Snowman Made of Mud profile picture

Snowman Made of Mud

About Me


Snowman Made of Mud is a musical project that has been active from 2003, birthed from a lack of musical talent. Consisting of a 22 year-old Scottish oaf named Paul Ferguson, an aforementioned lack of talent, lots of modest equipment, and a near constant stream of grand unachievable ideas, Snowman Made of Mud is musically something of a derailed train tumbling down a hill into a pool of lava.
The concepts that guide Snowman Made of Mud are simple: 1) Ambient music (in the Brian Eno sense) 2) Tension + Release 3) unlimited tonal palette.
In Snowman Made of Mud's long bumbling journey, several other projects have branched out. These include the electronica-oriented Cluster 8 , Asphixiator which deals with pure noise, drone and field recordings, and Tzitzimime, which is experimental doom metal (and is yet to fully manifest).
This page currently includes some recordings from several of these other projects, simply because Snowman Made of Mud has been on hiatus since late 2006.
And now a story: Imagine, if you will, a young boy who wakes up on a snowy day, gets dressed and goes to school. All day long he's looking out the windows of the classroom, looking forward to getting home and building a snowman in his back garden. At lunchtime he enjoys a snowball fight with his friends. His face is red and stinging, but he endures he discomfort. The bell finally rings and he runs out f the school, jumping into the waiting car. His mother tells him she has to pop into the shop on the way home to buy some milk. Fifteen minutes later she returns to the car with a full carrier bag. She tells him she needs to get petrol (gas for the Americans). Twenty minutes later they're on their way home. They arrive at the house at last, and the boy runs round the side of the house, opening the gate, only to find the snow in the garden has all but melted to nothing. He runs into the house in anger, his mother is unpacking the groceries. He exclaims to her "This is no good! Snowmans are not made of mud..."

My Interests

Music:

Member Since: 18/03/2007
Band Website: http://www.timidelfdesigns.co.uk
Band Members: Paul Ferguson: noise, voice, instruments (specifically bass guitar, guitar, keyboards, toys and percussion), programming, temporal experimentation, generative digital noise, visual designs
Influences: Frank Zappa, Pink Floyd, Magma, Caravan, Camel, Hatfield and the North, Gong and Gong-related bands, Ozric Tentacles, Yes, King Crimson, Porcupine Tree, Blackfield, Bass Communion, Steven Wilson in general, The Flaming Lips, Tom Waits, Primus, Les Claypool in general, Rush, The Mars Volta, Isis, Jesu, Sunn O))), Asva, Earth, Orthodox, Thrones, Boris, The Melvins, Big Business, Pelican, Tusk, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Silver Mt. Zion, Fly Pan Am, Do Make Say Think, Polmo Polpo, Hangedup, Sackville, Constellation Records in general, The Locust, Talking Heads, Paul Simon, Mr. Bungle, Secret Chiefs 3, Trey Spruance in general, Fantômas, Mike Patton in general, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, Miasma and the Carousel of Headless Horses, Khanate, Stephen O'Malley in general, Gorillaz, Merzbow, Lustmord, Brian Eno, Sigúr Ros, Opeth, Meshuggah, Captain Beefheart, Big Country, Love, The Beach Boys, Brian Wilson in general, Henry Cow, Robert Wyatt, Alan Parsons Project, Robert Fripp, Captured! By Robots, Old Man Gloom, Neil Hamburger, Gregg Turkington, The Nice, Emerson Lake & Palmer, Kayo Dot, Oxbow, Swans, Angels of Light, Akron/Family, Aphex Twin, Björk, Wolf Eyes, Music that sounds like it's made by flailing scarecrows on fire falling out of tall buildings being shot at in slow motion, Shigeru Ban, Norman Foster, Mark Rothko, Casper David Friedrich, Hayao Miyazaki, Jim Henson, Rolf Harris, Resident Evil (the games not the movies), Nintendo, Final Fantasy, Valve, Boss DF-2 Super Feedbacker & Distortion, Phillip K. Dick, Star Trek, Star Wars, Stargate, Babylon 5, Battlestar Galactica, Firefly, David Icke, ideas that are without purpose or reason, barcodes, modern life, Igor Stravinsky, foley artists, people who live in the countryside and are mostly self-sufficient, people who have jobs that are utterly pointless and yet get paid to do them, the ever-present loud buzzing noise in my brain, the horror of modernity, the terror of antiquity, the slow/fast march of time, broken machines, moments of clarity, moments of confusion, extremely unsettling situations, various extremes of reality, mytholgies and mystic religions, religious blasphemy, holism, reductionism, objectivism, situationism, futurism, modernism, brutalism, romanticism, absurdism, surrealism, dadaism, pseudo-science, anti-humanism, humanism, headaches, anger, longing, sorrow, disgust, loathing, rage, mortality, death, everything that has ever happened, everything that I have ever experienced and felt and continue to experience and feel and A BILLION OTHER THINGS THAT CANNOT BE APTLY QUANTIFIED
Sounds Like: Synthesised scrapings, bleepings, growls, smashing, crashing, bashing and buzzing. Sometimes like the bits of the Mars Volta that idiot Mars Volta fans moan about and edit out. Sometimes a bit like a bunch of drums being hit in the wrong order, at the wrong time, at the wrong velocity. Sometimes like a chord progression played on a piano that fell down the stairs. Sometimes like a dustbin being cut into with a chainsaw. Sometimes like a corpse convulsing in a septic tank. Sometimes like a giant burning robot made out of tinfoil. Sometimes like a Mark Rothko painting melted down and poured over a bowl of Rice Krispies left out on the counter since 1974. Sometimes like two owls being drowned in sewage. Sometimes like a beautiful enormous butterfly crushing buildings with the mere flutter of its wings. Sometimes like a giant set of wooden teeth gnashing wildly in mid air for no particular reason. Sometimes like a skeletal horse vomitting blood. Sometimes like a brick through a stained-glass window. Sometimes like when you find a dead siphonophore floating in your swimming pool. Sometimes like a bucket full of bibles dissolving in the ocean of truth. Sometimes like the entire human race replaced by robots without even noticing.
Record Label: timidelfdesigns/unsigned

