Hey. Glad you could drop by. Have a seat and a cuppa.
I'm an eclectic-indie-pop-rock-classical-crossover kinda guy (yeah, one of those...) from Berkshire, England. If you like achingly beautiful piano/string arrangements and theatrical melancholy, occasionally veering sideways into anachronistic electronic pop, then you've come to the right place.
My 'solo' recordings over the years have often seen me collaborating with many other singers and musicians, and this has led to the evolution of a separate piano trio project called Cherry Mint Koala, with the absurdly talented Tony Woollard on cello and Charlie Brown on violin. We've mostly reinterpreted my own song material thus far, with a few tasteful forays into WW1 marching songs and 70s disco.
Tony and Charlie also contributed to my covers album, 'European Dream', on which I explored the darker side of some classic Europop. You can find the YouTube videos for the taster tracks 'Saturday Night' and 'Ride On Time' on the Sound & Vision page.
Since then (well, Sept 2019) I seem to have accidentally launched an ongoing series of piano-based topical satire, mostly about everything sinister or stupid connected with Brexit and right-wing populism. You can find all this on the Topical Satire page, unsurprisingly.
Meanwhile, I appear to (quite steadily) be making a new album. Or two mini-albums, possibly. It's hard to be sure, these days. And there's an unexpected and curious video project underway for one of my favourite songs.
So: listen, watch, read, enjoy... And mine's an earl grey if you're making one.
It’s hard to know how to respond to the gravity of current events. The horror of what Putin and his military are doing is just so relentless, so brutal, so heartless. So many lives lost and millions displaced for his delusions of empire. So many outrageous lies told to brainwash his population and others around the world too.
So... Here’s a small piece of musical anger and defiance from me.
The first half of this segues some carefully chosen tunes by Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev and Mussorgsky.
The largely instrumental second half interweaves the Ukrainian National Anthem with Beethoven’s Ode To Joy - the anthem of Europe.
This is a reflective mash-up of the famous Bach Prelude No 1 in C major from Das Wohltemperirte Klavier together with a song which became especially resonant for many as the COVID pandemic took hold and we went into the first lockdown: You’ll Never Walk Alone (by Rodgers & Hammerstein, originally from 'Carousel').
I opened up the front of my trusty Yamaha piano to record this, so that the inner workings of it could be seen. I also used the ‘practice’ pedal throughout. This lowers a piece of felt between the hammers and strings so that the sound created has a heavily muffled quality. It also means you can hear the physical action of the piano mechanics far more clearly.
The Bach prelude also has a resonance of its own. In late October 1971, the UK House of Commons voted to approve the proposed membership of the European Economic Community. On returning to Downing Street afterwards that evening, the then PM Edward Heath played this Bach prelude on his clavichord to family and close friends; a poignant acknowledgement of our shared cultural heritage.
On Jan 31 2020 the UK left the European Union. At the end of the year, the transition period during which EU law still applied ended. At that point the recently struck Free Trade Agreement began to apply, but so much of what we benefited from as members was lost. The first few months of 2021 have seen continuing antagonism, with a row over vaccine supplies and the UK again threatening to break international law over the NI Protocol. The trade problems being outside the Single Market and Customs Union are becoming all too apparent.
I have made no secret of my opposition to Brexit, and the deal just struck - while clearly better than nothing at all and a framework that can be built on - paves the way for years of wrangling and renegotiation by successive governments. It will not close down the issue because politics is largely about economic and moral choices, and Brexit is a huge failing on both these counts. In time I hope we will come to undo some of the damage, but the UK may yet break up under the strain as Scotland and NI rightly consider their options. English Nationalism has made what it values clear enough.
So the past year has been one of immense stress and sadness in many ways, but I feel the message of both the pieces I've brought together here to be one of shared endeavour, friendship and understanding. May we cherish and stand up for these valuable things in the years ahead, however difficult it may be.
Much of my creativity over the past year and a bit has found an outlet in satirical mash-up songs recorded at home, quite often Brexit-related. I hadn't intended this to become a series, but seeing as a) it clearly has, b) I'm not likely to stop anytime soon, and c) a fair few people seem to like what I do, I figured these entertaining creations really deserved their own page on this website.
So, rather belatedly, they now have one. Click on 'Topical Satire' from the main menu and there you will find them all nestled together for warmth and moral support. Includes the latest addition from this US election month of Nov 2020: a reworked Sinatra classic to mark four passionate years of Trump & Brexit. The bastard celebrity hook-up of 2016 with so much to answer for! (I'm quite chuffed with how this one turned out.)
However, there is one recording I made earlier this year not on the page simply because it can't in any way be classed as 'topical'. That's my rendition of ABBA's 'Thank You For The Music', but with all the letters 'a' and 'b' swapped over in the lyrics.
Why, you may well ask? Well, I just thought it ought to be done by someone, somewhere, sometime. And once I get a stupid musical idea like that in my head, often the only way to stop it bugging me is to make it happen. The strange months of lockdown seemed to be the right time to bring it to life.
As fate would have it, a mere week or so later I suddenly landed on another two ABBA songs segued together as the ideal vehicle with which to poke fun at the Cummings Durham/Barnard Castle jaunt debacle (I Don't I Don't I Don't I Don't I Don't), which really wasn't convenient timing at all. But, c'est la vie.
MOOOVE FURTHER / DON'T SPREAD THE FEVER! (CORONA MONSTER MIX)
Toward the end of last year, I started recording a series of anti-Brexit songs at home with my phone unceremoniously gaffa-taped to the end of the piano. These mostly adapted existing tunes and melodies of all sorts and in some cases mashed up several within the same piece. Some of them used text directly lifted from the excellent Remainiacs podcast, which gave me a little niche fame on Twitter. (Very, very niche, tbh.)
