New Stuff In The Offing? Options

[Keltik]

"An exciting new project with Andy Partridge and Peter Blegvad (of Henry Cow and Slapp Happy fame ) is being developed in the dark recesses of the Lighterthief bunker"

The above from Stuart Rowe's Facebook newsletter. Nice!

[Andy Partridge]

We are taking a three week break at the moment as Peter is off teaching in Africa. Say's he's already found a young kid called Lightnin' who plays great blues guitar.

[Keltik]

not a hopkins by any chance?
While we're studying your various practical projects, do you think Ape is getting quite "organic"... in the sense that there seems to be a considerable degree of Record Company Executive involvement in various Ape artists' creations. I haven't seen anything like this since Richard Branson had an acting part in an XTC video.
Seriously though, when you sign up people you really dig, there's the obvious issue of inspiration from each other. I'm certainly not complaining, and trust that there's plenty more to come. On the whole, I think you've done exceptionally well with Ape, as difficult as the exercise has been financially. I hope it continues in this way ( not the financial bit though).

[Andy Partridge]

Hey Kelts,yes,I sign people who I love the music of and so wanting to be involved in some way is just a natural extension of that. Sometimes it's a financial consideration too,ie: Jen needed a mixer/producer for her album,I was free to do it and didn't need to give me an advance{and couldn't}.With Peter,well i've know him since 1983 and we've worked together a lot,so that feels just natural.
I hang out and create a lot with Stu,so there's a normal extension of a friendship going on there. Milks= mutual respect.Same with the Pugs. Monstrance= project I'd wanted to do for ages,and good to hang out with Barry and Martyn anyway,smart fellows.
The only one to resist my input was Veda,I thought it might be fun,so we wrote together but she decided to drop it immediately,oh well,it was not to be.

[Keltik]

Interesting about Veda...I have Kildeer, This Riot Life and Here is a Picture. I reckon she would be the most challenging to collaborate with but I'm probably ill-qualified to hazard a guess on that subject. But working with the other folks must be the best part of running your own label, methinks. It certainly seems to produce the goods, judging by what we've heard so far. Thanks for the reply.

[Andy Partridge]

A good day editing Peters vocals{he leaves us with a bunch and we pick the best stuff}. GONWARDS is really shaping up. Stu plays a mean bass,I clank a good guitar,no probs.
Maybe closer to NAKED SHAKESPEARE than ORPHEUS. I love this mans words.

[Keltik]

Looking forward to it!

[Honeycomb Jack]

A good day editing Peters vocals{he leaves us with a bunch and we pick the best stuff}. GONWARDS is really shaping up. Stu plays a mean bass,I clank a good guitar,no probs.
Maybe closer to NAKED SHAKESPEARE than ORPHEUS. I love this mans words.

Sounds like a band made in heaven, can't wait!!

[tenazxtc]

http://radiofreesongclub.com/archives/1

[Andy Partridge]

When APE is up and running again we'll have to add a GONWARDS section in here as me and Stu are getting on well with the mixing{ seeing as we can only spend a day and a half a week on the project that is}.
Just got 90% through a great mix for ST. AUGUSTINE SAYS. An odd little song seemingly about drinking too much/sex with seniors and philosophy,all cut to a ska beat with Maori backing vocals. Just an average day for Pete I reckon.

[Mr Tein]

I hear rumours that at least three tracks ar ready and sound very good!

[Nedison]

How long until GONWARDS?

I can't stand this waiting...

[Omnibus]

How long until GONWARDS?

I can't stand this waiting...

Sex with seniors with a background of Mahori vocals… uhm should I have a go?

[SDR]

Peter is appearing on The Verb tonight (Friday 3rd June ) on BBC Radio 3 and will be playing a track from Gonwards - "Sacred Objects"

This is his text for the show



Andy Partridge and I have been making records together — sporadically — since 1983. I usually write the words, and he usually makes the music. Over the years we’ve recorded pop, rock, folk and experimental music.
On our last record, in 2008, we re-imagined the myth of Orpheus. Richard Williams reviewing it for the Guardian said “this one could make even the drive to the supermarket seem like a journey.”
Which he meant as praise.
On the follow-up, which we’re working on in Swindon with our colleague Stuart Rowe, there are a couple of tracks in which we re-imagine another myth: the myth of the blues.
One of these, “Devil’s Lexicon,” begins with a pulse, the heartbeat of the blues, around which we build a body out of matter-nouns: meat, bone, hair, fur, smoke, clay, turpentine, whisky, kerosene, ice, paper, cotton, gold, stone, steel — the list goes on, and every noun is enhaloed in shades of blue.
Then we animate the body with the sparks it makes when nouns collide. Or with the charge nouns generate when stacked together like the layers in a voltaic pile:
cypress sweat honey cloud doctor
gasoline smokestack lamp ladder shoes
lightning suitcase valley

By the end of the song, the body walks, the blues are abroad in the land:
The whiskey glue road nickel body of the blues.
The cypress sweat honey cloud doctor of its moan,
crying steel beans dynamite matchbox tears
for the loss of its city skillet pocket shotgun rose.

