In the 5 years the Tories shared a coalition with the Lib-Dems, those forced by circumstance of ideologically driven cuts to services and welfare had to turn to food banks to feed their families, and in fact, in 2015, the year of the next general election, over 1 million families were being fed through the food-bank charities. Newspapers told stories of people dying after the government took away their disability benefits, leaving them unable to feed themselves or heat their homes. A disgrace.

On 7th May 2015, Scotland voted overwhelmingly for the welfare-protecting, migrant-welcoming, NHS-defending, Trident-abandoning Scottish National Party. The majority of the UK, however, voted for another 5 years of Conservative Party austerity – a sickener for Scots already heartbroken at 2014’s Independence referendum. With Clegg out of the way, Cameron, now with no guard rails (such as they were), announced plans for an in/out referendum on the European Union—and we know how that turned out.

For the next term, Chancellor George Osborne laid out plans for another £8 billion in welfare cuts, and the Tories clearly had no plans to curtail austerity, even while the richest got richer, and people in dire need of support and care were left without it.

How on earth does this relate to Too Many Fireworks, or this release?

At the time, I was playing guitar in the prog-post-rock band, The Frozen North. I had collected an embarrassing array of effects pedals, and in my Mogwai, Godspeed, MBV obsessions, I loved nothing more than spending some time in our rehearsal room alone just making noise.

The evening following the election, I stayed late after rehearsal and expressed my sheer frustration, disappointment, and anxiety with noise, feedback and effects while recording some of the improvising. From the 37-minute session, I cut the best 13 minutes, called it Shark, and released it as a single on the label to raise money for the food bank in my home town of Airdrie.

While of course attractive to only a very niche audience, I nevertheless felt strongly about doing something, anything, that I could do. In the end, we raised £143 from the single across its various releases and gave it to the food bank. Given the abstract noise of the track, I imagine some of that was donation.

Still, I’m quite proud of it. It feels like a different life, when I had 2 huge cases of pedals and some other bits and pieces, and a room in which to destroy my hearing. In the “liner notes” on the label’s website, the single credit read: rage, anger, disappointment, disillusionment, hope, optimism, belief and guitars: Neil Milton

Trussell continues to raise money for food banks in the United Kingdom.

Shark was released on digital download on May 15th, 2015, and we gave it the catalogue number 2mf019. You can listen to the single here

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In the mid-2010s, while I played in The Frozen North, the Polish music industry held several fairs in and around Warsaw. The weekly listings supplement Co Jest Grane 24, distributed with the daily newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza, organised the most famous event: a national music fair at the Palace of Culture and Science. Over time, some smaller independent music fairs began to spring up.

For a few years, Too Many Fireworks took out a stall at several of the fairs, including one of the more popular, held in the garden of the music bar, Eufemia. At the time, we had only a few physical releases remaining from the old days, and even fewer that Polish audiences would have recognised, so we used the opportunity less to sell records and more to introduce ourselves to the Polish market and build friendships — and boy, did we.

Mateusz

It was a beautiful, sunny August afternoon. A girl I was a little crazy about had visited our stall earlier, and it had subtly become clear she wasn’t into me at all. The stall was having a poor day, stuck – where we were – at the far end of the fair. I wanted to go home. One of the few visitors we had that afternoon was a quiet, bearded lad named Mateusz who had an album he wanted people to hear.

Mateusz Franczak was unknown to me at the time, which, given how much he’d been doing in music in Poland, was a little unforgivable. Still, this former saxophonist and talented improvisationalist, and maybe the kindest bloke in Polish music, had recorded his first solo album earlier that year in what he recently described to me as lonely nighttime recordings in the countryside, at a summer cottage overlooking a lake.

During our brief meeting at the fair, Mateusz handed me Long Story Short, a CD wrapped in a paper sleeve featuring a photograph of a zebra lit by flash against a beautiful sunset, and asked me to have a listen. I had recently parted ways with the first Polish band on Too Many Fireworks, a Lublin-based outfit, Plug&Play, and at the time, the only band making records for the label was my own, so I was open to new artists. Nevertheless, this chance meeting with Mateusz surprised me, and I had to shake myself out of the funk that my earlier romance-related disappointment had caused. I probably made some interested but, ultimately, non-commital noises about listening later with no real expectation that Mateusz would become a key fixture of Too Many Fireworks’ Polish adventure.

