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  A little background to this EP
  
  I have been writing songs since 1993 but for various life reasons I never managed to record and release anything until my album Gods in Brasil in 2019 which was quickly followed by 2020’s A New Kind of Fool. These two albums were made in incredible studios, with even more incredible musicians. The guys took me through the whole process and turned my songs into amazing polished diamonds.
  
  I moved to Rio in 94 taking my Les Paul with me, but when I got there the sheer quality and abilities of every musician I met, left me feeling too anxious to ever really join in. I worked those years in Rio in the music business and I wrote songs in secret at home, (Juanito Caminante, Electro von Carimbó among others) but never did anything with them.
  
  I went back to London and started my record label Whatmusic and then in 2004 having had my fill of the ‘business’ of music, I decided now was the time to make my album.
  
  I got my first ever bunch of gear (in the 90s I had a Tascam Portastudio which I loved) - I bought guitars, bass, drum machine, mics, and a G5 mac to run ProTools. I never got on with PT (still to this day it makes no sense to me) but I had Ableton Live 4 and that method of being able to record small sections and loop them really kick-started my creativity. I started to make demos of my songs from the 90s and also new ones at the time. However, the timing wasn’t right once again, I felt like I was making these songs in isolation and to be honest I had no idea if they were good or bad. And all I could hear were my mistakes or limited mixing and mastering skills. (Not to mention my then wife coming home from work every day asking me what I’d been doing all day loafing around with my music).
  
  I pretty much left the music world entirely, even stopped listening to music. I left some good friends behind because I didn’t want to go there anymore.
  
  Eventually, my friend Kassin persuaded me to finally make my album Gods in Brasil.
  
  I loved it, but that and the follow up took most of the money I’d saved over the years. But I still had around 60-70 songs in the ‘drawer’ mostly with recorded demos of varying degrees of quality. How on earth was I ever going to record all of them, with the cost and relatively late stage in life? To be honest it was stressing me a lot.
  
  When we were recording Gods at the Polish Radio Studio 2 in Warsaw I had to play these old demos to the band so they could learn them, tell me what key they were in or should be in - I had no idea! Alberto Continentino - ace bassist and arranger - said ‘oh you should release these demos you know…’ I remember thinking he was taking the piss, but his face was serious. That thought simmered away for more years (there’s a pattern here somewhere) until one day when I was preparing songs for a new album to be made in Rio my business partner Thomas Xavier who’s a generation and a bit younger than me, kept saying ‘I like your albums but they’re a bit too perfect for my taste and for millennials - we like things to be un-perfect’. Well, my demos were certainly unperfect but Thomas has a background in mastering and offered to take a crack at some demos I had that only existed today as MP3 - and he worked wonders. Pedro Montenegro played 3 of them on his Barkino show on Soho Radio. I was super nervous, but no one called me and said ‘Gary what the hell are you doing?’
  
  Little by little I started to like the idea that I would start paying real attention to these recordings and no longer treat them just as sketches for better musicians than me to play and interpret but that I should just go ahead and put them out there.
  
  Well, guys, these are the first 4 songs, written, recorded, arranged, mixed and played by me that I’ve let out into the world. But they are only the beginning. I now have around 100 songs in the drawer that need to be finished and released.
  
  So anyone expecting the supremely polished perfection of Gods or Fool will find something a little different. The major influences never change, mostly the classic Brasilian music I’ve listened to for 40 years but also I can see now some influences from my teenage post punk years, Pere Ubu, The Pop Group, and The Monochrome Set with their super catchy songs. And I really like this odd timeless mix of influences.
  
  Next up is an album of New Wave Samba! ... more
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