Not Even My Closest Friends - sleeve notes – Day For Night

Day for Night 

The sunken features of a satellite 

The moon tide turning as two stars collide

And love ignites            

Depth of field 

An image caught inside a Catherine wheel 

Rotating, turning now you can’t conceal 

Just how she feels 

 

The day is dressed, but still unlit 

The benzy buzzing of fingertips 

That spark a thought into a sound 

As the motorcade drives underground 

 

Edge of frame 

Peep through the curtain to that other plane 

Rewind forwards, and then backwards again 

In a looped refrain. 

 

Fade to black 

The film is over, and the screen retracts 

We leave the theatre in our stove pipe hats 

As the stars collapse 

 

The day is dressed, but still unlit 

The benzy buzzing of fingertips 

That spark a thought into a sound 

As the motorcade drives underground

 

This track is the closest to the small group of songs I recorded at West Square almost 40 years ago with Naomi. Back then it was a simple VCS3 pattern over which I laid vocals and vibes before then asking Naomi to sing them as her vocal style seemed more suited to the tongue in cheek cinema inspired tales of “mixing drinks and aeroplanes”. 

 

Here the first phrase that came to mind whilst singing over a synth pattern was “day for night” a film term that describes a now largely redundant technique of shooting what are ostensibly night time scenes during the day, but underexposing them.  Rather like back projection, day for night is far from convincing, but has its own charm. The phrase itself is perhaps more evocative than the technique. 

 

Having chosen the first phrase I decided to begin each verse with some kind of film term. As with the Naomi tracks the lyrics are mini melodramas - they could be outlines for 1980s pop videos in which lots of stylised action takes place with a performative vacuousness. There are plenty of nods to that and this, “the sunken features of a satellite takes in Bowie, Bolan and Reed in one go, “caught inside a Catherine wheel” is “Windmills of Your Mind” and so on.     

 

Musically it went from a simple backing, vibes and vocals to a full on orchestration, so much so that I had to start cutting back the velveteen layers to make any kind of sense of the mix. Vocally I tried to keep the delivery as unmannered and plain as possible, you can have too much chocolate in your box.  

This is the last track proper to be covered from the album which leaves "Bye", suffice to say it is not my dad speaking. 

 

 

 

 

 

  

  

Not Even My Closest Friends - sleeve notes – Swing

 

Dance a furry foxtrot 

In your puss in boots shoes 

Hobble as you hopscotch 

Now late Chelsea muse 

 

Saucy little swindle in 

Cigarette tight pants 

All of a giggle 

Out blowing the ranks 

 

Swing why dust she swing thee 

Swing thee round the house 

Bring why dust she bring thee 

Crashing to the ground 

 

Reflecting on a fortune 

Now in the looking glass 

Cream on the wrinkles 

Blur on the past 

 

Plotting every movement 

With glass headed pins 

Waiting for the moment 

Knowing when to give in 

 

Swing why dust she swing thee 

Swing thee round the house 

Bring why dust she bring thee 

Crashing to the ground

 

As with so many of the tracks “Swing” started life as a sequencer pattern, this time a ¾ tango type pattern which you can hear at the beginning of the track. Over this I quickly improvised a vibraphone and matching vocal line and the core of the song was there so to speak, bar the usual challenge of working out what if anything the song was about - filling in the gaps between the few phrases I had already mouthed. I usually do this by repeatedly singing the lyrics to myself as I walk along the road, stopping every now and then to scribble a new line down in a notebook.  

 

The scene is 1950s Chelsea – the model is perhaps Major Rupert Rutland-Smith from the film The League Of Gentleman. In the film Rutalnd-Smith’s wife makes little attempt to disguise her unfaithfulness talking to her lover on the phone whilst taking a bath with Smith in earshot. “The war’s been over a long time” - “Nothing’s rationed anymore, there’s plenty to go round” she says provocatively. This and a host of other B & W 1950s British films provided the role models for the different characters that pop in and out of the song. For a singer prone to sibilance the lyrics are almost a self-directed/inflicted challenge. 

 

Musically a top of the ¾ synth pattern I added various layers of tango type instrumentation albeit warped and morphed. So in the mix one has organ, brass, vibes, piano overly foregrounded drum all building to something of a New Orleans funeral march on the chorus. In all of this the original synth sequence got a little lost so on the final mix I poked its head through here and there.

Not Even My Closest Friends - sleeve notes – Before The Mast

Upon the rocks where the winter waves dash 

Along the shoreline with its twinkle lightning flash 

It all happened a long song ago 

When we were drifting, our powder running low 

And all the while you were waiting on the drum 

But nowt to hear but the sad and dirty hum 

All dressed up in your bright blue uniform 

Before the mast and waiting for the storm 

 

And when it came it hit just like a fist 

The bow it buckled, and broke just like a stick 

We were tossed high into the air 

Our mouths were gagged by wind and rain and hair 

 

And all the while you were waiting on the drum 

But nowt to hear, but the sad and dirty hum 

All dressed up in your bright blue uniform 

Before the mast, and waiting for the storm 

 

The morning after, the waters still and slow 

Just a little debris in the ebb and flow 

No sign of bodies, and no sign of blood 

All hand were lost, taken down to the mud 

 

And all the while you were waiting on the drum 

But nowt to hear but the sad and dirty hum 

All dressed up in your bright blue uniform 

Before the mast and waiting for the storm

 

In 2012 to coincide with the release of the Hollow Gravity LP I recorded a session of nautically inspired instrumentals for Daniel Blumin on WFMU. One of the tracks “Running The Rigging” is a lively number using the MFB Nanozwerg and the Rota-Synth sequencer. It has a crashing through the waves, tossed on the high seas feel, and over the years I have returned to it adding more sonic layers, but to no real effect as after a while it seemed to merely drown out the riff. 