Long Story Short

Mateusz describes the album as ethereal and dreamy. I remember my first impression being how moving it was, soaked as it is in an ambient bath of reverb. I didn’t know it at the time, but retrospectively, Long Story Short was exactly the album I was looking for, for Too Many Fireworks. In Mateusz’s songs, there are shades of Bill Callahan, Will Oldham, and most importantly for me, David Pajo. Though there is no obvious melodic connection between Long Story Short and Papa M’s Live from a Shark Cage, Mateusz’s album opener, Lazing, put me in the same emotional room as I was when I first heard Drunken Spree.

Much later, I asked Mateusz how he recorded the album, and it was with an entirely minimalist set-up. He used only his favoured 1994 American Fender Stratocaster and a compact Roland GC-405 amplifier, which had previously only been used for practising at home, though it turned out to have a pretty interesting sound that worked for the record.

Present participles

The titles of the album are all one-word present participles. Some seem to be taken from lyrics, others from the mood of the song itself, and others still may be less literally connected to the music. As such, I wonder if the titles are related to the feelings of recording the record itself. When I asked Mateusz if there was something from the recording of the album that only he remembers, he told me there was an underlying sense of excitement and free-flowing improvisation. I do think this came through in my first listen.

Listening to the record now, I am struck by how beautiful it is in its darkness and the feeling of it being just out of reach. From Lazing‘s lilting melody to the squealing feedback on Moving, the record sways between delicate and fierce and it can get loud. In Crawling, there are strikes of distorted guitar that hit like a bell, among squalls of feedback that feel like a more consonant distant cousin of Gang of Four’s Love Like Anthrax.

Long Story Short was the first of several albums Mateusz would feature on for Too Many Fireworks. We released the record on CD and digital download on April 15th, 2016, and we gave it the catalogue number 2mf020. You can listen to the album here

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A fortuitous coincidence accompanied my move from Glasgow to Warsaw in 2010. Having then recently bought a piano, a set of strings samples, and Apple’s Logic Pro, I had been playing with modern-classical and ambient music. Following in the footsteps of Icelanders Jóhann Jóhannsson and Ólafur Arnalds, I began exploring life away from the guitar. At the same time, Poland celebrated the bicentenary of Fryderyk Chopin’s birth. With so much of Chopin’s music to enjoy, I became a little obsessed that year. I was a regular at the Warsaw Philharmonic, and from May through September, I spent every weekend in Łazienki park, where, under a large statue of the composer himself, concert pianists from around the world would perform Chopin’s music to a delighted audience every Sunday.

Over the following several years, I began taking piano lessons with a local teacher from the British School. I chose the British school to find my teacher, as I was able to then sit exams each year with the Associated Board of Royal Schools of Music. My journey ended in 2013 when, during a football match, I broke an elbow and only just scraped through my grade 4 six weeks later. In a weird twist of fate, I couldn’t play guitar for a while with my broken elbow, but my cast was set in such a way that I could easily strum my guitar. That broken bone would lead me back to delay and distortion pedals in a big way, but those are stories for the future.

Variations of Chopin

Before all of that, though, in the autumn of 2012, I invited several ambient, electronic, and modern-classical musicians to help me create the collection of contemporary interpretations of Chopin’s music that became 2mf013, Variations of Chopin, released on May 13th, 2013.

The album opens and closes with 24 Preludes op. 28: no. 7 in A major: Andantino. The first interpretation is my own straight performance, albeit soaked in reverb. Clem Leek’s version closes the record with a beautiful bath of piano, violin, and ambient washes of sound.

When I invited friends to be involved, I had no idea what the record would become. I certainly didn’t expect Miaoux Miaoux’s exhilarating, pumping electronic interpretation of 2 Nocturnes op. 55: no. 1 in F minor, nor deSelby’s beautiful classical guitar recording of Fryderyk Chopin’s 3 Nocturnes op. 9: no. 2 in E flat major. Ensemble Thing provided a superlative, jazzy performance of the Waltz in D flat major, Op. 64, No. 1, which I still can’t quite believe when I hear it today.

Other ambient interpretations filled out the record with music that tugged on the heartstrings, from Antonymes, Good Weather for an Airstrike, and Now Wakes the Sea, among others.

