Cloud cuckoo land

A new video for a pacifist song about imagining better futures. And a dream-come-true day for the singing half of Songwritings, who has a new novel out in the US.

Hello!

’Cloud cuckoo land’ is a song we first shared a while back, but this is a new video for it. Once again, we’ve made it by trawling the Internet Archive for public domain footage, then splicing it together to echo the mood of the song (often in ways that surprise ourselves more than anyone). In this case, it’s a 1943 film featuring Daffy Duck and a world leader you’ll recognise.

We like to think the little fella clapping at the end is the same guy as in the Songbird video we shared earlier this year.

In other news…

Kate’s book is out today in the US!

Kate’s novel AND HE SHALL APPEAR is a dark academia tale, so you can expect creepy cloisters, arcane secrets, and characters who are too clever for their own good. Think Saltburn meets The Secret History (but without the bathwater). In the story:

A working class narrator arrives at Cambridge University feeling awkward and out of place. So he’s delighted to fall in with Bryn Cavendish: wealthy socialite, wild partier and amateur magician. However, things turn sour when the narrator starts to suspect that his new friend’s charms are literally occult.

Years later, the narrator is called back to Cambridge. And, back in the city, he fears that the ghosts of his past – and of his old friend Bryn – are waiting for him.

Above is the US cover. Booklist called this ‘An eerie, deeply disturbing tale that is as mesmerizing as it is provocative’ – and gave it a starred review!

The novel is out in the US on 1 Oct. UK readers will have to wait until January for their copy, but can absolutely pre-order from any of the outlets listed here…

Nick’s book is about to hit Canada!

In a vain effort to compete in the glamorous book news stakes, Nick is off to Toronto in November to talk about his book The Road to Hell at the Design Thinkers Conference. More widely, the talk is about following creative impulses for their own sake and seeing where they lead – a spirit at the heart of Songwritings.

If we have any readers in Toronto, please consider coming along. And for readers elsewhere, you can buy The Road to Hell in various places, including a big shop called Amazon – and there’s a Kindle edition coming out soon.

All of the above means we’ve not had loads of time to create music lately. But the spirit of this slow-burning project is that music will bubble up in its own sweet time.

In the meantime, we’re building up a nice little library of videos, ranging from the retro-futuristic I delight in you to the fever-dream surrealism of Been dreaming about you lately. You can fall down our YouTube rabbit hole here.

Thanks as ever for watching, reading, listening…