stories behind the songs on crooked timber (by andy cairns)
Before going into writing this album we had a few ideas. We would write all the songs from scratch. No one was to bring in a riff or a chorus or a bass line or a drum hook. We would start from scratch, music, melody and lyrics. The starting point for every song would be an idea.
We got together at the Snug rehearsal/recording studios in Derby late May 2008 and we worked in blocks of 3 or 4 days, then took days off. When the songs were complete we took them to the producer, Andy Gill. Andy had a few valid points. He really liked the new material and thought it closer to what the Therapy? he knew was all about. He thought it should emphasise rhythm and dynamics over generic riff rock guitar stylings and be more sympathetic to a three-piece line up. He also took on board our various concepts and track-by-track applied what he thought the overall sound needed.
I can’t remember the order we worked on the tracks so for convenience’ sake I’ll write about them in the order they appear on the album.
the head that tried to strangle itself
I’d nipped out to the shop to buy water and quorn sausage rolls (I’m not proud) and came back to the rehearsal room to hear Neil and Michael playing and locked into a tight groove. They mentioned they’d been talking about a techno track called “Dooms Night” and were trying to play a piece in the same timing. We all played round it again. The stuck groove of the track reminded me of insomnia which I’d been suffering from a lot. We began to chat about insomnia which led to consciousness which led to ‘apperception’, the consciousness of being conscious.
I came up with the line “the head that tried to strangle itself” and we began to try and make the music and lyrics toss and turn, so to speak. One of the things about insomnia is that no matter how much my own mind gibbers on, it never fixes on one thing long enough to be creative or even calming.
We decided that we’d let the guitar pretty much play the same thing and let the bass and drums slowly shift underneath to try and create a feeling of uneasiness. To really push our luck we added the section with the guitar stretched (along with the patience of the listener) to breaking point. Andy Gill shortened this slightly by the time we got to the studio.
Lyrically the song takes influence from sleeplessness and consciousness and to this end I found the book “I Am A Strange Loop” by Douglas Hofstader helpful. I also got inspiration from “The Rest Is Noise” by Alex Ross, in particular the section on Britten’s musical interpretation of the Thomas Mann novel “Death In Venice”.
From “I Am A Strange Loop” by way of poet Russell Edson: “Yes reader, I ask you: Who shoves whom around in the tangled mega-ganglion that is your brain, and who shoves whom around in ‘this teetering bulb of dread and dream’ that is mine?”
enjoy the struggle
Talking about Helmet (a band we all love and who T? toured with) led to a discussion on how some phat bass riffs by jazzer Charlie Mingus could sound soooo heavy and immense. Messing about trying to play like Mingus ended up with the main riffs in the song. In the solo there’s even a nod to “Haitian Fight Song”, one of the great man’s big tunes.
The verse stop-start riff got us thinking about the joy of playing three notes over and over and that led to us talking about Sisyphus from Greek mythology, a character whose fraudulence so annoyed the gods that he was banished to Hades, condemned to roll uphill a huge marble block that always rolled back. Many people see this as a metaphor for the human condition, Albert Camus was one of them. The opening line of the song comes from a review in a paper of an exhibition by Sam Dargan and his absolutely amazing painting “No One Gives A Toss Anymore” (PDF).
So, a heavy jazz rasper influenced by painting and existentialism and not at all, in any way, sounding like “Walk” by Pantera, honest.
clowns galore
Old rave tunes sparked this one, Stakka Bo, Eon (Ian Loveday died recently, R.I.P.). We wanted an energetic clatter that would shudder, stutter then build into a big springy riff. On the face of it this one should have been easy for us, we’d been on this ground before with Teethgrinder, Neck Freak, If It Kills Me, etc. but it proved difficult putting all the ‘bits’ in an order that worked. We had the main ravey riff, the Eon style chorus and the slide guitar build. It took us ages to get them to fit.
For the intro I’d been listening to a lot of Big Black and the David Byrne, Brian Eno album “My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts”. We had the title “Clowns Galore” and we wanted it to sound like a speeded up keystone cops car chase, accelerated culture.