Other Notes

Variations of Chopin was the first physical release to come from Too Many Fireworks since the hiatus in 2006, and as such, we looked at ways to make it pop. Ekopaks replaced the jewel cases we used on earlier releases. To design the artwork, I asked Polish illustrator Justyna Kowalska to create her own interpretation of the composer. She chose to include the willow tree, something almost synonymous with Chopin, here in Poland.

I will come on to talk about Laeto from Dundee, Scotland, later in this series, however, at the time of this record, the band’s drummer Robbie Cooper was fighting a rare and aggressive form of cancer. To support Robbie, all profit from Variations of Chopin was donated to Robbie to help during that time. Robbie tragically died almost a year later on the 23rd April, and he is still very much missed by friends and colleagues. The record, such as it is, is still dedicated to him.

You can listen to Variations of Chopin here

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On the 21st of January, 2002, a Glasgow post-punk band that had passed swiftly through the dark tunnels of indie pay-to-play hell to find itself in the city’s welcoming DIY scene, launched their debut e.p. with a show at the 13th Note Cafe/Bar in Glasgow. The band’s name was Troika. Its guitar player was a short fellow with a love of Fender guitars and post-rock music. He, for his sins, was me.

That evening was notable for several reasons, not least that someone mugged me shortly before I took the stage – though that’s a story for later. Primarily, though, the evening was important as the launch of Troika’s Missing Passport e.p. gave birth to a small organisation that was to take over my life for many years to come: my record label, too many fireworks.

anniversary

The 21st of January 2027 will see the 25th anniversary of the show, the e.p. and the label, which came to an end during the pandemic when I returned to the camera. The last, and most likely final, too many fireworks release was the Without You b/w You Are The Summer single by Pop-up Books.

With 32 catalogue numbers, one shared release, a club night, a film music event series, a short-lived TEDx clone for the DIY music industry, several collaborations and artist features, and one tattoo; too many fireworks had an exciting life funded almost exclusively by a succession of day jobs through the years.

Over the next 32 weeks, I’m going to share a catalogue number from the label, my memories, and I hope those of the artists that made it happen, whether from Scotland, England, Iceland, or Poland.

As I’m waiting for pictures, memories, and other bits and pieces from some of the artists, I decided to start with one of my own records from over the years, the 2018 e.p. Singing As You Leave.

Singing As You Leave e.p.

I wrote and demoed the title track of the record about two years earlier. David Cameron had resigned after his gamble to quell the Eurosceptic rebellions within the Tory party with an in/out referendum on the EU. As he finished his statement outside Downing Street, and still mic-ed up, he turned, made his way back to the iconic black door, and infamously sang a little ditty to himself before the microphones caught him saying, with some sense of washing one’s hands of something, right.

I had been listening to a lot of Superchunk, so I think a little bit of that crept in, in both the righteous anger and the arrangement. Still really enjoy listening to that guitar solo, but as I recorded it on a Vox AC30 in an apartment block in central Warsaw, I can’t imagine my neighbours loved it.

This wasn’t the earliest song written for the record, though, by a long way. I wrote Bridge Will Burn after a break-up around 2015, when I was playing in the Frozen North. This song appeared elsewhere later, but this version was recorded direct to tape in the band’s rehearsal room. Talking of the Frozen North, the band’s violinist, Aga Olek, played violin on Bird Sanctuary. I remember the only note I gave her was that it had to be scratchy.

Local Fan

My favourite song on the record is my earnest thank you to my dad. Growing up in Airdrie in the 80s, rather than Rangers or Celtic, my dad brought my brother and me up to support his first love, our local team, Airdrieonians. I’m a die-hard fan to this day. I wanted to write my dad Local Fan in the way David Scott from the Pearlfishers had written his dad, My Dad the Weatherfan. The song opens with one of my favourite childhood memories of supporting Airdrie, Stevie Gray’s superlative goal away to St. Johnstone at McDiarmid Park on a beautiful, sun-scorched day.

Not long before recording the 4 demoed songs, I’d bought a Rickenbacker 330, and while the Jaguar and Telecasters were the main guitars on this e.p., the Rick makes an appearance on all songs recorded at my place, even if found lower in the mix. Talking of the recording, this was the first record I used the JHS Colour Box with the EMI Neve chip, giving the overdriven sound of the Beatles’ Abbey Road desk.

