Front Squats to "Heimdalsgate Like A Promethean Curse"

This has become my new favourite gym record. I have no idea why, but no one quite does happiness and madness quite like Kevin Barnes.

Memory Records - The Glow Pt. 2

"I took my shirt off in the yard. No one saw that the skin on my shoulders was golden. Now it's not, my shirt's back on, the glow is gone..."


It's a dreary rainy day here in Toronto. I feel it's appropriate, given the short interviews I uploaded with Phil Elverum and Memory Tapes to post another memory record. This time I want to talk about "The Glow Pt. 2" by The Microphones, the name for Phil's solo work prior to Mt Eerie.

Released in September 2001, "The Glow Pt. 2" is my favourite Microphones album, and I'm sure I'm not alone. Like "Kid A", which I discussed previously, it has a unique atmosphere, and, similarly, feels incredibly intimate at points. Where latter holds its intimacies close to its chest, however, the former is raw and full of immediate feeling. Part of this is due to the analogue equipment Elverum uses, where every sound is wrapped in warmth and static. It's an album that is very much alive, as symbolized by its repeating heart-beat drum motif and distortion. Like a lot of my favourite music, it's a headphones record.

It's a labour of love in multiple senses. First, literally, as it was reportedly inspired by heart-break (read Elverum's journal, "Dawn" for an insight into this). Second, it's so intricately layered and produced that it must have been meticulously crafted and planned (especially as it wasn't recorded digitally).

When I heard it, it was a revelation of sorts. While I'd always loved lo-fi music, I'd never heard anything so ambitious recorded by one person, on a presumably small budget. It was inspiring, and still is; a cathartic and troubled bedroom record on a grand scale, a universally personal experience.

As I listen to it now, I associate it with several memories:

- When I lived in Aberdeen, Scotland, I always walked home the same route. The final part involved a street on a hill with large looming houses (some of the most expensive in the city) and ominous gardens. There's something bewildering about big houses in the dark, they take on a life of their own. When I listen to this album I don't remember this part of my walk but the street after it that leads up to the intersection thirty seconds walk from my front door. I remember having "The Glow Pt.2" on CDR in the wrong order as a friend had downloaded mp3s from the internet without knowing the track-listing. I'm listening to the first track "I Want Wind To Blow" in the dark. The streets are empty. All the lights in the houses are out. I'm alone.

- My friends used to stay over in Garthdee, an area of Aberdeen around fourty minutes walk from my house. It's close to the river Dee and the surrounding area of trees and grass. A number of the houses are wooden, which is unusual as the majority of the homes in Aberdeen are made from granite. I remember having mushrooms at my friend's place and putting on "The Glow Pt. 2". Sometimes mushrooms have the wonderful effect of accentuating the music you're listening to, and in this instance the organic sound of the music became a part of the trip. I could see the walls pulsate with the rhythm. I became convinced that I was the captain of a ship.

Memory Tapes

"It amazes me how many people, including my friends, don't listen to music on real speakers or nice headphones anymore. I imagine a lot of people don't give music the time to make the right kind of sense to them and it's a shame. Would you have sex while you watch TV?

I'm from New Jersey, sort of the Pine Barrens area between Philly and the shore. It's a big influence on my writing... the combo of the suburban strip-mall thing that is very NJ and also the giant forrest; I like the hybrid of those elements. My friends and I used to take a boombox down to the beach at night and blast music...that was always a pretty ideal spot. I remember one time in particular we were making our way through the dunes in the dark and listening to "In Search Of Space" by Hawkwind... definitely a good way to hear that record.

I always liked house shows. It just feels more natural to be in someone's living room playing for people all around than to be up on a stage having an awkward conversation with some sound guy you can't really see or hear at the back of the room with a crowd of people at your feet.

[On inspiring places] The basement in my parents house was my room as a kid, it has never changed since the 70s and the decor is very of that era. I always used to love writing down there because I felt sort of out of time, [but] I'll write anywhere. My life is pretty fucked as far as my circumstances, so if I needed some sort of ideal zone to work I'd never get anything done!"

Thanks to Dayve for the Interview.

