Song By Song - The Wargame

The darkness and silence of the ocean depths fill the Wargame with salt and stay; it dates from 1989. There was a series of trawlers being dragged and or sunk by submarines in the late 1980's the introduction of quick release mechanisms for nets has changed that but the the silent and invisible 'ungentlemanly weapon' still remains a menace to fishermen.
I had just read Edgar Allen Poe's short stories and their recurring themes of live burial and claustrophobia resonated with the disappearing trawlers and submarines in the news headlines.
Submarine exercise areas surround the British coast and there are also visiting (and not always invited) submarines present.
There are several recorded versions of The Wargame; the 2010 version on the 'At Tree Level' album, a live studio recording from late 2013, an 'unplugged' version from also from 2013 and the 'Everything Changes' album version of 2016.
Regularly in the live et, The Wargame has multiple different live recordings also existing from 1989 and 1990. The 2010 version has a video filmed in North Brewick, which has submarine exercise areas clearly marked just off shore on the standard ordnance survey map.

song by song: I See You Everywhere That I Go

Kevin is the only one of us whose voice isn't on the Everything Changes album; 'I See You Everywhere That I Go' feature's Paul's vocal contribution: 

"Ya right?" Just before counting us in. It seemed wrong to edit it out.

Written a week before the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, 'I See You Everywhere That I Go' (or ICU as is was abbreviated on set lists in ’89-‘91) was a regular in the live list from immediately after writing, the format has changed little since then, it still opens with the single minor chord and hurls itself straight into a chorus before diving into the first instrumental passage which has shrunk considerably and is less John Coltrane/Eight Miles High/far-out than it used to be 28 years ago.The verses still all come together, a sideways shift and then its choruses all the way out. The live popularity is echoed by the number of recordings - live versions exist from ’89 and ’90 as well as the 'At Tree Level' and 'Everything Changes' album takes, plus an as yet unreleased remix from the EC recording. Currently - thanks to it briefly being on the NME website in 2011 - it is also our most watched video.

Although not deliberately obscure, it is open to interpretation in several different ways. The ever present security cameras of the 21st century were relatively uncommon in 1989, but in East Germany one in six people was a Stasi informant, at various times spying on each other often without ever knowing their target was also an informant and reporting back too. 

Lyrically there is a parallel element of paranoia and obsession - it could be a love song or even a stalker song. It''s unclear if the point of view is the watched, or the watcher, or both. This slightly dusty miniature of the paparazzi statue in Bratislava stands next to the CD player in the kitchen,. He Is a reminder that you are always being watched. You are always on camera. So best look sharp.

song by song - Checkpoint Charlie

Imagined as the soundtrack of a dark and bleak unmade cold war spy film, Checkpoint Charlie crunched and kicked its way to be the opening track of the bonus CD of the Everything Changes LP. The Berlin Wall lurked in the background of my childhood, through the teenage years and half of my 20's. It was a stark symbol of the the ever present threat of nuclear winter and of course a physical

barrier and a significant cultural reference point, through the writing of Len Deighton (and the Michale Caine films) plus Quiller, John Le Carre and the binary appearance of 'western' freedom with David Bowie and Iggy Pop creating art and expression, while just over the border an average of one in any six people was a Stasi informant, while the cities of opposites competed with each other to be best; if one built a TV tower the other built a taller one with a restaurant in it; if one had a zoo the other had to have more spectacular animals in theirs.

An insular self-contained city deep inside a separate country, divided into four different administrative zones and split from itself by a wall would be the stuff off science fiction if it wasn't real.

The first EP was released in September 1989, and one of the first places it was broadcast was on Kentucky Fried Royalty alternative radio in Berlin, just before the wall came down on 9th November. The following month the Romanian regime collapsed and the Soviet Bloc was crumbling, and with it the cold war. There was a sense that the world had come to it's senses and nuclear war receded into the background... little did we know.
The former site of Checkpoint Charlie - the transit point between the US Zone and East Berlin - now has a recreation of the border crossing booth and a MacDonalds, it is a Grade One listed tourist trap. If you are ever in Berlin try Checkpoint Charlie in the late evening, when the tourists have all gone and the streets are deserted, there is at least a whiff

of the atmosphere of menace as you walk across the street that was an open tract of land between the East and West checkpoints of the wall.

The tune for Checkpoint Charlie was born on a visit to Berlin in 2012, I met up with Lord Litter (the DJ who had played us there 23 years earlier) did an extended interview for his show on Radio Marabu and left a guitar riff on his hard drive. We both recorded very different versions (you can hear them on Soundcloud), mine became the demo-version for the recording for Everything Changes. It evolved and the final LP version has Lord Litter provided the voice of an East German border guard on the introduction, speaking the phrases he had heard so many times before as a native Berlin resident, sometimes while he was smuggling

East German bands master-tapes into the west... I can't think of anyone better qualified to have on the recording.
The closing moments of the album version of Checkpoint Charlie are JFK addressing the people of Berlin and the world's media on 26 June '63, many thanks to the Miller Centre University Of Virginia for providing and allowing use of the audio. Ich bin ein Berliner.

Checkpoint Charlie also appears on this Detour Records compilation album 

If you want to know more about life in former East Berlin try Anna Funder's Stasiland