 Steve Somerset chats with Peter Blegvad | Date: 16/02/04 |
| THE LOWDOWN ON ORPHEUS Steve Somerset chats with Peter Blegvad There is something comforting about Metropolis Mastering. It's been the final delivery room for many an XTC project. It's here that Ian Cooper adds his touch of magic to the final product. Tinkering with eq, compression and adding stereo wideness to the mix, he ensures that your final CD sounds as good as possible. And so it was that I found myself there on a wonderfully Spring-like day at the end of January to take some pictures and hear the latest APE release 'Orpheus, The Lowdown' by Andy Partridge and Peter Blegvad. I arrive to find Ian Cooper in familiar pose, standing behind his desk listening intently to a playback; Andy Partridge is tucking into a plate of sausage and chips and the softly spoken and very tall Peter Blegvad is chatting with long-time friend of Andy's, and writer of the musical version of the 'Full Monty', David Yazbeck. David is complaining that the Coffee Bar is full of kids. "Thats S Club Juniors", replies the knowledgeable Ian Cooper looking up from his desk, "they've been here all week." What an an interesting juxtaposition; for nothing could be musically further from the prepubescent teeny bops than the project that Andy and Peter have conjured up. "Night of the comet" intones Peters voice from Ians giant speakers against a spiky abstract wall of sound provided by Andy. Intoxicating, disturbing, dreamlike and incredibly exhilarating, this is a rarity... a totally original album. Anxious to find out more I caught up with Peter Blegvad later and asked him how the project came about. Peter: Andy and I have collaborated on several unpopular pop music projects together, but we both have a strong experimental streak too. Our first collaboration was in 1983 when Andy produced the 'Naked Shakespeare', my first solo album for Virgin. This had a couple of spoken word tracks on it, for which he devised the settings. In 1990 we'd made a promotional CD which featured some spoken word and soundscape experiments (called 'Peter Who?' it was for my 'King Strut album'). We recognised a potential in the form which we wanted to explore further. Which is a po-faced way of saying it was fun. Steve: How would you describe the album? Peter: Armchair travel. Let us transport you to hell, to the slopes of Olympus, to a bowling alley in Galveston, be transmuted into a seer by the alchemy of sound! Poetry in which conscious and unconscious kiss and make up over soundscapes by Partridge in which music plays hide and seek with noise. The themes the texts explore include language, love, loss, and initiation. Comedy, tragedy, poetry, anxiety. Steve: I heard about four tracks years ago. Why did it take so long to finish? Peter: We did those first tracks about 11 years ago, I think. I moved back to NYC. We lost touch for awhile. We were both busy with other projects, with raising families, etc. Steve: When you returned to the project did you pick up instantly where you left off or did the passing of time offer you a new perspective? Peter: Maybe because 'Orpheus, the Lowdown' is primarily about the dead, nothing had changed. We fell right back into surprising ourselves again. Steve: You've worked with Andy before; how did this differ? What were your roles? Peter: This was our own project. No A & R people to please, no one to please but our hypercritical selves. This wasn't about crafting catchy tunes, this was more about creating cinema for the inner eye. To me it felt both avant garde and old-fashioned, a return to the values of radio drama. The freedom was exhilarating. I'd come down to Swindon from London with my jottings and we'd retire to Andy's shed (his home studio) I'd recite something, he'd reach for an instrument or programme some samples, and we'd be away. Somehow we knew when the marriage of sound and text felt right, or not. The danger with a project like this is PRETENTIOUSNESS. We sail close to the wind at times, but I think (I hope) the humour, dark and devious, saves us from capsizing. There was a lot of laughter, which is essential in any collaboration, for me at least. It went very quickly once we got down to work. Friction less and fecund. Steve: I'd describe the tracks as paintings in sound. Do you think your work as an illustrator influenced the album? Peter: Yes. paintings in sound is good. Both Andy and I are visual artists as well as musicians/songwriters. I have long sought to bring my various obsessions, visual, sonic, literary, together into one form, and this project is a stab at that. Steve: Is this a new kind of beat poetry? I'm thinking of the records Jack Kerouac made with jazz playing behind him... Peter: I'd be chuffed for it to be thus perceived. Kerouac and the other beats were a huge influence on me. Gregory Corso, Burroughs, Ginsberg were and remain mentors. In fact Andy gave me several cassettes of Kerouac reading live to jazz when we first met in 1983. Steve: Talking of jazz. There's some amazing free-form bass going on in one of the tracks. Andy seems to relish the musical freedom that a project like this offers. Do you think the only way to get this kind of project out is on an independent label? Peter: What, you think a major would touch it with an 11 foot barge pole? They're whores, mere professionals. On 'Orpheus' we're AMATEURS, the true meaning of which derives from AMOR, i.e. we're doing it for love. The track you refer to is 'Steel Bed' on which Andy plays bass. Pop genius that he is, he says he also loves playing free-form stuff and he has the chops, quick wit and imagination for it. Bass, guitar, keyboards, drums, vocals, he can do it all. Fred Frith, John Zorn, Han Bennink, Bill Laswell, James ‘Blood’ Ulmer, etc. I'd like to hear Andy working (playing) with some of these guys. Or Archie Shepp for that matter. Or... etc. Steve: Are there plans to record a follow up? Peter: There's plenty more where 'Orpheus' came from. I hope we'll collaborate on more songs, spoken word stuff, jingles, a musical, etc. Steve: What's the ideal way to listen to the album? Peter: Dead. Some of the frequencies we used are only audible to the dead, some of the jokes and references are only intelligible to them. But the living can get a lot from it too. Listening to it through headphones, lying down in a dark room is a good start. You have to invest in the experience for it to work. It won't happen if you put it on while you do the dishes, for instance. 'Orpheus, the Lowdown' is designed to be totally immersive. |  |
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