Kerala Diary Excerpt Pt. 2

"8/8/09
I arrive in Dubai airport. It’s roughly 6.45pm here. I try to convince my body of this. The airport itself, or what I have access to, is impressive. Near my gate is an elaborate indoor garden complete with Koi Carp pond. I approach the water and the fish come up to great me. I’m reminded of a similar pond in some public gardens at home in Scotland that I used to visit as a kid. The fish would suck at your fingers thinking it was food.
I restart, “I <3 CAMPING” and “Dayvan Cowboy” by Boards of Canada comes on. It’s appropriate music for being so spaced out right now. I think that it’s also one of the few serviceable songs from “The Campfire Headphase” which was such a dissapointment after “Geogaddi”. I buy some samosas and an apple and pear drink from a store. Both are very good although I have no idea how much I paid.
“This Must Be the Place (Naïve Melody)” by Talking Heads comes on. I have lots of good memories attached to this song, mostly too private to share but two stick out: being on tour in Brighton and hearing “Speaking in Tongues” for the first time, and a trip to Toronto waterfront last week where we accidentally stumbled on a free showing of “Stop Making Sense”, the live Jonathan Demme film of Talking Heads.
Talking Heads are a difficult band to negotiate at first, I think. Simultaneously accessible and inaccessible, the lesson learned from time spent with their music is that sometimes it’s best not to over-analyse things. “I’m just an animal, looking for a home”, what a line! I wish I could write lyrics like David Byrne, who can say so much with so little.
Waiting for the plane that will take me to Kochi, Kerala, I listen to The Rural Alberta Advantage and The Antlers. I enjoy both although find each albums relentless commitment to the same distraught tone a little overwhelming. Also, “Sylvia” by The Antlers rips off “Somewhere Only We Know” by Keane about half-way through. Still, both are enjoyable and “Don’t Haunt This Place” by RAA is fantastic.
I notice that I’m still hungry. I return to the same place and pick up some spring rolls. “Back again?” the woman behind the counter asks. “Still hungry”, I reply and smile. I use the washroom and come out to find my plane being boarded. Really not feeling The Antlers album now, but I’m not sure why. Too forced, perhaps?
I board the flight, listening to Cass McCombs. “Morning Shadow” sounds especially good at the moment. This plane is less impressive than the previous one. There are still T.V.s in the seats but it looks like the movies stream live rather than providing the choice. The flight will take roughly five hours, a lot less than expected. I take a lemon drink and a hot towel. I spend five minutes with the latter, rolling it up to see if I can still remember how to roll a cigarette. I turn off my ipod for take-off and start making faces at myself in the reflection of the T.V. screen. I hope noone is watching.
I sleep for a bit but keeping banging my head off of things and waking up. The in-flight meal, a vegetarian curry, is good. I end up watching half of “The Devil Wears Prada”. Feeling slightly strange now, and consider listening to the amazing “Wind’s Poem”, by Mt. Eerie. I decide against it. It’s such an intense album. I struggle to find a good time/place to listen to it. Recently, on a late bus from Buffalo to Toronto, I put it on but kept falling asleep and waking up during the most intense points. There was a storm going on outside.

