Thursday, February 12, 2026

Welcome to Crispycat Recordings....

WELCOME TO CRISPYCAT RECORDINGS

We issue the solo and collaborative work of musician, abstract artist and podcaster 
DAVID REILLY aka CLOUDLAND BLUE QUARTET

This section is the
Cloudland Blue Diary
with daily entries from 
Sunday 5 March 2005
to
Wednesday 11 February 2026
 (Scroll down for the latest entries)

To go to another section of the site, click on an icon below

ABOUT    NEWS    MUSIC    PODCASTS    ART    RECOMENDED LISTENING
                         

CRISPYCAT RECORDINGS ON BANDCAMP
To go to the Bandcamp discographies of these Crispycat related artists, click on an icon.

                    

Crispycat Recordings released the first 25 Cloudland Blue Quartet albums (recorded between 1996 and 2012) to Bandcamp in 2013.

A further 8 LPs were released between 2013 and 2019.

Then, with the advent of lockdown, David spent much more time on new Cloudland Blue Quartet works, with the result that, since May 2020, new music has been released almost every month, with over 90 further new releases having been issued in the last five years.

The current 12 strong pipeline (see below) will take matters to the end of 2026, beyond the 30th anniversary of Cloudland Blue Quartet's debut recordings, pushing the total CBQ releases available on Bandcamp to 140.

Meanwhile, retrospective releases by David's groups Creek, Crazy Wisdom and Capital Models have also been being issued by Crispycat Recordings and these are set to continue, with around 50 planned over the next 18 months or so...

In 2025, Crazy Wisdom and Capital Models also released new recordings, with seven new EPs from Crazy Wisdom and their remastered back catalogue, which you can find here; and, from Capital Models, two new studio LPs, a live LP and an update to their all encompassing "Repertoire" virtual box set, all of which, along with original recordings from 1980 and reunion tapes from 2011, can be found here...

LATEST CLOUDLAND BLUE QUARTET RELEASE



As always from Crispycat Recordings, this release is entirely Free to Stream or Name Your Price (including zero) to Download (with bonuses)

"Low Peach Winter Sun" is the 40th Cloudland Blue Quartet soundscapes album - an almost purely ambient 80 minute work, separated into what would be 4 sides of a double LP

The download bundle contains two completely alternative versions of the album, adding around 160 minutes of music and giving an insight into how this developed from, initially, a "joint" work of synthesisers and Short Wave Radio, to being mainly a study on Short Wave Radio, to, finally, emerging as the almost purely ambient, Double LP/CD Length work presented in the main LP

The final album is music in the vein of previous ambient works "Cold Clear", "Gewitter", "Mercurial" and "Like a Sunday" and can be seen as a continuation of those

Sleeve notes contain diary entries for the three days of recording which produced the work"

CLOUDLAND BLUE QUARTET RELEASE SCHEDULE
   

Friday, 6 March, 2026: Materialisation (with Joe Higham) (41st in The Soundscapes Series) (Recorded June and July 2025)
Friday, 3 April, 2026: Dissolution VI (6th in The Dissolution Piano Series) (to be recorded March 2026)
Saturday, 11 April, 2026 (Record Store Day)GLAM! FOUR (5th in the GLAM! Covers Series) (Recorded February 2023 - October 2024)
Friday, 1 May, 2026: Cobalt (42nd in The Soundscapes Series) (Recorded August 2025)

   

Friday, 5 June, 2026: Dark (43rd in The Soundscapes Series) (Recorded August 2025)
Wednesday, 10 June, 2026: Drift (Slow Songs 1996-2026 30 Years of Cloudland Blue Quartet) (19th in The Collections Series) (to be compiled May 2026)
Friday, 3 July, 2026: Across the Landscape (44th in The Soundscapes Series) (Recorded October 2025)
Friday, 7 August, 2026: Broken (19th in The Songs Series) (Recorded November 2025)

   

Friday, 4 September, 2026: Elevation (45th in The Soundscapes Series) (Recorded November 2025)
Friday, 2 October, 2026: Music for Guitar and String Quartet in 18 Movements (46th in The Soundscapes Series) (Recorded November 2025)
Friday, 6 November, 2026Swan Songs (6th in the GLAM! Covers Series) (Recorded December 2025)
Friday, 5 December, 2026: Disquietmusik X (10th in The Disquietmusik Frippertronics Guitar Series) (to be recorded November 2026)

(All artwork, releases and release dates subject to change)

UPCOMING LIVE PERFORMANCES
            

There are currently no performances planned

Performances include solo appearances, as Cloudland Blue Quartet, presenting sets of either songs or soundscapes, and group performances, with the current line up of David's 1980 new wave band, Capital Models 

At present there are no plans for his electronic improvisational quartet, Creek, to play live and nothing in the calendar for Cloudland Blue Quartet or Capital Models but a gig by vocal/electronic trio, Crazy Wisdom, is mooted in 2026...

PODCASTS

Since 2014, David has produced almost 750 editions of the "Cloudland Blue Eclectic Selection", his weekly podcast on Mixcloud, reflecting his esoteric taste in music and encouraging listeners to broaden their musical horizons.  

