Hi Lighterthief! This is the place in which we ask you stuff and you answer with whatever stuff you have! (Thank you Mr Tein for the Q & A idea).

How is it to have Andy as a bandmember?

What´s your view on recording music?

Your next exiting project?

Hi everyone- thanks for asking the questions Per, - not sure who’s gonna be interested but here goes:

How is it to have Andy as a bandmember?

Well Lighterthief isn’t really a band in the traditional sense- its basically me and whoever happens to come round to the studio. There’s been about 30 different musicians involved over the years. But I have to say that young Partridge is showing a lot of promise- hahah- he always has some very unusual ideas

But seriously its been a privilege and an education working with Andy on Monstrance and the Lighterthief tracks.

What´s your view on recording music?

Well I could rant about this for 32 pages but basically I try to find the most interesting musicians that I can- point a microphone at them-press record- and then manipulate and re arrange the results over months and months until they satisfy some deep dark urge within me.

Your next project?

Well there’s a lot of different stuff going on here but the next Lighterthief release on Ape is being finalized right now- it should be out at the end of June/beginning of July. Three tracks again- Andy’s popping up all over the place, plus lots of other Lighterthief musicians, and Jen Olive has contributed the most amazing vocal parts to one of the songs.


Anyway- hope thats enough-

Cheers

Stu

Great news, Stu!

Here's a question - what set you off making music in the first place?

Thanks Stu! Cool that you and Jen do a song together. Maybe more APEs are heading for the Lighterthief headquarter!?

I have no idea!!!-some inner demon-- hahah- I grew up in house with only 2 records in- "Walking back to Happiness" by Helen Shapiro and "Let There be Drums" by Sandy Nelson and I suppose its been a lifelong quest to make a record with both abnormally low female vocals and ridiculous amounts of reverb.

Do you know, I thought that Lighterthief ep sounded a bit Shapiroish, with a touch of the Nelsons about it!

Thanks for the answer Stu!

Hi Stuart -

How did you become such a great recording engineer? School or "on the job" training? I really like the quality of the sound on the projects you've been involved in that I've heard (Monstrance/Lighterthief).

Also - can you give us any info on The Alfonz? I've heard them through MySpace and they are awesome! I'd love to know if or when I could buy tracks like the fab Sitting on Your Radiator.

Cheers!
saturnboy

Well spotted Mr Jack- there's just not enough Shapiroish/Nelson influenced music out there.

And thanks for your kind words Saturnboy but any engineering skills I have developed have come from playing music for many many years and trying( and failing dismally) to make it sound like my favourite records-I played guitar and bass and did a bit of engineering for the Future Sound of London and Amorphous Androgynous which led me to record every person in Swindon that I came across- this in turn led to Monstrance- then Glory Bumps with Shriekback and Barry Andrews and finally to the dissonant but not unfriendly world of Lighterthief.

Mind you- it helps having Andy Partridge on your shoulder saying 'have you ever thought of doing............"

And The Alfonz- pesky varmints- they seem to live in my studio-there's a terrible smell in there- my son is the drummer- so they've been hanging around here for years- Sitting on my Radiator is just about to be released as a single-


Cheers

Stu

Great work so far Stuart - looking forward to the next batch!

Indeed - genious, in my opinion!

So, what was the extent of your involvement in Monstrance, Stu - if I may call you Stu?

Toad.

Hi Toad- you can call me whatever you want to:)


well ...

its a long story.

But briefly- I wandered into the studio where Andy, Barry and Martyn were recording Monstrance just as I Lovely Cosmonaut was wafting through the air. I was transfixed by possibly the strangest music I had ever heard in my life. But it made sense totally to me cos i was heading off into the same strange bizarre musical places myself but with only a computer for company- and here it was being played by 3 guys in a room. So I hung around for a bit- helped out where I could- did a remix of Chain Gang to show em what I could do- and then got asked to help out with the mixing of the album- it was great- I learnt a load of new stuff about production from Andy and we just tried to make it sound as good as we could. I think its a great album- but i can see hows its difficult on the ear to some listeners- its pretty abstract- but there are some genuinely brilliant bits I think.