9/8/09

I arrive at Kochi airport after an hour or two more. It takes me roughly half an hour to an hour to get my bag and go through customs who are, generally, fairly efficient and reasonable. At the entrance of the airport I meet Sajeev, the driver for the next nineteen days, who is holding a sign saying “NICHOLAS FENN”. It’s four thirty a.m. and I discover that poor Sajeev has been waiting here for three hours. Luckily it takes only half an hour to arrive at Le Royale, the guest house where my family and I will be staying in Kochi. I go to bed and get roughly five or six hours sleep. After waking up, I shower and dress, and wonder what I’m going to do today on my own.
Going downstairs, I find a place mat and cutlery set out for me. A man, whose name I forget, makes me an amazing breakfast with papaya, mango, pineapple, toast, and eggs. In the middle of this, Jenny and her husband arrive. My father has booked this holiday through Jenny, who talks to me a little about Keralan politics. I discover that, although the Indian Communist Party has been in power for a while, they will be being voted out next year in favour of the Indian Congress Party, who are slightly more right wing. Similarly, the Communist Party haven’t really been progressive, Sajeev informs me later, since prior to the reformation of the state Jenny and her husband are history professors, and have four children, one of whom is studying medicine in the Philipines, and the other three are triplets (two boys and a girl), twelve years old and still at school.
After breakfast, Sajeev drives me on a sight-seeing tour of Kerala, which I am finally seeing in the day light. Everything is very green. It’s like an Indian Massachusets, but with palm trees. There is so much water here, too. Apparently there are four large rivers in Kerala. We visit Sajeev’s house in the village he lives. So nice to be invited here. I meet Sajeev’s brother, nephew, niece, mother, and father, and eat local Keralan delicacies; banana fried in rice flour, popadoms in rice flour, a savoury crispy fried semolina and something else I forget. Later we visit Cherai beach, where Sajeev tells me the locals like to visit. It’s beautiful, and so amazing to see the Arabian sea. I feel to privileged to be here. I listen to the ocean, one of my favourite sounds, as it roars and I fantasize about going on a motorcycle adventure. Must email A. about this. We walk along the beach. On the journey back to Le Royale, I am falling asleep. Everything is like a bizarre beautiful dream right now. I need coffee, though. It’s five thirty.
Later, I listen to “Rolling Home Alone” by Jason Lytle from his brilliantly understated solo album, “Yours Truly, the Commuter”. I love this song. The melody wilfully tugs at the heart-strings but does so so effectively that you forget how simple it is. Another effect use of lyrics that would fall outside of their musical context; “I bought you something nice”. Freed of the Grandaddy moniker, “Yours Truly…” is free of any grand ambitions and is, purely, a great album. Perhaps it will soundtrack more of this trip."

Kerala Diary Excerpt

I was in Kerala, India this August for three weeks with my family. During the trip I kept a diary while I was listening to music. As it's relevant to the theme of this blog, I'm going to publish (relevant) excerpts.

"7/8/09

Airports are the way I imagine heaven is; lots of light, constant repetition, sterile, static, and stuck in no particular time whatsoever. “Heaven”, David Byrne once sang, “is a place where nothing ever happens”. I’m sitting in Toronto Pearson airport where I will catch a flight to Dubai, then Kochi (Cochin), India. I think the flights will take me, in total, 23 hours, but I am unaware of the accuracy of my calculations.
I’m listening to the Wooden Birds album which seems to work perfectly in jolting some kind of life into the dead canvas around me. I’m listening to the Wooden Birds, but I’m thinking about Thom Yorke, who has enjoyed somewhat of a renaissance on my headphones ever since I heard his cover of Miracle Legion’s “All For The Best”, which is Yorke’s contribution to “Ciao My Shining Star…”, a tribute album to Mark Mulcahy whose wife was recently tragically killed in an accident.
On first listen, there is nothing remarkable about “All For The Best”. A glitchy, unremarkable beat begins the song only to be accompanied by some fairly basic keyboard swells. What works so well about this track is not groundbreaking production but, as demonstrated more than ever by 2007’s “In Rainbows”, Yorke’s fantastic ability to isolate and emphasize the right melodies at the right time. Though the accompaniment to Yorke’s singing builds subtly and effectively, it’s his perfect, lethargic singing that really stands out here. I listen to it again and love it, especially the “say you love me” coda.
After listening, I revisit some other Yorke albums. First up, “The Eraser”, Yorke’s only, to date, solo outing. It’s not brilliant by any stretch, but there is some fantastic stuff here, particularly the title track, “Black Swan’, and “Cymbal Rush”, of which there is a good remix by The Field.
Next up is the recently released “Harry Patch (In Memory Of)”, a tribute to the last surviving UK soldier from WW1. Using just strings and vocals, it’s effective, and touching, utilizing well on the lessons learned from the luscious production on “In Rainbows”. I read a review of this track on Pitchfork today that gave the track 7/10. Almost the right score, but the review itself was bizarre, concentrating mainly on the author’s apparent desire to claim that they liked it while admitting that they could see why their friends didn’t. More assertiveness please.
On the bus to the airport today I listened to “Amnesiac”. Although I like some of the tracks, it always seemed, and still does, like a collection of random tracks whose main similarity is their being recorded at the same time. It really lacks the flawless cohesiveness and immaculate sequencing of “Kid A” and stands, with “Hail to the Thief” as one of the weaker of Radiohead’s recent work, “Kid A” and “In Rainbows” being my current favourites.
I’m not sure what time it is but I think it must be boarding soon. I put on “Document”, by REM, but quickly get bored of it. It’s by no means bad, I love REM, but as I watch the que of people board the plane, I get a pang of nostalgia and put on a mix I made for A., “I LOVE CAMPING VOL.1”. The reason behind the name is that we seem to have spent a bit of time recently driving places in New York State and camping. “Exhuming MCCarthy” gives way to “Stand-Ins, One” followed by “Lost Coastlines” both of course from “The Stand-Ins” by Okkervil River. I’ve started my mix with two tracks that follow each other on the same album. I wonder if I’m breaking some sort of mix-tape code, but quickly dismiss this. The instrumental followed by the lead single sound fantastic together.
All of these tracks are themselves from other playlists I’ve been playing in the hired cars we’ve been taking on our trips, although some have been played on these neat $10 portable speakers we bought in Wall-Mart that came with cool patterned jackets that allow them to stand. The majority of the tracks are taken from one specific playlist, “Great Party”, which was constructed for, fittingly, a party. Six hours long, it comprises mostly of tracks I was listening to last year. The party itself I have few good memories of as a visiting friend made me drink too much tequila.
Ah! Shady Lane! I love this song, and now it reminds me of Allegany State Park, where we sang it a cappella, while hiking. Later, Jens Lekman will play, which I strongly associate with seeing bears for the first time ever in the wild. I can’t believe this was the cheapest pen in the airport shop, $3.98! Should I be listening to “Music for Airports’, I wonder?

