The recording of “Velocity Girl” last night put me in mind of this catchy little seasonal offering that I recorded towards the end of 2006, as a private release for distribution to friends and colleagues in place of Christmas cards. Given that I was in the final few months of singing with folk group The Village Wakes at the time, it met with some fairly interesting reactions.
The story behind it is this: one evening I was musing idly to myself, and found myself wondering what would happen if doom-metal funsters Sunn O))) tried their hand at recording a Christmas carol. I decided to find out.
Recording this was pretty simple; there are just three tracks: heavily de-tuned guitar, bass, and a Xasthur-inspired vocal performance that makes me sound as though I’m being burned alive at the bottom of a well. You’ll no doubt be pleased to know that no recontructive throat surgery was required in the days immediately following the recording session.
The lyrics are from a traditional West Midlands version of “We Wish You A Merry Christmas”, although as befits the genre, you’ll be lucky if you can make any of them out. Around the six-minute mark you should be able to hear the words “We wish you a merry Christmas”, and the dementedly-repeated phrase at the end is in fact “A PIE! A PIE! A PEPPERCORN! A PIE!”
Nobody said that all Black Metal had to be miserable, after all.
If there’s one song that sums up the C86 jangly guitar sound for me it’s Primal Scream’s “Velocity Girl”. It’s sad, then, that the Scream disavow their pre-Screamadelica discographynow as though they’re embarrassing teenage diary entries.
They are, of course, perfect pop.
Armed with an array of distortion pedals of different shapes and sizes, I set about a marvellous evening’s entertainment bludgeoning this song to within an inch of its life with noise and feedback. It emerged beaten, bruised, but ultimately with the tune intact, if nothing else.
No wonder the Stone Roses nicked it for “Made of Stone”.
This article in the Grauniad about his public expression of discontent with US foreign policy made me think that I really ought to spend more money on recordings by Krystian Zimerman.
The paragraphs that most caught my attention are near the end, and tell you everything you need to know about the ridiculous heights of paranoia post 9/11:
At least some of his opprobrium appears to be personal. Shortly after 9/11, his piano was confiscated by customs officials at New York’s JFK airport, who thought the glue smelled funny. They subsequently destroyed the instrument.
For several years he chose to travel with just the mechanical insides of his own piano and install them - he is a master piano repairer, as well as player - inside a Steinway shell he borrowed from the company in New York. In 2006 he tried to travel with his own piano again, only to have it held up in customs for five days and disrupt his performance schedule.
Incidentally, his performance of the Webern op. 27 Variations is pretty stellar - he perhaps doesn’t imbue the scherzo with as much fun as Mitsuko Uchida does, but it’s still a great rendition. If “rendition” isn’t too loaded a word to use in this context…
A quick word of appreciation for the marvellous Presto Classical in Leamington Spa: granted, it may sometimes be a bit more expensive to go to a specialist shop than to obtain your CDs from Amazon and the like, but my experience of Presto Classical is that they’re the kind of independent record shop that we really ought to be supporting in these difficult times. Their customer service is truly superb.
Apologies for the recent silence; I am still recovering from an operation on my right hand which, as you can probably imagine, put a bit of a spanner in the works with regard to playing the piano. Everything still works, though, apart from some nerve damage here and there, and I hope to start posting a little more regularly now.
On the theme of “Silence”, I’m now the proud owner of a 4′ 33″ t-shirt, which has the Edition Peters frontispiece on the front, and the “tacet” version of the score of John Cage’s mighty silent work on the back. I wore it to work, and gratifyingly nobody asked me about it.
A Place in Space, featuring the track Will Beckett’s March (reprise) from Mother’s Thinking Bath is now available on InvisibleGirl records.
The album’s press release reads:
A compilation of original artists from around the planet.
This global release has been made available on the winter solstice
(21 December 2008)
Music, culture, sounds and experiences express this diverse collection of unique (with a capital U) artists on the compilation.
Ranging from Portugal, India, Uruguay, Japan, and France to name a few, the artists are specially selected by Invisiblegirl from the MySpace social networking site.
A Place In Space is a truly fascinating listening experience.
A Place In Space is available online from iTunes, by following this link
There are a few CD copies available in the award-winning independent record store Piccadilly Records in Manchester
One of my greatest concerns when beginning to work seriously at the piano again was whether or not my hands would regain their former fitness. After all, the muscles used in playing the concertina and various other free reed instruments are very different from those used for diving through a Chopin Étude. With something as close to a sensible practice régime as I can manage with a full-time job getting in the way, I’m finding that my hands are indeed steadily regaining their facility, and I’m becoming gradually less frustrated as time passes.