And thanks for your kind words xyzman ( and everyone else who's commented and sent messages)- it's great to think that people are getting what we are trying to do here.

Cheers

Stu

Stu, is the fact that both you and Andy comes from Swindon an advantage when making music together? You know, some Swindonian feeling/attitude/disease/mood?

Well – this was not a question to dismiss with a quick quip. This has taken careful consideration.

Well firstly it’s a definite advantage to me as it’s great having someone with Andy’s’ musical experience living close by who can give me some advice on whatever ridiculous musical project I’ve somehow got myself involved in. And Barry Andrews has moved back to Swindon so that’s definitely helped me in my endeavours as well.

But with Swindon in general- I don’t think its much different from any other small town. Lots of bands- a few venues- some real talent floating about- a few people getting it together.

The main thing that influences the music here is that there is no university- so a lot of talented young people leave here at 18/19- and are not replaced with an influx of other drink, drug and sex-crazed youngsters as would be the case in university towns. So there’s not so many clubs- restaurants- bands- artists- culture etc etc

So who stays?- young people who don t feel the urge to get away- maybe their parents aren’t wealthy enough- they can’t be arsed- they aren’t academic types- and also maybe people move here for work- lots of banking/insurance type businesses- car factories. The rail industry that Swindon was built on has gone but there’s still plenty of work.

So there’s an atmosphere around Swindon that’s quite unique- I’ve lived in a few places and Swindon definitely has its own thing.-I’m not sure if it’s a disease- hahah- but its maybe a smell. Or an odour- or maybe a fragrance- naaaah- its definitely a smell.

Life in Swindon is quite simple I suppose- go to work- go to the pub- foppishness is generally frowned upon- it’s a down to earth kinda place- I moved here when I was 27 so I can see it probably differently than people who grew up here. Its definitely got an edge here- its quite a tough place.
Its not a pretty town- there are some beautiful parks and buildings but they are few and far between- it’s a funny ugly little place really- but its great – I love it here. Its regarded as pretty uncool by the rest of the country. In "The Office" the only town to be considered more depressing than Slough is yes- Swindon-hahahah.

But I don’t think there’s really a Swindon feeling in music- Andy (and Colin, Barry, Terry and Dave) created their own thing which stands head and shoulders above anything else created locally- they bestride the local music scene like some grotesque dissonant angular poptastic 5-headed monster-
“shit – we ve got to be better than XTC” that’s one hell of a weight to carry for a young band:)

But Swindons music scene is quite healthy at present – there’s some great young bands about- I’ve taught, recorded, produced, written and played with anyone who’ll let me for the last 18 years so I know most of ‘em and it s a pretty good place to be a musician. There;s all types of music going on here from blues to the most outrageous form of metal- to bhangra to dubstep.- whatever.

And with Lighterthief we just make records with who happens to be about- so sometimes you get blues harmonicas mixed with opera singers, Andy on guitar and samples sent back from street markets in Asia- choirs from the desert - etc etc - it just depends on who comes to the studio or has been in touch. Everyone adds their little bit to the soup. But i suppose it has a Swindon feel and rhythm if there is such a thing cos it was made here.



Sorry for the rant-but you did ask

Stuart, please feel free to rant how much you want. Great post that gave a lot of insight about Swindon and how things work there. I´ve only been to the place twice, but I could certanly feel that something Swindonian, whatever that is, is going on.

Hhm, at this point I usually have a question to fire off, but I spare you this time, ha ha!

Hi, Stuart! Thanks for coming onto the APE forum to answer our questions!

As a fellow (but not as accomplished) engineer, I'm curious as to if you have a preferred recording system. I assume you started in the old analog 24-track days (as I did), but what do you prefer to use now? Logic? ProTools? (I know Andy uses Cubase, he's obviously figured out the updated version by now.) Do you send .wav files for your long distance collaborations, or what?

