The Shop - Nick Toczek books, albums and CDs!

Music

 

Shooting The Messenger by Nick Toczek & Signia Alpha (released in 2020 by Mutiny 2000 Records)  Released seconds after midnight on 1 January 2020, Shooting The Messenger is the first album of the new decade. It sees writer and spoken-word artist Nick Toczek joining forces with Signia Alpha, a musical project led by multi-instrumentalist and producer Matt Webster and featuring a host of first-rate guest musicians. The seventeen-track result is unique mixture of Nick’s poetry, lyrics and avant garde stories all set to jazz-tinged funk rhythms, post-Beat beats and atmospheric grooves, Within these tracks, tight and syncopated guitar, bass and drums are mixed with floating saxophone, melodic flute and splashes of mandolin.

From Bob Dylan to Ian Dury, Woody Guthrie to Patti Smith, Jack Kerouac to Linton Kwesi Johnston, Lou Reed to John Cooper Clarke, and David Bowie to Eminem and other rappers, setting spoken word to music has an honoured past. The current revival is exemplified by the most recent work of Nick Cave, Kate Tempest and countless Grime artists.

 

The Bavariations Album by Nick Toczek & Thies Marsen (released in 2019 by Not-A-Rioty Records) The result of an unlikely 18-year collaboration between UK writer and performer Nick Toczek and Bavarian indie/punk musician and songwriter Thies Marsen. Without actually meeting, working only via email, the pair created this diverse 12-song collection.

 

Totally InTOCZEKated (released in 2007 by Mutiny 2000 Records), this is a twenty-five track collection of music. It features lyrics written and sung by Nick working with a variety of musicians and bands. These recordings date from 1977 to 1986 and come with a photo booklet containing all the lyrics together with full recording details and credits.

 

Poetry

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Dealing With The Darkness Volumes 1 & 2 (released in 2018 on Mutiny 2000 Records). This is a forty-nine track collection of poems about tackling fear – be it of death and dying, night and nightmares, faith and guilt. Its target audience is of adults, not children. 

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Motormouth Volumes 1 & 2 (released in 2018 on Not-A-Rioty Records.) was previously available as a very limited edition of three CDs released by Soundshack. This fifty-six track collection consists predominantly of performance poems and travel poems and is intended for all ages from teens upwards.

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Selfish Men (released in 2004 on Not-A-Rioty Records). Definitely for an adult audience, this is a collection of thirty performance poems and song lyrics which deal directly male roles, masculinity, machismo, ego, self-indulgence, bluntness and brutality. These pieces are intentionally provocative, entertaining, confrontational, derogatory, deprecating and occasionally shocking. Though it was recorded in 2003 and released in 2004, this CD is as relevant today as it was back then.