The lyrics were inspired by a recollection of a pamphlet by Jonathan Swift, “A Modest Proposal” in which he suggests, well, track it down but it’s behind the “fattening kids for the future ahead…” line.
Initially when we’d recorded the track we pondered over it being somewhat harsh sounding but after seeking council with Mr Gill we agreed it should sound overbearing relentless and gnashing. Just like modern times.
exiles
At the time of making the album we were listening to a lot of dubstep. Burial, Kode 9, Distance and tons more. Bored with off-the-peg guitar tones I was finding shelter in the pressure and melody of bass weight.
Our first attempt at mixing this in with T? was Exiles. Messing with the rhythm of a track “Wickedness” by Cult Of The 13th Hour and adding a dash of Jesus Lizard we came up with a great piece of music.
We added a Ruts-style middle eight but found it too harsh so in keeping with the dubstep vibe we brought it down to an ambient, haunted ball room piece with lots of fx. The original solipsistic lyrics took a different slant after seeing a picture called “Earthrise” taken by astronauts. The total black void behind the blue earth highlights just how alone in the universe we really are.
The melody of the verse was changed at the last minute by Andy Gill as he thought a more ‘dub’ melody would complement the feel of the tune. He was right. Personally, this is one of my fave T? songs of all time.
crooked timber
For a while we’d been listening to a lot of 70’s German rock on tour, not just the Scorpions… Krautrock. The German musicians hate the term and I can’t say I like it myself. Kosmiche?
We’re big up on the Kraftwerk, Cluster, Harmonia and Can but Neu! were really, really floating our boat on this particular track. We wanted to do something hypnotic, on a particularly fractious trip to rehearsals I’d got lost and ended up driving blankly for quite some time. I got myself doomed out and just wanted to turn back. We jammed round the chord progression for ages just enjoying getting lost in the repetition, I started ad libbing vocals and writing them down as they came to me.
A pub break later we returned to the tune at greater volume and purpose. I thought of the book on Samuel Beckett I’d been reading and how he was influenced in his early writings by philosophy. Checking out German philosopher Immanuel Kant I had come across the quote which gave way to the chorus opening line and the title of the song.
We took the track to Andy Gill with a rudimentary power chord and relentless drum beat. We all thought the tune could benefit with more atmosphere. Initially I added a dark low harmony which made the tune take on an almost bad trippy-hippy tone, someone mentioned “Don’t Fear The Reaper” by Blue Oyster Cult, turns out we all love that tune so next it was time to add the Neu! style guitar extras. Listening to a track called “Hero“ from their “Neu! ’75” album we decided to add a slide guitar and echo at the outro which sounded ethereal. We thought we had the track in the bag, listening back to it in the studio I was absent mindedly playing over the top of it with some harmonics when Mr Gill decided we should throw them on as well.
The refrain in the outro is from Samuel Beckett’s “Ohio Impromptu”. It’s a beautiful piece of work. There’s a version of it on YouTube with Jeremy Irons.
The song reminds me of Family.
i told you i was ill
The title comes from comedian Spike Milligan’s gravestone. It was added after the song was completed. The lyrics are remembered fragments of wandering around the house alone, self explanatory in the text.
The music was started by myself and Neil waiting on Michael to arrive. It was originally a jam around a My Bloody Valentine style bridge leading into quite a predictable ‘doom-laden’ chord progression. It was one of the quickest songs to come together. I love the drum pattern on the verse and the drum and bass breakdown. Originally in the studio we tried keeping the vocals high pitched throughout but this was way too melodramatic and jarred slightly with the music.
Helmet meets My Bloody valentine with a Shellac freakout in the middle. Andy Gill, strangely enough, thinks the opening vocal ‘wooaaahs’ have a Native American Indian flavour…
somnambulist
I had the nagging riff and Michael added the ‘sleazy’ bass line for the verse. Initially it was a Killing Joke effort but took on more of a Stooges “Down On The Street” feel when the rhythm boys got their grimey paws on it. This seems to me quite a straight ahead rocker compared to the rest of the album but I’m really pleased with the guitar ‘solo’ section. Initially I’d played a Doorsy, eastern flavoured piece but we deemed it a bit too cliched so we were scratching our heads. Andy Gill had been talking about ambience, Brian Eno and Robert Fripp so, for the hell of it, we placed the guitar across the mixing desk and manipulated an fx board. It sounds waaay better than the shitty solo I can tell you.
