5th November:
Probably the most enjoyable musical experience of the last month was the near completion of No-Man's forthcoming album, 'All The Blue Changes'.
Roger Eno recorded some righteous harmonium for the album while the heavens roared (torrential rain hammering against attic windows). Lending aspects of the album an almost 19th Century evangelical feel, Roger's playing was subtle and inspired and provided a gorgeous organic counterpoint for Ben (son of Roy) Castle's clarinet leaps of imagination.
A day later, I finished off my vocal parts and we embarked on No-Man's first official photo shoot for two years.
Using London's evocative South Bank as a backdrop, the shoot (with ace lensman and designer Carl Glover) was amongst the most relaxed and successful that we've ever done. Early on, to add an air of danger to the proceedings, we were unceremoniously thrown out of the Royal Festival Hall by security guards (taking photos without permission). Wilson, Bowness and Glover, very nearly in the dock for crimes against Queen and country, carried on regardless and proceeded to illegally abuse many other fine interiors for the next few hours.
So far we have fifty minutes of new No-Man material. The debate about what should stay and what should be consigned to b-side ignominy has begun in earnest. Expect the album sometime in 2006.
Elsewhere, I did some more studio work with Henry Fool (a delightful tune called 'Ian McShane') and Bowness/Chilvers (who are gracing London's 12 Bar Club on November 14th).
Of interest to Krimson News is that the Burning Shed 'shop' section will soon be stocking the 21st Century Schizoid Band CD and the new Mastica release. The label's 'new' signing of the month was veteran bass-playing genius and ex-Soft Machiner, Hugh Hopper (who will also be playing at the Shed live events in December). Someone I've admired for a long time, in my opinion, he's given us one of the best albums of his career (also featuring Robert Wyatt, John Marshall and Elton Dean in sampled and mutated form!).
Until next year?
26th September:
Consider me chastised!
An email from a fan suggested that there was little point in me having a diary page without me actually having written a diary on it. A reasonable point, I suppose.
The last month has been quite frantic -
8 days in the wonderful City of Toronto, more work on the new No-Man and Bowness/Chilvers albums and the setting up of a Burning Shed mini-festival in Norwich and two dates in Athens (co-headlining with Roger Eno). Add the start of a Cultural Studies course, e-flurries galore and the fact that I've been socialising at a level equivalent to that of Tara Palmer Tompkinson at her most decadent and there's some good excuses for not doing this.
Toronto was big, bright, cultured and still alive at 3am. Inevitably, I loved it.
Along with our gracious guide Diane, we took in the City sites, the International Film Festival and the obligatory CN Tower and Niagra experiences. Strange delights included finding the Peter Pan statue in Glenn Gould Park, seeing directors such as Peter Mullen and Michael Almereyda discuss their work and sitting on the rocks by Lake Ontario at midnight marvelling at the glowing downtown core.
The Bowness/Chilvers performance was intimate and strong, the response superb. If not the most well-attended gig, it was certainly one of the most special. The audience enthusiasm and warmth was infectious and worth the trip alone.
While there, myself and Lord Chilvers (who, true to form, dined on caviar most evenings) wrote a couple of new pieces while gazing at a fantastically panoramic view of the City from our 29th floor window. Whether it's changed the nature of our work or not, I'm not sure. The songs still sounded more miserable than old man Steptoe with a hernia to me, and that's perhaps as it should be.
I could blather on about Pedro Almodovar, Asa Chang, Peter Gabriel, Underworld, Terry Gilliam, Roland Barthes and other cultural highlights of the last few weeks, but I fear I might bore even myself.
Until next month?
23rd August:
How much of the unreleased material I mentioned in my 12th August entry will ever see release is debatable, but the existence of Burning Shed and the economics of CD production certainly makes it all very possible.
I continually vacillate between admiring musicians who release almost every aspect of their work (Davis/Fripp/Nelson/Rundgren/Zappa) and those who only wait until a project is complete sonically and emotionally before letting go of it (Blue Nile/Hollis/Massive Attack). In many ways, it's a battle between capturing the heat of now (personally and technologically) and attempting to pinpoint the heart of the timeless (within and without).