*******************

This plane is insane. There are T.V.s in the back of the seats with touch screens and a database full of popular (and recent) movies and T.V. shows. I’m easily impressed. I switch from “Dylan In the Movies” by Belle and Sebastian, to an episode of the Office. I wonder, is this free? It seems to be… this is ridiculous.
“He died, alone with not even his own head to comfort him” – fantastic line. I watch three episodes then the second half of the new Star Trek film, the first of which I had watched online. I get that this is certainly better than the other Star Trek films I’ve seen but haven’t we had enough of “origin” stories recently? Similarly, Leonard Nimoy and Simon Peg kind of push things into camp territory the film would be better keeping out of.
After the film, I fall asleep. It’s impossible to tell for how long but I reckon I manage a respectable five hours. I awaken to the sound of bird noises being played over the P.A. It makes me wonder which morning Emirates airlines is referring to, given that we’re traversing time zones. I put on “Mars Attacks”. There’s a camera at the front of the plane that can be accessed through the T.V. Soon I’ll be arriving in Dubai.
An advert welcoming passengers to Dubai interrupts the end of the film, accompanied by that song with the chorus, “it’s a wonderful, wonderful life”. Dubai is marketed as an exotic paradise, although unfortunately comes across as a tasteless moratorium of excess, at least via these images of creepily clean and empty hotels devoid of an distinct personality. For me it’s always been the place where friends parents go to work in the oil industry, and has never struck me as a place for a holiday. My housemate’s girlfriend told me at dinner two nights ago that bankruptcy is a crime here, literally; they’ll arrest you."

Musical Cooking

I just made a curry to "i" by The Magnetic Fields. I'll be honest, I don't really know how to cook curry. Here's what I did:

- I heated oil up in a pan, adding mustard seeds when the oil was hot.

- When the mustard seeds started to pop, I added cumin, turmeric, paprika, chopped garlic, a chopped green chilli, and chopped coriander (I judged this by eye).

- When the onions started to lose their colour, I added three chopped tomatoes, cinamon bark, cloves, cardamon pods, baby spinach leaves, diced tofu and some curry leaves.

- It's now covered and simmering.

There are some tracks I love on "i", like "I Don't Believe You" and "I Wish I Had An Evil Twin", but it doesn't keep my attention all the way through. Despite this, I still enjoy it a lot more than "Distortion", which I really can't get into. Nothing beats "Holiday" as far as I'm concerned, or "The Charm Of The Highway Strip". They're playing here on the 8th of February next year, I can't wait.

Mt. Eerie

"This is a photo of Mount Erie.