I have intended to give them a page of their own on this website for some while, because they've been a massive part of my musical creativity lately. I'm sure I'll find time soon enough. (Ahem.)
Because they were appreciated by quite a few people, and because they were fun/cathartic to do, I also fully expected to be writing more political ones this year. Not least because the Brexit process hasn’t run its course (surprise!) even though we officially left the EU at the end of January.
And then the past month happened.
For a while I thought: I have to do something musical in response to this crisis. But how do you create an upbeat ’satirical’ song about a virus which is causing so much anxiety and suffering, as well as ruining people’s livelihoods? It’s a tough one to tackle.
But with plenty of time at home to ruminate these past few weeks (!) I finally came up with this medley, using the songs 'Move Closer’ (orig by Phyllis Nelson) and ‘Fever’ (Peggy Lee along with many others), with another well known melody thrown in over the latter for good measure.
It’s both serious and not-serious, and I do hope it makes you smile. Goodness knows we need to find things that will do that right now, for the sake of our mental well-being.
This is my radical reinterpretation of the stomping Italo house hit for Black Box back in 1989 (a track that got into choppy legal waters through its unauthorised sampling of Loleatta Holloway's 'Love Sensation').
My take on the track is a slowly unfolding thing of beauty, with a typically sumptuous lead vocal from regular collaborator Alexandra Howlett, previously heard on 'Luco' and 'The Up Shit Creek Blues'. Meanwhile, the Cherry Mint Koala guys - Tony Woollard and Charlie Brown - do their usual magic on the old strings. It's a slight edit of the opening cut from the 'European Dream' album.
The video is a simple affair (by my standards) involving a truckload of matches and not a lot else. Realising the pulse was approx one beat per second, I thought it would be quite effective to use this details to mark the passage of time through the song, and the stark image of matches on black background prove hypnotically effective. Sometimes, less really is more.
My new covers album 'European Dream' is out now as a download/stream. You can find it in all the usual online places, inciTunes, Spotify etc.
If you're one of those splendid types who like to support independent music stores, you can find it all right here on CD Baby.
The 12 track album features slightly sinister lead single 'Saturday Night', along with two previously released tracks from earlier EPs ('The Day Before You Came' and 'Dancing On My Own'). The remaining songs feature vocal collaborators both familiar and new, and a hefty dose of exquisitely arranged atmospheric melancholia, Northfield-style.
Swoonsome strings on several tracks are provided once more by my Cherry Mint Koala colleagues: Tony Woollard & Charlie Brown. Accordion on 'Voyage Voyage' and 'Asereje' is played by Martin White, founder of the delightfully unfathomable Mystery Fax Machine Orchestra. Guitar on 'Saturday Night' and 'Sexy Boy' comes courtesy of the ever appreciated Gareth Forster. Bass Guitar of Death on 'All That She Wants' and a few handy programming tricks elsewhere are provided by the never knowingly undersold Andrew Holdsworth.
Everything else is my responsibility.
The fine arty cover shot is from a photo by Simon Bennett on the shoot for the 'Saturday Night' video. It was gently tweaked into shape by Gary Collins for Absence/Presence.
Ride On Time (feat Alexandra Howlett) - originally by Black Box Saturday Night - originally by Whigfield All That She Wants (feat Ellen Jakubiel) - originally by Ace of Base Voyage Voyage (feat Rosaleen Donnan) - originally by Desireless The Day Before You Came - originally by ABBA What Is Love - originally by Haddaway Sexy Boy (feat Gareth Forster) - originally by Air Blue - originally by Eiffel 65 Self Control - originally by RAF (also Laura Branigan) Asereje (feat Alexandra Howlett) - originally by Las Ketchup Dancing On My Own - originally by Robyn Euphoria (feat Ellen Jakubiel) - originally by Loreen
(Normally, I release things through Bandcamp as well, but they don't allow covers to be sold through their platform. It's a cruel world sometimes.)
The homepage is dead, long live the homepage! Or something like that. My dear old website, idiosyncratically delightful as it was, had always been a bit clunky. I thought it about time to invest in something a little more stylish and swooshy, and more importantly something that actually works properly on a smartphone. (Because, well... duh!)
So, here we are people. At some point I'd like to add things like a 'collaborators' page, maybe make sheet music available, that kind of thing. I daresay there will be some new pictures along shortly (I seem to have more hair again). Being a little more user-friendly, I might actually feel inclined to update this blog more often too, though I'm still someone who prefers to focus on quality rather than quantity and I doubt that will change. I find it difficult to reflect and create when wired up to social media.
One of the cool features herein is the music player, which I've loaded up with a mixed up playlist of both Mark Northfield and Cherry Mint Koala tracks rather than all the albums in their normal running order (if you want to hear those in that way, you can go to my Bandcamp store). It was kinda fun putting that together, juxtaposing music from different parts of my life. You'll find the videos on that page too.
What's coming up soon? Well, a new single and album no less ('Saturday Night' and 'European Dream' respectively: yes, the long threatened/promised Europop covers project). I'm also going to be working on some short film composition again for the school of Acting at ArtsEd next month, and it was lovely to be asked again after my first foray into that territory last year. In the midst of all this, I'm also going to be moving to Reading (or thereabouts). It's all go around here.
If you like my stuff and you're not on my mailing list, please do sign up. I don't bombard people with emails, it's just to let people know about new things when they happen, and maybe the occasional giveaway too. The sign up thingy is just over there on the right.