And what effects processors/plugins do you really like to use?

Thanks!

- Jeffy Truzzi

And another, if you don't mind.

Brian Eno once said that if you want to be experimental in the studio, it doesn't need to take a lot of time. In his opinion, using more studio time usually makes the product slicker as opposed to more experimental.

I'd appreciate hearing your comments.

Hi Jeff- thanks for the question-

this answer is going to be so incredibly boring to most people so please ignore if you know nothing about the recording process☺

Well- I currently use Logic- but my background in recording is unusual in that I never really learnt the traditional route at all- I ve only ever used computers for making records and if anyone sits me I front of a big mixing desk its akin to being asked to fly a 747 to New York.

So I know none of the traditional ways of making records- I ve just experimented with software. I ve worked with lots of people who understand hardware really well but I get in such a terrible mess with wires and cables that I prefer the virtual world. Andys got a fantastic knowledge of all the recording and production techniques from the 60s onwards so I ve tried to learn as much as I can from him about those methods and work out how to get software to do a similar job.

What I’ve done is to try and capture the feel of my favourite records but by only using software which obviously ends up sounding radically (and sometimes disasterously) different to what I intended and I suppose I ve got more and more into what can be done with plug ins and gone further away from the traditional route.

I started on Cubase and then moved to Logic about 7 years ago. I ve done a bit on Protools and I think the audio side is brilliant but I prefer Logic’s MIDI side. `I also use Ableton a bit—particularly for triggering stuff live. I developed a guitar a few years ago called The Cybercaster that enabled me to trigger samples from the guitar itself- I used it on a tour with The Future Sound Of London and at some Lighterthief gigs . It was built by a chap called Chris Bauder who invented a thing called The Midi Gun.

Yes - I use wavs or aiffs for any long distance collaborations- its worked really well- but there is something about being in the same room with someone that is always preferable.

ooooohhhhh plug ins I love….

I am a software queen- so…..

Well all the Logic stuff is superb I think- its an amazing package for making any type of music but I think its good to get your own unique sound so I try to experiment a lot with new software.

I like Waves stuff as well- its expensive and they have a cruel upgrade policy but I would really struggle without the L1 limiter. I ve just bought the Maserati collection which I’m loving.

I use a lot of unusual plugins- the Ohmforce family is great- particulary Ohmboyz- but my favourites are things called Supatrigga made by Smartelectronix and Buffer Override made by Destroy FX- they kind of mangle up stuff in a very pleasing way- to my ears anyway. Aptrigga is good for drum triggering. I love loads of em really.

However recently I ve been more and more using a very strange piece of equipment called a VST Partridge- its great – you throw a generic drumloop at it and hey presto –out pops a fully finished song with unusual chords and great lyrics- I'm just trying to find someone to market it☺

And this has come in handy a lot over the years;-


Click to view attachment


Cheers

Stu

Wow! What a great and detailed answer!

My background is going from hiss, consoles and razor blades to mixing in the box, so your comments are highly enlightening and extremely helpful. Thanks, Stu!

The Turd Polisher - that's not in my Waves bundle.


VST Partridge, eh? Highly marketable. I've made a hobby out of trying to figure out (and name) those unusual chords.

Great answers Stu!

I've a question for you:

If someone came up to you with a big fat pay cheque and said 'Pick an album, any album; remix it, add samples, do what you will with it, and the money's yours', which album would you pick and what would you do with it? (the album, not the money).

Cheers!
Jack

Hi again Jeff

Bloody hell- these are great questions- invitations to rant- i don't need to be asked twice- hahahah

Well I think he’s totally right. and Brian Eno is a master at knocking people out of their comfort zone and getting them to play outside themselves . Some of his techniques are brilliant- the oblique strategies are great fun to use if you are stuck.