In the Devil’s Lexicon every word is a noun.
What is it about nouns? Gertrude Stein says poetry is all about “using losing refusing and pleasing and betraying and caressing nouns.... “
She says poetry is “really loving the name of anything” — and the line she’s most famous for creating “a rose is a rose is a rose” caresses the noun in order to reclaim it, to make it red again.
Rose is a concrete noun. Love is an abstraction.
An abstraction is something we can know with our intelligence but can’t perceive with any of our 5 senses.
When I read the word “rose” I experience what Ezra Pound called “phanopoeia” the property language has of “throwing the object (fixed or moving), onto the visual imagination.”
When I hear the words steel beans dynamite matchbox tears I see that too, though I’d be hard pressed to draw you a picture.

In her essay, “The Blue of Distance” Rebecca Solnit writes
“The world is blue at its edges and in its depths. This blue is the light that got lost.”
Solnit writes about the place-nouns in songs: ferries, jails, rivers, stores, streets, fields.
Apropos the murder-ballad “Long Black Veil” she says:
“The grave, the town hall light, the hills, and the gallows are all more vivid than the protagonists... ...the places are what remain, are what you can possess, are what is immortal. They become the tangible landscape of memory... . They are what you can possess and what in the end possesses you.”
The places, yes — and, I’d add, the things in songs do that too.
“John Henry he left his hammer, all painted in red, all painted in red.”
After you’ve heard Mississippi John Hurt sing “Spike Driver Blues” a few times, that line, specifically the image of the painted hammer will be part of your memory landscape for good.
John Henry can’t stay, but his hammer will remain, as red as Stein’s rose.

In “Look Over Yonder Wall” Freddie King sings “hand me down my walking cane.”
When Freddie is gone, his cane will remain,
as will Slim Gaillard’s “cement mixer, putti-putti”
and the matchbox holding Blind Lemon Jefferson’s clothes.

All these objects and more populate the landscape of the blues, and they populate the landscape of the second song Andy, Stu and I have been working on in Swindon. It’s a fable or parable in which “nothing happens and when it does it’s almost like something never was.”
We’ve done a mix specially for the Verb, and it’s called “Sacred Objects.”

First thing in the morning
last thing at night
sacred objects come to light...

[Omnibus]

Thanks for posting this SDR!
I hope there will be a podcast, as I can't listen to it tonight…

[Mr Tein]

GONWARDS. OMG. Heard a few snippits of it and it is amazing ( hope that doesnt get anybody into trouble!) I would hate to create a wave of Hype but whatever you are expecting from this album you are going to be hit round the face by a selection of creative wet fish to shock you or of your new music apathy. It really is not what I was expecting. I cant wait to hear the thing in full. and you can tell from hearing it how much fun and joy there was making it! AP is defiantly back on top form.

[Andrew Swainson]

GONWARDS. OMG. Heard a few snippits of it and it is amazing ( hope that doesnt get anybody into trouble!) I would hate to create a wave of Hype but whatever you are expecting from this album you are going to be hit round the face by a selection of creative wet fish to shock you or of your new music apathy. It really is not what I was expecting. I cant wait to hear the thing in full. and you can tell from hearing it how much fun and joy there was making it! AP is defiantly back on top form.

This place needs a 'like' button!!!

This is absolutely right - I've only had rough mixes but it's a real pleasure to listen to and even has genuine "single" material on there too. Can't wait to hear the finished album.

[Andy Partridge]

Teino,Stu confessed that he'd trapped you in the Lighterthief lair and forced you to submit to his evil torture. Hope you liked the bits you heard. Going to be mastered shortly,better get that sleeve a moving along.

[Andrew Swainson]

Alright... I can take a hint!!!

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/tongue.gif)

[Keltik]

Considerable appetite-whetting going on here. Us folks of the antipodean diaspora must sit and wait patiently while Tein gets a guided tour. Bah. I knew there was a bonus to living in Southampton. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)
Will there be a download version as well as a disc?