To a certain extent, No-Man now fit into the latter category. 'Returning Jesus' took five years to write, record, assemble and assess. It was an album that we wouldn't release until we felt it was exactly what we wanted to say. In retrospect, I wouldn't have had it any other way. It's still the album I'd rank as my best. Most everything else I've done seems slightly half-hearted by comparison with the debate and care that went into 'Returning Jesus'. Viva preciousness!
Sometimes I feel there's too much music out there which is merely good and adequate and that by releasing so much 'work in progress' that many musicians (myself included) are unnecessarily adding to the ever growing 'heap of the acceptable'. On the other hand, at their best, these works can be significant indicators of a musician's hidden qualities, or where their music is coming from/going to. They can also contain some of the musician's more peculiar and risk-taking experiments. It's this latter aspect that perhaps justifies the ProjeKcts box set, the Darkroom live triple and the Complete Plugged Nickel Miles Davis experience. Also, who says the creator is always right about what's good in his/her work?
For my part, on one level I'm attempting to question the very nature of what I do and why I do it and touch something 'eternal'. On another, I'm attempting to lose myself in an immediate spark of creativity and engage with the possibilities that contemporary technology has to offer. The world constantly changes and it's a challenge to respond to that. While I continue to vacillate between the ideological extremes, I just make music.
-------------------
Richard Barbieri calls me regarding a possible re-release of our 1994 album, 'Flame'. New Porcupine Tree drummer Gavin Harrison (also on 'Flame') calls concerning Burning Shed. Other dealings with Andrew Keeling, Third Stone, Neil Sadler, City Of Culture 2008 and Diane, our friend in Canada.
Diane hasn't been in contact recently due to having severed her hand in a work accident (I wince even reading her description). Luckily, three top Toronto surgeons have replaced the hand and feeling and movement is now creeping back. Along with Sid's 'Shingle Chronicles', this makes me feel sick by association.
To bed, before I choke!
12th August:
Liase with Pete and Peter regarding the eight (!) forthcoming Shed releases.
Receive a package from Lee Fletcher which includes some interesting and rare Bowie material as well as a great mix of the new Centrozoon song 'Make Me Forget You'.
Along with 'The Me I Knew', it's one of the two songs I wrote with Centrozoon during my last stay in Germany in June/July. Both pieces are more structured and conventionally 'romantic' than our previous work together and were premiered live just days after being written. Immediately, they established themselves as a perfect balance to the more extreme, beat driven aspects of the set. As a live band, the communication has developed well and the material become more consistent. As yet though, we haven't decided how to proceed regarding promoting/assembling the very varied work we've composed together. In addition to the album proper, Pat Mastelotto and Bill Munyon have come up with an excellent album's worth of remixes.
All of this reminds me of other outstanding projects I'm currently in the process of evaluating:
No-Man: The follow-up to 'Returning Jesus' is 80% complete. Barring final arrangements and instrumental voices/choices, the material is mostly there.
Composed in December/January, the sound has taken further certain aspects of its predecessor without repeating it. Lyrically personal and emotionally raw, from its inception it's been one of the most inspiring and affecting albums I've been involved in making.
Bowness/Chilvers: We're two thirds of the way through a follow-up to 'California, Norfolk'. The material is more loose, epic and sonically experimental than before, but contains one or two more standard songs.
Unexpectedly, more Jazz and World influences than before. In addition, 'Overstrand', our album of outtakes and alternative versions of songs from 'California, Norfolk' is nearly ready. In many ways, it's as good as the album it's accompanying.
Echosphere: An ongoing series of echoplex improvisations with looping musicians Deive Montaigue (guitar) and Andy Butler (bass). We already have hours of material to sift through and the editing is where the real work will come in, I suspect.
Henry Fool: two studio songs and three live songs into the second Fool album. 'Pills In The Afternoon', one of the new studio tracks, is perhaps the strongest and loveliest thing we've done.