And its also very easy to be experimental given the tools now available to a musician- there’s so much technology that will change any parameter of any aspect of the sound - that just by setting some parameters to randomize will create some pleasing results. And by changing any aspect of a performance- for example- I’ll play in D and you in B flat-the drummer plays in 5 and we ll have percussion in 3- that will give some interesting experimental results.

However the same techniques will also produce some scandalous results that are best left unheard - so I think the answer is to be creative and experimental really quickly- improvise – throw ideas down – anything goes- but then spend as long as is necessary organizing those ideas into a pleasing shape. It means you have a lot of weeding to do- but the gems are in there somewhere.- maybe☺

I don’t think experimental necessarily means good and also I dont think that slick necessarily means bad. In fact- slick experimental is pretty good to aim for I reckon- some of the best stuff ever made is probably both. They don t have to be mutually exclusive.

its a tricky one- because to be too experimental can be very dull for the listener- great for the musicians- hahah

what's everyone else think?

Thanks again, Stu!

I think THIS:



...is an excellent point!

Good morning Jack

Another twister of a question- hahah. Every album I thought about- seemed to be perfection anyway- how could you possibly improve em? -I d be more excited by picking them apart and listening to how they are constructed then by putting them back together- so I ve been thinking long and hard about this.

And I understand that some people may see this as heresy- but that’s what I love doing- taking stuff apart and putting it back together again but wrongly-haha- when I was a kid my attempts at making airfix models were disasterous.

At first my mind immediately went towards Revolver as its probably my favourite ever album and the raw material would be incredible just to listen to in multitrack format- but it would be impossible to improve on. I think the Love album was an interesting experiment and I was very excited by it at first- “wow – you can do anything now-“ but I found I didn’t listen to it that much- they probably should have gone further with it.

So then I thought of Miles Davis- I think Bill Laswell did an amazing job with Panthalassa where he re constructed some of the early 70s stuff like on The Corner- I always refer back to it - so maybe working with something earlier like Kind of Blue would be good to do- but its perfection again.

Hendrix was remixed by The Beautiful People in the early 90s – I imagine it is really dated now but I loved it at the time- I listened to it a lot.

US3 were granted access to all the Blue Note jazz stuff but did some very commercial sounding hip hop with it- I thought it was very light.

Maybe some Beach Boys- Pet Sounds would be be incredible to break up – but maybe because of the limitations of 60s multi-track recording there would nt be that many tracks to get at.

Led Zep’s first album would be raw and exciting to use- a few years ago there were some files of some later John Bonham outtakes that were doing the rounds- amazing-so powerful.

I love The Bends by Radiohead – that would be very exciting. To pick apart the guitar arrangements.

Anything by Aretha Franklin in the 60s would be great- for the rawness of the vocals.

One of the 3 great Stevie Wonder albums of the early 70s- for everything.

And a Carpenters record- probably The Greatest Hits- would be really thrilling to me- to be able to take those vocals and put them in some other contexts- I think Karen Carpenter floating in some ambient space could be really wonderful

Or the Phil Spector christmas album- I love that- or even maybe some classical stuff – The Rite of Spring by Stravinsky .

What I’d really like to do is to be able to take all my favourite bits of the above albums and mix them into one great big steamy soup. So Karen Carpenter on lead vocals with Jonny Greenwood and Hendrix on guitars- McCartney on bass- Miles on trumpet- Stevie Wonder on keys and Brian Wilson, Aretha Franklin and the Ronnetes doing backing vocals- and John Bonham drumming .
That would do me I reckon- and Phil Spector in the control room with me, and Bill Laswell mixing it- string arrangements by Stravinsky-


But if I had to pick one album- then I have to say right now it would be Jen Olive’s album Warm Robot- just got to persuade Andy to give me that big fat cheque and the files- hahah

And what would I do with it?

Well I’d ruin it of course- but I d have a great time in the process.-

Indeed. Karen could use some 'fattening up.'

Hi Stu

A question or two if I may...

