Alexander Arundel
Alexander Arundel, Musician.
aka Arundel, Gene Poole, X Factor (see below, Warrior Soul, MTV), Alternative Cabaret.
Born in Glasgow, Scotland.
1980/81...Alexander Recorded "When The Gold Runs Dry" for 4 Play Records under the band name FLAK. Produced by John Tilly. It was a double A side with Alexei Sayle recorded live at "The Comedy Store". The sketch was called Dedication. This would be the beginning of a long career thematically of writing songs that had a socio/political edge. This song reflected the oil crises of the late 1970s.
1980/1982...Alexander Arundel was a Founding member of *Alternative Cabaret in London with Alexei Sayle, Keith Allen, Rik Mayall, Tony Allen. His double A side release was born from touring with them. Alexei and Rik would go on to star in the MTV Comedy hit The Young Ones.
*[Alternative Cabaret was a group of politically motivated performers, jokingly described by one of its founder members, Tony Allen, as "a sort of collective of comedians, musicians – dope smokers, dole scroungers, tax evaders, sexual deviants, political extremists"[1]]
1982...Alex Recorded a double A side, "It's Not Love On The Run"/ "Change Of Heart" with Steve Petters as vocalist. Produced by Chas Chandler (of Jimi Hendrix fame), the label boss at Cheapskate Records. Arundel wrote both songs, played guitar and provided backing vocals.
1982...Alexander Recorded a song with John Kellior as an entry to be considered for the official theme tune for the BBC's World Cup coverage. The Spanish Guitar piece was not chosen but Alec Weeks said it was given serious thought. 'Aztec Gold' by Andrew Lloyd-Webber was chosen.
1982...Arundel secured a deal to record in Chrysalis Records demo studio with Hugh McKenna of The Sensational Alex Harvey Band. The two worked and toured together as part of regular "Alt Cab" Club nights in the back bar of The Elgin pub on Ladbroke Grove, and they performed at The Tramshed in London.
1985...Alexander Arundel now lived in New York City where he met and recorded with Robbie Shakespeare and Sly Dunbar at Park South Studios New York for Chrysalis records. He tracked 2 songs: Destiny and Indigo. Mars Williams (Psychedelic Furs…) on sax and Ed Buller (Suede, Psychedelic Furs) on keys. Produced by Richard Burgess.
1993/1996 ...While rehearsing on The Lower East Side in New York he met and later joined Warrior Soul. Alex played guitar and co-wrote the album Space Age Playboys. The nickname XFactor was given to him by a fan. The album is listed as one of Lars Ulrich (Metallica) favourite albums, who thought it underrated. [1] The album was also voted 323rd in the top 500 Hard Rock albums of all time by Hard Rock Magazine.[2]. The band toured and headlined Brixton Academy and Glasgow Barrowlands and toured the album through Europe.
1994....Warrior Soul were selected by Metallica to play with them at The Monsters Of Rock Donnington in 1995.
1994/5..Alex was asked by Dennis Publications if he could write a tour diary, so he wrote a monthly piece called The XFiles published by Metal Hammer Magazine.
1994... Under the moniker XFactor he was asked if he would do a backstage walkabout and interview bands at Dynamo Festival. So he Was MTV video VJ on Head Bangers Ball live at Dynamo Festival.
1996...When Alex left Warrior Soul, his friend Jon Zazula, who discovered Metallica and Ministry, asked him if he would go to Canada and work with a new artist who had just signed to Atlantic. So he worked with Bif Naked and wrote the song Chotee. This was on her Platinum selling record 'I Bificus'. The song appeared in the Natalie Portman/Susan Sarandon movie ‘Anywhere But Here’. The Jay Leno band performed the song as an instrumental every night for a week.
1996...Arundel was looking for a new sound. The idea of a DJ in a rock band first came to him whilst still in Warrior Soul. So he formed a band with some of his friends in New York. They recorded 3 songs at Electric Lady Studio and Bass Hit New York with Mackie Jayson on drums (Bad Brains, Fun Lovin Criminals), Zowie, bass player with Circus of Power, and the late and very great DJ Spinbad of Hot 97 NY.
Those songs were Say What?, Lay Down and TRUTH.
2000 .. As XFactor, Alex Interviewed Jamie Reid, artist and creator of Never Mind The Bollocks album cover, as part of the 30th anniversary show in London.
1999/ 2003 .'.. Alexander Created the 3 piece hybrid electronic band Truth. They set up a studio in Williamsburg in Brooklyn. They Performed 3 online live shows on the first ever live internet tv show called PSEUDO in New York. The show was called freq' and was streamed live. Truth would perform at The Miami Winter Music Conference. A live band with a DJ was a first at the Conference. Dec and El were on bass and drums and Alex played guitar, keys and turntables with Alex Bovone mixing live. The band's slogan of NO TAPES NO DATS LIVE was refreshing maybe but too early. Williamsburg at that time was awash in guitar bands.
2003…Truth moved from NYC to Dublin where they would perform 2 songs on a live radio broadcast on RTE Dublin on Cormac Battle Show. They are Before You Fall and Another World. The band broke up soon after that show.