(Mt Eerie) is a reference to the place, but it's also 2 words that are meaningful to me. "Mount Eerie" to me means, poetically, this looming ominous presence, a dark watcher. This is a feeling I have always been trying to evoke in my "work", and it was much more appropriate a name than "the Microphones". The fact that it was also a reference to an important place for me (I grew up looking at the mountain) was just a bonus.

(On the best place to listen to music) Everything sounds better in headphones, and with the lights off. The less stimulation from the world around you, the more you can get immersed in the world I tried to make in the recordings. But it's a lot to ask, I know, to have people listen so attentively. I'm hoping the album works with more superficial listening as well

(On the trip to Norway) The changes in my personality and ways of thinking that happened in Norway have stayed with me and kept changing in mysterious ways since then. I came back thinking I was going to be this new way forever, but of course I've kept changing as a person. That period in Noway is still significant for me because it was a time of deep quiet and focussing on listening, rather than walking around in the world and blabbing my mouth (releasing albums). I still try to remind myself about the importance of stillness and listening frequently. All this is reflected in my "work".

I like playing in any big wooden room. Churches are often like this. They're nice because they make what's happening inside them feel significant and they're made to sound good. Also, I like the feeling of smuggling my non-religious, vaguely pagan young ceremonies into these buildings. Location affects everything ever. I have only tried recording music in someone else's space a couple of times and it's always felt awkward. For me, recording is a process that happens as part of daily life in my nest-like home place.

I don't know where my musical inspiration comes from. I drove past a construction site recently. They were tearing up a freeway with an enormous machine. It was the loudest sound I've ever heard, and mostly bass. That was inspiring."

Thanks to Phil for the interview.

Camping Mixtape

It's a grey day today. Funnily enough, it reminds me of Scotland, and so I kind of like it. In the burrito shop they were playing Great Lake Swimmers, perfect for this kind of slow day...

This summer I did a lot of camping. At some point, I compiled the tracks I listened to the most into a mixtape entitled "I <3 CAMPING". I listened to it a lot on a holiday in Kerala, India, in August, also. I'm hoping to upload some my diary entries from that trip at some point in the near future. In the meantime, I thought I'd share the track listing:

1. Okkervil River - Stand-Ins, One
2. Okkervil River - Lost Coastlines
3. Pavement - Shady Lane
4. Fleet Foxes - White Winter Hymnal
5. The Rural Alberta Advantage - Don't Haunt This Place
6. Cut Copy - Hearts On Fire
7. The Dirty Projectors - Stillness Is The Move
8. Bat For Lashes - Daniel
9. Desmond Dekker - Beautiful And Dangerous
10. Black Milk - Losing Out
11. Belle & Sebastian - Like Dylan In The Movies
12. Animal Collective - Fireworks
13. Boards Of Canada - Dayvan Cowboy
14. Jens Lekman - Postcard To Nina
15. Talking Heads - This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody)

Tiny Vipers

"every show on tour is really different. i have learned that there is no way to predict how a show will go. sometimes i play in an ideal situation, like a nice quiet sit down place, but i leave the show feeling terrible. or i play in a loud and smokey bar but i walk away feeling good about the show. i think that the context is not always in the venue or city so much. the context of my mindset when i need to get up there and play really effects whether i believe a show is good or not. for example if i am tired from travel and i am not in the mood to be 'expressive' then while i am playing the show i feel like i am forcing an image that is not %100 accurate. when i am tired i am just trying to make it through the set so i can get off the stage. this leaves me feeling incensire after the show. if i am in good spirits then i go up there with a mind set that is more focused on the present, rather then just thinking about getting off the stage and hiding i am just happy with where i am and what i am doing. in this mental place i typically leave feeling fine.

i listen to music alot on the plane. i am trying so hard to block everyone and everything out that i really focus on each song.

(on the best place to record music) alot of recording has to do with the studio you choose and the engineer. i think using the studio/engineer that i choose had a big impact on my mental space when recording the record. i was more at ease because i knew the place and i trusted its equiptment. Andrew Hernandez, the engineer, is a good match for me. i feel like we comunicate on the same level. we can take abstract aproaches to making each song sound right. it is hard to record and not end up killing each song by overthinking each step. Andrew keeps an eye on the whole sound and doesnt get caught up in details. a rare quality with engineers i think.

