“I didn’t play on it at all. It has been my ambition ever since I came into this business! Not to play on something I wrote. I never intended to be a player, I always wanted to be a writer.” —Tony Banks regarding his second classical album
News
2023 roundup!
Discovered in the course of trying to figure out why my website is suddenly getting so many hits in Poland*:
Amor Fati and Refuge made Christoph Linterman's top five albums and singles list for 2023.
https://damusic.be/eindejaar2023/christoph-lintermans-5161.html
*If you happen to know, please tell me…
Weapon of choice
In which The Laconic uses many words
Premiering today, an interview I did yesterday with Cedric Theys about The Laconic.
https://youtu.be/jZUhYjDw7f4?si=r1NI6HA17CZ15tqL
I only completely lost my train of thought once.
Thanks, Kathy Job
Sometimes I am struck by how much of my musical education came from piano lessons when I was a child and young teen, and more significantly, how much I retained of that. This week in particular, it hit me when I was writing parts in staff notation for a certain drummer/keyboardist. And I took some pride in details like stem orientation. Where did I learn this, and why does it always feel fresh in my brain, four decades later? 90% of it was from my piano teacher, Kathy Job. Thanks, wherever you are now.
Mike and me
If you're happening to read this, and you happen to be familiar with the work of both Mike Oldfield and me, you may be surprised to know that I wasn't at all familiar with his work until the last year or two, so while I now consider him an influence, this is only recent, and necessarily limited – I'm still coming to grips with his discography, and large swathes of it are terra incognita.
Given that, it's surprising how often I do something very specific that he did already. The latest such case: I was planning to do one or even two ABBA covers for Derivatives v3, only to learn that Mike covered ABBA's “Arrival” on QE2--which I have yet to even listen to. I'd like to think that I'm tapped into the Source (as Rick Rubin terms it) in a similar way to Mike, but likely it's just that Mike did so many things first that anyone is likely to later repeat something he did, even unknowingly.
David Byrne gets it (exactly?) right
From his essay on “My Life in the Bush of Ghosts”:
“In the West anyway the causal link between the author and performer is strong. For instance, it is assumed that I write lyrics (and the accompanying music) for songs because I have something I need to `express’. And that as a performer it is assumed that everything one utters is naturally autobiographical. I find that more often, on the contrary, it is the music and the lyric that triggers the emotion within me rather than the other way around. By making music we are pushing our own buttons, in effect, and the surprising thing is that vocals that we didn’t write or even sing can make us feel a gamut of emotions just as much as ones that we wrote. In a way making music is constructing machines that, when successful, dredge up emotions- in us and in the listener…”
Ever since I got into this, I have been adamant that I am not expressing anything through music, but rather evoking, as described in the last sentence.
Time And Tide on streaming services
For what it's worth (maybe $5 if I'm lucky), Time and Tide goes out to streaming services today.
https://open.spotify.com/track/1KbDmR61HxAmf0hC5GKLnZ?si=CQ8ARz-jSs6pURVsZD_Org
Local boy does good
I just discovered this mention of the T&T release in a local blog. Thanks, Jason!
https://thedelimag.com/the-laconic-time-and-tide/
Amor Fati Listening Party on January 28th
By popular request (meaning that two or more persons requested it), a listening party for 2023's Amor Fati. I'll be there to answer questions and offer color commentary as usual. Personally, I'd love to have a listen through, especially with anyone who missed the original livestreams--looking back at this album while ramping up production for the next.
https://thelaconic.bandcamp.com/merch/amor-fati-listening-party
Note that it will be followed by a second listening party for The Main Sequence At Last, by Thirst And The Cow (Tim Gardner), which I had the pleasure of contributing to (and now listening to).
https://timgardner1.bandcamp.com/merch/the-main-sequence-at-last-listening-party-2