If you’ve ever seen Peter Greenaway’s excellent Drowning By Numbers you’ll recognise the idea of enemies gathering under the water-tower. If you haven’t, you could think of it as a metaphor for bad Karma.
I wrote this track in bright sunshine, at midday. I recorded it hours later in the middle of the night. Weirdly I wrote it about someone else but listening now it could just as easily be about me!
This not sleeping is getting beyond a joke. Plus I saw the ballet Romeo and Juliet today which kind of put me off everything.
I am so tired. So tired that I feel like I’m floating, but floating in some heavy, poisonous liquid. Hanging, suspended in toxic waste that is slowly polluting my blood. It’s a shame on such a nice sunny day.
I went to a book club meeting for the first time ever today. We talked about this and that, analysing the work in question. So here’s what this song means.
Ha ha cluster bombs are the devastating munitions that a friend of mine uses on MSN. It goes:
Me: Now you’re just being insensitive
Her: HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
The rest of the song is obvious and self-explanatory.
Remember that French disco track I was talking about yesterday? Well I found myself humming the words all around the supermarket this morning so I figured there must be something good about it. I tried again when I got home and voila, it smells like a flower!
Many thanks to Claire Decamps, the guest vocalist. I hope to be persuading her to return to the microphone again, she’s a natural.
I used to be a bass player, in the olden days. Now that I’m learning the guitar I play the bass differently. I prefer it. I wish, oh how I wish I’d discovered the guitar earlier.
The sample this track is based on is of a group of Zanu supporters I recorded in Zimbabwe. It was fun riding in a minibus with them on their way to do some campaigning because their song was so lovely.
I like working during the night. I love London at this time in the morning and having permission to be here as well as having access to places that are usually inaccessible. It is also sad and lonely.
My friend Pippa gave me two cassette tapes today, they were demos that I recorded in the 80’s. I was in a band then but I didn’t write songs myself, apart from this one track.
Picture the scene in our dingy Balham flat as I wrested with a Casio keyboard, a Copy Cat tape echo and a Fostex 4-track recorder, playing snippets of film sound-track from an ancient cassette machine. Little did I realise I would one day etc etc
I did this one on a very old battered Coles lip-mic in the kitchen because everyone has gone to bed.
Do you think I look a bit psycho in this picture? That’s just how I was feeling.
It’s Memorial Day in Israel and Jerusalem feels troubled and uncertain. Sudden gusts of wind are making the palm trees rustle and the sky is filling with strange clouds. I am very tired. This is the sound on my balcony.