[i write most of my music] at home usually. it is where all my stuff is and typically where i am most relaxed."

Thanks to Jesy for the interview.

The Dirty Projectors @ Opera House, Saturday 16th November

Last night I saw The Dirty Projectors at the Opera House on Queen Street East here in Toronto. First of all, I really like the Opera House as a venue, it has a good shape, a nice atmosphere, and, most importantly, the sound is usually decent. The band themselves were excellent, really tight, really together. They have this appealing geeky awkward streak to them, a nod to technical virtuosity not usually seen amongst indie bands (although, I have to add, common in metal), that last night manifested itself in a three or four song "acoustic" middle section, complete with double bass. There was no apparent reason for this but it made them all the more loveable. Most of the tracks were from "Bitte Orca", but quite a few were from the similarly excellent "Rise Above". The crowd were as hipsteriffic as one would except at a show like this but ultimately well behaved and appreciative. This is with the exclusion of the dudes who feel the need to yowl during quiet moments of songs - what's with this? Dudes, you almost ruined "Two Doves" for every one...

Memory Records - Kid A

I love Kid A. I think it's one of the best albums of the 2000s, and it's one of my favourite all time pieces of music. I didn't always feel that way about it, though. In fact, I was kind of disappointed when it came out. I wasn't outraged in the same way others were, I wasn't at all pissed off that there were hardly any guitars on it. If any thing, I was too ready for it, and it sounded too much like it did in my head. This is in part because I'd been following radiohead.com for the various years leading up to the album and I'd adjusted my music tastes in accordance with Thom Yorke's sporadic tastes. I knew about Warp Records, I'd checked out Can, Neu, and Miles Davis. I anticipated the change in direction.

It was also because of the clean, unforgiving production Radiohead records have. Short of Hail to the Thief, the production on which I still don't like, most Radiohead records are pristine to the point of being almost impenetrable. They practically glow when played. This makes them amazing to listen to on excellent speakers but tough if you want to get through to the heart. You have to put a lot of listening time in before you get any thing out. Or, at least, that's how I find them to be.

I don't want to get distracted getting geeky about production, as much fun as that would be. Instead, and in keeping with the theme of this blog, I want to present snap shots from times I've listened Kid A, because I really associate it with certain times and places.

- I'm walking in Aberdeen, Scotland with a friend, and I've just bought the record. I can see the corner of the road, where I'm standing with it. It's at this point whether I'm wondering if my faith in this band has been rewarded or not. Should I succumb to the overwhelming indifference of a collection of the reviews I've read? I know it's not a terrible record, but is it going to turn out to be really good? I can see where I'm standing, the grey bricks in the wall, the grey sky. It's the afternoon. I'm seventeen.

- The funny thing about memory is that we never know how much of it is invented by our minds. When I think about Kid A, I think about new year's eve, 1999, but I know that it wasn't released until April 2000. Still, images revolve around in my head. One is of a big house party in Cults, an upper middle-class area of Aberdeen. The party is being thrown by a girl called Helen I used to sit beside in English class. The sky in Aberdeen frequently has an orange glow about it due to the street lamps. I can see orange and black. I have really strong images of trees in my head. I think that I have this memory for two main reasons, it was round about this time I was getting into Warp Records – I bought Autechre's lp4 on December 31st 1999, and the colours used in the art of Kid A suits the memory I have.

- I can remember the night I realized how powerful this record was. I was in a kitchen, with some friends, and we're fucking around with a ouija board. I was super-intense teenager, and so the ouija board is freaking me out a little bit. There's a stereo on the counter, and we're soundtracking the whole event. “The Sophtware Slump” by Grandaddy goes on at one point, then Kid A. I start to realize how haunted the music sounds. It's cold but I get the impression that it's because the protagonist is trying to give the impression of disappearing, both involuntarily and as a way of escaping. The title track is the least Radiohead-like composition I've heard so far. The two most traditional sounding tracks paint a pretty bleak picture. And yet, even with all this, there's something incredibly moving about it, something that I can't pin down, something that makes me want to listen to it over, and over, and over...

