Little Hands Clapping – Milterlude (Or: Ensmallened music)

One of the reasons I didn’t post anything here for ages was because I was busy finishing off Little Hands Clapping’s full-length album, The Unbroken Wave.

The album – which you can download for free – is based on a live electric set Tom and I played a few times with a drummer, David Christie, and as such isn’t Small Music. Live, it was a sequence raw frenetic surf-inspired instrumentals, while the recorded arrangements all involve multiple loud guitars and layers of percussion.

But we thought a series of short, fast complicated surf-prog might be a bit exhausting without breaking it up and varying the pace. I’ve always admired albums with little interludes or linking passages, and reoccurring themes. This may be a symptom of having come of age in the late-90s – At The Drive In’s prog-influenced post-hardcore masterpiece Relationship of Command uses interludes to break up the assault of the main songs, and Kid A by Radiohead and 13 by Blur both make excellent use of interludes.

Anyway, on the LHC album, the interludes take the form of shorter tracks, or fade-outs.

One is an ambient thing involving samples of me playing a jew’s harp. Another is a standalone track which introduces a couple of the themes contained in the next song. In a couple of cases we did little remixes of other tracks on the album.

Milterlude is a short reprise of Milton Street, highlighting parts which were really fun to listen to on their own but a bit buried in the mix of the “main” song. The badly played bongo, a swannie whistle choir, a cheeky organ vamp… they all get their little moment here.

Here’s Milton Street, the track the parts originally came from. Milterlude is a sort of ensmallened version of Milton Street, with a miniature structure, the big drums and amped-up guitars done away with, the smaller instruments to the fore, and a lighter touch overall.