The record came out on digital download, streaming, and on cassette tape on the 14th September 2018. It had the catalogue number 2mf029, and I straight-up nicked the Cooper font that the Beach Boys used for Pet Sounds. The cassette came bundled with a small button badge bearing the simple but direct message, Fuck Brexit.

You can listen to the Singing As You Leave e.p. here

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We Sink Ships

From, I would guess, 2008 to late 2010 Heidi and I took on that name as our identity for a mixed-media collaboration that would see us exhibit our photographs and those of others, produce a weekly radio show, collaborate with others to make a short film, and later for it to have its premiere at 2010’s International Arts Festival in Edinburgh. In an odd twist of fate, my turn to compose music for the collaboration would lead me away from photography and back to music for the following decade, though I did find my way back to my camera eventually.

In the late noughts, as social media was only becoming popular, and the internet was still in its sullen teenage phase, Heidi and I devised our plan to host an online gallery that would operate much like a physical gallery in that there would be an exhibition for some time, then it would come down and another would take its place. All the while, Heidi and I would be working on our own art to intersperse the guest exhibitions with ones of our own.

An Organic, Glacial Aesthetic

Our art was simple with an obvious influence of the music we were listening to at the time, a great deal of Scottish and Icelandic music. The art often took on an organic, glacial aesthetic. I made photographs with my Leica M8 and a body cap attached with a pinhole laser cut into it. Heidi used a Nikon DSLR and a selective focus gadget called a Lensbaby. We would base our exhibitions on a theme, and in the beginning, half of the photographs would come from me and the others from Heidi. It was later that we began experimenting with digital double exposures, overlaying my photo with Heidi’s or vice versa. After some time online, our debut two exhibitions, Talvi/Winter and Before You Wake were printed and displayed in the 13th Note cafe for our first physical gallery show.

As the project progressed, we invited friends, colleagues, and people we admired to exhibit their work on our little online space. We met with Glasgow’s online radio station, Radio Magnetic, and joined their roster. We recorded every week, sometimes inviting guests to DJ, other times choosing top 5 lists to trade back and forth. At the end of each month, I began a too many fireworks radio show which directly led to the return of the label from hiatus. It was through this radio show we first met and became friends with worriedaboutsatan, Erased Tapes’ Robert Raths, Ólafur Arnalds, Nils Frahm, and Codes in the Clouds. Our friendship with Codes in the Clouds would indirectly lead to my work with VLMV 6 or 7 years later.

We Sink Ships: Elements

As one decade turned into another, Heidi and I began what became our final project, Elements. For each of the classical medieval elements, Air, Earth, Fire, Water, and Aether, Heidi and I would create an exhibition. I would soundtrack each exhibition with what were my nascent attempts at modern classical music. And our friend Rhys Baker composed a poem to accompany each element. Later, a new acquaintance, Matty Ross, would weave our photographs with his own and with archive film footage creating an evocative film with the classical elements and technology at its core.

We Sink Ships is a project I am proud of and now just over 15 years on, I do feel it ended far too soon, though it has to be said, it did so as a result of my move to Poland and my drift towards a solo musical project. I do regret that we did not continue with the potential it may have had.

Below are some of my favourite pictures made by We Sink Ships, and you can see some of the other exhibitions we made and curated on the excellent retrospective website Heidi created on Cargo Collective.

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Stanley Kubrick

Unlike many of my pals at school, I wasn’t a fan of graphically violent movies. Gory horror movies were not my thing. Classic 80s slasher flicks were, obviously, right out. Nevertheless, I was obsessed with Stanley Kubrick. 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Dr. Strangelove led me, somewhat unwisely, to The Shining – a movie I love to this day. It was the adaptation of Anthony Burgess’s novel A Clockwork Orange that gave the 14-year-old me pause due to the controversial scenes of “ultra-violence” reported within.

Nevertheless, I borrowed a VHS from a friend, and flying below the radar of my parents, as a cossetted wee lad, I set out to watch the spree of juvenile delinquency of Alex and his gang of Droogs. So much of the film is iconic – from the oft-Halloween-worn costume of Alex, to the Nadsat slang that gave many a 90s band its name. All that said, I don’t remember being particularly shocked by what, already in 1995, seemed a little tame in comparison.