What was the first recording gear back in the mists of time you used and could you list the upgrades as you went along please...?


What was your first airfix model...?
I was given a Fairey Battle for a birthday some time in the late 60's and proceeded to glue it together wrongly and also to the sofa...I got the bug and gradually collected most world war 2 era planes and the odd duffer (grannys & aunties etc would admire my hanging dog fight/bomber display and buy me for christmas a bloody VC10 or a Concorde or something)

Again, thanks for providing a great answer Stu! I've oredered a copy of the Bill Laswell/Miles Davis cd; thanks for the tip!

Have you ever listened to Coltrane's 'Interstellar Space', and 'Ascension'?

And regarding Airfix kits; did you used to paint them? And if so, did you paint the bits whilst on the frame, or when the model was fully constructed. Once, I asked my dad to get me some paint for a WWII tank I was making and he came back with Humbrol orange, red and a bright blue colour. He said he was in a rush.

I have those files... I think they are excellent!

Click HERE for those files.

TC

Terry - these are brilliant - I never even knew they existed - thanks, mate!

So, Stu...you're gonna use some of these. right?

Al.

Hi TC/Al


Well i know very little about copyright law but i do know that no-one would be able to use them in a release without the permission of the writers /the publishers and the record company who own the masters- . However I m pretty sure these have never been officially sanctioned. But lots of bands are now releasing multi-tracks for remixing purposes so they will probably be officially released at some point . Maybe already have- i have no idea

So to your question Toad- I d love to - but I can t . Just got to find someone who can drum like that- hahah- easy:)

I've never heard anyone get near it- the closest I ve heard is someone called Virgil Howe- Steve's Howe's son- he 's got that kind of power. He s in a band called The Dirty Feel but i played with him with The Future Sound of London/Amorphous Androgynous- he s a fantastic drummer.

stu

Glad you like them Al... I just love the playing from John on those... you can hear him grunt and groan through some of it too! I tend to go for the more powerful drummers myself

Me too, Tel - although I still prefer Phil Gould to Garry Husband!

Stu Rowe could do a lot worse than point a mic or 2 at xTC, IMO!

I'd pay good money to see the Carpenter/Greenwood/Hendrix/McCartney/Miles/Wonder/Wilson/Franklin/Ronnetes/Bonham/Spector/Laswell/Stravinsky/Olive/Partridge/Rowe line-up!
Al.

Hi Mr Soup

– thanks for the questions but firstly I need to clear up a couple of misconceptions. Unfortunately my attempts at airfix modeling went no further than round 1- I have no practical skills whatsoever- that gene completely bypassed me –my entire family are all very practical- to this day rewiring a plug requires hours of preparation and careful reading and re re-reading of the instructions. It’s a kind of family joke.

So the airfix days have been wiped from my memory banks like some dreadful childhood trauma at the hands of a wicked uncle. Maybe therapy or hypnosis would retrieve the names of the models that I so grotesquely brought to life but I think its fair to say that they would have had no chance of flying . I can faintly remember some success with a model of a motorbike- possibly a Moto Guzzi -but it was smashed to pieces in a tragic accident within hours of completion- I think that was the final straw. However it seems that amongst the forum there is a subsection of airfix fans- maybe a thread should be set up- I of course will avoid it - hahah

And also I m not really an engineer- I m a musician who’s just had to learn how the technical side works- its not natural at all for me to understand anything mechanical.
I spent 20 years studying chords and scales and different genres before I came to the conclusion that without a knowledge of the technical side my music would always sound lame.

So recording gear… I d like to be able to say that at 3 years old I was recording the milkman with a device I had invented -like some child protégé who had somehow inherited the combined knowledge of Geoff Emerick and Joe Meek- but the sad truth is that I messed around a bit with a Fostex 4 track and a Alesis drum machine in the 80s and early 90s- in fact in about 1987 I was experimenting a little bit with samples but on a digital delay line.- using the repeat to capture bits of Chuck Berry riffs and the New York Dolls and then slow them down and trigger them as an into – disastrous of course but the seeds had been sown.

