Gloryland

 

My Father passed away in 2004, aged 72. I was aged just 32. Not a lot of time to have spent with a loved one when you think about it. He had been sick with Cancer since his retirement 7 years earlier and after working for over 50 years in a factory only to take unwell mere weeks into his retirement still makes me very angry to this day. My previous album had been released only a few weeks before my Dad’s death. The first album to come out after his passing was going to be a double CD collection called ‘Gloryland’. I loved my Dad very much. He was a tenor in the Portadown Male Voice Choir and also sang in a barbershop style quartet. He, along with my musical Mother, gave me and my brothers and sisters all a passion for music. We all sang and played in different bands, albeit the music I would listen to and create would be miles away from what they all did.

For this album there’d be a new sound. A recently acquired electric violin would make a tentative foray into the recordings. I had never played a violin before, I looked up the basics on the internet and marked out the notes using thin strips of tape. I think for the most part I got away with this as the instrument was always pitched low in the mix and formed part of the overall drones that I was currently into making. I told myself that those creaks and weird noises were all part of the sound, and all was fine.

This album was heavy on the samples again, for example, I sampled W.A.S.P’s ‘Forever Free’, turning it into a swirling folky country thang and channeled my inner Bob Dylan. It sounds a whole lot better than I’m describing. Taking a sample and slowing it down so it’s unrecognisable was another trick I would employ regularly. Often this would result in weird hiccup sounds when the loop refused to align. Another new sound I had taken to using was my version of slide guitar. I eventually bought a wee glass gizmo that you put over your finger but for most of my recordings, a battery or glass was used. The track that samples Marlena Shaw “mmmm-ing” and has sad slide guitar is a tearjerker, especially the final refrain of “I don’t want to watch you dying”. Death was now freely permeating the lyrics of my songs, whether I wanted it to or not.

Similarly I would take to speeding up the samples and the “You are a vapour trail, in a deep blue sky” that forms the chorus of ‘In A Deep Blue Sky’ is utterly heart-breaking with melodica adding to the melancholy. It was actually a kid’s toy put through a delay pedal. I saw Clinic perform in Katy Daly’s and had to get one, albeit theirs was a proper instrument. The experimentation was getting really global when I sampled a Māori choir for a chorus. When I was a kid my Parents listened to Nana Mouskouri in the car and to this day I have a special affinity for the Greek bespectacled chanteuse. The pilfering of her song ‘The White Rose Of Athens” wasn’t just a loop of a flickering bouzouki, I completely nicked her chorus and harmonised with her.

I mashed up a buzzing riff sampled from an obscure indie tune by Quickspace with Sly and the Family Stone with zero regard for dynamics. Another legendary singer I had recently gotten into was Emmylou Harris and she duly sang a chorus while I added some heavy distorted guitars and eery synths. Hip-hop has always been a massive influence and I couldn’t get heavy enough beats from my drum machine so Fried’s ‘When I Get Out of Jail’ RZA beat was mixed with some speeded up ghostly vocals (don’t know who!) to sound like the Wu Tang Clan. Having built the track up I don’t want to mention the fairly shite half-arsed melody/vocals I added to it, kind of ruining the vibe!

When you sample Godspeed You! Black Emperor in full flight it kind of leaves no room for much else but I piled on squeaking violin, slide guitar and filled out the space for a messy reckless cacophony. If I was doing some psycho analysis, I would say my head must have been all over the place and it was manifesting itself in my music. Sometimes the sample would overpower the song and I should have realised this when slowing down John Lennon singing the opening lines of ‘Norwegian Wood’. The end of CD1 is a sample with the words “Just want to pass away nice and peaceful, wake up in the Gloryland”.

The opening sample on CD2 is from Delays’ Greg Gilbert, who sadly passed away recently, also to Cancer. I had forgotten I’d sampled him on this track so hearing his angelic voice soar is like a punch to the stomach, truth be told. It was a bold move to combine violin and piano so sparsely as I did given I couldn’t really play either instrument, but again, I think I got away with it. Hidden Cameras were a new band on my radar (I would later see them play a gig in Auntie Annie’s and it was absolutely magical). Their brand of uplifting folk and heavenly voices was prime for sampling for the vibe of Gloryland. Try and find Brit hip hop banger ‘What’s Goin’ Down’ by Honky without using Youtube. An absolute banger that sampled Ian Dury, I ripped it heavily for one of my songs. The track is a shocking mess to 51 year old me. 32 year old me was oblivious to finer details like creating a song that sounds like two songs playing at the same time!

Inexplicably there’s a spoken word intro to one of the songs from Max and Paddy where one of the prisoners looks at Paddy in the shower and says “Stunning, like a young Burt Reynolds”. The sample for the song that follows is the killer riff from ‘Hina’ by David Lee Roth, played by Steve Vai. Continuing the metal riffage, I nabbed a glorious riff from non-metal-should-have-been-massive-but-weren’t Ultrasound and added more scorching guitar. It’s twisted and violent and actually really horrible. Again, my headspace must have been in a bad place to create such a warped ugly piece of music.

Spiritualized are the masters of the drone. See them live and you’ll notice a loop of swirling tones that can pretty much underpin all of their songs. I took that loop and added some slide, strings and Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy looping “And then I see a darkness”. It’s beautiful but distinctly mournful and bleak. One thing I do notice, there was really only two notes I could play on the violin as the intros to so many of the tracks start with the same familiar siren wail sound. Spiritualized make another appearance with the “Whoa-oh-whoa-oh-oh” from ‘Let It Flow’ forming a chorus over an effect/beat that chugs like a machine gun.

Sebadoh’s ‘Brand New Love’ gets sampled heavily on a song I think I ended up just calling ‘Brand New Love’. Their song was already a garbled lo-fi dirge and I piled on more of the same to create a hideous track of pure bile. Lord only knows what I was trying to do with the Royal Trux style shithousery of the song that sampled One Dove over a beat that sounded like a knackered car starting. Finally the sprawling catharsis ends with a delicate post rock ballad that has some Mogwai-esque wandering guitar and a wailing violin. Another track that showed the sounds I would later employ as Cruz as waves of distorted guitar crashed in.

Listening to this album now is harder work than I anticipated. To even find the spark to create music after such loss must have been a soul search and it’s clear from the music, I was angry and confused, and full of aching grief and sadness. But as I would find through subsequent releases, music is the ultimate way of escaping and unleashing inner feelings you just wouldn’t always find yourself talking about. I know this blog isn’t exactly uplifting but I wanted to share how such a life changing and tragic event had impacted my music. Thank you for taking the time to read this.