Lockdown 2020 played a part in compiling and composing Cestrian. Obviously, I couldn't do much at all with The Dicey Rileys or The False Poets. Taking inspiration from Kevin Phillipson's marvellous The Fool and the Moon my soundcloud recordings going back almost 10 years were plundered and I found a little inspiration on the way with the essential help of the label to get it all together.
The songs were recorded by myself on my trusty Zoom MRS 4. I think I bought that in 2001, possibly from Sounds Live in Newcastle (RIP, Sounds Live). I was actually talking to the lad who used to work in there the other day. His dad was one of the owners and he said rumour had it that they went bust, so if anyone thinks that, Sounds Live didn't go bust, the business was wound down and the owners are enjoying as pleasant a retirement as you can do in a Corona infected country, I guess. Also, heavily featured, the ever trusty Fender DG21S acoustic guitar that I got from Windows in, 1998 I think for about £225 which was pretty much that semester's student grant, which I quite luckily caught the tail end of before they were banned for good. Ok, that's enough of that. I'll waffle on about the songs now...
I think I put this together not long after discussing an album with the label, or maybe just before as I was contemplating it. It was the first song I'd written since Ghost Ship nearly two years before. I put the main body of the acoustic down first, filled it out with the bass then added 2 or 3 solos, leaving spaces for verses. Lyrically, I don't like to say too much without spoiling other people's meanings that they may attach to it. There's a myth attached to a river in Syracuse, which I just like the sound of, really. I sort of used that to come up with some lines and images for the lyrics. I think there is some label influence on the song here. I know whitevanperil and Support Band like to stretch some music out and I've kind of done that here with repeating two chords for longer than may seem necessary. I think I did alright in putting the solos down and being able to remember when the thing changed!
Syracuse was my own and the label's first single. The link above on the song title takes you there. 2 b sides which were False Poets intended songs acoustically demo-ed but never used by the band. One of the songs stretched out psychotically by the Support Band. As it's a single the download is only a quid. I mean, come on! Also, and this is rather technical, Syracuse was the first song on the album that the label could get it's hands on individual tracks of the songs as I could transfer the files of the individual tracks separately whereas, with the older songs the label had to do its best with my mixed of the whole song, if that makes sense.
This is the oldest song on the album. Written and recorded in 2011, so the only pre-Poets song here. The tune I wrote on a break in the Lakes. Do you know, I can't remember how to play the bloody thing! I get the main part, but there's some manoeuvre I do leading into the end of the verse which I remember thinking at the time "Ooh, that's clever!" well, I've outwitted my future self there. I think I was getting to know Tristan quite well then. The lines were kind of inspired by reading the wikipedia entry on Tristan and Isolde after he'd been talking about his name, just to set me off, really and get some images to play with. The internet age sort of dumbing me down by googling things instead of actually reading a book. It works well on the headphones this one and it's pleasing to go from one of the new songs, the opener, to the oldest of the selection.
This is one of the few songs I've written the lyrics first for. I think I wrote them pretty quickly at work for one of my delightful colleagues who said that nobody has written a song for Kirsten. Regarding, the squeezing in the lyrics, when having a cup of tea made, I don't like my tea bag squeezed. I'm a stirrer not a squeezer, you see. She was putting algae in her smoothies, I think, which seems quite unconventional and we find out that giraffes and mooses moo. I'm sure you would get along with Kirsten if you met her. I miss working with her.
The only appearance of mandolin on the album, a cheap one at that. It doesn't half rattle along. I was a bit embarrassed about it, really, thinking it was just a laugh, but there's nothing wrong with that and it rightly claims its place on the album. I quite liked that the NARC article refers to it as vaudevillian.
