News - Phil Gray

UnclePhil’s TRAVELLING HOME ep RELEASED!

Phil Gray — Tue, 20 Sep 2022 09:05:12 +0000

Hey all! UnclePhil’s new EP, TRAVELLING HOME is now available to listen to on Spotify, or download from Amazon, or purchase as an actual CD (£5.00 all in) via contact through replying to this email, FB Messenger, carrier pigeon or any other method of communication that we have in common.

It features the Cajun-flavoured title track, plus ‘Cotton Through And Through’ a blues/ragtime acoustic guitar number about being from Lancashire; ‘Large Head George’ about my fictitious childhood (which is a follow-on to my Monster song of a few years back), and ‘Home’, a country-influenced reflective ballad on the nature of home and what it means to me and others.

I hope you like it!

And here’s the Spotify link for you https://open.spotify.com/album/5eEqInAoghlHlug1dmZYB8

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HIP DEEP – new UnclePhil album released today

Phil Gray — Mon, 25 Apr 2022 19:57:42 +0000

This missive is to inform you that UnclePhil’s latest album HIP DEEP is released today on GratisFool Records.

It is available for you to purchase as a download at Amazon.

It is available for you to listen to on Spotify.

Or (and my particular favourite) it is available to purchase from us as an actual CD! If you are interested in buying a copy, please let us know by replying to this email, or any other means of communicating with us that you have at your disposal. The cost, as ever, is £8.00 plus £2.00 p&p, a nice round tenner in total. The means of payment can be determined on an individual basis.

For this, you get sixteen brand new tracks of blues, funky dance tracks, yearning ballads and arrant nonsense, in roughly equal measures. Plus a finely designed album cover inlay, with copious sleeve notes and track details. UnclePhil at his best, we think.

Hoping to hear from you soon, and please send us any feedback on the music and lyrics on the album, as it is greatly appreciated. Cheers from UnclePhil and GratisFool Records.

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New UnclePhil track: Coco Mi No Coco

Phil Gray — Tue, 12 Apr 2022 15:42:25 +0000

UnclePhil’s sixth studio album, HIP DEEP, is released on 25 April, and here is a small foretaste for you.

Below is a link to a YouTube video accompanying the opening track from the album, Coco Mi No Coco. Caribbean rhythms, group harmonies and spiky guitar underpin a tale of love lost and regained. And you can dance to it!

The video is released at 12:00 on Sunday 10th April https://youtu.be/JyCsUMxy8fg

Hope you all enjoy it and will purchase, download or at least listen to the new album. All the best from your pals here at GratisFool Records.

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UnclePhil new release 8 November 2021

Phil Gray — Mon, 11 Oct 2021 08:44:36 +0000

UnclePhil has a new 7-track mini-album, SHERRY BOX SPECIAL, released on GratisFool Records on Monday 8 November.

This is an unusual release in that it is a collection of ‘field recordings’, purely instrumental, exploring the wonderfulness of UnclePhil’s self-built ‘Sherry Box Special’ guitar. All seven tracks were recorded onto his phone, with only minimal digital processing thereafter, and some of them have accidental sonic additions, such as the radio on in the next room, the back garden water feature and next door’s chickens.

It will be available to download from Amazon and all the other digital providers, as well as to listen to on Spotify. Those of you who prefer an actual CD may purchase one direct from us, via UnclePhil, at the giveaway price of £5.00 plus £2.00 p&p. This can be facilitated via return email or exchange of blood samples/everlasting and unbreakable vows etc.

We have attached a link to a Sneak Peek – a SoundCloud track featuring short extracts from all the tracks, plus a voiceover from U.P. himself – at the bottom of this email, so that you can bask in the sound quality that an ancient iPhone can produce.

Thank you for reading!