Revisiting the Korova

Rewatching in 2025, the depictions of rape and violence now seem almost quaint in comparison to grim torture-porn TV shows like, for instance, The Handmaid’s Tale. Though Malcolm McDowell’s simultaneously joyous and depraved, naive and calculating, depiction of Alex is a stand-out role across all of cinema.

I must give the superlative soundtrack a special mention. From a brutal and chilling use of Singin’ in the Rain, through a number of Deutsche Grammophon recordings, to the inimitable Wendy Carlos on her Moog synthesisers; it is spectacular from beginning to end.

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During the presentation, the speakers introduced the audience of around 30 to different forms of art and performance of resistance. Performances that provoked the intervention of the oppressors were particularly moving. Sadly, I don’t remember who the artist was as mentioned, however, on one occasion, performers locked themselves in a cage, forcing the oppressors to symbolically free the Palestinians.

Razan Akramawi

Dani Abulhawa introduced the audience to the performance art of Razan Akramawi. In her performances, she seeks to take control in environments in which she would be controlled.

In The Scarecrow, Akramawi acts as a positive element, protecting the Palestinian Territory. Standing, as she does, in the East Side of Jerusalem in Sheikh Jarrah, an area that is controlled by Israeli occupation forces the artist shows a message of resistance. The Jewish man who intervenes in the project is unknown to the artist.

Another performance, The Gate, took place across the old town of Jerusalem. Akramawi and friends used their bodies as barriers similar to the checkpoints Palestinians have to pass through every day, opening and closing the gate at random with no obvious logic, and denying Israelis movement in the manner the occupiers deny movement to the Palestinians. The defiant, senseless act and the clear bewilderment and discomfort of the Israelis provide a staggering, moving statement of repression and resistance.

The Freedom Theatre, Jenin

As the presentations continued, Sofia Nakou spoke at length about the community-based Freedom Theatre in the Jenin refugee camp, which was recently raided and daubed with the star of David. The theatre’s artistic director, Ahmed Tobasi, was taken into custody though released, and Mustafa Sheta and Jamal Abu Joas Sheta are still being detained. Over 1000 luminaries of British theatre have signed a letter calling for their release. In her presentation, Nakou discussed The Gaza Monologues which continue to be performed and filmed across the world and are indeed now being added to.

In 2 months, Israel has killed several artists in Palestine, and while not mentioned in the talk, I wanted to end with paying tribute to the murdered poet Refaat Alareer, and a video of Brian Cox performing his poem, If I Must Die.

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Cartier-Bresson, Meyerowitz, Webb, Winogrand: as exceptional as they are, they are unable to see the future, but they did learn to predict it. This talent for anticipation may be innate, an instinctive sense honed through childhood, but it can be learned. One only needs to study the patterns and rhythms of the street to develop an awareness that feeds an intuition that supports anticipation.

The Psychology of Anticipation

In the sense of street photography, to anticipate is to recognise a future moment to allow time to be in the right place at the right time to make the photograph. To do so means recognizing patterns and predicting movement. Unique occurrences that unfold in the street are rare, so the photographer begins to unconsciously recognise cause and effect. Whether comedy or tragedy, an aggressive collision between 2 people will give rise to some drama. A missed bus sparks a commuter’s gesture of frustration. A child playing with a ball in a busy street? That ball is going to find its way under someone’s feet. The potential is endless, it only takes some experience to develop intuition and a gut instinct that something may transpire.

In a past issue of the Photos, mostly newsletter, I wrote about the French concept of disponible, of being open and receptive to what might occur. Anticipation is an important part of this, letting one’s eye be open to all possibilities, waiting for something to happen and trying not to dismiss or second guess a situation. To notice and wait for development, attention to detail is key.

Honing Anticipation

Anticipation doesn’t come easy though it can be learned and developed. As I have noted, a vital aspect is to become familiar with the patterns and repetition of the street. This is, to some degree, synonymous with understanding human nature and the behaviour, both rational and irrational, that we exhibit in public. Beyond that, though, it is helpful to learn to see beyond the obvious. A situation may seem run-of-the-mill, completely without interest, but then some small detail or action turns the scene on its head. So often something may catch the eye and the scene will not develop as one may hope. So what? What is lost? The photographer was attentive to the possibility that something may unfold, and in those situations when it does? Perfect!

