Love - Live. (The Speed Of Sound)

A live recording of Love - The Speed Of Sound : here

Songs evolve and change over time and this one changes pretty often. There are only three chords and they have remained constant throughout; but they are unusual chords and there is plenty of space to play with in there between them, so Love transforms naturally and frequently, sometimes the mutation is subtle and sometimes it is drastic. The current live incarnation of Love has a very different sound and a much darker feel to the drumless (but not percussionless) album version, which was recorded in 2010.
There is a Japanese poster for Love, produced to mark the world-wide album release of The Speed Of Sound At Tree Level (which includes Amazon Japan among other places to buy).

A film poster is wasted without a film, so there is also a video for the album version of Love. The video is in the YouTube panel on this website, but for ease the direct link is here.

The Lyric doesn't need any complex explanation because pleasure and pain are always bedfellows.


Love

Make me breathe
Make me sigh
Make me close my eyes

Make me fly
Make me glide
Make me feel alive

Make me lie
Make me cry
Make me die inside                

John Armstrong (August 1988)

Love has been in the live set since it was written; so is one of only four songs currently to have been performed live by all three band incarnations The Droogs, The Blood Oranges and The Speed Of Sound (the other three are Checkered Land, There's No One There and Uhrwerk). The personnel line up for The Speed Of Sound's live recording in this post is John Armstrong on guitar and vocal, Kevin Roache with 'Rosso' his beloived Italia Mondial Classic bass and from Spain, the remarkable Raoul Carrino on drums.

The Wargame - Live. (The Speed Of Sound)

A live recording of The Wargame, 17 November 2013 : here

We went into the studio, set up and played. So the recording was live; without headphones, without being in separate rooms, without layering multiple tracks and without adding anything else later. This is three people in a room making music together at the same time, which is how it used to be done and a return to the traditional method of recording. So, if this sounds like a live recording, that will be because it is, because that’s what we were after.

The amps and drums were mic-ed up separately and we put the vocals through the PA using one speaker as a monitor so we could hear and another one mic-ed, but in different room to give a bit of sound separation and so we were able to mix the track levels later.

Guitar (Rickenbacker 620-12) and vocal – John Armstrong

Bass (Italia Mondial Classic) – Kevin Roache

Drums – Raoul Carrino 

The studio is a multi-use community building so there are other people using the space, we’d booked it for the whole day, but Audrey was still there so we let her watch.

The video of the album version from The Speed of Sound At Tree Level is here and there is an unplugged recording here

The Wargame:

Silently searching cruising fifty feet down

Sealed orders are opened as the sweep-hand reaches high

In the darkness of ocean a wargame has begun

Submariner crouches over green glowing screen

Watching listening

In the darkness of ocean a wargame has begun

Far from alone the headphones are alive

Echoing with herring shoals as the order to dive is re;ayed and obeyed

In the darkness of ocean a wargame has begun

A trawler catches an oversize prize and is gone

A trawler catches an oversize prize and is gone

Copyright 03 October 1989 John Armstrong

Music and Elsewhere New Year Showcase

Its nice to start off the year by being featured in another podcast; its also nice that M&E chose the most experimental song Ghosts Of Grytviken (from The Speed Of Sound At Tree Level) for their New Year Showcase. There can't be many songs about the ghosts of whales (and whalers) that were recorded at night on Halloween - by coincidence not intention - but if there are, this is one of them.  

 click here for the Soundcloud link
The visible influences are different on this one, its not an obvious choice for a song and doesn't follow an obvious pop song structure. Its more of a psychedelic trip to the South Atlantic
Grytviken is an abandoned whaling station on South Georgia, roughly 900 miles off The Falkland Islands. When the whaling stopped in 1965 the whale-catching ships were abandoned and they slowly rust away in the harbour near the tanks used to store the whale oil. The explorer Earnest Shackleton is buried in the graveyard there.
Ghosts Of Grytviken is an atmospheric soundscape of a song, starting and ending below the sea, having climbed the mountains and flown with the wandering albatross before the first verse. Yes, its a bit far-out. The drums only appear on the chorus, but there is assorted ambient percussion including the ringing of eight-bells. Its not a dancer but still has plenty of sway, the chords move up and down like an ocean swell.
Its the Italia Mondial Classic six string on lead (and rhythm) with the Danelectro '63 bass.
There is an earlier post here with a bit more background, photo's of the whaling station and the lyrics.
I like a bit of wilderness so it'd be neat to go there, but it is pretty inaccessible. Definitely on the list though.

M&E dates back to the 1990s, but has been off the scene for a while. This is their first showcase in quite a while and should be every 4 months or so now. You can get more information here
The full listing and liner notes are on the 'showcase' tab and the full set is on the M&E Soundcloud page here 
Have a listen, its all real music.

Interview for Magic Music Box

Recorded in Berlin, broadcast in California and now on the web:
Lord Litter's Magic Music Box

Introduction and Torrey Canyon:

Lord Litter's Magic Music Box International

                           click below
Interview and Music Part One (29'40"-45'15")
and
Interview and Music Part Two (26'10"-42'48")

All the shows are downloadable at the foot of the linked page and are worth a full listen through if you can.

Lord Litter's Magic Music Box: (click below)
German Language Edition September'13 (from 55"10' to the end)

Who is Lord Litter? In his own words:

Lord Litter

'The show presents the new microcosm of free music production, once known as "independent" or "alternative" music, expressions that - now integrated into the "system" have no relation to their original meaning. Music that is uniquely based on more than 70 years of recorded sound, whatever direction, from classic cassette scene releases of the 1980's to the hypermodern update studio technology results. The emphasis is on long working musicians with a unique quality.
Lord litter hosts radio shows since 1987 and says Vive Le Difference!'

(He is also a musician with countless of his own releases; the latest project is Meta Georgia) www.lordlitter.de
 thanks and cheers!

Support real-music:
(Lord Litter on Radio Marabu is monthly and K-WTF is weekly)

Checkpoint Charlie - the video

The video for Checkpoint Charlie was filmed in Berlin; between Alexanderplatz, Fredrichstrasse and Berlin Hauptbahnhof. 
The S-Bahn remix includes ambient sound and some additional percussion provided by train doors.

The passenger at the end is an unplanned echo of the man-on-fire on Pink Floyd's 'Wish You Were Here' sleeve; but we kept him anyway. Serendipity.
Checkpoint Charlie will appear on the third album when it is released in 2014.

You can watch the video on YouTube here

The Parallel Evolution of Checkpoint Charlie

In August 2013 Checkpoint Charlie was just an unfinished riff, while recording the interview for Lord Litter's Magic Music Box I played it into his hard-drive

 and left it there to germinate in Berlin.

Meanwhile, I also took it back to Manchester.
This was an experiment in parallel evolution and the results were two very different songs carrying the same basic musical DNA.
Strangely (and unknown to both of us) each version would be finished and mixed the same weekend during October.


You can hear (and download) both versions via the soundcloud links below:
The Speed Of Sound version

And
The Armstrong/Litter version

Completely different, but the same:
Vive le difference
Lord Litter's website is: http://www.lordlitter.de

Scootfest 2013

Live on stage at Scootfest

The set list:

Checkered Land
Love
I See You Everywhere That I go
The Wargame
Only Everything
The Changes
Chalk Circle
You've Got To Move Too
Glide On By