I could never understand why my recordings were not attracting the attention of the major labels- why weren’t Madonna’s manangement banging on my door demanding that she be given the opportunity to be recorded onto the Fostex 4 track-thru the guitar fuzz box I was using as a signal chain. To me of course they sounded amazing- but to others it must have been a joke.

In 1998 I decided I had to do this seriously-I went on a music tech course -I bought a Roland VS840 multitracker- which is the cheapest one of that line- and once I realized I could loop stuff on there- I was away. I then realized I could synchronise it to the family pc and I started creating music with friends and family - I used Cubase and discovered soundfonts and then with Recycle I could chop up bits of singing or guitar playing and trigger them back into the computer- I borrowed an Akai sampler and Oasis ‘s Wurlitzer Electric piano and just started recording everyone. But it was frustrating – I was mixing using some blown speakers and the pc was so unreliable- Cubase seemed to have been designed by some madman-
A few victories- couple of radio plays- but some woeful recordings in the technical sense- miles off the mark really.

Then a new PC and onto Logic 5.5- fantastic- really made sense to me- converted the loft- started getting people asking me to record them- I was so cheap- usually free – but I needed the experience- also did some remixes for some people - never ever was one used I don t think- they sound like a madman with an axe chopping tracks up and putting them back together randomly with no apparent finesse or attention to detail.

With my 2 brothers I spent a couple of years licensing tracks to various publications-we sometimes had to produce 16 tracks a week- quality control sometime suffered quite badly at the hands of this pressure- hahahah - but just kept getting better gear- some Mackie HR 824 Monitors.

Rented a studio in town to attempt setting up a business but realized I actually hated recording other peoples bands- just wanted to make my own music with people I like. Just working with people who excited me. So I persuaded my brother and a friend to build me a studio in the garden and I just potter about in there.

Then when Apple bought Logic I had no choice but to change to a Mac- now I have a new Mac Pro and an Apogee Ensemble- a real piano- a real drum kit- a digital drum kit-a few decent mics—a tokai strat – the cybercaster- an old EKO acoustic- a precision bass- nothing really good- none of the stuff you would see in a professional commercial studio.

stu

well we 've started rehearsals-it took quite a while to get hold of a few of em - but i have to say- there's been some terrible arguments !!!

This I'd pay my life savings to see!

Thanks Stu for a brilliant answer...A bit disapointing about the Airfix though as I was looking for someone to share a tin of duck egg blue...

Hi again Stu, superb answers. Where do you find them?

You wrote a while ago that a new EP will be released at the end of June or the beginning of July. Can you reveal anything more about the songs, like tracktitles? Your ever curious Swede!

Hi Mr Jack-

Hopefully you ve received the CD by now – I really like it- “Black Satin/What if “is always played thru the PA on a Lighterthief night- it creates a really good atmosphere- I ve even played it when DJing- its had mixed results- hahah-its tough to dance to.-

And I own Ascension and have been listening to “Interstellar Space”. To be honest I find listening to John Coltrane a bit like being in the line of fire of a flame thrower- the intensity is just too much for me sometimes. But when he s beautiful I love him- I m probably in the minority when I say that my favourite player on Kind Of Blue is Cannonball Adderley- he sounds really a beautiful man- funny and warm- and he plays really naturally which I love.

Re Airfix kits you should speak to Duck Soup- just keep me out of it - and painting them would have made things worse- a lot worse!

Hi Per

Yes – I did say that- I shall be careful what I say in future-hahah- as I write this I have a team of dwarves polishing and buffing the tracks before they are presented tomorrow to Head of Quality Control at Ape Records. If they pass this stern and rigorous test (and he has sent me packing a few times- hahah-) then to mastering later this week and should be out within a couple of weeks-

The EP is called “Trick Picture”- I think it’s a lot more commercial than Maximalism- this is our tilt at the Christmas number 1 market.

