list.co.uk/music FEATURE | MUSIC GOING UNDERGROUND | MUSIC
GOING
THIRD-DEGREE UNDERGROUND
BYRNE
Stewart Smith digs out some of the best underground, DIY and self-released
music currently coming out of the Scottish music scene David Byrne talks to Claire Sawers about life after Talking Heads
– collaborations, creativity and How Music Works
W here’s just one small caveat before The List gets the green light on an interview with David Byrne. One thing Mr Byrne most definitely won’t be talking about, comes the polite but
MERCURO-CHROME firm message, is Talking Heads. From anyone else, a request to not talk about the single biggest Athlete of Joy / Athlete of Despair ●●●●● thing they are famous for might seem churlish, a bit awkward; the Much of the most exciting new music coming out now in Scotland is released digitally uncooperative demand of a pop diva. But coming from a shape-shifting or on tape. There’s an immediacy to these polymath such as himself, coming from David Byrne, it makes perfect formats, not to mention a refreshing lack sense. Byrne’s CV reveals a man constantly on the lookout for new of filler. Cassette is the ideal format for a ground to break, new skills to master, new projects to complete; the project like Mercuro-Chrome’s Athlete of polar opposite of laurel-resting. Yeah sure, David Byrne was a singer Joy / Athlete Of Despair. Beamed from in one of the most influential new wave pop bands of the 70s and 80s, the kaleidoscopic mind of poet, artist and whose hits (‘This Must Be the Place’, ‘Psycho Killer’, ‘Once in a musician Jamie Bolland, Mercuro-Chrome Lifetime’, insert your own favourite here) still sound fresh as daisies is a long way from the Lynchian jazz of his nearly 30 years later. But he’s also been a film soundtrack composer, former group Tut Vu Vu. The two pieces here bike rack designer, photographer, illustrator, writer of non-fiction, are adaptations of his poem ‘On All Fours’, record label runner, visual artist . . . Byrne has built a career out of devised to accompany a performance with creative ADHD, and thrived on it, so it stands to reason – why would he costumes by Morven Mulgrew. It begins with want to get misty-eyed and revisit old ground? Bolland reading out a litany of identities: ‘I am ‘Yeah, I declined an interview with Mojo for that reason,’ Byrne a seabird . . . the tree of Tolstoy . . . a vision confesses, leaving only a second before letting out a laugh, something in the body electric.’ Then out of nowhere, he does a lot during the chat. He’s in his New York office, waiting on a an Ornette Coleman-derived rhythm kicks in lunchtime delivery of sushi, and he’s in good spirits. and Bolland’s voice blossoms into blissed-out ‘I have no embarrassment about Talking Heads stuff, of course I don’t. auto-tune, like a strangely ecstatic inversion It’s just there’s an awful lot of other things going on, especially at the of Kanye’s 808 & Heartbreaks. Bursts of moment. I thought, “Oh god, they’re probably gonna want to masticate absurdist humour (a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it the past. Mull things over somehow.” I would just rather talk about KRS-1 sample) are followed by moments of other stuff.’ revealing vulnerability. As wonderfully odd as It’s safe to say Byrne is a fan of forward motion. Right now, he’s being this exploration of ‘bipolar identity, delusional propelled forward in several directions. He’s just put out the excellent intuition and the body’ is, it’s also deeply Love This Giant, a record made with fellow New Yorker St Vincent, real empathetic. name Annie Clark, and backed by a brass band. He’s also writing music for theatre, designing more bicycle racks – this time alphabet-inspired HORSE WHISPERER ones for the Brooklyn Academy of Music – and prepping himself for a book tour. Oh yeah, he’s written a massive book too. Planctae / 8 Fictions ●●●●● How Music Works is music-geek heaven. It’s Byrne’s very enjoyable The demented DIY prog of Horse Whisperer’s The Fifth Season remains one of GLARC’s alternative to a cheesy popstar memoir – a sort of intelligent storybook most striking releases, so it’s a delight to for music fans crossed with a manual for emerging artists. In it, see Max Syed-Tollan return to the esteemed he examines music from several angles – as a recording artist (with Glasgow tape label with this set of chamber anecdotes about Brian Eno’s unconventional but clever methods; and music and piano improvisations. Written for their pots and pan percussion on joint album My Life in the Bush of woodwind ensemble, ‘Planctae’ is a fiendishly Ghosts). As a businessman (with a chapter dissecting the motives intricate and weirdly compelling piece of behind money-making from art, his own record label, Luaka Bop, plus baroque-modernism. The jerky rhythms and the practicalities of touring/ making CDs/ selling t-shirts), and most OTHERWORLD Cleadworkiet ●●●●● I Had Forgotten How Much Light There Is In The World, Till You Gave It Back To Me ●●●●● Otherworld is the latest project from Kay Logan, whose 2016 album as Helena Celle, If I Can’t Handle Me At My Best, You Don’t Deserve You At Your Worst, is one of the most original in the Night School catalogue. In contrast to the DIY techno and lo-fi wonk of that album, these two releases venture into dreamlike realms of electro-acoustic ambience. Logan creates her own sound world by feeding her sound sources through slow reverbs and long delays. Such an approach can run the risk of turning everything into an amorphous mush, but Logan has a painterly attention to detail, and a keen sense of duration and space. On Cleadworkiet, heavily treated guitar chords shimmer and swell over shifting drones, gradually creating a blissful sense of yearning. I Had Forgotten . . . is more impressionistic still, as piano and mallet tones glimmer through a pale golden fog, buoyed by airy flutes.
