HOW TO MAKE AIR ITSELF

HOW TO MAKE AIR ITSELF 

Air Itself was recorded by Dorian Taywood in a former stable, now underground club/cinema next to the S Bahn line in the former east of Berlin. We mixed it there, at my place and in an old farm house out east towards the Polish border. Since the recording was done without a budget it was undertaken as and when possible and convenient for everyone involved - roughly an evening a week - without the pressure of pro-studio time.

Despite the conceptual constraints I often impose on the songs Air Itself is I think a quite personal, intimate sounding record. It’s hard not to describe it, by comparison with recent releases, as a solo album - yet this is far from the truth. The LP’s sound was very much shaped by the musicians with whom I was lucky enough to collaborate.

Unlike my last full length LP here it's acoustic instruments that predominate - nylon and steel string guitar, ukulele, glockenspiel, musical saw, violin and piano all feature. Nonetheless it’s hard to call the album an acoustic record. I was looking for an ambient, immersive sound world to place these songs into - and through some mysterious and circuitous process of experimentation and collaboration I began to find it.

EVERY WEEK OVER THE COURSE OF THE CROWDFUNDING CAMPAIGN I'LL BE POSTING SOME THOUGHTS ON EACH SONG THAT FEATURES ON THE RECORD AND HOW IT WAS MADE

IT WOULD BE MASSIVELY APPRECIATED IF YOU SHARED THIS SONG AND SUPPORTED THE CAMPAIGN TO TURN IT INTO A BEAUTIFUL 'REAL' THING OF THE WORLD (ie: a packaged LP/CD)

Making Second

I wrote these words to give a little context and history to anyone that's interested in the making of the new Mute Swimmer record Second. 

Second can't be called a spontaneous thing for lots of reasons - creative, personal or financial. Even by my own standards, it's taken a long time. 

Recording for the album actually began in May 2012 when, on the invitation of friend, musician and sound engineer (Troels Nygaard) I de-camped to an old out-house on a farm in the Danish countryside. I had the idea, strange to me now, of putting down guitar tracks and vocals for a band to later play along to. Second could conceivably have been this record, another kind of record completely - an acoustic guitar-based suite of songs backed with some discreet textures and effects - very much the follow-up to my self titled, lo-fi, kitchen-recorded debut. Perhaps this part real, part hypothetical record will find it's way out into the world at some point.

Second LP Cover Draft

However, often throughout these sessions, rather than my own acoustic guitar, it was an electric guitar sat in the corner of this old hut that I kept picking up. They say you learn more from your mis-steps. I can say it was thanks to this largely abandoned session (and that electric guitar) that I realised the songs I had written were demanding a different approach. A band certainly, but not a backing band, not an accompanying band working around the typical centre stage guitar and voice of the song-writer, but a band band. Equal parts vocal, bass, drums, guitar. I also heard brass. Sometimes I have these thrilling but utterly frustrating insomniac visions of entire arrangements for songs in my head. Frustrating because I have no adequate way of transcribing them. I'm merely left with some absurd nocturnal muttering on a muffled, over-compressed phone recording. But I heard the brass in my mind - arrangements that bordered on a portentousness that the songs themselves, lyrically or musically, undercut. I often found myself describing them, slightly facetiously, as sarcastic horns but they were also supporting or 'framing' the tracks in more traditional ways. Anyway, these Danish sessions flew by and I hadn't sung a note. I had some acoustic guitar recorded and a lot of material that sounded like someone re-familiarising themselves with an electric guitar. 

Berni and Nicolai - playbacks

Touring commitments prevailed throughout the summer (Germany, Switzerland and Slovakia) and then I moved house in August. It was autumn before I could return to the tracks and, despite having no opportunity to record as such, my ideas about the sound of the album, as a full band, had begun to take shape. I started messing around with midi horns on the train between venues on tour, just to try things out.

In November of that year when I played at an art opening I ran into Berni (Bauch) who asked me, apropos of nothing, if I had ever thought about having a drummer play with me. I told him that I had been thinking about that a lot and that, yes, if he knew someone, to please put me in touch. I'd known Berni two years and he'd never once mentioned that he played the drums himself. It was with a degree of trepidation (as when a friend suggests themselves and you are afraid to hurt their feelings should things not work out) - that we met up in a little rehearsal space in Kreuzberg to try some things out. I think we played 'Time Song' first, which went well enough, but it was his skittering hesitant insertions on 'The Idea of Zero' where I thought, not only that he was a great drummer, but he was a great listener (and as the old cliches have it, these qualities are not always combined in a drummer).

