The Third Space

The song "Animals" started life as a recording Joe made on his lap-top. Quite "new wave" sounding, the original song was built around a jagged guitar riff. Sounding a little like the Knack, it could have come straight out of…

The music for "The Little Things" was written by Joe, using his guitar, bass, drum-loops and laptop. In October 2018, whilst staying at Joe's house for a few days to work on music, this was one of approximately 20 "snippets"…

"Post Human (Ghost in the Machine)" is the Third Space's first venture out into the empire of dance. Although we have dabbled with electronic music (for example "Upside Down"), we have never before made a full-blown dance record.

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Funk The Night Up (Last Night On Earth) is an INXS type funk-rocker celebrating the joys of a BIG NIGHT OUT!

The song started out as a riff Joe had recorded on his laptop. Henk took this riff and added…

This is a song about anonymous British grafitti artist "Banksy" whom both Joe and I are big fans of.

Joe lives in Swansea (Abertawe), Wales, and a lot of our stuff is recorded down there nowadays. Around Christmas 2018, a…

A completely straightforward ska / calypso tinged celebration of a very simple theme -- going on holiday!

This dreamy, "Richard-Hawley-meets-the-Smiths" jangle fest is a rumination on suicide and takes it's title from the famous Stevie Smith poem.

A jangly pop jaunt through one of the most volatile flashpoints in any relationship -- navigating whilst driving!

My wife Juliet and I get on famously (which is why we are married in the first place!) and rarely fight.

But…

A piano led ditty that recalls a trip to Paris in November 2014, when Joe and I walked for hours through rainy Montmartre in the early hours, looking for shelter and peace from spectres of ghosts past.

A jangly, poppy, straightforward love song. Almost everything that can go wrong does go wrong in the protagonist's life...but he just doesn't care because he is "in love with a girl".

"I Want It" is a synth and guitar driven meditation on addiction. Although the exact addiction remains unspoken -- drink; drugs; sex; food -- the underlying desire is addressed; throbs in unison with the ominous beat.

A jangly condemnation of busybodies who invade one's privacy with intrusive questions. Written about a neighbour I once had. 

"Baby, When You Leave", is a 1940s era crooner song written by Joe and his oldest daughter Anna (15 at the time). For one track only, "The Third Space" do Sinatra.

Probably one of the most personal songs "The Third Space" have ever written. A joint writing credit. Both Joe and Henk had "absent fathers". Now, regrettably, we are ourselves such. An apology to our children, whom we love very much.…

A rambling, jangly, guitar riff filled rumination on that ancient old break-up cliche "It's Not You, It's Me". Our attempt to sound a bit like the Faces, circa 1973.

Written by Henk, Joe and William Manwaring, this song is an eighties era (U2 or Simple Minds style) atmospheric rocker about the saddest of all themes: the death of a child. In memory of a football-loving nine-year old who died…

Upbeat, 1980s style electronic pop tune on the theme of upheaval in life and the need for change. Written by Joe and his eldest daughter Anna (then aged 14). 

This song is about the tyranny of the TV. How the everyday can become oppressive. There must be countless couples out there where the TV comes between them; a distraction from the fact the relationship is on the verge of…

I wrote this song very quickly one evening, when a silly incident, somewhat uncharacteristically, upset me disproportionately. I am (i) not really over-sensitive and (ii) not usually bothered by whatever anyone writes on my FaceBook page or says about me.…

So…a few years ago, I went out for a couple of years with this gorgeous redhead, whose name I shall for reasons of decorum not share here. Unfortunately, things did not work out, partly because I am simply an eejit…

This song was written in November 2013. My dear neighbour of ten years standing, Lilia Mimicopoulous died, aged 89. A Greek national, she had lived a very eventful and colourful life that had included brushes with Ceacescu’s Communist regime in…

The riff for this song was written in Redwood City, California, in Late November, 2013, whilst I was out there for work. My friend and ex-colleague Bryan Wright lent me this gorgeous gold top Les Paul. I wrote the song…

This song was written in the July/August timeframe, 2013. As always, it was the harmonic structure, the chord sequence and riff, that came about first…from doodling away on the acoustic guitar one weekend or evening. The music came relatively quickly. …

One weekend in early September 2013, Joe, William and I were round my flat when Joe dared us each to write a punk song on the spot. This activity lasted a few minutes, and neither William nor I came up…