What?! I'm actually doing it? Not just teasing it? A whole SONG?!
Yes. Clone Zone. Friday 20th September 2024. All major providers. Spotify pre-save at this link.
So I've been teasing these tunes too long to let them gather dust. The album is on its way, but the last time I put even just something new out there was too many years ago to be acceptable. I'll put my hand up.
In the period since I finished this album, I've given glimpses to what I've got in store. And more to a small selection of people. On the album, there's catchier. There's cleverer. There's more heartfelt. But for some reason, even though it doesn't check any of those "official boxes", THIS is the one that's caught the most people's ears... "What is this?!"
For real. Molotovs have been singing it back to me. Old friends and inspirations have come out of the woodwork just to pull me up on it. And recently a member of a band starting out messaged me on Insta to say they're obsessed with a snippet I put up. I just can't explain how life affirming these instances are. Seriously.
So my gut feeling has been, man... I've got to get this one out there at least, whilst I'm behind the scenes polishing the rest of the show.
It's a song called 'Clone Zone'. For those who know... yeah, but it's such a resonant name that stuck with me, and a shoe that fitted my observations of contemporaries - competitive creatives aspiring to solely replicate one of two or three stock figures, rather than embrace the uniquety of themselves - it just fell into place. And, in the midst of a certain reunion of a band I formatively like who have unfortunately become one of the go-to templates, I can feel becoming prophetically more topical than it already is.
Sonically, I don't know how to describe it. It's nothing like Another Guy or Out Of Hand. When I put it through my distributor, it asked for a genre. I didn't know what to put. It's jazzy, it's funky, it's beaty, it's rocky, it's theatrical, and it's got the most DISGUSTING Minimoog solo ever crafted to figurative tape. The radio will probably call it 'indie' cos I'm a whippersnapper in the grand scheme of things, so instead, I firmly advise you to make your own minds up... or just classify it as 'Tom Monks'.
As with most of the album - I played all the instruments on my larry, produced, and mixed it. But I'd love to give a huge thanks to the Lord of Waves, Dan Cooper, who mastered this track to make it sound humongous - and my musical soulmate, Reece Bailey, not just for photographing and designing such brilliant artwork for this, but for the awful threats for if I didn't get this moving.
I'll keep on teasing this tune from now til next Friday, but for now... here ya go.
The rest shall follow.
Keep your ears OPEN
T x