It is here at last - Alpaca Guessed's new long playing CD If Not Then Else available from www.alpacaguessed.co.uk
Read on to learn more about the making of If Not Then Else…
In March 2003, I was listening to ECM’s Rarum first compendium, and I noticed that a second Rarum compendium was in preparation, featuring a disc by the guitarist Ralph Towner*. I’d first heard Ralph Towner back in 1993, when I’d been leant a CD of his by a long haired fan of jazz (and heavy metal). His name was Rohan Leach. We’d recorded a couple of tunes (Rohan playing his unique 10 string guitar tuned to some gypsy mode or another), but hadn’t kept in touch. Due to the wonders of the Internet (and Rohan’s cryptically named site www.rohanleach.com) I tracked down his email address and sent him a mail, entitled “Rarum”. Now, sending mail to non-regular contacts at the height of spam is normally a bit of a hit-and-miss affair, what with spam filters, offensive content filters, and over-zealous use of the “delete” key, but something about the word “Rarum” struck a chord, and Rohan read and responded to the mail. Within a week or two, he was in my studio armed with his Bawu (evidently the 10 string guitar no longer held the same “unusual” cachet, so he retired from guitar playing and took up a variety of Asian blowy instruments; I leave it to him to describe them all, cos I’m buggered if I know…), and we were improvising a piano / bawu duet. As is often the case with improvisations, the first take was the most inspired. Unfortunately, we hadn’t yet sorted out our levels and mic positioning. Even worse, we hadn’t turned half of the microphones on. So what you hear on Ten Years On is acoustically compromised, but it is absolutely the first time we played together for ten years.
Rohan and I have very different approaches to recording; Rohan will tend to record a lot of material very quickly, but I have an irritating tendency to spend hours in the studio tinkering upon some minor thing or the other. To make matters worse, when I’m tinkering, it is often quite difficult to articulate exactly where I’m going with something, which can cause problems in a collaborative situation. Also, due our tendency to enthuse at length about what we’d been listening to recently, not to mention our healthy appetite for endless cups of tea, it was soon obvious that we would be best of collaborating at a distance. This was the method used on our next piece of music, Adam (named after the Northern Exposure character, who was apparently a big fan of Eberhardt Weber, and therefore Rohan’s hero). Rohan worked on a bass part, a bawu, a guitar, and some distorted rhythms. He then sent these bare tracks to me on a CD for further embellishment. I added some piano, banjo, and drums; I then sent the resulting audio tracks (or “stems”) back to Rohan to complete the mix. This is the way that the majority of the pieces in this collection have evolved.
Rohan’s stems for Loam originally arrived at some time in April or May 2003. It sounded quite complete. Finished, even. I took it for a spin in the studio, and played around with a piano part. After a few plays through, nothing I was adding was improving the piece in any way, so I put the piece to one side. And there it stayed until February 2004. I would like to blame my reluctance to do anything with Loam on the long hot summer, gardening, or focusing on finishing the last collection of Chrysanthemum Fiends songs. But, that would not be the whole truth. I had grown to hate it. I was afraid to touch it. This albatross of a track had almost entirely defeated me. Rohan continued to hassle me regularly, berating my tardiness on his web site. Finally, he said in exasperation “it has gotten to the stage where whatever you come up with, that’s what we’ll go with”. So, I decided to sabotage it. That’s right – I played the worst, most aggressive, tuneless piano parts I could imagine. As I went to bed that night, I laughed to myself that I had killed the beast, and could finally shed this heavy burden and get on with my life. Two weeks later, I listened to the the new piano parts, and rather surprisingly, I liked them. The piece was making sense. It had a shape. So, I added some drums (real and electronic), synth-bass, scratching, and more piano. And that, my friends, is the Loam you hear today.
Nicole was originally recorded as part of a trio of pieces for the baby daughter of some friends of mine, but appears here with some gentle bawu in the second half. A Grebe Amongst The Bulrushes is a solo bawu improvisation, which closes 10 years on.
As most upright and honest people will tell you, many of the best ideas come in the bath. Such is the way with melodies also, and the main melody to In Not Then Else was the theme music to one particular bath I took with my wife in March 2004. I probably sang the theme for about 10 minutes (in my best Native American Chief voice), before running into the studio in a bathrobe to record it. The piece starts slowly, like some vast Mongolian juggernaught, gradually building up speed, knocking down everything in its path – trees, buildings, cakes and squirrels – nothing can survive the oncoming behemoth. Dervishes whirl, and were-fishes durl. Then, one of the wheels smashes on a rock! And another! The wheels collapse and fall off, but still it accelerates, until it can finally go no further, whereupon it turns into a short jazz solo, as these things so often do. Rohan has added two bawu parts, some percussion, and a rather fine bass guitar in the first section (adding an entirely new harmonic inflexion)
Pale Imitation was originally something quite different (see http://www.niknewark.co.uk/archives/000040.php for details), but exists here in a heavily reduced form.
The Diet Cola Dream was originally entitled “Enlightenment”, and featured an uplifting chord sequence in the first and last sections, plus a rather sparse middle section featuring a pair of thai flutes. I’ve added a cheesy piano melody (I likened it to the great WG Snuffy Walden, but Rohan has compared it to NutraSweet, hence the title), and some additional harmonies towards the end (which are now doubled by Rohan’s guitar). I’ve also added some drums, mandolin and guitar to the middle section.
Strangely Perfect and Perfect Strangers are a pair of Piano / Khean improvisations recorded at the same session. In fact, a third piece (Perfectly Strange) was also recorded at the same time - this is available as an MP3 on the CD. You'll have to get a copy to hear it! Interestingly, the few photos of Alpaca Guessed in existence (all destined for teenagers' bedroom walls in the future, no doubt) all date from this session.
So, that's about it - the first Alpaca Guessed CD. Obtain it today, and get a free picture of an Alpaca, in the process of trying to reach a decision in the face of insufficient evidence.
*I've since received the second ECM Rarum box, and it doesn't include a Ralph Towner CD at all! Bah!