probably best known as the longtime bass player in the band Porcupine Tree, but I’ve worked with various other people too, I am pretty sure the picture above was taken whilst I was playing a gig with Tim Bowness, (…photographer unknown)

Currently, I am very much involved with the ongoing O.R.k. and also in bringing Voyage 35 to life, which is a new project myself and John Wesley brought about and which is dedicated to reviving the older repertoire of Porcupine Tree and playing it out in the live arena once again. I also have a number of other ongoing collaborations - including working with ambient guitarist Jon Durant as Burnt Belief, with Fractal Sextet, Italian musician Eraldo Bernocchi, dub producer Gaudi and others.

If you’d like to see a recent in depth interview which covers a lot of my past - a lot of which I’d forgotten about, please check out this video where I am chatting with the very friendly Claudio from Fairfax City Music:

I am lucky enough to have my own small studio and I do a fair few guest spots or sessions with various artists all over the world, so I also write about some of the other things I get involved in along the way.

Bass is generally speaking, an instrument that you tend to play with others, in an ensemble situation, but to keep my creativity going, and sometimes because I just can’t turn it off, I also record my own solo material, most of which you can find on my Bandcamp page. When I feel it’s appropriate, I’ll share my thoughts behind the music, but equally, I sometimes think the lack of any context or explanation can make for a more engaging piece of work, so things are sometimes presented without explanation.

Other than whatever is going on and coming up, occasionally I also like to share my thoughts about the music I am listening to, books, films and other things I enjoy which cross my path. Sometimes I also post about other subjects which I find interesting, like photography, AI, things that might have influenced me and occasionally the equipment I like to use.

I have had a long obsession with lomography and I like to snap things wherever I go. I often use these pictures as cover images for my solo material. My most recent solo release, The Place Of Definitions, uses a double exposed fisheye picture I took in a freezing cold Basel, when, some years ago, Endless Tapes made the video for Terminal_1: - I knew I’d find a use for it one day!

Below is a world famous site, I photographed a few years ago with some Redscale film and a fisheye camera. Snapped in the moment and super fast, on a cheap plastic camera. The results are variable but I think this one came out well.

For the last few years and looking forward, I have an ongoing commitment to decluttering my life, so quite regularly, you will also find here items I am moving on out of my possession, in what I call my Swedish Death Clean. These are all things from my musical past like posters, CD’s, vinyls, T shirts and souvenirs from gigs, which I no longer want to hold on to. After leaving home in my youth with all my possessions fitting in a very small car, I am slowly working towards a minimalist nomadic state, which means I need to think about clearing out a lot of the things I’ve accumulated in the last 30 odd years. No idea if I’ll get where I want to be, but it’s all in the trying.

I try to post more frequently and at greater depth and length here than I do on other places, but you’ll also find links to my YouTube channel, Facebook etc and some other recent things here: https://linktr.ee/colinedwin

Anyway, if you’ve read this far, and any or all of the above sounds of interest, then I’d like to invite you to:

Last thing, I’ll share a thought with you now, the recent desire to form Voyage 35 and get back into playing some of the old Porcupine Tree material again is really down to a combination of factors. Reconnecting with both John Wesley and Chris Maitland of course, then revisiting the music and realising it perhaps would be fun to play again, and also seeing a similar musical thread in things I have been doing right up to now. But I also can’t ignore the fact that, after thinking for a long time no one was really interested, I realised that the old Porcupine Tree music is still held in great affection by a sizeable number of people all over the world, and that realisation is mostly due to connecting with people through this Substack. So, I really should acknowledge that and say thanks for connecting!

Best to all,

Colin

*Everything bar my double bass, and a box of cassettes and records I left behind but let’s exempt those, because it doesn’t fit the picture I am painting in your head as you read this, it was a tiny metro, of course I had to make an extra trip to get my double bass.