The tracks are:

“Up on Hi”- - features Andy on guitar and vocals and also offers the listener a tantalizing glimpse of Ape’s very own princess of the desert- Miss Jennifer Olive- it’s a very very happy tune- sort of African- pop -gospel-hop- its been real fun to do.

“Killing Time”- sung by Matthew Kilford who ‘s a singer/songwriter/guitarist based just outside Swindon and he’s also been coerced into playing keyboards in the Lighterthief live band . I suppose it’s a piano ballad but pushed through the Lighterthief filter- I think its sad and beautiful and bleak- –there’s even big string arrangements and brass sections

“Scream Baby”- features Swindon singer Natasha Griffiths - and Billy “the Onion“ Jones on harmonica- (the Lighterthief Myspace site is a picture of the inside of Billy’s garden shed.)
The track sounds like the band Television have somehow mistakenly been booked to play at the Ministry of Sound nightclub in London –they are joined on stage by a Scratch DJ, Miles Davis’ keyboard player, a drunken harmonica player, a violinist studying the history of atonal music and a young girl who leaps out of the audience and starts singing wildly. By the time they have finished the first song the club has completely emptied☺

Thanks for the input on all this Stu - great stuff.

I'm really interested in the FSOL angle - how did you end up working with them and what, if anything, did that experience teach you?

I've always found them fascinating to listen to and the recent archive series has been interesting just to hear their rough cuts - I think I can hear some of them in your material (or vice versa!!) so would be interested in your thoughts.

Thanks a lot.

Liam.

Hi Liam

Thanks for the question. Yeah I suppose that I’ve been influenced by them a lot – I worked with them on and off for about 8 or 9 years and picked up a lot about their approach to making music and the complexity and depth of some of their tracks- and use of space.

My youngest brother Mikey is a session musician- he’s played keyboards for Sheryl Crow , Oasis, Mick Jagger, and Prince-plus he plays a lot of the trickier Lighterthief parts-- but in 1998 he was doing some sessions in a London rehearsal room in the same building as FSOL had their studio- they heard him wailing wildly through the walls and asked him to play on their new material- they were also after a guitarist who could play in various classic styles for their new album and I was suggested. I actually think I only got the job because I said I liked Captain Beefheart. They’d worked with Robert Fripp before but I think they wanted a different kind of playing- in some ways more traditional. The first session I played on ended up as tracks for “The Isness”- I think this album took about 6 years to make- I ended up playing several sessions for it and the album featured choirs, orchestras, flautists, sitarists, Donovan, Linda Lewis, Herbie Flowers, and a host of other singers and musicians. They were working with composers Max Richter and Daniel Pemberton as well who brought an orchestral thing to what they did. This new project was entitled Amorphous Androgynous and was like a kind of side project to FSOL but based a lot on 60s psychedelia.

I also played a lot of guitar and bass on the next album which was “Alice in Ultraland” – and I make fleeting appearances on “The Otherness" ,"Papua New Guinea Translations” , “A Monstrous Psychedelic Bubble Exploding In Your Mind” and “Teachings from the Electronic Brain” and did some tours with them to Russia, Sweden and Australia. They had a fantastic live band including Gary Lucas (who played guitar for Captain Beefheart and Jeff Buckley) and Baluji Shrivasta who is a fantastic sitar player. So on stage we were improvising live with computers and samples and blending electronics with live performances. For this I developed this thing called the Midi Parasite which fitted on my guitar- it meant I could trigger samples at the same time as I was thrashing away. It sort of worked –hahah- there’s a track called “The Prophet” on which this worked best- half funk- half abstract electronica

What was good about working with them was the way that they got the best out of me- they d make me improvise for about 5 hours over loads and loads of material- and then take that material – re work it –put it in another context and when you heard the final track it would be on another song in another key. They had banks of dats on the walls with performances from everyone carefully catalogued- fascinating. In fact the best guitar playing I ve ever done is on a track called “All is Harvest”- I don t even remember doing it - it must have been in the middle of a long session where I was just gone- zoned out- hahah

So as this was going on I was developing the Lighterthief stuff- I could nt afford the session musicians that they had -so I just started recording everyone I knew- students, friends, family- anyone who came round and started re arranging and chopping it up.

