What people are saying about Digressions…
Released: 17th September 2023
Digressions was originally released in October 2022 as part of the Werra Foxma Sub Club. This re-release, one year on, opens up the album to a wider audience – and also includes a couple of bonus tracks that weren’t on the original release.
It’s a collection of tunes that cover a range of styles and approaches, but all have that ‘gribbles sound’.
As part of the Werra Foxma release and promo, Graham wrote some supporting blurb for the Werra Foxma magazine:
I have a bit of a reputation for going on a bit. Never use one word when ten will do. And a natural effect of letting my mouth run and brain wander is I do tend to go off on the odd tangent.
This sort of spills over into my music. I’m firmly in the amateur musician file. I have a full time job, and often when I get time to sit and write music, my muse isn’t always with me. I remain in constant awe of folks in a similar position who turn out quality stuff at a rate of knots I can only dream of!
So I grab snippets where I can. I capture short little moments that I come back to again and again and let my fingers run and my ears wander and build around them. A sound here, a melody there and over time I form my tangential musical conversations, until hopefully at some point the disconnected doodlings become something that makes sense…sometimes it’s like I’m waiting for the tune to tell me what it is.
That way of working means I generally end up creating tunes that tend to stand alone. Little self-contained aural stories – where the narrative generally emerges during the writing. It’s fairly rare that I’ll sit down with a firm idea in mind and am able to see it through and write with design towards a predefined outcome. I’m not short of ideas and intention, it’s just my process doesn’t move that way.
So as I write, I digress. And I seem to end up with an eclectic mix of tunes – each different but somehow still me, so I’m told.
It is a source of wonder, amusement and, yes, pride that people seem to like my musical meanderings. And never more so than when Werra Foxma asked me to do something for them. Digressions was the result of that – previously only available thorugh the Werra Foxma Sub Club, but now rereleased with a couple of extra tracks from about the same period.
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April 2022
(updated September 2023)
Graham also wrote track notes, which can be found on the Bandcamp track pages – but an easier way to get them is the collection of track-by-track recorded commentaries that he did for YouTube based on those notes – you can listen to that collection here.
EPK files
If you would like listen, review, or play these tracks on your show you can download an archive of wav/mp3s of the tracks from the link below. This archive also contains other media such as cover images and logos.
Download Digressions EPK Files
Videos and other media
Reviews / Quotes
There are no reviews for Digressions yet.
Brief Bio
“ [a] British electronic music wizard” – Spinditty
“Vangelis and Moby have an unusual relationship and @gribbles is created” – Uncle Les
gribbles is Graham Thorpe, an amateur musician from the UK. He has been described as a “British electronic music wizard” – which makes him blush and laugh in equal measure.
Originally from Gainsborough in Lincolnshire, like many he was in a few bands in his youth, playing local gigs and getting a small following. Then, again like many, life took over and whilst still keeping his hand in, making music was put on the back burner.
He picked up music again in the late nineties with a big beat/found samples solo album that drew comparisons to Bentley Rhythm Ace, and into the 2000s doing Underworld inspired semi-improv live electronica as part of the duo Aztechnology. Aztechnology morphed into quiddity who produced music in a mix of styles from ambient, through to big thumpers – “Like Underwork and Fluke have a Warpy face-off”, as one person put it.
More recently, gribbles has been mainly working on solo projects with the odd collaboration, and has been putting out a mix of increasingly well received ambient, synthwave, electronica and EDM tunes.
Gribbles has been steadily gaining attention with music being included in two mainstream Playstation/PC games (Polybius and Moose Life) from the critically acclaimed independent software house, Llamasoft.
His track Requiem topped the most played chart on SkyLab Radio in August 2020, and ‘I Was’ was chosen for inclusion on the Hippie Drive label’s debut compilation album.
His latest full album ‘Digressions’ was released in late 2022 on Werra Foxma’s SubClub, and has just been re-released through his Bandcamp store.
Plans for the immediate future are to continue releasing singles/EPs on Bandcamp while working on a couple of longer form projects.
Current projects & distractions (Sept ’23)
- Creating some initial material incorporating recordings of old Lincolnshire Dialect poetry. Possibly an album, or to add individual tracks to other releases. I’m about half a dozen demos in… 😆 – Working Title: Lincolnshire Voices
- A hauntology project, inspires/based on my childhood growing up in Gainsborough. Not terribly original, but I think I need to get it out of my system 😉 . Working Title: The Past Is Another County
- A series of longer form, more ambient ramblings. The initial idea was to go DAWless for this, but I’m not sure I’m wired for that. Or I’ve just got *too* reliant on Ableton…. Toying with the idea of tying them together with a concept. Have one in mind, but just seeing if it’ll work… 😁
- I have a good backlog of demo tunes, so I may aim to do some sort of monthly release. It has been suggested I start a BandCamp subscription or resurrect my Patreon for this, but I’m not sure. Maybe…
None of the above have a firm timescale – I fit my music making in where I can. That said, if any labels are interested in anything, drop me a line – a potential release may help focus my attention… 😉
Useful Links for gribbles:
Places I’m most often around in….
Bluesky – @grahamgribbles-co-uk
Bandcamp – gribbles.bandcamp.com
Mastodon – @
gr******@ma*********.uk
(My antispam filter might obfuscate this – click to view!)
YouTube – @gribblesmusic
Streaming stuff…
Bandcamp | Spotify | Apple Music | Amazon | Tidal
Other links:
Facebook – @gribblesmusic
https://flow.page/gribbles
Get in touch
The quickest way to get in touch is to email me by clicking here
You can also DM me on Twitter or Mastodon (links above) – I tend to check them daily.
Subscribe to my EPK newsletter
I’ve set up a mailing list to send out EPKs and announcements of events such as live shows. If you’d like to be kept in the loop (and help me keep down on admin sending emails to lots of addresses), then you can subscribe by clicking here.
Rest assured that emails sent to this mailing list will be few and far between as I get releases out – unless I get struck by lightening and suddenly turn uber-prolific.
But even in that event – you can unsubscribe at any time, of course…
Discography
I’m aware that a lot of my old stuff will still be new to a lot of people. Of course, if you’re interested, you can have a shuffle round whatever is in your music player of choice, but for DJs/Bloggers/Vloggers etc I’ve also done a discography. I’m adding EPK pages to my back catalogue so you can use/review some older tunes if you feel so inclined and would like access to some resources for them. If you hear something you like and may want to use, but it hasn’t been EPK’d up yet – drop me a line and I’ll sort you out with the files…
Click here for the full (ish) gribbles discography
