Part 2

How do you think the meaning, or effect of an individual piece is enhanced, clarified or possibly contrasted by the EPs, or albums it is part of? Does each piece, for example, need to be consistent with the larger whole?

So, this is a great question that touches on so many of my favourite topics! Obviously the following applies generally to all the arts, to greater or lesser extents – but let’s narrow it down to music.

On every level, it’s about the balance between similarity and difference, homogeneity and contrast. So if it’s a drum’n bass record, a 172 BPM banger might sound slow if it’s sandwiched between a 180 BPM and 190 BPM pair of bangers (which technically gives you a banger sandwich!). At the other end of the spectrum, a 91 BPM downtempo groove might well sound like a banger if the highest other tempo on the EP or record is 65 BPM. That’s obviously a tempo-specific example, and there are so many other levels to it …

Zooming out somewhat, I remember feeling very gloomy when I first saw the iPod shuffle, for two reasons: the absence of a screen meant listeners were far less concerned by knowing what they were listening to, and more importantly – “shuffle “. Listeners who purchased that model of iPod had already decided that albums were too great a commitment for their attention spans - which at the time I took to be the heralding of a change in how music was to be consumed and experienced going forward. (then, streaming happened …).

So at the time, I did somewhat mourn the death of the album, like many – it was a lovely long form delivery method for a body of work which covers a good deal of musical geography.

The thing is though, historically, we’ve only come full circle – albums were originally conceived of as a marketing strategy, to resell nine previously released 7 inches, with the carrot being a 10th previously unreleased single song, as the Colonel famously coined in the case of Elvis, when he was drafted and stationed in Germany.

So, what so many of us grieved for as an art form was only ever conceived of as a sales strategy … Which happily gave us nearly 50 years of album culture.

In terms of what they contribute to a song, what is the balance between the composition and the arrangement (including production, mixing and mastering)?

Very complex; I would go so far as to say that the balance is between all five poles of composition, arrangement, production, mixing and mastering, rather than just the two.

Also the answer really depends on which format you mean – songs written by one party, then recorded by another? Did the writer know who they were writing the song for, or were they writing it for a future, as yet unknown artist? Or was it the song’s performer who wrote it themselves? Was it a solitary singer songwriter, or was it then played to the rest of the band, who then played their own parts in the inimitable voodoo that is the chemistry of the greatest of bands?

Historically, for the largest part of time, and for the most part of musicians / artists, each of those five stages were separate functions, different career paths. But perhaps post-WW II, each generation has seen an increase in the number of outliers who defy traditional wisdom and dare to “dabble” in others’ expertises. Technology has only increased this exponentially generation by generation.

I think it’s fair to say the last 20 years have seen more fully autonomous “one-man-army“ musicians than any era previously experienced, and that provides us with a huge amount of information to analyse. My fascination with the centralisation of the five poles (six if we consider that a song was the sum of a lyricist AND a songwriter’s output) of the question is that each of the five was a valid career in and unto itself, that arguably required a lifetime to master.

But there has been a generational evolution, and now kids getting into playing instruments often get as equally into learning how to record them – that’s the gateway drug. Effects, synthesisers, samplers, MIDI controllers, mics and preamps, sequencing, programming, sound design and mixing – that’s where they end up.

My point is the complex nature of interplay between the five or six poles of the process is completely and utterly changed between the two situations of being centralised within a single consciousness, versus being spread across five or six inevitably subjectively different consciousnesses.

Music and the accompanying artwork are often closely related. Can you talk about this a little bit for your current project and the relationship that images and sounds have for you in general?

True, but often the relationship between them is post de facto - in that the artwork is rarely commissioned before the completion of the record, at least till the finished mixes are in place. Otherwise, whoever’s responsible for the artwork isn’t really being guided by the true character of the finished body of work. In that scenario, much of the perceived relationship is in the eye of the beholder, more than the artists’ mind’s eye.

Obviously, there are exceptions - sometimes the artwork concept grows in parallel to the song-writing process and is fully conceptualised by the end of writing / recording / post-production / mixing - and the artist can be fully briefed well ahead of time of the finished article.

Which was what happened with The Inner & The Outer (2021). Except, rather than briefing an external artist, I did the artwork for that one - and it grew alongside the last 3 of 5 tracks.



Other times, an album might even start from the abstracted concept triggered by an image … Like most of these things, anything’s possible.

For me personally, the relationship that images and sounds have is particularly pertinent, as I am a synaesthete, so I already experience sound on a visual and tactile level - rhythms and harmonic structures trigger geometric and crystalline images and forms, specific harmonic voicings have colours or senses of claustrophobia and relief, sequences and structures “feel” a certain way under the fingertips of my mind.

So I don’t really separate the audio from the video, so to speak - each already comes with a corresponding other!

After finishing a piece or album and releasing something into the world, there can be a sense of emptiness. Can you relate to this – and how do you return to the state of creativity after experiencing it?

Oh, totally. The emptiness, I think, derives from 2 main factors, one timeless, and one rooted in the technological framework of now.

The technological factor is that music is primarily consumed digitally now-we rather miss the near-catharsis of that aspect of the physical era, as the tangibility of CDs or vinyl slightly mitigated that sense of “nothing“. The virtuality of digital music clearly doesn’t tick that box.

The timeless factor is that of anti-climax - from the first scraps and scratchings of the earliest writing of a body of work, something switches on - and then it’s a build of intensity, crescendo-ing all the way to the point of all-consuming – till the end of the mastering of the album. And once the master is approved, suddenly - nothing. All the weeks and months, sometimes years of building intensity, followed by - nothing. The thing that has increasingly occupied your conscious mind for months is now done - and gone. So there is almost a sense of loss, or grief.

The flip-side interpretation of that one always reminds me of The Shawshank Redemption - you live with the prison bars for so long, when you are finally out, you don’t quite know what to do with yourself or what the next step might look like … But that’s where the dichotomy of studio / writing and performance / touring tends to jump in and save the day - happily, there’s a natural cycle between the 2 states, for obvious reasons.

In terms of specifically writing, though, I find that the trick is to not stop writing once the touring cycles start – it’s true that writing is very much like riding a bicycle, in that you never completely forget how to do it – but equally, to extend the simile, those hills are nearly impossible if you’ve been off the bike for months!!