Your friends at GratisFool Records.

https://soundcloud.com/user5973199/sherry-box-trailer

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UnclePhil NEW VIDEO TRACK

Phil Gray — Mon, 24 May 2021 16:54:01 +0000

UnclePhil‘s latest video FRUITS DE MER! is now available for viewing on You Tube. A jumpin’ number out of the Louis Jordan bag, this most excellent track is from his fifth studio album A MILLION WAYS TO GET THE BLUES, to be released in summer 2021 on GratisFool Records. Watch this space for further info, cats. Here is the link to the video on YouTube.

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PLACES – New EP from UnclePhil

Phil Gray — Sun, 25 Apr 2021 18:49:34 +0000

Hello folks and supporters of UnclePhil.

His latest 4-track EP, PLACES will be released via GratisFool Records on Monday 26 April at 12:00 on Spotify and most other digital platforms to download and purchase should you wish so to do. You can also purchase the ‘actual’ disc directly from me for the princessly sum of £4.00 plus £2.00 p&p. Contact me via return email, Facebook Messenger or carrier pigeon if you want to buy in this format.

PLACES features four tracks, all new compositions: The Trope-O-Sphere; The Isle Of Man; Joe In The Future; The Unthank Road. They are (in turn) odd, sad, funny, gloomy. In other words, something for everyone!

For purchasers of the ‘actual’ disc, there is the usual bonus EP of an extra four FREE tracks, all cover versions of old songs, each with a ‘Moon’ theme. They are: Carolina Moon (1924), Blue Moon Of Kentucky (1945), Sugar Moon (1947) and Shine On Harvest Moon (1908), all treated quite disrespectfully. As ever, these cover tracks are NOT available via any digital platform: they are CD-only artefacts. (I do not profit from these tracks, which is why they are free gifts, as I do not wish to deprive the songwriters of any royalties).

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THE AUFENTICS New artist! New Release.

Phil Gray — Wed, 02 Sep 2020 07:34:54 +0000

We are proud to introduce to you the newest members of the GratisFool family, THE AUFENTICS, and have put together a sampler of their debut EP ‘TWENTY FOOT RIVER’, featuring 30-second clips of each of the four tracks: Strabismic Boogie, Steelin’ Your Heart Away Blues, Oh, Blow That Thing! and Twenty Foot River. We do hope you enjoy them and then order the CD from us! There is a link to the sampler’s Soundcloud file at the bottom of this message.

The Aufentics are:

Alec ‘Thumb’ Parnwell – vocals, keyboards, drums
Sitting Bill Murrow – vocals, drums, keyboards
Ronnie Chatteris – “Forty Foot” – bass, guitar, percussion
Martin ‘Lefty’ Warboys – vocals, guitar, dobro, harmonica, percussion
Big Finger Frank Thorney – guitar, lap steel, bass, percussion

A group of ex-farm workers, The Aufentics met through being outpatients at the Fenland Lost Limb Therapy Clinic, all five having survived agricultural accidents. Sharing a love of a wide variety of roots music, including blues, rockabilly, r&b and cajun, they traded influences and in some cases, re-learned their instruments in new ways to create an idiosyncratic approach to music-making. One example would be Alec and Sitting Bill’s teaming up to play the accordion, taking one side each. All the band are happy to try any new instrument that might add texture to their music.

A severely edited list of their influences and enthusiasms include Chicago blues (Howlin’ Wolf, Little Walter), Memphis rockabilly (Sonny Burgess, The Rock’n’Roll Trio), 60s r&b (The Contours, Gary U.S. Bonds), string bands (The Memphis Jug Band, Milton Brown’s Musical Brownies) Louisiana Cajun and zydeco (D.L. Menard, Clifton Chenier), New Orleans r&b (Smiley Lewis, Alvin Robinson) and swamp pop (Tommy McClain, Johnnie Allen), along with early 60s surf and guitar instrumentals – these boys love a twangy guitar. They also love to mix-and-match any of the above, at any time, to create something unexpected.

This is a CD-only release, not being made available on any digital platform, which you can purchase via a reply to this email, via a Facebook message or any other mode of communication that we might share. the EP costs £4.00 plus £2.00 p&p, six pounds in total.