The Clientele

"[This is an image of] Fleet in Hampshire, which is the commuter town I grew up in. It was taken on a winter night 2 years ago and I think it reflects the innate eeriness of the place; you have the isolated house and the sodium lamps in the foreground, and behind and all around is what seems like a huge, empty nothing. That suburban feeling of isolation but simultaneous magic is what a lot of my songs are all about.

[On releasing Bonfires on the Heath in the fall]. I think once you release a record it has to live inside other people's spaces, and it's theirs to make of it what they will. Having said that, it was cool that this record came out round about the time of year which a lot of the songs are lyrically referencing - I get a sense that everybody in the northern hemisphere is on the same page, and that really, genuinely delights me, it's like an experiment which worked, for once!


[On the “heath” in the title] There's a kind of desolate, blasted heath called Blackheath, in London, a few miles walk from the light and civilisation of Greenwich, which always seemed like the end of the world to me. And there's Hampstead Heath in London too, which I visited before writing the songs on this album, one very bright summer day, trying to shake off the effects of a very long-lasting acid trip. I guess all those places combined in my head. Really to me, it's just a haunted space, a waste ground, somewhere large and empty, a lonely place.


[On the inspiration for the songs on the album]. I vividly see the landscape of the countryside and the suburbs in Hampshire, where I grew up, in these songs. These strange in-between places where you can imagine uneasy sort-of faultlines running through the land, mysterious fractures in the continuum. There's a restlessness in that landscape, nothing is permanent, little patches of woods, little streets of new-build houses, and because you can't really seem to grasp anything or divine any real character in these kind of places, you have the perverse impression of them being hyperreal, more real than reality, they're bigger than you can get your head around. I've always said the suburbs were magical, and not in a patronising way, because that's where I'm from and I genuinely love them, but they have a type of weird environmental intensity that's often missing in the city itself.


[On the track, “Losing Haringey]. The events in Losing Haringey pretty much happened to me word for word as they appear in the story, except obviously I did not find myself trapped in a phantom photo - in reality the things around me just inexplicably reminded me of that photo (which does exist in a photograph album I once saw). The benches and the road in the story are just off Wood Green High Road in North East London - the last time I was in the area they were still there, although quite dilapidated now, and the bushes with the pale yellow flowers still grow all over the hill that leads West to Alexandra Palace.

I'm not sure how memory and place interact. Maybe that song was an attempt to explore it somehow, how perhaps memories and places are not stable, they can recur over the years, overlap, or lead back, like snakes and ladders.

[On the best places to listen to music]. I like listening to music on the train, watching drab South London scenery fly by. Especially at this time of the year when there's no light. The feeling of moving past and out of it all -of escape- is very comforting while it lasts.

[On favourite venues]. Floods of sunlight on an outdoor stage at Farnborough 6th Form College, summer 1992. We played to our schoolfriends, it was one of our first gigs and, astonishingly for that time, it sounded terrific. I'm sure we had a go at Graven Wood that afternoon. Over the years the memory of the space and the light has become so idealised in my mind that I doubt I'd recognise it now if I went back to look at it.

[On inspirational places]. One example is Dulwich Wood. This is the wood near my house, which I often run through in the mornings. It’s not that big, but it’s very old, the last remnant of the Great North Wood which once stretched all around South London. It has Victorian ruins, a hidden pond, and lots of criss-crossing trails. Oak and Hornbeam grow there, Byron and Samuel Palmer loved to walk there. I’ve seen it in all seasons and I think it has an objective spookiness. I wrote Harvest Time and Bonfires after walking in this wood. I’ve often had the irrational feeling of being watched there; I’m being melodramatic of course, but it’s a sinister place.

[On whether the recording environment effects the recording]. I tried an experiment with this album, which was to record at a very dead time of year, between Xmas and New Year, when there's no light and everything and everyone is exhausted. I wanted to capture some of that enervated, weightless, strung-out feeling in the music, but I don't think it made any difference. Once you're in the imaginative space you want to be, where you actually are doesn't matter so much.

[On the best environments for writing]. I can write anywhere; again I think once you've got to the mental place where you're inspired and having ideas, your surroundings aren't important. In a way that's the beauty of it, that you can escape from the world for a while, you can negate the world around you."

Thanks to Alasdair for the interview.