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September 29th
Pea fights at the restaurant - check.
TV noise and drunken shouts until 5am – all present and correct.
An en suite room with an absence of toilet and working shower - why,
of course, Sir.
Add sticky black dirt on the furniture and phlegm on the TV remote
control to the above and as Robert Fripp might say, "Welcome to 'B&B
Exceptionally Unacceptable'."
Boasting a decent AA recommendation, surprisingly, the cost of
staying in this arena of the extremely unwell was more than
profligate blue-blood Lord Chilvers recently paid for a superb 5-star
hotel in Toronto. By the end of my first hour (in a room little
larger than a portaloo), I was begging for the key to Stephen King's
Room 1408!
The reason for staying at the Devil's lair was in order to get plenty
of rest in preparation for No-Man's long-delayed recording sessions.
If nothing else, the feeling of despair the place engendered added
total authenticity to the melancholy outpourings of the next five days.
Despite nights of unrest (and a choice migraine or two), the days of
No-Manning proved highly productive with myself and the man Wilson
demoing ten new songs.
Three are ambitious, emotive and melodic, ballads with real musical
scope. Three other songs (in a similar vein) show potential, but
don't yet pass the Wilson Test. Another, ‘Mixtaped’, is as dark and
atmospheric as the band has ever got and features a haunting Theo
Travis flute coda. A 20 minute disco epic passes the Wilson Test, but
fails the Bowness Gauge, while a further two songs are notably
different from anything else we've done, but by mutual consent don't
seem album worthy.
Overall, between 28-38 minutes of music emerged that we both feel
could grace a strong follow up to Together We're Stranger and a
further 10 minutes that could make for an interesting outtakes EP.
Although most of the starting points came from pieces I brought in,
inevitably the strongest songs were the genuine TB/SW co-writes, in
which Steven considerably added to and developed further the
compositional frameworks I presented him with. In those cases, that
'old No-Man magic' was very much in evidence.
While SW takes PT around the globe again, I'll be doing further work
on the material in Sweden with Together We're Stranger/ My Hotel Year
contributor, Stephen 'Baron' Bennett.
Myself and SW will meet up again in January to complete the pieces we
both like and develop additional material.
A Spring 2008 release is still the aim.
-----------------------
In other news:
A social meeting in Dublin with Fovea Hex's Clodagh Simonds proved
highly enjoyable. As sweet and accessible in person as her work is
ambitious and intense, interesting anecdotes flowed freely over fine
coffee and salad. Hopefully, not a one-off.
Of late, I've been in reasonably regular contact with Peter Hammill,
someone whose work had a very strong influence on my own early
attempts at making music. A genuinely intelligent and truly
idealistic artist, Peter will be contributing guitar to the epic
slice of misery that is At The Centre Of It All (part of the ongoing
Giancarlo Erra sessions). An honour in many ways.
Porcupine Tree's Colin Edwin and the excellent percussionist Rick
Edwards (a veteran of Returning Jesus) have also recently made some
impressive contributions to a couple of other songs scheduled for the
upcoming Giancarlo Erra (incorporating Jacob Holm-Lupo) album.
As 'The Summer That Rained Forever' morphs into an unseasonably mild
and dry Autumn, reasons for optimism abound.
Reading:
Michael Cunningham - Specimen Days
Barney Hoskins - Hotel California
Walt Whitman - Leaves Of Grass (1855 edition)
Watching:
Atonement
Hallam Foe
Little Fish
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July 29th
The UK's Summer That Rained Forever continues with an enthusiasm not known since the days of the ark. Dark skies, high winds and relentless downpours have provided a suitably gloomy backdrop to recent writing sessions and nostalgic visits to old Northern haunts.
My gap between new albums is now larger than it's ever been. Not quite in the Scott Walker or Kate Bush league (a mere 3 years), but it no doubt affects decisions and writing. The unused song mountain (which, sadly, the EU can't use) grows as the focus on creating something worth waiting for intensifies.
As I suggested in the recent Guitar Player interview, too many musicians have fallen into the trap of releasing everything they do because it’s so easy and cheap to produce and distribute music in the era of downloading and inexpensive CDs. It’s definitely more important to me to produce a body of work I have extreme pride in, which is why I tend to produce far more music than I release. For me, releases must pass the test of being both creatively unique and having an emotional reason to exist. Whatever emerges into the 'real world' has to be something I'd want to buy and fall in love with myself, otherwise why bother?
The positives in this approach are that everything comes under intense scrutiny and that there's a constant questioning about what it is I want to do musically. The negatives are that the positives can often lead to complete stasis and a paranoid belief that all my previous work is better than what I'm currently doing. Consequently, the impulse to watch Annie Hall, Manhattan or Alien 3 (you know, the underrated, mad, one!) for the fifteenth time rather than work is immense. Even the non-existent lure of Turner And Hooch seems appealing in times like this!
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Jacob from Norwegian bands White Willow and The Opium Cartel now looks like he'll be getting involved in the mixing side of the project with Giancarlo Erra. A strong album's worth of material has been written, and in many ways, it's a far more logical successor to the last two No-Man albums (especially Returning Jesus) than the material under consideration for the new No-Man album.
The t-bo/sw No-Man summit of August 2007 is still on, and as No-Man has, so far, never repeated itself, the man Wilson is determined that we don't start now. For obvious reasons, I agree. The essential Black Metal genre shift starts here!
Now, where is that umbrella?
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Reading:
Stuart Maconie - Pies And Prejudice: In Search Of The North
Lewis Williams - Scott Walker: The Rhymes Of Goodbye
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June 11th
My unlikely new found status as guitar god gains pace with June's edition of
the magazine Guitar Player, which features a recent interview with me (by
Anil Prasad).