Other unfinished work includes songs written with Roger Eno, Fjieri Group (also involving Richard Barbieri and Gavin Harrison), Halou and Rhinoceros (a couple of intense post Trip-Hop pieces). Not to mention the two 'lost' albums: Samuel Smiles album of Nick Drake covers (which may one day get completed) and 'It's A Long Way Back To The Dark, Dark And Dark', an album of spoken word and textures written with Peter a couple of years ago.
Damn, I feel tired even thinking about the above!
-------
Cinema-wise, see the extraordinary 'Hotel' by Mike Figgis. One of the new breed of low-budget 'digital' films, Figgis has extended the ideas he initially presented on 'Timecode 2000' and shown himself to be one of the most original directors of recent times. By turns, pretentious, indulgent, unique and crudely funny, he's becoming something of a toilet-mouthed Peter Greenaway (not an entirely bad thing!). The film also features a superb Figgis composed soundtrack with hints of Eno, Massive Attack and Miles Davis. Freed from the restrictions of big budget Hollywood, Figgis is trying to find a new vocabulary for cinema. He may not be entirely successful, but his bizarre efforts are well worth supporting.
5th August:
Get a few positive emails regarding the Fool performance (including one from the organiser who wants us back for next year's festival).
After a week of reading Frank Skinner and Douglas Coupland and mainly listening to old favourites (Bjork, Martyn, Mitchell, Davis etc...), in honour of the new S Club Juniors release, I go out and buy the latest King Crimson reissues. How contemporary!
Earthbound is fascinating. Totally unlike the quiet/loud Art Beauty of the band's first four albums, it's sometimes very good (Sailor's Tale) and sometimes more like an orthodox blues band playing in a pub in Diss than the mighty King Crimson. Boz's scat singing is mundane and on a couple of tracks RF sounds as if he'd rather be somewhere else (probably Diss). Mel Collins is, as ever, excellent.
USA is stunning and the remaster sounds immaculate. A distinctive band at a creative peak.
Thrak, to me, still sounds overproduced (especially in comparison to Vroom).
Overall, it's an album that I'm still not sure about, although it's undoubtedly very impressive in parts. Perhaps more importantly, it's the sound of a band entering its fourth decade of existence and still caring about the noise it makes, with certain pieces (B'Boom, for instance) hinting at a fresh future.
In contact with Sid Smith regarding a possible Burning Shed release.
Sid's late 70's/early 80's work is a wonderful snapshot of where electronic/ambient music was at at the time. Clearly influenced by Eno, Steve Reich and some early electro-pop (Cabaret Voltaire/Human League?), there's a warmth to the recordings and some genuinely nice ideas. As a forgotten album from a distant age, it's ideal Shed material.
Talk with Steven Wilson and Carl Glover regarding the new No-Man album and an offer that has recently emerged. Steven and Carl are all for going it alone, although I'm worried about the potential lack of profile that might entail.
August 4th:
2.00pm:
After in car listening provided by Arvo Part and David Toop's excellent 'Crooning On Venus' compilation and food by Esso Shop, myself and Peter arrive one hour late for the soundcheck (we're delayed by crashes on the motorway). The Bear and The Master arrived on time, but to little effect.
Headline band Focus have emerged from their van bleary-eyed and four hours late. They proceed to soundcheck for the next three. Our 'essential' 1pm start becomes a 5.30pm one.
In between, we meet the organiser David Martin, Anil Prasad, Cyclops' boss Malcolm Parker and New Horizons writers Marissa and Simon Hill. The dead time becomes a great opportunity to finally put faces to email addresses.
The festival atmosphere is positive and the people seem decent. Its also good to see a crowd that makes 'Lord ' Chilvers regal girth seem minuscule by comparison. I suspect the presence of real ale drinkers.
5.30pm:
The soundcheck is none too good. At this stage, I sound more like a retarded Lou Reed aged 2 than Segovia. I start to worry.
On stage at 7.30pm and all improves.
Like a delicate filling in a mighty Prog sandwich, the 'fake' Henry Fool play between neo-Prog/Jazz Fusion monsters Sphere 3 (who play more notes in one bar than we do in our entire set!) and the reformed Focus.