I have been very aware of the need to learn pieces that are completely new to me, as well as revising some old ones. I allowed myself to cut corners when learning works in the past, and this is something I am determined not to repeat. Hence I have been plundering boosey.com and other online music shops for ideas, and have ended up with the following as beginnings of a new repertoire (needless to say, it’s almost all twentieth century material):
Arvo Pärt - Für Alina, Variationen zur Genesung von Arinuschka
Henryk Górecki - Piano Sonata no. 1
Galina Ustvolskaya - Piano Sonata no. 6
John Cage - In A Landscape
Anton von Webern - Variations, op. 27
Béla Bartók - Sonatina, Allegro Barbaro
Philip Glass - Mad Rush
Aaron Copland - Night Thoughts
Chopin - Études op. 10 no. 2 & 3
At the moment that feels like plenty to be getting on with.
The Glass and Copland are still remarkably well in my fingers considering how long it is since I last looked at them in any detail; the Webern I have played on and off since I was 17, and it’s high time I undid some of the crafty (i.e. lazy) redistribution of notes between the hands and observed Webern’s own wishes. The Chopin op. 10 no. 3 is a bit shaky - I last performed it 18 years ago, so I suppose that’s to be expected - but not beyond redemption. The other pieces are all new to me, and the Górecki and Ustvolskaya pieces are demanding most of my attention. The Ustvolskaya piece in particular is a real revelation, using huge note-clusters to devastating effect - here is David Arden’s performance of it, which is disappointingly unfaithful to the composer’s intentions, but still gives a fair idea of the piece:
I also have my eye on the Ligeti Musica Ricercata, two pieces by Tavener, and some Sorabji. Goodness only knows whether I have the technique needed for the latter, but nothing ventured nothing gained…
Ah, the amusements come thick and fast with Dave Simpson’s new book. He’s created a website for it at http://www.thefallen.co.uk on which there’s a gallery with a mugshot of yours truly, with the caption “Fallen after one song - Stu Estell“.
Never once did I suggest to the esteemed Mr. Simpson that it would be acceptable to refer to me as “Stu”. There are about half a dozen people in this world who are allowed to call me that, and I’m afraid he isn’t likely to be one of them. I suppose I should be grateful that it is actually a photograph of me and not Karl Burns…
Don’t you just love the attention to detail paid by the journalistic profession?
A couple of years ago, I was interviewed by Dave Simpson for an article he was writing for The Guardian newspaper, which involved his tracking down all former members of The Fall. Now, I have never been in The Fall, but Simpson’s definition of “being a member” involved all those who have played live with the group, which I certainly have done, when Mark E. Smith passed me a guitar during the encore at one of the legendary “Granny On Bongos” gigs at the Reading Alleycat in April 1998. I’ve recounted the story with monotonous regularity over the years as it has far more credibility than admitting to having sung backing vocals for Sarah Brightman, which, to my shame, I have also done.
Simpson has compiled material from all of those interviews into a book, The Fallen, prudently launching it at a time when MES is surrounded by something of a media circus again. I haven’t read it or even bought a copy yet, although my suspicion is that it’ll make far better reading than the bar-room babbling of MES’s autobiography. However, I was somewhat perturbed by this review of the book in The Guardian which claims that the aforementioned incident took place in 1989 in Leicester, at which point I would have been just 14 years old. Even more amusing is the fact that the “information” is in quotation marks, so either the reviewer is incapable of quoting a text properly, or Simpson is incapable of reading information freely available on the once-official Fall website.
Priceless. To quote the Hip Priest himself, “Check the record, check the record…”
To those of you who have listened to my music and only know me through this website and from gigs, either solo or with my previous group, this may come as something as a surprise. To those of you who’ve known me longer, it’ll come as no surprise at all. No-one ever said I had to be consistent.
Every now and again I get a bit stale - usually when I haven’t been kept in an airtight bread bin. To this end, I’ve dusted off my piano and decided to try and coax my fingers into playing the thing properly again. I used to be reasonably useful at it, once.
The idea is to be completely selfish about music-making again, and do it purely for my own pleasure - which is, I think, something I lost sight of. And if you stop enjoying something, you may as well not do it.
So, in order to achieve some sort of focus, I’ll be putting the folk music to one side completely for a while, as I continue to resurrect my tuba-playing and also embark on learning some 20th century piano repertoire that I’ve wanted to get the hang of for years. What interests me particularly is that the rhythmic vitality and articulation so necessary for playing folk tunes well has certainly begun to inform my piano-playing already, especially when playing material based on folk music such as Bartók’s Allegro Barbaro.
I may well continue posting details of my progress here. Who knows, I may even make a few recordings if my playing gets back to a satisfactory standard. Equally, I have no doubt that I’ll resume singing and playing traditional material once my “muse” has had time to refresh itself.
A Christmas carol, in the middle of May?
If there’s one song that sums up the C86 jangly guitar sound for me it’s Primal Scream’s “Velocity Girl”. It’s sad, then, that the Scream disavow their pre-Screamadelica discography now as though they’re embarrassing teenage diary entries.
A Place in Space, featuring the track Will Beckett’s March (reprise) from Mother’s Thinking Bath is now available on InvisibleGirl records.