 

One approach I did try in 2013 was to add a vocal line with sea shanty phrasing. This was well before the shanty became all the rage in the pandemic, but even back then I wasn’t convinced that it wasn’t a tad contrived. Last year (I don’t give up do I) I tried again but this time instead of more atonal noise I added a simple set of chords. This provided the foundation for a verse/chorus structure. I kept a nautical theme to the lyrics borrowing the title of one of the other WFMU session tracks as a chorus lynchpin. The three verses are a relatively simple tale of a boat and all hands lost at sea with the chorus returning us repeatedly to a figure “all dressed up in your bright blue uniform, before the mast and waiting for the storm”.  Is it a metaphor for something, for the pandemic, for impending doom, tempting but I’m not sure that it is.  

 

Once a song structure was in place and the BPM established extra musical parts could be added and there is veritable orchestra of vibes, piano, brass, strings, scaffold poles (from an old improv session) and other sundry noises. There were so many tracks that I ran into those mixing dilemmas they earnestly discuss in muso magazines and on line. Basically you reach a point of having to decide which instruments to foreground and which to leave in a supporting role. So one may have a great vibe pattern, but even though it is counterpointing the strings, and in a different register to the brass not everything can be equally loud, and even with all the compression gizmos in the world pushing the vibes (for example) ultimately means making something else less audible. So you have to choose which child to sacrifice.

 

As an aside I think Tom Jones would make a decent fist of covering this track, one could just imagine him belting it out with that voice of his as the waves lash the deck in the accompanying video. Probably be a number one.  

 

 

 

Not Even My Closest Friends - sleeve notes – Idol Ferry

It’s got to be Kate Bush 

It’s got to be the Nice 

It’s got to be the Eagles 

And Three Dog Night 

 

It’s got to be Lulu 

It’s got to be the Ramones 

It’s got to be Pierre Schaefer 

And the Rolling Stones 

 

It’s got to be the Beach Boys 

It’s got to be Dick Dale 

It’s got to be Brian Eno 

And John Cale 

 

It’s got to be Organum 

It’s got to be the Seeds 

It’s got to be the Beatles 

Playing with Lou Reed 

 

It’s got to be Iggy 

It’s got to be the Cars 

It’s got to be Stockhausen 

And the Spiders From Mars 

 

It’s got to be the Monkees 

It’s got to be Wings 

It’s got to be Momus 

And his Pretty Things 

 

It’s got to be the Faces 

It’s got to be the Clash 

It’s got to be Stackridge 

And Wishbone Ash 

 

It’s got to be Ian Dury 

It’s got to be the Slade 

It’s got to be Johnny Winter 

Eating Marmalade 

 

It’s got to be Dory Previn 

It’s got to be the Rats 

It’s got to be Beyonce 

And her Stray Cats

 

It’s got to be the Blockaders 

It’s got to be the Skids 

It’s got to be Barry White 

And his Heavy Metal Kids 

 

It’s got to be Amen Corner 

It’s got to be the Fall 

It’s got to be Burt Bacharach 

And Lynsey De Paul 

 

It’s got to be Hot Chocolate 

It’s got to be the Cream 

It’s got to be the Sweet 

And Tangerine Dream 

 

It’s got to be Delia Derbyshire 

It’s got to be Judge Dread 

It’s got to be Adam Ant 

And his Medicine Head 

 

It’s got to be Scott Walker 

It’s got to be UFO 

It’s got to be Magama 

And Status Quo 

 

It’s got to be Marc Bolan 

It’s got to be Mungo Jerry 

It’s got to be Billy Idol 

And Bryan Ferry! 

 

It’s got to be 

It’s got to be

credits

 

Another sequencer delay line pattern this time with the BPM and delay time just offset enough to allow for a scrolling or combing effect. The sing over produced the beginnings of a list song. Having got the first couple of acts in place I sat down with pencil and paper and sketched in the rest. I decided to not try too hard, there are some contrivances such as the deserts verse “It’s got to be Hot Chocolate, It’s got to be the Cream” etc, but generally I left the associations between acts fall pretty much as they came to mind. Most of the names are from the 1960s and 70s canon with the odd noise act such as The Blockaders and Organum. I can’t remember why I left Storm Bugs out, it would have rhymed nicely with the Fugs. Anyways inspiration wise the list song has many antecedents though if there was a model of sorts for this one it is “friends” by Adam Ant.  