Luckily, people are supportive and seem to enjoy the between song banter which is more prominent than usual due to my obvious nerves regarding playing guitar for the first time live (an experiment unlikely to be repeated in the near future). We're mostly on form, although due to the lack of rehearsal and the fact a third of the set is entirely new, understandably there are some occasional rhythm and instrumental slips.
In many respects, this is the weakest professional performance I've ever been involved in. Luckily, it's one of the better vocal performances (my recent German dates with Centrozoon paying off?) and in every track, for every negative there's a positive reaction. Peter's new electric piano sounds good and his experiments with the fretless through the laptop are inspired and unexpected. Michael's texture and solo voices are strong and for getting through the 22/8 time signature maelstrom of Poppy Z, Richard has earned his Fool stripes in full.
Especially on the big atmospheric ballads (Sorry Looking Soldier/Brightest Blue/Judy On The Brink/Pills In The Afternoon), it seems genuinely effective and emotive, and perhaps turning into the more communicative Samuel Smiles myself and Michael Bearpark always wished for. A brutal 5/4 rock reading of the previously genteel 'Dreaming Of Babylon' - which in thrall to the spirit of Spinal Tap, features sustained vocal scream and white noise guitar solo - is also a highlight for both band and audience.
Focus are quite excellently and accurately 1973 era Focus (Hammond organ in tow!) and deservedly go down like conquering heroes. If you ever liked the band, you'll like the band. Strangely, they're interested in launching their new album 'Focus 8' via the Burning Shed site. We talk.
Throughout the day I have quite a few No-Man queries and the odd worried Porcupine Tree fan coming up to me. Scared that the Tree's Atlantic deal is going to force them to take a highly polished FM Rock route to success, I reassure them that Steven's been listening non-stop to Asia's debut album and Celine Dion, and that they will (NB I've heard the demos and the reality is very different).
I arrive home at 4am, reasonably satisfied.
3rd August:
The final Henry Fool rehearsal before tomorrow's gig at Whitchurch.
Finally, it all comes together. From having no material, we end up with an hour and twenty minutes worth.
The sound is no longer Foolish, but, by necessity, Samuel Smiles with rhythm. At our best, we create a fresh vocabulary for the band (a kind of contemporary variation on John Martyn's late 1970's Jazz-tinged, Ambient singer-songwriter material) and at our worst, we no longer sound like The Mission.
Richard begins to feel more integrated, I pretend I can play like Segovia and the mood is good.
In the evening, before travelling to Cambridge, myself and Peter see Men In Black II. Loud and stupid, I'll have forgotten it by tomorrow, but it's ideal to wind down to (Peter didn't want to go to the party). One feature of the film is its highly contemporary digital look. With even Rip Torn appearing more like a video game character than a human being, I'm sure that this heightened artificiality is what will date and define big budget films of this era. Unlike the brilliant Amelie where the artifice (such as a digitally 'cleansed' Paris) was intrinsic to its labyrinthine plot and skewed dialogue, MIB II's look seems merely flashy.
2nd August:
Innerviews writer Anil Prasad arrives in Norwich for the patented 'Bowness Tour Of The Fine City'.
Anil is tall and friendly, and with the right backing band and sensual production, his rich Canadian voice could transform him into the 21st Century Isaac Hayes. Idealist to the last, I'm not so sure he'd be up for it.
Along with verbally righting the wrongs of corporate industries, discussing racism in the US and the UK (Oldham riots etc...), I introduce Anil to Welsh Rarebit at the King Of Hearts and we listen to bits of the new No-Man and Centrozoon albums. I also play him a Henry Fool track (Pills In The Afternoon). Written last month, this already feels like something I've known all my life. Unfortunately, I fail to convince him that Goldie's Saturnzreturn is the most undervalued and bizarre album of the last half decade.
During 'the tour', we bump into Anne from the group Fiel Garvie (an interesting PJ Harvey/Throwing Muses style combo), the owner of excellent local shop Dots And Squiggles (sadly closing down at the end of the month) and Fiona from my occasional college course. By God, I'm popular!
