Andy Blade – Tiny Specks In A Huge Abyss Punk77 Review September 2025

So here we are again, one year later and another solo album – Tiny Specks In A Huge Abyss – from Mr Blade, this time covering Karen Carpenter, UFOs, the Gaza conflict, identity & mental illness.

If you’re coming to this because you like Eater, then I tell you now it’s nothing like it. However, don’t be scared to dive in – you never know.

As usual, it’s a superbly produced listening experience of an album that’s a dense feast of multi-tracked treated instruments and vocals. There are various supporting female vocalists and contributors like Derwood again adding finely balanced simple but effective guitar runs.

In fact, I don’t think Andy gets enough credit for his vocal production work. The PR describes it as ‘honeyed’, which I think is not bad, but there’s more, including the art of multi-tracking and dovetailing/layering with his guests that ae intrinsic to his songwriting.

With no lyrics provided (and there may be none), I haven’t got a clue what the songs are about, so I’ll go on feel. The closest I can get to in comparison would be Spiritualized Ladies & Gentlemen.  Listening to it is like a late-night warm bath with headphones on after a medicinal dose of methadone. That’s a good thing, by the way. Though remember kids, drugs and /or warm baths can kill.

This Place’ has had Andy post the words, and is about the Gaza/Palestine situation which is very personal to him but it doesn’t overshadow the album.

Picks for me are

Mud – Fantastically atmospheric and the dual vocals work really well. Very catchy and almost sensual


I’m Not Myself (the Derwood mix) Seventies feel with a trip hop beat and simple but very effective fat fuzzed guitar motif


About That is the closest to an up-tempo jolly jaunt, complete with handclaps and horns from the Madness brass section!

For me in totality better than Being Alive and a more complete album that will repaylistening to over and over.

Everything we do still means nothing at all, because we’re all still just an insignificant speck of dust in the universe. It all means nothing.

We are all small specks from up there in the firmament, but we live life in the micro not macro and everything means something to somebody. 🙂

Here’s the PR

Punk pioneer/Eater main-man, Andy Blade’s 7th solo album and follow up to 2024’s critically acclaimed and heavily rotated, Sparks bros endorsed Being Alive Is Fun. It is imbued with the usual left-of-centre Blade-ism’s and themes: star maps, UFO’s & a slightly twisted nod to tragic 70’s heroine Karen Carpenter. You get what you deserve with Blade, and with Tiny Specks you are rewarded with a rich code to decipher at your leisure. Most of all, however, it is all about the quality of his songwriting.



TalkPunk

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