 

This is another track I left to mature for more than 36 weeks in a cool cellar before rerecording the vocoder vocal, and adding further instrumentation: a hand clap pattern (“Three six nine, the goose drank wine. The monkey chew tobacco on the street car line”),  drums and in a nod to Kraftwerk’s “Europe Endless” an extra sequencer pattern with romantic strings. 

 

I’m mindful that in including in these sleeve notes the various reference to popular songs I may be overly foregrounding the influences as if they were at the forefront of my mind when putting the tracks together. Whereas it is more the case that having been soaked in popular (and unpopular) music for 60 years they seep out whenever one opens one’s mouth and start to sing over a track

Not Even My Closest Friends - sleeve notes – Oozie Bluzey/Glazing Over

That oozie bluzey moment when the ceiling caved in 

That bluzey bluzey moment with a startled grin 

I feel like I’m crying now the moon is bad 

Sitting on the corner watching wallpaper die 

Wallpaper die 

 

That bluzey bluzey moment when you walk past my door 

Quest a world end the nightmare before 

That bluzey bluzey moment what more can I say 

A bluzey bluzey moment when you played it away 

That bluzey bluzey moment when you called in today 

That bluzey oozie bluzey jack-a-oozie jack-a-oozie bluzey 

Jack-a-oozie jack-a-oozie bluzey 

Jack-a-oozie jack-a-oozie bluzey 

That bluzey bluzey moment when the ceiling caved in 

Drunk like a pig on whisky and gin 

That bluzey bluzey moment when you walk past my door 

That bluzey bluzey moment of the nightmare before

 

In another room I make videos, artist moving image videos or whatever this week's term is. The emphasis is often on the sound to image relationship and one particular piece of software I use produces tones in response to shifting forms. One ‘composes’ both sound and image simultaneously. Occasionally though the sound produced offers potential as the basis for a song. Oozie Bluzey uses one such sequence. 

 

I'm not sure why I adopted the stylised blues drawl but that is what came out when I opened my mouth and attempted to sing over it, indeed the vocal line is the first take recorded with the laptops built-in mic. The thin sound and occasionally half formed words seemed to fit the bill and so I left it at that. I sat on the track for a couple of years before adding the synth bass, percussion and guitar parts.

I don’t know why you believe in me 

For I’m no ghost of substance 

Just a see through gossamer man 

No shape no form no feet no hands 

Who slides unseen right down your screen

 

My recent solo albums have all had at least a couple of instrumentals indeed at one time my albums were all instrumentals but for Not Even My Closest Friends it is pretty much songs all the way except for “Glazing Over” which is half-way between the two forms. It contains a reworking of part of the vocal from “Ghost of Substance” but stretched out of shape and mixed in with – well to be honest I can’t quite recall, a montage of various electronic bric-a-brac. The element binding it all together are jazzy chords (probably augmented or some such thing). The synth sound used for the chords was one you would find more often on a deep house or chill out track but here it blends in nicely with the clatter to hopefully give that floating between collapsing stars kind of vibe.   

 

 

Not Even My Closest Friends - sleeve notes - . You Know She

I met her in the hallway just at the break of dawn 

I was all out of battery, and a long way from home 

As the algorithms fluttered I felt so confused 

You took me in hand, and you showed me what to do 

 

Two weeks later inside a Brighton flat 

With marble floor ways, and gold plated taps 

You showered me with presents, and the warmth of your bed 

The little tricks you showed me really turned my head 

 

My, my little angel 

Can’t bear to see you cry 

But oh my little angel 

You know she can’t be denied 

 

You asked if it was OK to bring a few friends round 

Just a little party with drinks, and light and sound 

And after all you’d done for me well how could I say no 

To a tight fitting costume, and a naughty little show 

 

And then when you mentioned the need for sacrifice 

You know I was the first to sharpen the knife 

The freeing of the spirit, the cutting of the flesh 

All on the kitchen table laid out for magick sex

I had recorded a busy bubbling little sequence/synth pattern, singing over it resulted in two very different vocal lines - one was a first verse about meeting somebody in a hallway being "all out of battery and a long way from home". Lyrically it was a rehash of a phrase (By Steven Ball) from the Storm Bugs “New Resolutions” track namely “I went out on my own I even left my phone at home”, and the "meet me on the corner" verse from Lindisfarne. The second vocal was almost Roy Orbison-esque - "my little angel" and seemed to suggest a different direction altogether. It took a while to do what was really obvious - combine the two approaches. 

 

Having arranged the rendezvous in verse one it wasn't entirely clear what should happen next.  Around this time I watched an online video about the exploits of sometime Hastings resident Aleister Crowley who enmeshed his willing disciples of both sexes into his majick circle though a process of rituals. This scenario of a desire for (often mutual) destruction and debasement then loosely became the basis for the remainder of the song.

 

Drums, bass and a time stretched organ part were added and the track seemed to be grooving up nicely, but was perhaps a touch too creepy. A last minute addition of a double tracked vocal gave some distance, and sound effects snippets from an old B & W film gave just a hint of humour taking the track over the finish line.