This tune came to me at the end of the fancy cheese and pork pie section of Morrison's in Chester-le-Street. That melody on the recorder was just playing in my head for some reason, so I let it play it and kept repeating it till I got home. The only words I could think of was "Charlotte at the window" to the start of the tune. Charlotte being my Uncle Dave's white long-haired cat I'd met during a recent visit. I couldn't think of any more words than that, but it's still dedicated to her. It went down quite well on soundcloud and got called a sweet tune. It's not a fancy recorder. I would've liked a wooden one. There's a couple of slightly raspy notes in there, but just about getaway with it. It's funny when tunes come to you like that. It doesn't happen very often. I think it might happen more when not stressed!
The album changes tone a little here. I'll not say a great deal about it lyrically other than I don't think I would have written it if I hadn't on a whim went to the Great Gas Gala in Balcombe one weekend in August 2013. I met some pretty amazing people there. I didn't get in any bother. Musically the riff seems to have been informed by my guitar part on Tristan's Did It Feel Real? I was writing songs quite a lot then. The Poets were over a year old. I guess it's like a muscle, songwriting or music making, the more you do it, the more comes through.
Topographically linked to Chester le Street market. I was back living at my home town after some years in Gateshead and living in a flat on the Front Street for a few fairly happy years, I'd say. It was good to be back in Chester. I picked up a strange book from the market one day by Dion Fortune. I'd not read anything like it. I've some more of her books to read. The only other one was a book of short stories, The Secrets of Dr Taverner. One story, A Daughter of Pan, was great. I don't think I've any songs dedicated to any authors. Dion must've made an impression.
There's a few words about this on The False Poets blog. This was the original, semi-drunken recording which the label gave a lo-fi sheen to. I don't think I had recorded it brilliantly, maybe cos I was half cut. So, remotely, during lockdown label business discussions, why not have it wrapped up as some sort of answerphone message? I'm trying to get a message to you! It's so important I have to ring you up and tell you about it. The "End of messages" bit at the end makes me chuckle. Is there a scene in Phoenix Nights when Brian checks his voicemail and he gets told he's got no messages? It's quite fun to play with songs in this way. The label encourages and facilitates this sort of thing. Give the label a follow on various social media platforms! I can't on Facebook presently. Some git hacked me account and was trying to fleece friends and family in my name, godammit!
Mad Machine was to be the last song on Side A, but I went and wrote another lockdown song...
The first music I've written in my garden. The lyrics written a few days later on one of my daily permitted exercise walks in the local countryside I can get to from my door. This was the second single, released a month before the album. In terms of online plays, it didn't do as well as Syracuse, which was a little disappointing. It's not the happiest listen, to be fair. In fact, it's possibly one of the saddest things I've written. Maybe. It could be lockdown was getting to me. I tried to perk it up with the b-sides of The Miller's Three Sons which I think might be the only time I've recorded tenor banjo. I also sort of wrote another song Away From My Door. I say, sort of wrote, it was more mucking about in open G tuning and then playing it back and thinking I could fit a few lines in here and there. There's a bit of self referencing to older songs I've written. I'm so self obsessed it's ridiculous! I should probably see someone, really. Thank you for reading this!
The Support Band reference the previous single with this meditative remix making the Roses release an EP with 4 tracks. So, again, as with Syracuse, the label had split tracks to work with here, so there is lovely touches of reverb to different instruments that was more easily done when there was just my whole mix of the songs to work with.
That's side A brought to a close in rather sombre fashion, I think. I like the title. It sounds like what song titles used to be with crackly 78s when there weren't too many motor cars on the road.
I'm pretty sure I recorded this the same day I did Cestrian. This was early afternoon tho. The False Poets had disbanded very recently. My creative train was about to crash off the tracks. The rate of songs from 2012 through to 2014 was about to hit the buffers, just like how I'm running out of train analogies now.
This is quite good fun. Pretty much an improvised piece. It's heavily informed by Side B of Love's debut album, maybe Mushroom Clouds, more specifically. Here's an acoustic guitar, dick around with a chord or 3 and see what comes out. Don't ask about the title. Maybe there's a play on words with the musical note and the curly crisp thing, but then the quavers are doing that anyway by being shaped a bit like quavers, or something. It's getting late. I should get to bed!