Michael Bearpark arrives an hour later than expected and myself and Peter force him to watch the DVD of The Imposter. An adequate sci-fi romp, it's based on a Philip K Dick short story that's remarkably similar to the much hyped Minority Report. Not as good as MR, it's certainly not much worse either. For my part, I prefer Tom Cruise in the magnificent, underrated Magnolia.
1st August:
A day of emailing and receiving emails.
I hear from Stefano Panunzi from Italian band, The Fjieri Group.
I've sung on two tracks for their forthcoming debut album which is getting remixed by Richard Barbieri in the next couple of weeks. Stefano is starting work on a new solo album and asks me if I'd be interested to sing on any of it.
The Fjieri style combines the break beats of early No-Man, the power chords of Porcupine Tree and the harmonies of Rain Tree Crow. Hyper-Romantic, in many ways it's a very Italian sound.
Jarboe has contacted me regarding whether I've got a back up for the track of hers that I sang on (she hasn't). Unfortunately, I remember sending everything to Craig Peacock (her Japanese manager and friend), so only Stephen Bennett's Logic Files can save us now.
A strange email from ex Henry Cow man Geoff Leigh and an invitation to Trezza Azzopardi's boyfriend Steve's party on Saturday also arrive.
I book my plane ticket for the Bowness/Chilvers show at the Toronto Rivoli (September 10th) and give breakfast instructions to Diane the organiser (muesli or cereal for myself and a golden bucket full of caviar for the profligate Lord Chilvers).
28th July:
Off to the village of Happisburgh on the Norfolk coast with Lord Chilvers.
With some of the village disappearing into the North Sea and a road that suddenly turns into a cliff, several ideal Burning Shed photo opportunities present themselves.
After developing a rather nice 1970's Ryan O'Neal/Magnum PI hairstyle for the Whitchurch Festival, I come over all cowardly and decide to have it cut.
I later find out that Mr Chilvers (who had been developing a super fine white afro) has done the same. From looking like members of The Eagles we suddenly resemble early A Certain Ratio or a couple of US Marines. Scary!
We watch Wes Anderson's Rushmore on DVD. Not as sharp or cohesive as his latest (The Royal Tennenbaum's), the film still has a very mannered and highly original quality that makes it worthwhile viewing.
A confident run through the more discreet moments that we're intending to inflict on the Festival goers of Whitchurch.
Our fragile faces could be feeling the fists of disgruntled Metallica fans sometime soon.
24th July:
As part of Norwich City Council's City Of Culture bid, I'm invited to a 'literary lunch'. What I assume will be a grand banquet turns out to be ten people being professionally nice to each other while two respected writers (poet George Szirtes and Booker nominee Trezza Azzopardi) recite parts of their work for the grand prizes of a sausage roll and a pizza slice.
I'm introduced to Newsnight Review critic Miranda Sawyer who is as lovely/quirky as she is on TV. Avoiding asking her the truly essential question as to why she changed her name from 'Bunny', we talk about Manchester, * the Sebald project and the fact that a bag of chips (the caviar of the North) can get you killed in certain parts of Hulme (something that I suspect won't appear on the next edition of Newsnight Review).
Afterwards, I go for a coffee with George Szirtes. As well as talking about the Sebald project, we discuss the particularly unfashionable intensity of the late 60's and early 70's work of Ted Hughes and Bernard Malamud and the alarming similarities between the contemporary musical and literary industries. George is intelligent, enthusiastic and has an impressively open mind regarding art, literature and music and the way in which its viewed.
Hoping I've not made a complete arse of myself on his hallowed literary turf, we agree to meet again.
* The Sebald Project
This is something I've suggested to the City Council as part of their City Of Culture bid.
The press release:
'In association with the Norwich City Council's bid for European City Of Culture 2008, innovative online label Burning Shed is spearheading an ambitious project involving an intriguing fusion of music, art and spoken word.
Using the inspirational texts of the celebrated late German writer W.G Sebald (former resident of Norwich and UEA Professor), a unique album will be assembled utilising musical compositions and atmospheric soundscapes from the likes of Brian Eno, Robert Fripp and Neil Tennant (Pet Shop Boys) and spoken contributions from acting luminaries Stephen Fry and Simon Callow.