Recording Brass

It was a month later that Nicolai (Schorr) joined on bass. I'd met him the year before where we both played a show in Bremen and I became a firm fan of his own music (both under his own name and as Canoe Man). It wasn't really planned, I simply mentioned the idea of having a bass player over coffee, not considering how effortlessly Nicolai might adjust his talents from guitar to a bass. He suggested trying it and remarkably, thrillingly, in a very short time the songs began to approach the sound I had heard in my head when I wrote them. 

Between Nicolai's and my own touring commitments and Berni's work the three of us practised as often as we could throughout the winter '13.  Around April we figured we were ready to put the tracks down, but I had nowhere for us to record. A studio was out of the question - with no other source of income apart from my modest touring spoils it was, even at friendliest hourly studio rate, inconceivable - and it's simply impossible to record a full band in a Berlin flat, at least if you intend to stay there.

During that winter I had the good fortune to tour with My Sister Grenadine, these three individuals came to play different significant roles in the story of the album.

Vince overdubbing e/guitar 

Felix (Koch) accompanied me on one or two songs on that tour and took an interest in the brass parts I'd written. He helped me augment and realise these sketches and began playing with the band on our occasional live outings (eventually joining the band full time)

Angelina (Kartanski), violin supremo, provided us with Rue Bunte, a hidden little rustic sanctuary off Neukölln's busiest street. Rue Bunte became our recording studio/home for a week in May 2013. I was given the space for the smallest of donations and an agreement that I sweep the yard come autumn - outright charity in other words.

It was Vincenz (Kokot) who introduced me to Niko (Jeremic). Niko recorded and mixed the basic live tracks over our week in Neukoelln for less than a Tesco minimum wage. It was also Vince who later put me in touch with Antonio and Daniella - Wolfin Sound - who mixed Second and finally it is Vince who provided the amazing guitar squalls heard in  'A Melody (Strands 1-3)'. So in short, Seco:nd probably wouldn't exist without these three individuals. 

Nicolai with the bass 

Berni and Niko looking
like rock stars outside Rue Bunte

In August we began rehearsing and recording the brass section. Hitches abounded, technical and otherwise, the sessions were largely abandoned but the input of Frieda, Askin and Felix taught me a lot and many of their ideas are woven into the final arrangements you here on the record. However at this point I thought I'd never get it done and considered dropping the idea of brass all together. (I felt out of my depth, that it was an over-ambitious idea and crazily unpredictable in a recording situation). The reason the brass is there i guess is down to a kind of bloody minded stubborness to stick as closely as possible to the sounds I heard in my head when I'd written the songs. Eventually  I enlisted the help of some players from outside and recorded on and off throughout the Autumn, when i could afford it and with the continued charity of Rue Bunte.

it was a bit of comedown, having finally got the brass down to realise I still had the vocals to do. Again without the possibility of a studio and in need of somewhere relatively echo-less and quiet Nicolai suggested his back room workshop which we hastily converted into a child's den packing as much soft furnishings as we could around myself and the microphone. The rest of the year was spent touring, editing the tracks from the three different sessions (Band/Brass/Vocals) and wondering how the hell i was going to get the record mixed and made.

And so finally to the present point at which you find me - trying to fund the mixing, mastering and production of this crazy two year project. I'm pleased to say that with your help so far we have been able to mix most of Second. I have to say a few words about Antonio and Daniella at Wolfinsound, since I have lost count of the hours they have put into the mixing and editing of what will shortly be dropping through your letterbox. If I gave Antonio the entire money raised from the funding it wouldn't cover the time he has spent attending to my impossible requests, changing whims, perfectionism and blatant cul-de-sacs.

Patience. Antonio at Wolfin Sound

We now have the funds to master the record properly. This way it can sit alongside Beyonce on Radio 1 with no noticeable difference in audio quality. Thank you all.  We are also halfway towards getting enough for the actual product - the vinyl and CDs.  

I hadn't meant to write all that but I wanted to attend to the context and story of this record for anyone who cares to read it. This documents the challenges faced and, at the risk of sounding like a Hollywood trailer, of trying to stick to an artistic vision without compromise and to create something unusual and wonderful with no external financial help. But more than that I hope it makes clear the work of all the people above who believed in the project. Thanks.