Unfortunately, with only the most recent 10 able to be made available on the Mixcloud platform, each new podcast replaces the one from 10 weeks before.  

To obtain an MP3 download link for any currently unavailable Cloudland Blue Quartet Eclectic Selection, simply e-mail your request to crispycat@hotmail.com.  

Click on the pic to go to Mixcloud...


Note that, in the diary, 150 days, across 6 periods in 4 of the 21 years are, currently, "picture only":-

2016: 15-17 October (3 Days)
2021: 8-21 May (14 Days)
2022: 18 April - 10 May & 6 July - 5 September (85 Days)
2023: 1 - 15 October & 18 October - 19 November (48 Days)

It is always the intention to update "picture only" days with the relevant text but doing so is, of course, subject to opportunity (and, indeed, memory!)

Wednesday, February 11, 2026

A dozen or so people in a circle can be surprisingly enjoyable...

Playlist


It was light by the time I got up today...





Got the things done first thing that I "have" to do...

1. Post Morning Morning post 
2. Amend the landing page 
3. Download pictures from yesterday 
4. Create pics of yesterday's playlist and new additions 
5. Prepare yesterday's diary entry 

7. Post yesterday's playlist
8. Post the CD Box of the Day
9. Repost the podcast
10. Repost the latest LP etc

Except No 6

6. Write yesterday's diary entry x

But, post breakfast...


...I got to work and started to finish off the Amsterdam posts - the final three were completed shortly before 1...

Then, I added two pre-prepped post Amsterdam posts...

Strange jittering on the laptop re music listening has been bugging me for the last two days...

So bad that I'm having to listen to CDs if I'm online - there's no jittering re hard drive music if I'm not online...

Extremely frustrating...

However, that meant that the work on the diary was soundtracked by these two CDs...


I did not play the next one but chose the CDs from the next two boxes - here's today's box...

Marais to Medtner...


I chose the last of five Peter Maxwell Davis CDs of his 10 string quartets, commissioned by Naxos...



Inside, I found our tickets to his 80th birthday recital in Glasgow in September 2014...


That was a good night...

And so, more oblique string quartets joined the one CD from each box selections thus far...

We continued with "Younger" over lunch...

Anne was off to the dentist and to see her mum...

The work on the diary continued in her absence...

I managed to write up another four days - so, now, I'm less than a week behind...

Post Anne's return, some more "Younger" and a tasty chicken based tea, I drove to Newhaven and picked up Ian Sclater...

To London Road and the Artisan Bar...

Learned a few things about Ian tonight - he is a die hard Rangers fan - his dad took him to Tynecastle in 1965 to see Hearts play Rangers and he "fell in love" (his words) with Jim Baxter...

He also supports Bonnyrigg Rose - which, it turns out, is his hometown team...

Which means he attended Lasswade High Secondary School - exactly the same school as me - but he was there 1965-1971 and I was there 1971 to 1977 - so we just missed being there at the same time...

I already knew that Ian's sister is married to my old chum from work days, Ross Young...

But, in another twist, Ross is the son of one Archie Young, who played left back for Bonnyrigg Rose in the 60's and, despite Ian's love for Jim Baxter, Archie was his absolute footballing hero...

Anyway, enough of all this...

Upstairs for a "music night"...


Around a dozen musicians sitting in the round, with people just starting to play reasonably well known songs and everyone just joining in...



Ian played two of his own tunes, which, of course, no-one knew so playing along was fairly impossible for them...


But they indulged him - this was his local when he lived near here for many years and most of the guys knew him...


For my sins, I managed to lead the group in a rousing rendition of "Let's Stick Together", complete with both violin and accordion solos...


Set list (of sorts)

Lyin' Eyes
Cocaine
Sunny Afternoon
House of the Rising Sun
Some Scottish Pish
Folsom Prison Blues
Ian’s song about Dr Winter
A Bob Dylan song
Dirty Old Town
Don’t Think Twice It's Alright
Ordinary Man (Christy Moore)
Ian’s song re the last man hanged for blasphemy
As Tears Go By
Fisherman’s Blues
The Leaving of Liverpool
Let’s Stick Together
Meet Me on the Corner
When I’m Dead and Gone
Over the Mountain
Some More Scottish Pish
and
A song about a drunk guy coming home to find a different item, each night, for a week, which belonged to another man, whom his wife was obviously seeing while he was getting drunk at the pub

Some things were better than others...

My unannounced tips for the team were:

Set up a WhatsApp group and post the songs you'd like everyone to play - maybe just the titles and the keys - to allow everyone to be reasonably familiar with what's going on rather than, quite often, just guessing the chords (and to decide whether or not they want to participate in a song)...

Introduce elements of percussion to the evening - even just shakers or muted tambourines...


All in all though, surprisingly enjoyable...

Took Ian for a tram home from the top of Leith walk and I was back home by 11 for a "Chicago PD"...

Bed post midnight...

Highlight of the Day: Musicking and diary catch up...

Today's New Music: