acoustic guitars in made up tunings. the quiet between quiets. overthinking/underthinking. tape hiss/memory's static.
The lovely Robot Needs Home have put together a compilation CD as part of Record Store Day and I’m super thrilled to be part of it.
There are only a 100 copies and they’re to be given away to folk who buy something from Rockaboom records in St.Martin’s Square, Leicester on Record Store Day (Saturday 16th April). You can read more about it and see the tracklisting here.
Bright sunny day. A small breeze teases wisps of cirrus cloud in a near perfect blue sky, long shaded trails of white. Sitting on the grass, looking up at the tall thin trees gently swaying. Then above the shimmering rustle I hear skylarks – somewhere higher than the trees in front of me and beyond, above a field somewhere up in the air. The fantastic fluttering melody rising as they fly, unable to place the sound as it’s carried off by the wind and then returning. I remember the first time I learned the sound of the skylark, I was instantly taken back to fields in Norfolk where that sound seemed to be everywhere in summer.
I’ve only seen a Skylark once before, as I was cycling up a hill in Church Langton in Leicestershire but that sound is such a wonderful, beautiful sound.
http://www.rspb.org.uk/wildlife/birdguide/name/s/skylark/index.aspx
It’s a stamp with a train on it. What isn’t there to love?
This particular stamp is a favourite for three reasons.
1) It has a lovely shape that frames the boat perfectly.
2) The frank mark is in an almost perfect position.
3) This stamp was attached to an envelope that contained a cd from Clare Blackman – an ace singer from Essex. Check the Billy-O out of her, she has the most amazing voice.
I was walking from work to the recycling bins with an empty coffee jar. As I went down the road I looked around me and listened. A bright day, bird song, sudden blossom on trees. There was pop music coming out of an open door – something r’n’b with bleeps and beats, a simple rhyme spoke/sung/rapped over the top – I thought to myself ‘How can we make this?’ I thought to myself ‘Is this how I will be judged too?’
I carried on walking past the coach works, the sound of angle grinders and panels being beaten and I looked at the jar in my hand. Once as a child with my brother we would take jars like this down to the river with brightly coloured nets, hoping to catch sticklebacks. Holding it up to the light amazed at we are, at what we have become.
There is something about the Snipe. it has this kind of mournful look.
And everybody loves an owl.
I’d planned to do some recording on the Friday afternoon 4th Feb but it was so windy the night before, I knew I wouldn’t be able to do it. The wind whips around the house, blows the bins over, whistles around the windows, makes the trees shimmer and the mics pick it all up and loop it endlessly. I didn’t want to do that on this particular occasion, just wanted to record some singing. But, still, on the Thursday night I set up my kit to check that everything was ready and worked OK. In the absent mindedness of simply playing I caught the music in the player below. It was edited down from about 18 minutes worth of playing and maps a gradual progression of the improvisation.
I was to release this as a business card cd-r for the Her Name is Calla gig at Firebug, Leicester 29th March but because of not really being able to play live at the minute I’m not sure what to do with it, other than have it digitally available. The work in progress sleeve looks a little like this.
I hope you enjoy it.
P.x
My first encounter of Hood was in a fanzine article around 1997 (Easy Pieces, I think) – I remembered being astounding by the amount of material they’d released ( see both Singles Compiled and Compilations 1995-2002 ), it wasn’t until 1999 I got round to hearing them.
I saw the sleeve in my local record shop and immediately picked it up – there was something about the photo, something I recognised. Discovered it was Hood, remembered the article and bought it straight away. From the moment I put the record on I was I was transfixed. It’s difficult to describe the songs as they’re ‘just songs’ but sometimes they’re barely there at all. The first thing that struck me was how I could identify the sounds because they all sounded ‘real’ to me – there wasn’t coats of polish over them, they were just recorded quite starkly and laid next to one another. It wasn’t just the guitars though – there’s trails of tape delay, crinkly field recordings, muttered dictaphones, actual pianos in actual rooms. Also the quality of the voices, again, were just real. They really seemed to capture a sense of place for me and a time too.
It’s still a record I go back to time and rime again when I want to be fascinated and lost in the sound, in another world and when I want to feel inspired with what you can do with minimal equipment and an idea.
A letter from The Netherlands but with stamps from Germany. Or rather the envelope had a Netherlands address printed on it.
What I really liked about this was the detail on the one below. The grain on the print. I like the little Deutsche Post frank as well. I’m a sucker for thing like that.
Blu-tacked to a cherry tree, no less.
peter wyeth 