Guy / Mute Swimmer

April 27th 2014

Recent Statement

My current work is performance-based integrating traditional popular song forms, performance art and site-specific film projection. These works utilise elements of folk and rock music to lyrically deconstruct the song writing process and act of performance itself. The (lyrical) space usually assigned to the narrative ‘other’ is essentially inverted resulting in a self-reflexive meta-narrative that is at once confrontational, ironic and absurd. Accompanying film projections run parallel, relaying footage of the same location, performer and audience in a looped time delay that is potentially infinite in its recession.

The work is performed in music venues and galleries and consciously seeks to test perceived boundaries between the two contexts. The adoption of a moniker, ‘Mute Swimmer’ and the works’ presence on internet music platforms such as My Space and Last FM similarly seek to disperse and subvert distinctions between ‘performance artist’ and ‘song-writer’.

Concurrent work under the name ‘Dala’ applies certain conceptual constraints to form the basis of an abstract sonic project. The work ‘PC’ for example is derived entirely from two minutes of amplified silence recorded on a computer and manipulated. ‘Guitar’ is similarly composed from a recording of a guitar being plugged in to an amplifier and then being unplugged.

My work in other media is similarly reflexive in nature, in the series ‘Interventions’ photographs partially replicate the locations in which they are situated, mediating the viewers’ experience of mundane public spaces. Paintings produced for the residency/exhibitions ‘Parallax’ and ‘The Wrong Map’ take the changing conditions of light and shadow on the painting support itself (canvas, stretcher, staples etc.) as a subject whilst the Replica series consist of slightly modified photographic constructions of existing objects.

A number of key themes underpin the production of these works. Firstly their resistance to an identification with, or projection of, an 'elsewhere' figurative, metaphorically or otherwise. These works exist, often transiently in situ, referring solely to their own means of production and the context in which they operate . Their mode is that of a tautological circuit whose ostensible absence of a subject provokes the viewer's interrogation and critique of structures previously considered self-evident or 'given' in the moment of viewing.

My own working process similarly compels me to consider what this emphasis on presentness might mean, how it is accessed or indeed if it is possible; it can be said to move between an idealistic fascination with the present or things as they are whist at the same time acknowledging the frustration and impossibility of that inquiry in the process.

If these notions are the lynch pin of my activities then failure, absurdity, irony and melodrama become sub-texts, an inevitable by-product of an impossible project. As such, for all their formal or theoretical constraints, I consider my project fundamentally romantic in nature.

Mute Swimmer - Record Release

I'm pleased to say that the record is done and available to your ears for an inevitable (but hopefully worthwhile) foray into commerce. You can get it from me directly for ten English pounds including postage (at the email above), at gigs for £8, or here:
http://www.woodlandrecordings.com

I'll resist the temptation to describe the music as such. Suffice to say the album is eponymously titled. It has ten tracks with a few hidden surprises. It was recorded by Lawrence Collyer, Stephen Burch and myself in various rooms in the south of England. I mixed it with some help from Stephen and we mastered it here in Berlin.
It features the invaluable musical contributions of The Diamond Family Archive (electric guitar, keyboard, voice), Nezih Antakli (Percussion and atmospheres), Kay Johnson (vocals) and The Great Park (organ).

There are 110 numbered copies with lyric sheet inserts, fold out covers and photos which I designed and made myself with moderate mechanical interventions and the help of Fee and Stephen.

As a taster here's a free download of the song 'Different Name' from the album:
http://www.mediafire.com/?gn4lmmg0jqi
Finally thanks to the many people directly or indirectly involved for their support and patience while I've been doing this.

I hope you find something to enjoy there.

Guy/Mute Swimmer

ps:
Here's a video of Saturday night at Ida Nowhere, Neukölln, Berlin if you want to take a look:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8M9KtSbx6ck

Thanks to Magdelena for this.

some thoughts on some songs

i’ve always loved john cage’s 4’ 33”. not so much because of the way it conveys the relative status and ultimate impossibility of silence itself but for the way in which the audience come to create the piece in some measure, they actively engage it’s principle through performance.

i liked the way david byrne always sang as if he was outside looking in – a kind of anxious, disinterested (unpoetic) poetry of the mundane and absurd.

i still get a weird thrill when i hear kylie minogue’s ‘can’t get you out of my head’. it is a kind of pure pop tautology – it puts it’s addictive primary hook precisely where you can’t get it out of your head and then it tells you so…..along with other aspects of her person, i just find that sexy.