A radically truncated version of an epic four hour original conversation, it
was still a delight to be interviewed by Anil, who remains one of the most
knowledgeable and idealistic journalists I've had the pleasure to meet.
The article can be found here.
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In other news, I've been very busy recording over the last two months.
Four days with Fjieri in Rome in April proved highly productive and
enjoyable with 3 songs recorded (in the superb Forward Studios), which also
involved the talents of Gavin Harrison, Richard Barbieri, Nicola Alesini and
a string quartet.
Combining the rock dynamics of Porcupine Tree with the atmospheres of
No-Man, the tracks manage to sound unlike either band (all the more peculiar
given the personnel involved).
Perfect weather, stunning views, gracious hospitality and the presence of
more fancy food than I've seen in a lifetime of over-eating, made for an
excellent time.
Closer to home, I've resumed recording with the 'posh prince of much hair',
Lord Peter Chilvers (currently on a sabbatical from his work with Brian Eno)
and Alistair 'the curator' Murphy. The follow-up to California, Norfolk finally seems to be taking coherent shape, while the excess of Songs Of The
Surf is undoubtedly getting more extreme with each recording session.
Unsurprisingly, 'the curator' has aged 10 years in the last 2 months of
subterranean studio-knob twiddling. His bath chair awaits.
Another session with Nosound's Giancarlo Erra provided yet another
slow-burning, highly emotional, addition to our growing mountain of
unreleased songs. Of all the present projects I'm involved in, this is
perhaps creating the most open, moving and unexpected (in its simplicity and
sense of the appropriate) songs. As with everything else here, release dates
and album schedules are currently unknown.
Following the acquisition of the magnificent M-Tron, I've recorded an
atypical piece of Art Goth Prog (called Outside The Mercury Lounge) which,
originally scheduled to stay forever in the 'cupboard of doom' (along with
the many abandoned songs I've recorded in the last decade), may have found a
new lease of life courtesy of an impromptu G-Man re-mix.
With any luck, No-Man will get to work on something new in August.
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Listening:
Tori Amos - American Doll Posse (2007)
Bjork - Volta (2007)
Leonard Cohen - The Songs Of Leonard Cohen (re-issue) (1968)
Love - Forever Changes (1967)
Clint Mansell - The Fountain (soundtrack) (2006)
Reading:
Douglas Coupland - J-Pod (2006)
HG Wells - The Invisible Man (1897)
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March 29th
A new site demands a new diary entry, so here goes:
2007 has been a positive and productive year so far with some excellent
sessions in France with Rajna and some fine noodling in the heart of Norfolk
with Alistair 'The Curator' Murphy and Andy Butler.
The year has also seen myself and the man Wilson meet up in London to
discuss all things No-Man, including the prospective new download store and
the forthcoming album.
Elsewhere, my Polish chocolate mountain sadly diminished, but luckily was
almost instantly replaced with copious amounts of sweet stuff sent to me
from sunny California and Northern France.
The race to reach Nutty Professor-sized proportions by the early Summer is
still well and truly on!
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Located in a part of France with an uncanny resemblance to parts of Northern
England (Manchester exotique!), the recording sessions with Rajna managed to
be a genuinely creative fusion of what we both do best, with Rajna's
atmospheric World Music-inspired approach working surprisingly well with my
voice (set at croon factor ten).
As a result of the success of the sessions, Rajna has subsequently been
adding musical layers and production ideas to solo songs recorded on my home
studio over the last couple of years.
The next few months will determine whether this becomes a full-blown
collaboration project, or just a few collaborative tracks on one another's
albums.
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The Norfolk sessions (going against my previous diary entry's desire to
outlaw all improv and ambient music!) saw the BBM trio develop further from
our improvised Durutti Column support of last year.
For my part, I used the DL4 in ways that I haven't before and as that
demanded a different approach, I found myself doing some new things vocally
that definitely fit into the 'interesting' category, if not the listenable
one! Andy B created some wonderful guitar-generated percussion and The
Curator added some other-worldly organ and demented marimba.
One exception to the atmospheric improvs was the brittle oddity, 'The
Legendary Longford Lover' - a song that represents a major departure from
anything so far created with The Curator and perhaps more properly belongs
alongside my work with Centrozoon or on No-Man's 'Wild Opera'.
A jittery piece of wanton nonsense about a long-dead Warringtonian charmer
(a true rarity!), we've so far spent 60 hours on turning it into something
vaguely resembling music. By my reckoning, a further 60 hours may be needed
to fully achieve the transition!
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April promises sessions in Rome with Stefano Panunzi/Fjieri Group, an
article in US magazine Guitar Player, and the release of the new CD/DVDA
edition of No-Man's 'Together We're Stranger'.
This new edition has been lovingly re-packaged by Carl Glover and manages to
compete with the fantastic Tonefloat vinyl issues in terms of sheer
indulgent loveliness (another true rarity).
The album as a whole I still feel represents the most complete, emotional
and successful project I've been involved in making, and perhaps the most
exciting aspect about creating the new No-Man album is that due to the time
between albums and the experiences gained since making 'Together We're
Stranger' (both personally and musically), whatever it becomes, it's
unlikely to have many echoes of its predecessor.
All change (again).
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In conclusion, many thanks to Tony Kinson/HotsDesign for the lovely 'new
look' T-Bo site.
Listening:
Terry Callier/4Hero - The Day Of The Greys (2001)
Bruce Cockburn - Falling Into The Dark (re-issue) (1976)
Depeche Mode - Music For The Masses (re-issue) (1987)
Ursula Rucker/4Hero - Loveless (1998)
Reading:
George Saunders - In Persuasion Nation
James Tiptree Jr - The Screwfly Solution
Watching:
The Fountain (2006)
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other years
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