It is crucial to pay attention. Elsewhere I’ve written about staying alert when photographing in the street. Avoid podcasts, music, or anything else that may divert attention away from the street. Look for stories that may occur. See something and imagine what might transpire. In this way, one can be quick to make a decision and step into the space to make the photograph. While it may seem unlikely, a comparison can be made of Garry Winogrand’s photography with the paintings of his contemporary, Jackson Pollock. Both artists are at the centre of their art. Pollock, literally standing on his canvas and dripping the paint. To view Winogrand’s photographs is to feel like you are in the midst of the frame. He was a master of anticipation.

Timing is Everything

Often street photographers will talk about the importance of timing. Richard Kalvar often analyses a frame by imagining what it may have been a second before or a second after. Criticism of much of the mediocre street photography out there tends to rest on a frame made a fraction too early or a fraction too late. Considering a photograph made at 1/1000s, Joel Meyerowitz notes that in 1s, 1000 photographs could have been made. Was the one captured the right one? In the documentary, The Impassioned Eye, Henri Cartier-Bresson illustrates that oft-misunderstood decisive moment, oui, non, oui, non, OUI! Everything falls together in that fraction of a second then is gone.

To predict and then catch that fraction of a second, then, is what anticipation in street photography is all about. Foreseeing and then positioning oneself for that optimal moment to trip the shutter, that moment of heightened emotion, action, drama, comedy, or irony. To spot things as they begin, then predict how they may transpire, how movement, action, gesture, and emotion will affect the scene, that is anticipation.

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As I sit here warm, comfortable, and safe, I can’t begin to imagine myself in the place of the civilians in Gaza who have suffered this disgusting collective punishment. Those who have lost whole families. People who have been forcibly displaced. People who may never see their homes again. I can, however, pay tribute to the Palestinian journalists and citizen journalists who have shown the world the truth of what has been happening in Gaza. Many of those have been killed, in fact, just today as I write this, the CPJ has announced this to be the deadliest time for journalists in modern warfare.

Before the Photos, Some reading

I began to write at length my thoughts on the shameful rhetoric coming from much of the Western media and politicians, but I don’t have it in me, and frankly, others have written much more eloquently and informatively about Israel and Palestine than I could do. I will direct readers to Verso Books which has made available 6 titles for free. Ilan Pappé’s Ten Myths About Israel is an excellent primer on Zionism and Israel’s occupation of Palestine. Palestine Speaks, edited by Mateo Hoke and Cate Malek, centres the voices of Palestinians themselves. Not included, but worth finding is Pappé’s excellent conversations with Noam Chomsky, titled On Palestine.

Since the inevitable mowing of the lawn began in Gaza, I have been following and documenting the Polish-Palestinian protests. These photographs as a selection of my work up until the 5th of November 2023, with other photographs from the 18th November and onwards still to be developed. There will inevitably, and heartbreakingly, be a follow-up.

Free Palestine!

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Where 2 years before, Derek Jarman illustrated his fictionalised retelling of the life of Caravaggio by representing the baroque artist’s paintings as scenes in his film, in the 1988 autobiographical masterpiece Distant Voices, Still Lives, Terence Davies portrays long, silent scenes reminiscent of family photographs, all gathered together in a vivid scrapbook of working-class family life. In the first of these photographic scenes, the camera pushes into a photograph of the absent patriarch on the wall. Depicted by Pete Postlethwaite in the film, the photograph is nevertheless a picture of Davies’ own father. It is a haunting touch in this remarkable expression of sadness.

Distant Voices, Still Lives is a diptych of 2 films, Distant Voices and Still Lives. Shot 2 years apart, with the same cast and crew, the movie is a captivating tableau of sadness, love, anger, goodness, and hate. In a film that resembles a daydream of snatches of memory summoned out of order, there is little narrative. This is the story of a working-class Liverpool family during and after the Second World War. Mum, portrayed by Freda Dowie is a gentle, good soul though she and her 3 children live in fear of the brutal, abusive violence of Postlethwaite’s father figure. Song plays an important role in the film with moving, stirring pre-rock-and-roll pub singalongs used as text and subtext to the lives of the children, seemingly destined to repeat the dynamics of their childhood. This film is, indeed, a masterpiece.

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