September 22, 2003
Listening through to the master of the vinyl version of No-Man’s ‘Together We’re Stranger’, I become suddenly paranoid that I may never be able to do something quite so emotionally and musically complete again.
In many ways this was an album that came effortlessly to us, but only as a result of a series of inexpressibly hard and unique personal experiences.
Whether circumstances will ever conspire for me to make a similarly intense and resonant statement, I’m not sure, but as always, I’ll endeavour to keep on keeping on.
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Sessions for a solo voice album have begun with Andy Butler.
Creating layers of looped voices and playing with the possibilities of rhythm and harmony both within improvised and pre-composed settings, the idea is to create a project comprised of the voice, the whole voice and nothing but the voice.
Although I’ve been doing something similar within the context of Darkroom, I was keen to see what the voice was capable of doing as an instrument in its own right.
My original motivation was my memory of Robert Wyatt’s experiments with the early Soft Machine and the distinctive contemporary choral work of Meredith Monk and Steve Reich, but from the off, the pieces started to develop a strong identity of their own.
The initial recordings, although marred by occasional technical hitches, proved inspiring and interesting enough to plan for some further sessions over the next few months.
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‘we try to keep our dignity, we look for facts to set us free.
Just troubled souls who can’t agree, made see-through.’