Written quite quickly whilst in the Poets in 2013, I think and living in Gateshead at the time. Some nice big trees outside the tower block. There wasn't much else to look at. Musically, kind of informed by some of the stripped down Blood on the Tracks recordings, just get a relatively simple chord change and put on repeat. Maybe it could be arranged to work with a band at some point? Autumn is starting to come on now. Half of California is on fire presently. Not sure if that is autumnal or not...
Topographically linked to Chester Moor as I wrote the second verse on the way up to see Chester Town play Alnwick at Moor Park. First game of the season and the Cestrians keeper got sent off after ten minutes. I think it was a draw in the end. If I remember right, Chester went a goal up just before the break only for Alnwick to equalize directly from the kick off. Quite amazing, really.
The Poets have rehearsed this a couple of times and it sounds good in a band setting, but we haven't persisted with it. It's one of my favourites. Some tasteful mixing done by the clever bastards at the label. It's not a very long song, but it has some lines in that I am most pleased with out of my collection of scribblings.
The Poets have rehearsed this a couple of times and it sounds good in a band setting, but we haven't persisted with it. It's one of my favourites. Some tasteful mixing done by the clever bastards at the label. It's not a very long song, but it has some lines in that I am most pleased with out of my collection of scribblings.
Possibly the piece de resistance, the centrepoint of Cestrian. The Dirge. Discussions with the label at the beginning of lockdown on what tunes to take from my soundcloud had Dirge in E Minor on the back hob. An instrumental yang to Charlotte's Tune's yin, The Dirge was one of those tunes which came to me whilst I was going about my business. As with Charlotte's, it was a case of letting it play out, this time whilst walking down the Front Street on a grey day, past the empty shops and down by the daytime drinkers of G.W. Horners before getting home to transcribe the bloody thing on the guitar. Compare the soundcloud recording to the album Dirge tho. I was aware that the title track of the album is an instrumental and Chester deserved having a few words said about it, so I suggested to the label adding some verses I had written about the town into the Dirge and see if that works. It's the NARC guy's favourite track of the album. Stellar work in the mix by the label. The full verses to The Dirge are here. Written in a creative writing workshop in the much missed Willy Nilly which I sang about here. The work shop was delivered by a writer lady, I forget her first name. Robinson. I used to work with her mother in Peterlee. It's a Smalls World!
This was written and recorded in one go I'm pretty sure on the night of having recorded Quavers. I thought it would be interesting to play some sort of electric guitar over some DADGAD tuning. DADGAD does have a Celtic feel to it, which for some obscure, possibly misguided reason I associated with Chester-le-Street. My electric guitar part is played on my Sheraton, rather than my Squier Strat which was injured at the time. It's played through a small Vox amp in one of its pre programmed settings, so no pedal used. WVP added some touches to the final mix, too. I didn't really know what I was playing musically. I might have had a can or two. I think there might be some frustration coming out there as the Poets were going into hiatus and I was losing the opportunity to let rip on the guitar in a band for a little while and there I was back in Chester, but it was alright. I met up with old friends I hadn't seen for years. I was back on the Front Street, not far from Spoons and The Bridge at the bottom was good for a laugh and within a year or two I'd play a St Patrick's Day set in there and then the Dicey Rileys would get going and just along the way from the flat was the studio the False Poets would record their album in. I could just about see it from the windowsill I was sat on making the Cestrian noise for the hell of it. It all worked out in the end.
Reviews:
Well, NARC did the piece above I linked to in Kirsten's Song. Label scribe VH Monks did a cracking press release. When I get back on Facebook, I'll take it from there and update this.
The ever dependable and true Mr Rocking Magpie did this review here.
I sent it off to a couple of other places, but overlooked for now.
Tremendous artwork on the CD by sydelic. There's still a few available, you know!
The label has a new desk now, so you might be getting some other things soon, but for now, that's yer blog for Cestrian. Thanks for taking time to read about it and see you further down the log.
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