My Blog

Pylon Field

It's a simple Dbaug chord on guitar and bass with an Ebow. Nothing too exciting, but it is the first completed Snowman Made of Mud piece in a while, so I'm pretty excited about moving forward from thi...
Posted by on Sun, 28 Jun 2009 19:52:00 GMT

The Tracks: an explanation

intro:I bet you're wondering a) what are these tracks in the player? b) who is this idiot? and c) why should I care?Well, I can answer these questions. a) see below b) Just some guy c) I have no id...
Posted by on Thu, 05 Feb 2009 10:59:00 GMT

Songwriting/Composition

In my current creative slump, I noticed a discrepancy between what I do, and what most people in my position do. People who write music and record in their bedrooms seem to be predominantly focussed o...
Posted by on Mon, 02 Jun 2008 17:06:00 GMT

Moving in Interesting Directions

Hmm, looks as though I am applying to the SAE Institute to sit a 12 month diploma in Audio Engineering, which would be fucking awesome. Essentially this would make me making music both a hobby and an ...
Posted by on Sun, 11 May 2008 02:53:00 GMT

Asphixiator (a condensed history)

Well, I figure I might as well try and explain some of my projects to try and clarify the boundaries between them (for my own purposes mostly, since none of this is of any interest to anyone). First ...
Posted by on Tue, 29 Apr 2008 07:00:00 GMT

Well, that never happened (story of my life)

Yet again, failure to achieve many of the things I aimed for. I’m trying to keep music production to a minimum this year, to try and get the rest of my life back on track. Although I have gotten...
Posted by on Thu, 03 Apr 2008 17:04:00 GMT

Oscar

In the summer of 2007 my family got a second dog, a Miniature Schnauzer pup called Oscar. He was diagnosed with a heart murmour before we got him, but we decided to take that on, as our other dog Ror...
Posted by on Sat, 29 Dec 2007 09:49:00 GMT

Sinking Star Prayer

Here in her bitter light reflectedAll the breath hung in the airHushed secret lamentsFor my sinking starTo catch her in my trembling armsTo grasp a mere spark of her flameTo send me bitter and derange...
Posted by on Sat, 17 Nov 2007 16:05:00 GMT

The Gnus

Well, things have really moved along recently, although Snowman Made of Mud still seems to be on hiatus. Work is currently underway on a pair of pieces for Tzitzimime which some strange fellow has dec...
Posted by on Wed, 31 Oct 2007 17:08:00 GMT

ARGH!

Furious anger abound, as I come to realise that I suck at just about everything in my life, including the things I actually enjoy.I have a new goal, and that goal is to make the next Snowman Made of M...
Posted by on Fri, 27 Jul 2007 13:34:00 GMT