{"id":658,"date":"2025-08-26T16:26:21","date_gmt":"2025-08-26T16:26:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/secondlanguagemusic.com\/new\/?p=658"},"modified":"2025-08-26T16:26:50","modified_gmt":"2025-08-26T16:26:50","slug":"mark-fry-announces-not-on-the-radar-the-demos-vinyl-out-sept-26th","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secondlanguagemusic.com\/new\/2025\/08\/26\/mark-fry-announces-not-on-the-radar-the-demos-vinyl-out-sept-26th\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Fry announces ‘Not On The Radar (The Demos)’ vinyl, out Sept 26th"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

On the 26th September, Second Language Music will release a very special, limited edition vinyl album of Mark Fry’s solo demo recordings for his recent ‘Not On The Radar.’ These sketches, comprised mainly of just guitar, voice and the odd smudge of piano or tambourine, offer a fascinating insight into the composition of Mark\u2019s fifth solo album before the band arrived<\/em>, so to speak.
Crucially, ‘Not On The Radar (The Demos) also makes for a very fine standalone album in its own right which, if nothing else, bears testament to the inherent robustness of Mark Fry\u2019s songwriting. Songs that would become album bulwarks, like \u2018Big Red Sun\u2019 and \u2018Where the Water Meets the Land\u2019 are here revealed in more fragile, nascent form, often with work-in-progress lyrics still in place, while intimate, poignant ballads like \u2018Daybreak\u2019, \u2018Where Would I Be\u2019 and \u2018If I Could\u2019 are delivered with a raw immediacy that only deepens their emotional charge. By contrast, up- tempo essays like \u2018Stormy Sunday\u2019 and the title track are strummed work-throughs, almost unrecognisable from their pliant, percussive reinventions on Not On The Radar. \u2018Rainbow Days\u2019, meanwhile, an immersive, spoken-word nature meditation on the album proper, is here shown to have begun life as a drowsy ballad, replete with a repeated, angular guitar motif.
So, sure enough, this album is very much a case of watching \u2018the mind of the artist at work\u2019 \u2013 privileged access to the creative process \u2013 but, as Mark suggests, it also demonstrates how songwriting method lends itself to documentation, even at the most embryonic stage:
\u201cWith a painting, the starting point, the first tentative gestures, the endless paths you might have taken, are soon lost in the journey. When writing a song, those first moments when it’s taking form can be recorded. In that sense, the songs on this album are preliminary drawings to larger paintings.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

‘Not On The Radar (The Demos)’ is available exclusively from our friends at Norman Records mail order<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Second Language Music to release special, limited edition vinyl album of Mark Fry’s solo demo recordings for his recent ‘Not On The Radar’ on 26th Sept. Pre-order now. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":659,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[12,10,13,31,11,32,20],"class_list":["post-658","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-folk","tag-mark-fry","tag-new-album","tag-norman-records","tag-not-on-the-radar","tag-not-on-the-radar-the-demos","tag-second-language-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secondlanguagemusic.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/658","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secondlanguagemusic.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secondlanguagemusic.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secondlanguagemusic.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secondlanguagemusic.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=658"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/secondlanguagemusic.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/658\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":661,"href":"https:\/\/secondlanguagemusic.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/658\/revisions\/661"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secondlanguagemusic.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/659"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secondlanguagemusic.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=658"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secondlanguagemusic.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=658"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secondlanguagemusic.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=658"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}