All the best from all of us!

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World of Hat – new mini album, taster track

Phil Gray — Mon, 10 Aug 2020 07:28:30 +0000

Hey there, followers of UnclePhil and GratisFool Records!

A second six-track mini-album release from those wonderboys WORLD OF HAT is due out on Monday 7 September. Available to download from all the usual places, and to listen to on Spotify, and also to purchase direct from source here at GratisFool HQ, c/o UnclePhil. It’s called WORLD OF HAT 2: BANDWIDTH and is all killer, no filler. Here’s a pre-release track as a taster for you. Hope you enjoy it!

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Second new video from UnclePhil

Phil Gray — Sun, 05 Jul 2020 19:08:45 +0000

Hello once again, loyal supporter of UnclePhil, it’s George here at GratisFool Records.

As a second pre-release treat, we have prepared another lo-tech videos of a song from the new album MOSTLY. This one, titled HOOP-BIP-DE-BOP!, is about as far as you can get from DIFFERENT, last week’s video. A hybrid of early rock’n’roll and fifties r’n’b, the rhythm on this number will help you with your jiving practice!.

As we told you last week, UnclePhil’s fourth studio album, MOSTLY, will be released on Monday 6 July. We think that this is the best work he has done to date, with sharp lyrics, fine playing and excellent production values. The tracks range from hard blues through New Orleans fifties-style r&b, traditional rock & roll, contemplative balladry, folky accents, big production numbers, simple country blues, jazzy blues… Every type of music that you have heard on his previous albums is here again, plus some new directions, which we think you will enjoy.

The album will be available to purchase as a download from Amazon, Anghami, Apple Music, MediaNet, Deezer, Google Play/YouTube, iHeartRadio, ClaroMusica, iTunes, KKBox, Napster, NetEase (beta), Pandora, Saavn, Tidal, and TikTok/Resso. You will also be able to listen to it on Spotify.

For those of you who like to own ‘the actual object’, a CD version of the album, signed to you, will be available to purchase direct from UnclePhil, either by return email or whatever means you fancy. The cost will be £8.00 plus £2.00 p&p, as ever, a nice round tenner. These will have their inserts printed in-house, making them even more special than usual, so you will be truly supporting a cottage industry by purchasing this disc.

Here is a link to a YouTube video for HOOP-BIP-DE-BOP!:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njcmN3vPBLg

Happy listening, stay safe, stay happy.

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UnclePhil: New album — MOSTLY

Phil Gray — Wed, 24 Jun 2020 11:48:25 +0000

UnclePhil has been busy in lockdown, producing his fourth studio album, titled MOSTLY, which will be released on Monday 6 July. We think that this is the best work he has done to date, with sharp lyrics, fine playing and excellent production values. The tracks range from hard blues through New Orleans fifties-style r&b, traditional rock & roll, contemplative balladry, folky accents, big production numbers, simple country blues, jazzy blues… Every type of music that you have heard on his previous albums is here again, plus some new directions, which we think you will enjoy.

For those of you who like to own ‘the actual object’, a CD version of the album will be available to purchase direct from UnclePhil, either by return email or whatever you fancy. The cost will be £8.00 plus £2.00 p&p, as ever, a nice round tenner. These will have their inserts printed in-house, making them even more special than usual, so you will be truly supporting a cottage industry by purchasing this disc.

As a pre-release treat, we have prepared a couple of lo-tech videos of songs from the album. The first, DIFFERENT, is gentle in mood and lyrically reflects on the importance of individuality. For all of you guitar buffs, this is the first time UnclePhil has utilised the DADGAD tuning on record (this means nothing to me, but he insisted that we include it). There will be another video release next week, for a song that is a total contrast to this one. So keep an eye on your inbox!

Here is a link to a YouTube video for DIFFERENT.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgqCCKCo5mU&t=12s

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