A specially commissioned sleeve design will come courtesy of Carl Glover (designer of the award-winning 1992 Led Zeppelin box set). Containing artwork and photography from legendary artists such as Francis Bacon contemporary Colin Self, the cover artwork will be conceived as an integral part of the project's impact and be accompanied by a gallery exhibition of the image components.
An exciting coming together of the disparate worlds of music, literature and the visual arts, The Sebald Project is a potentially culturally significant contribution to the new Millennium and a wonderful testament to the creative diversity and artistic excellence currently found in the East Anglian region.'
That's the idea anyway. Of course, it might help to tell Brian Eno, Stephen Fry and Neil Tennant about it!
The evening is spent with talented looping bassist Andy Butler. We listen to Torn's Splattercell and Talk Talk's 'Laughing Stock' before doing some improvising in his home studio. Later, I listen through rough mixes of some of our recent collaborations.
Have a long discussion regarding releasing an album by Deive Montaigue (looping guitarist) on Burning Shed.
22nd July:
To write or not to write, that is the question.
Having never had the patience to keep a conventional diary, or been particularly prone to publicly spreading the tedious details of my day to day existence, when I was approached by Krimson News (via Markus Reuter) regarding this, my first reaction was a resolute no. Who really wanted to read about me queuing for a bumper bag of muesli in the East Anglian heat, or the very avoidable circumstances of my latest gig disaster? Then again, in my guise as responsible citizen, perhaps it was my duty to provide a peculiarly apt example of what every young musician should avoid.
RF's initial reasoning behind the diaries (I think) was to expose the reality behind the myth of life as a professional musician. A way of making clear the mundane, often draining events that are as much a part of the artistic life as the few minutes of bliss and connection with Art that we're all actually striving for. In the process, through his extraordinary language and eccentric concerns, he enhanced his enigma and created dozens of imitators on dozens of e-groups. Hey, a reason for doing this!
Working on the premise that occasionally reading the diaries of RF, Pat M and the infamous Sidney Smith has not led me to a) hate them, or b) regard their work as any lesser, I proceed.
AN INTRODUCTION:
My name is Tim Bowness and I'm a musician.
Over the last 20 years, I've produced a variety of music with a variety of musicians and, despite the often bizarre situations this has led me into, the thrill that making some of this music gives me, means I still come back for more. I've had experience on labels as diverse as hip UK indies One Little Indian and Probe Plus, specialists Third Stone, Voiceprint and Materiali Sonori and a brief period with major Epic/Sony. Despite this, I've actually lived to tell some tales.
I've done some work that has involved collaborations with Robert Fripp, Mel Collins and Pat Mastelotto. I've also worked in some capacity with Jansen, Barbieri and Karn (Japan/Rain Tree Crow), David Torn, Ian Carr (Nucleus), Jarboe (The Swans) and many others, both well-known and not.
No-Man, my most enduring and successful band is an ongoing collaboration with Steven Wilson (also of Porcupine Tree, IEM and Bass Communion). For further details check out www.no-man.co.uk and http://burningshed.co.uk/aconfession.
Other projects include improvising Electronica outfit Darkroom, Art/Prog Rockers Henry Fool and my more intimate, textural singer-songwriter work with the supremely aristocratic 'Lord' Peter Chilvers which grew out of our work with Ambient Folk band Samuel Smiles.
Recently, I've also started working with German mavericks Centrozoon (www,centrozoon.de). Six months, eight gigs, twenty four songs and innumerable Mastelotto and Munyon mixes later, I guess we're a band.
In addition, I co-run an online, on demand CD/CDR label called Burning Shed.
The label has attracted interest and attention from Radio One's John Peel, Radio Three's Late Junction, The Wire and The Sunday Times and is similar in artistic and idealistic focus to DGM. I could bore you witless with our modus operandi, but I suggest you take a look at www.burningshed.com instead.
When former Creation boss Alan McGhee suggested that diversity was the key to survival in the modern music industry, he was probably right. For my part, I'm testing his theory. Very possibly to destruction.
-------
|