2003...Alexander moved to London where he befriended and eventually recorded with Accordion/piano virtuoso Michael Ward Bergman, who appears in Yo Yo Ma Orchestra. 3 Songs they tracked were a more organic version of Truth electronic song. Dogs Of War, Sunshine Superman Is Dead and Before You Fall/.
2003-2006.. Alex moved back to New York where he returned to his acoustic guitar roots. This is the point at which he decided to use the acoustic guitar and create a new sound he would call electrojammin sound. Songs he would write in this period would still be hard hitting and socially aware but now performed on acoustic.
Songs like Contempt, written as a diatribe against corporate greed, Second Skin, which rails against the horrors and wrongs of the fashion industry's obsession with fur, Hole In The Heart Of The World, which spoke of religion and struggle and Orphans and Widows, a song that graphically depicted hurricane Katrina's ravage of New Orleans. The acoustic version was arranged by Carlos Alomar, the guitarist for David Bowie. The song would be re-recorded in Nashville later.
2007/2008 Alexander and his wife Adrienne moved to Nashville Tennessee. This would be a period where Alexander Arundel worked on behalf of songwriters in a Copyright Reform Advocacy campaign that lasted nearly 2 years.
He worked with The Illustrator Partnerships in a campaign to stop The Orphan Works Bill passing. Arundel was asked by Bart Herbison, the CEO, to be the representative on behalf of Nashville Songwriters Association (NSAI) to attend the official Roundtable discussion in New York and address Member of Congress and Small Business Association.
With his new moniker of Gene Poole, Alexander wrote an Op Ed piece for The Nashville Business Journal about Orphan Works and the damage it would do if it were passed.
2012 .... Alex wrote the song ‘Here I Am’' and recorded various versions in Nashville, The first was with Jason Aldean drummer Rich Redmond in Nashville.
2012/2015 ...Alex aka Gene Poole would befriend many of Nashville's best songwriters and would be a regular and performed many times live at the famous The Bluebird Cafe in Nashville. There are live recordings of these sets from The Bluebird.
2015..It was at this time that Gene Poole (Alexander Arundel) would discover The Blockchain. It was due to his advocacy in this new technology that he was Invited by Imogen Heap to attend release and launch of first ever Blockchain single, Tiny Human in Shoreditch, London. He and his wife Adrienne published the online newsletter electrojammin, a magazine devoted to all things Blockchain.
2017...When the Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris happened, Alex (Gene Poole) was compelled to write the song Hey Toi. The new acoustic hybrid sound with acoustic guitars driven by break beats, sawtooth synths and symphonic sub Contra Basses was the perfect sonic landscape for this violent act. The lyrics try to bridge the gap between hate and compassion and Alex sings half the lyric in French.
Alex went North to the home of Ron St Germain where they produced it at his studio in New York. Alex would befriend the amazing Cellist Dave Eggar, best known for his string lines on Coldplay hit Viva La Vida. They would also record in one take an instrumental that Alex played to Dave at the studio. It is called Mood Divisi.. Ron produced the track.
Gene Poole performed his new hybrid set at The Basement East in Nashville. It was the first time he had played this new and far reaching sound live. It is written about here in his published article In Pursuit of the New Music Hybrid. He was accompanied on electric guitar later in the set by his good friend Lincoln Parish, guitarist for Cage The Elephant. He and Lincoln had been writing together in Nashville. Most notably California's Almost Gone,, a song about the thoughts of a young man that he had never been to California...this was a climate emergency song.
2019 GLASGOW, SCOTLAND ..
During COVID Alex decided to livestream DJ Live mixes on Twitch with full live switching of green screen video.
Since moving back to his home town of Glasgow Alexander has written songs that comment on issues of the day. These include S-T-O-P, a song that speaks about soccer fan violence, A Season To Kill, which is a direct response to The Capitol riot, Almost Midnight, a piece related to climate change and October Dance is Alex's opinion on the war in Gaza. Artificial Intelligence needed a song.....Alexander wrote I AM.A.I..
Alexander recently (2021) upon hearing of the passing of Robbie Shakespeare decided to take the 24 track masters of their recording made in 1985 and try to extract a bass line to write a new song in his memory. That song is called That Sly and Robbie Groove.
The documentary 20 years in 20 minutes detailing the progression from hard rock guitarist to hybrid DJ/Acoustic sub sonic songwriter will be available as a pay per view or stream on Alexander's new Live Stream Platform ...Southside Mix, currently in code Alpha level, readying for Beta launch in mid September 2024.
It will be a new venture allowing musicians to be able to stream live but with the ability to have a much higher take from rev than Twitch. There will also be the ability to sell, lease, trade NFTs. The concept of NFTs as a New Asset Class is being examined. This would be a first, and a major breakthrough for independent artists.
Alex's series of articles in Medium on topics like Six Strings and a Bit Of Wood....A.I Kiss my ass or Alexander and Collaboration are part of his new series, launched in July 2024.
2021-2026
Alexander spent over 2 years developing a Livestream Platform. It is at this point in October 2026 past the development phase and has already streamed the first Beta tests.
The home site is electrojam.in
The Platform is 100% independent with servers in India and a robust backend not connected to any other mainstream social media platforms.
Because Alex has been a fierce advocate for blockchain technology as a means for artists to be independent electrojam.in will have a direct focus on methods to establish not just provenance but ensure frictionless revenue streams.
Full programming is imminent.
References
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