THE CRAY TWINS In The Company of Architects ●●●●● On their second album as the Cray Twins, Paul Baran and Gordon Kennedy take on the role of directors, composers and assemblers, piecing together the contributions of a virtual collective
passionately, as a man still madly in love with music. Electronic music, world music, folk song, religious chants, ballet scores – the ritual, the craft, the urge to dance along while cooking in his kitchen – Byrne’s sour tonalities are balanced playful flourishes of musicians and sound artists along with their refrain is clear – he can’t get enough. and disarming moments of Stravinskian own electronics, keyboards and samples. The ‘A large part of my life is tied to something that is completely wistfulness, while a passage of staggered 40-minute title track opens with a dialogue ephemeral,’ he writes in the book. ‘You can’t touch music, it exists only long tones and extended harmonies reflect between Bruno Duplant’s chimes and Baran at the moment it is being apprehended. And yet it can profoundly alter Syed-Tollan’s. The eight piano pieces on the and Kennedy’s electronics, the reverberant how we view the world. It’s powerful stuff.’ flip take in swashbuckling free jazz, minimal percussive tones fading into hovering drones Besides innovation, a big part of Byrne’s enthusiasm comes from chordal exercises and impressionist doodles, and looming ambience. They sustain this collaborations – as he playfully points out, Pitchfork once said he’d with a brief snippet of a capella art-song. beautifully for over 20 minutes, with minimal collaborate with anyone for a bag of Doritos. So what does he look for acoustic guitar plucks, modular synth twitters in a collaborator? and disembodied voices weaving in and out ‘I wouldn’t want someone that does what I do,’ he answers. ‘That of the mix. Then, out of the blue, Lavinia would be redundant. You’re not going to get anything new out of that. Blackwell’s wordless soprano vocals come You want someone who understands what you do, but is coming from swooping in. The grand finale sees Baran a different place. Then you find the connection between the two. I love carving out huge blocks of tone on a chapel getting out of my comfort zone. It’s an incredible thrill when I learn organ, as samples and treatments transform the something and it starts to work.’ acoustic space. So, as a multi-disciplined artist, with what he self-diagnoses as ‘very mild Asperger’s’, is keeping himself on his toes as much a part of the appeal as creating something new?
GLASGOW IMPROVISERS ORCHESTRA & MAGGIE NICOLS ‘Yeah, I like to keep myself interested – I’ll kind of throw myself into some area that I don’t completely know or understand, that I’m not Energy Being ●●●●● adept at, so I’m forced to swim in order to stay afloat. There’s a good An unsung hero of Scottish music, Lindsay L Cooper played with everyone from Mike feeling that comes from that.’ Oldfield to Derek Bailey. After stints away, When he’s not studying music’s patterns, communicating with other he returned to Scotland in the 1990s, where music makers (in myriad different ways), or jump-starting some new he led improvisation workshops and played music genre into life, he’s also a fan of the simple bit – listening to it. bass and tuba with the Bill Wells Octet. In the ‘I like to listen in a concentrated way – that’s the best way to take it 1960s, he shared a house with Maggie Nicols in. I’ll put on headphones while cycling or jogging through the park. I and the late George Lyle, both future alumni usually sing along – I hope I’m going fast enough that no one can hear of Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra. Fittingly, me.’ Energy Being is based on Cooper’s poem-cum- While others bemoan the ‘death of the music industry’, Byrne stays manifesto ‘A Madman’s Guide To Music’, steadfastly on the other side. ‘There’s more good music being made with Nicols, Cliona Cassidy, George Burt and now than ever before,’ he states simply. guest Tam Dean Burn interpreting his words It’s the short version of what his book explains over 300-plus pages. In while the ensemble responds to his musings his 60th year, and fourth decade as an artist, can Byrne ever see a time and provocations. Certain stretches recall the when he’ll get bored of music? The answer comes with a laugh. ‘It’s microscopic abstractions of Spontaneous Music just not gonna happen.’ Ensemble (with whom Cooper and Nicols performed), but there are deliberate irruptions How Music Works is out now, published by Canongate. of form, from the birdsong vocal hockets that Read more from David Byrne at journal.davidbyrne.com. Editat. build to a teeming Ligeti-like chorus, to a toe- Enitatium sedit volorestiunt laboressum a comnis a dolupta tapping Latin-jazz number. tiunt. 1 Nov 2018–31 Jan 2019 THE LIST 83 1 Sep–31 Oct 2019 THE LIST 83