steve malkmus is particularly good at splicing his lyrics with little asides as to the artifice of the song itself – occasionally he just steps out of it altogether and waves at you from the sidelines. ‘stereo’ is an obvious point of reference but it’s usually listening to ‘gold soundz’ when he announces, at precisely the point you know it’s coming, that they are ‘coming to the chorus’ that i usually fall off my stool or spit museli all over my lap laughing.

a lot of hip hop utilizes a kind of self-reflexive narration. the rapper’s flow articulating the very fluency and originality of the flow itself in a self-congratulatory loop. in ‘twice the first time’ saul williams ruminates on hip hop’s genetic connection to the slave song - imploring the beat (as a cipher for the burden of black american history), to stop just as it drops back in. brilliant.

i often come back to analogies with painting. i think of lyrics like recognizable objects or motifs on a canvas, a window into somewhere else. there is something in all the above and an attempt in my own recent songs, to bust the window in some sense. the song takes you on a journey with no essential momentum outside of itself and the moment it occupies in time. it acknowledges the artifice of the construction, self conciously taking apart its conventions and received paradigms whilst at the same time reveling in their peculiar characteristics and intrinsic pleasures.

www.myspace.com/guydale

Quito To The Border

Quito as a ghost capital city on the Sunday morning I arrive. Everyone partying in Puerto Lopez perhaps.

Making enough bolognese to last me four days in an expansive kitchen listening to Françoise Hardy.

Going to the cinema to see Benjamin Button with a girl called Emily Button - poetic, even if the film was utter shlock. (Enjoyed Cate Blanchett though, I have no critical faculties when it come to this woman). We had to sweet-talk our way in past no less than 3 armed guards to do it- because we are 10 minutes late.

Playing songs quietly on the terrace in the occasionally library like tranquility of Casa Bambu with the nice Chilean couple I forget the names of....an amazing view of the mountain flanked city.

Waking up with a feeling I was leaving too soon but going anyway.

The horror of finding my empty satchel still wrapped around my legs on the bus out of Quito....relieved of a laptop with all my own recordings from November, music and photos from my trip.

Arriving in Tulcan border town to file a report at a police station Samuel Beckett would have been pround of. Emily kindly buying some rum which the Ecuadorian police gladly consume whilst typing up my report. (This is the first of two times that someone has entered ´British Citizen´ as my first and second name). One un-connected officer gives me a torrent of questions about English whiskey and also if Scotland is in fact England.

Watching The Squid and The Whale on a double bed in the utterly seedy Hotel San Franscico before the power goes out. Feeling indescribably downcast and philosphical alternately....

A brain like a fly around shit for weeks after. Únable to leave the incident alone...an ever accumulating list of losses, involutary acts of (imagined) violence and voodoo directed at the faceless perpetrator.

A long ride to Cali through some beautiful countryside. Emily leaving for the coast on her birthday. Me being ill, again.

Characters - Puerto Lopez

John and Dennis from Minnosota. Musician and eco warrior respectively. Poker. The dog that follows them everywhere. They´re being quietly smart (Americans) and, I can´t think of a better way of saying it, kind of short and cute.....long chats into the evening with John. Later his lost camera grief.

Fabian and ?. Fabian´s inherently hilarious body language, especially whilst playing pool. Isla Del Planta, playing that weird fill in the gaps game about a guy in a car listening to a record skipping who then kills himself...seeing some blue footed boobies and...thats all. Arriving to a hill top vista and sitting next to two guys holding rifles. Me asking them where they´re from and realising I have never actually heard a broad Alabama accent before, at least not in real life....Fabian asking what they are killing...the slow drawled response. ´Aymm jurst killin cayts´ (I´m just killing cats). The highlight of an off day.

Playing cards with the very loud guy from Alaska who was absolutely fascinated with himself.

Micheal, late 40´s from Sheffield. Works as a driver for an incredibly rich sheik in London - I forget how this came about. Takes lovely pictures which he frequently ruins with unnecessary Photoshop post production (in my opinion). Endears himself to my two german friends by asking them exactly what town the Nazi rallies took place in Germany, by way of introduction...They perhaps understandably don´t reply....the look of genuine curiousity and mischief on his face, which despite myself I found contagiously humourous. ´Travels´ with a stunning 22 year old actress from Cali who cooks amazing vegatarian food, practises transcendental meditation´and poses but naked on the beach for his impromtu photoshoots. My redeeming memory of Michael is of his swaying gently on a hammock in the humid equadorian afternoon reading Edgar Allen Poe and listening to Skinny Puppy. A true one off.