Morning Swipelings,
Hope the trudge through the hardest part of the year isn't getting you all down up there in the northern hemisphere. Obviously here in the Bahamas, it's all sunshine, palm tress and free pina coladas summoned up with the click of a duty free castanet from the waiters at the 'all-in' holiday resort next door to my humble German-engineered beach shack. The world of Trump, Putin, Brexit and the apparent resumption of hostilities in the war between everybody reasonably well known and the grim reaper* seems light years away. Indeed, if it wasn't for Negrita and her constant ejaculations of disgust at the TMS on the long wave, you wouldn't believe you were even in century 21. My goodness, loves the cricket does that one. She's even bought some pads along. And a box. Incredible...
But enough with the dull cares of the huddled masses. What brings us to the lovely Bahamas besides the obvious incentives of massive tax avoidance opportunities and freedom from extradition?** Well, truth is, I'm enjoying a real surge of mid-late career creative energy and where better to start committing to tape a dystpoian vision of a cold, wartorn, dysfunctional Europe than on the perfect white sands of the Caribbean? Plus it's obvioulsy saving me a packet on the old tax into the bargain. And you can never be 100% sure that those photoshopped images of Putin in a Grayson Perry outfit *won't* get traced back to your own personal computer, regardless of what Ian Hislop might say, now can you?
Anyway, enough of the context. What about the content? Well, we're certainly on a bit of a roll. Armed with a collection of Eno-generated loops, I've been assembling core tracks on (currently) about 9 new pieces. These range from a bizarre, scarifying and as-yet-untitled 80s style dance number with collosal compression on the snare and snarling synth brass riffs to a couple of reflective ambient instrumentals. Newest off the production line is a sombre Vangelis style epic with a disconcerting synth lead on it that is somewhere between a saxophone and an air raid siren. It's painting mental images for me of the ruins of a bombed out city and that I think will probably be the environment in which the lyrics unfold - assuming I can write any. I'm thinking 'Matter of Life and Death' meets 'Casablanca' re-staged on the bombsite where they plan to build the Burgundy Lido. If that makes any sense. These are suitable soundscape, anyway, over which to contemplate the horrible futures that seem to be hovering just a short way over the horizon for most of us.
Still, nil desperandum and all that. All I can see over the immediate horizon is a smart young chappette in a smart white uniform and bearing a silver salvour crammed with peachy blasts of ice-cold alcopop so, if you'll excuse me...
"Gladstone, I presume..."
L.U.V. on y'all,
Bob xx
*RIP dear old Graham Taylor.
**Thanks Cliff!!!
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