The bass sound on this is amazing, you can hear everything, every creak and groan.
blacken the page
“… you would do better, at least no worse, to obliterate texts than to blacken margins, to fill in the holes of words till all is black and flat and the whole ghastly business looks like what it is, senseless, speechless, issueless misery.” —Samuel Beckett, from “Molloy”, Part 1
We started trying to come up with a propulsive rhythm, add a bit of “No Love Lost” by Joy Division. Michael threw a curveball in the shape of the garage rock chorus riff. The song was a little bit like Ozzy fronting the Arctic Monkeys. When putting the song together we decided to go three times round the verse before hitting the chorus to hammer home the restless skittering patterns of the undecided lyric.
At some point in the song I employ the ‘alienation effect’… what a wa…
magic mountain
The sun was belting down outside the practice room. It was afternoon and we’d been working on Exiles all morning. We had to start again for new stuff, as I said earlier, from scratch.
I think, with hindsight, we all wanted to be outside and opening the door to let in air (and the glorious vista of people walking in the summertime) was probably a bad idea.
I started playing harmonics and sluggishly we stirred ourselves to something resembling intent. Within a moment the ghost of Battles, Steve Reich and Neu! was wondering was it already opening time.
When the piece had come to a halt we suggested that we should just jam, improvise and keep the finished results. Roll, see what happens. The initial take was a fortunate accident, sounding exciting but really long.
We decided to add an intro. The timing of John Coltrane’s “Giant Steps” welded to a stoner sludge to appropriate the title we’d taken for the piece from Thomas Mann, “Magic Mountain.”
Trudging uphill to find vistas.
The ‘vistas’ were all recorded by Mr Gill.
The Battles, Steve Reich harmonics (counterpoint).
The New Order jangle.
The drone, the Underworld inspired ‘rave kick-off’ bit.
And the aforementioned Coltrane/Sabbath/Eiger Sanction fest.
It was edited to the morsel you hear on the album. There is a longer version, be afraid…
bad excuse for daylight
The title is taken from a line in a wonderful novel, “Joshua Spassky” by Gwendoline Riley.
After a health scare I’d got pretty feckin’ morbid and found my only comfort in books and music. I wanted a track where the voice sound disembodied and detatched from the world around it. Andy Gill had also suggested at our initial meetings that I try singing more in my natural Ulster accent and less in my professional ‘rock voice’. I’m really glad I took this advice on board, especialy in tracks like Clowns Galore and this one.
In the rehearsal room we got on the subject of riots and how Igor Stravinsky had caused one in Paris with the performance of “Rite Of Spring” (May 29th, 1913, fact fans).
A few years back we had used an excerpt of the piece as our intro music and we loved it. Neil was curious and I’d recently been reading about the same piece in the aforementioned “The Rest is Noise” (By Alex Ross, 4th Estate Books, buy it, it’s amazing) so we decided to try playing a riff in the timing of the section we had in mind.
In “Rite Of Spring” the beginning of the second section, “The Augurs Of Spring” uses a crunching, discordant pulse. This makes up the timing of the verse. In full on Prussian Blue mode we introduced a spindly, brittle chorus and a slowed down section. The whole song took on a creepy crawl scrape of it’s own.
There was room for an intro and we looked to dubstep for inspiration.
It ends the album, it’s a deadener. I also think it’s beautiful.
By the way, we almost called the album “crash, clash, cling, clang, bing, bang, bing” in reference to the following review (at the time) of the “Rite Of Spring”:
“Who wrote this fiendish Rite of Spring
what right had he to write the thing
against our helpless ears to fling
it’s crash, clash, cling, clang, bing, bang, bing”
It eventually ended up tucked around the edge of the actual album CD.
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