I realised that most people play best when they are themselves- I was a rubbish session musician if someone told me what to do or said- “can you solo in the style of Brian May?”- “nooooooo” “ we d like a Knopfler-esq solo”- “help!!!!!!”- but if people let me play naturally I ‘m much better- so in Lighterthief stuff i try and get people to play absolutely naturally- then when they ve gone I twist them to suit my evil plans- hahah.

Cheers

Stu

Great stuff Stu - thanks for that.

I can see where your coming from - the use of space is very evident in their music and the use of material as collages is fascinating.

Looking forward to your new stuff and when I think of anything more interesting to ask, I'll be back to you!

All the best.

Liam.

Excellent question Liam, and excellent answer, Stu!

Ok, my question is about the 'Cybercaster'...you mentioned in the answer above that you fitted a 'midi parasite' onto your guitar to trigger samples - was this the forerunner to the Cybercaster? And when you say 'trigger' samples - are they triggered by switches on the guitar or are they frequency dependant (ie via the pickups, depending which note/s you play)? And how is the guitar connected to the sampler - is it wireless? Can it communicate with more than one sampler? I need to know, Stu! Get as technical as you like, I can take it!

Sorry about the tardiness of my reply but been on holidays and also could nt get the damn thing working.

So- I've made a little video to show the Cybercaster in full flow

http://www.lighterthiefmusic.com/Cybercaster.html

Its basically a Fender Telecaster with Line 6 Variax electronics transplanted into it so it can do different tunings and pickup sounds. Then the Midi Parasite bolts on top of it looking like a strange glowing lunch box. This is a Midi controller which sends data to Ableton Live via a Midi cable which I run on a Mac laptop also using Supatrigga and Sooperlooper for tomfoolery. It was designed to basically allow me to play guitar in different tunings and trigger samples all from one place.

Thats about it -

Cheers

stu

Bloody hell, you can make a lot of noise with that guitar, if now it is a guitar... Thanks for making a video to explain. Very kind of you.

Thankyou for making the video to explain Stu! I didn't realise the Line 6 could do different tunings at the flick of a switch. And that was a great groove you were getting into there!
Fantastic answer yet again! Thanks Stu!

Mr Stu,

can you please tell us the story behind "My Dream Sea". Once again lovely voices from the olive growing in the desert but how did it all happen when the song finally landed? I think that the blending with Mr P is working very well...

It´s me again, sorry. How musically mad on a scale from 1 to 10 is Barry Andrews? And is it possible to buy one of his masks?

Hi Stu, thanks for raising the Lighterthief benchmark once again with the brilliant 'Hard Listening' ep, its thoroughly tremendous! Is there any chance you could post the credits of who collaborated on this? (thats if you've got time of course, and if you can't, then its probably because you're busy, and busy for you can only mean good things for us!). I'm loving Lighterthief more and more each day, and what a brilliant Christmas present this is! Thanks Stu, and everyone associated with Lighterthief

I find MY DREAM SEA scary,and I'm on it. When we started I had no idea it was going to turn out like that. Almost a new form of music,DUB/PSYCH/COLLAGE/CONCRETE anyone ?

It´s dangerous to walk into Stu Rowes studio! Ha, ha. He tweaks and twist and I suppose that is what happened here. Great track. The way your voice blends with Jens is wonderful.

Scary? Well, the monk choir in the middle part is maybe a little bit spooky...

Scary? Gives me a bit of a chub. Then again, scary things sometimes do.
Jen sounds so fucking dangerous on this one. You really shouldn't get into the car with her. Really, no no no, it's a bad idea...
Just a short ride then.
Nice.