Silent Paper Radios

Silent Paper Radios BiographySilent Paper Radios is the solitary song-writing project of Dan Gubbins: a lost soul yearning for an existence on the outskirts of life. A relative novice to the world of Folk music, he previously DJ’d and produced in the field of Electronica, Soul, Funk and early 90’s “Daisy Age” Hip Hop. Feeling restricted by these artistic pursuits and after being spell bound by the beauty of the fast spreading “Weird Folk” movement that was being sewn into the tapestry of his world by the likes of Devendra Banhart and Joanna Newsom in 2004, he hung up his headphones, picked up a £50 nylon stringed guitar, loaned to him by a family friend and taught himself to play. And while he became intimate with his new love, he also sat for hours brushing up on the visionary poetry of William Blake to get his literary juices flowing.Putting pen to paper and finally cracking open the shell of his “Threadbare Heart”, the fragile and delicate thoughts of Silent Paper Radios were musically born. With songs about the oppressed bar girls of Thailand (where he resided for a year and a half) – “Butterflies” and a blurred, intertwined argument between a religious person, an Atheist and a Nihilist in “Dinosaur Bones”, he started to develop a consistency to the project known as Reborn As A Wind Chime. Philosophising over questions like the integrity of moral guidance, love and attachment, reality, afterlife and the impermanence but subtle significance of all matter being pondered in “Footprints”. The main artery of this album though, is the circle of birth, life, death and rebirth. The song “Rise Of The Foundling” being a particular symbol of one life bleeding into another as he paints a surreal musical picture of an abandoned child being found by angels.And then there is the title track – “Reborn As A Wind Chime” which conjures an imaginary story of an apocalyptic kind into the minds eye. Telling the tale of a figure closely resembling death, which pulls us down into the soil, “where our blood starts to boil”…This work, recorded on an mp3 recorder and transferred on to a laptop, is drenched in a melancholic despair, but somewhere in that darkness lays a little glint of light. There is a certain hope and romance tucked away behind the simple but sorrowful minor chords that Silent Paper Radios fingerpicks through. Dan wants this to be thought of as a rainbow album... “A mixture of stormy rain and glorious sunshine… Whether you look at the dark side or the light side is up to you. I like to look at both”.