Bio
A musical CV would go something like... “studied classical piano for 5 years. Guitar, self-taught,” etc. However, the real question is what kind of music does an ex-student of French at Manchester and Sheffield make as an Englishman in France? If such a fellow were a chef, he might cook rosbif bourgignon. But back to music. The youthful love of heartfelt folk (Nick Drake) and Northern English rock (The Happy Mondays, The Wedding Present), especially with a touch of poetic posture (The Fall, John Cooper Clarke), never dies. Nor does the passion for a thoughtful lyric set to something trippy, progressive or swinging (Robert Wyatt, ideally).
But the French experience invites other approaches, like the text-based tradition which goes by the name of chanson française. You're fully entitled to talk or whisper into a microphone. Hell, storytelling is cool. Furthermore, people are allowed to play cerebral games and call it literature, like the Oulipo writers, who use constraints to make writing harder. Speaking of being allowed: you're allowed to work to live, rather than live to work. That provides the time either to perfect one's table-football skills while slugging back Pastis, or to see if an irreverent, jocular lyric or an outburst of melancholy can fit with a piano, guitar or low-cost ambient background.
The latter is what's on the menu here, in the following ways:
Solo pop-folk albums bearing the name Tall Paul Grundy: - Important to the Species (2006), Stuff We'll Never Solve (2009), Reading Habit (2013).
The Grundys : a folk duo with Chloé Grundy (see demo tracks).
A rock/electronic collaboration (Pol to Paul) with Pol Desmurs, aka Lepolair (see EP tracks).
https://soundcloud.com/poltopaul/sets/pol-to-paul-first-ep/s-Dafp1
Assembly Time: assembled poetry with piano arrangements and instrumental parts by consenting rock and jazz musicians. The first release is an audio book entitled Solid Idols (2016).