Recently, I reviewed the new Hat’s Off Gentlemen It’s Adequate album, The Confidence Trick. You can see the review at https://lazland.org/album-reviews-2022/hats-off-gentlemen-its-adequate
Malcolm Galloway of the band kindly agreed to answer some questions regarding the album, his medical condition, and the history of the band, and his comprehensive responses can be seen below.
Thank you very much for agreeing to this interview. We are going to explore all things band music, your personal circumstances, and music in general. To begin with, please provide my readers who do not know with an explanation of the story behind the naming of the band.
Thanks very much for your interest in our music. The name is a self-deprecating play on the phrase 'hats off gentlemen, a genius', used by Schuman in a review of Chopin. The image in my head was of Edwardian gentlemen throwing their hats in the air about something being average.
You have known Mark Gatland for a very long time. I take it that there was a shared love of rock and progressive music from a young age. How did this develop into a working relationship?
Mark and I have played together since we were at school. We used to jam in the music room at lunch-times, and have been friends since we were about 11. In our teenage years we were exploring rock and metal, as well as going to classical concerts at the South Bank Centre and Barbican. After school Mark carried on playing in bands, while I got distracted by medicine for a couple of decades. I then took part in a hospital pantomime, where I sang a couple of songs in the role of 'Sinbad's friend'... I got encouraged by people who attended to do more singing, and started giving solo acoustic performances of songs I had written. Kathryn (my wife) had also been encouraging me for years to perform the songs I had been writing. Mark came along to one of these gigs, and since then we've been playing together again, which for me has been lovely.
One of the most noticeable aspects of the band’s output is the gorgeous flute provided by your wife, Kathryn Thomas. Her website is at https://kathrynflute.com/home We know that the flute is an integral part of “classic” progressive rock, but I am interested in a pen picture of Kathryn’s extensive reputation in the classical music world.
Kathryn is a professional classical musician, and I'm very fortunate that she supports me with my music. She studied at the Royal Academy of Music, and is a founding member of the Galliard Ensemble, one of the leading wind quintets, who were BBC New Generation Artists. She has recorded, performed and broadcast extensively as a soloist and chamber musician. As a classical musician, she has a rare gift of being able to improvise and play by ear as well as being able to read complex scores.
Let’s talk about 2022 Hats Off before we go into any detail about the history. The Confidence Trick is the band’s sixth album and finds you in remarkably good musical health. In my review, I stated my opinion that the work is linked by an overarching theme of cognitive errors, particularly overconfidence, and as a result our repeated failure to learn the lessons of history. Please provide us with your thoughts on the gestation and themes of the album.
I would entirely agree that the danger of unchallenged cognitive errors is the major theme of the album. As a species we keep making the same mistakes, failing to learn that dehumanising others leads to disaster. I think the danger of excessive certainty is underappreciated. Those confident enough to rise to leadership positions tend to look for proof that they are right, rather than asking why they might be wrong, biasing their perceptions. This is of course something many people do, but when it is done by those in positions of power, this cognitive error can have catastrophic consequences. My interest in this area started from my work as a neuropathologist and medical school teacher. I was interested in how to teach doctors in training so that they were less likely to make diagnostic errors. The more aware I became of cognitive errors in diagnosis, the more I noticed them in other areas. This eventually led to the underlying theme of 'The Confidence Trick'.
Refuge, the story of your great grandmother’s flight from pogroms, is simply a staggering piece of music, and one of the highlights of 2022 to my ears. Her story is astounding, showing great bravery and, whilst in The Pyrenees, one of compassion by her fellow humanity. Please provide my readers with the history of this and what led you to write about it.
One of the themes I'm interested in is our recurrent failure to learn from history. The Second World War and the Holocaust should be such powerful reminders that when we follow those who divide us into groups that are more or less human, we follow them into disaster. Overconfident and excessively certain leaders do well for themselves while harming those around them, and drowning out more reasoned voices.
My great-grandmother initially fled from Eastern Europe to Paris to escape from anti-Semitic pogroms. When France was invaded in the Second World War, she then had to flee again. She was protected by the people of a village in the French Pyrenees, who risked their lives to hide her in the attic of a barn. Despite all this, she always seemed such a cheerful person. I didn't think to talk to her about this when she was still alive, which is something I regret. I hope that she would have liked the piece.
The finest instrumental music tells a story without words, not merely giving this riff, and that solo. This is clearly a tradition which was started off by classical music. As a composer, how do you go about telling a story without words?
'Refuge' is similar in some ways to 'Ark', a piece in our previous album based on the experiences of my great-grandfather on my dad's side, who was a rear-gunner/telegraphist in naval biplanes during the Second World War. In both pieces, the music loosely follows the narrative of that person's experiences. It is quite an old fashioned technique really - in classical music it has been done since the 1500s, and flourished in the 1800s and early 20th century. As a composer, I find having a narrative for a piece helpful for me in providing inspiration and a scaffold for the shape of the composition. Hopefully it can also take the listener on a journey.
On the album, there are a couple of tracks inspired by Philip K. Dick. Is he your favourite author? If so, why, please? If not, who is? What is it about classical science fiction which appeals to you both lyrically and musically?
Philip K Dick is the author who has most influenced me. As a teenager, I was reading his books, and also listening to the music that would influence me greatly. One thing I love about Philip K Dick is the way that each time I re-read one of his books, I realise I had been missing so much previously. His books often explore themes of what 'real' means. I also enjoy current science fiction writers who explore philosophical themes, such as Alastair Reynolds, Ann Leckie and Adrian Tchaikovsky.
I would like to talk about medical issues, both personal and thematically, please. Firstly, I was fascinated by the track on the new album, Cygnus, which I indicated in my review was talking about the eponymous operation designed to ensure that the UK was ready for any pandemic but was little more than a box-ticking exercise. I would be interested to hear your thoughts on this as both a medical professional and lyricist.
It was inevitable that we would face a pandemic, and that we will face more in the future. The UK had run pandemic preparedness assessments, which highlighted the need to stockpile protective equipment for staff dealing with infectious patients, but sadly there was not the political will to fund all of the recommendations. The song is about the front-line staff who lost their lives.
https://www.bmj.com/content/377/bmj.o1235
https://committees.parliament.uk/committee/127/public-accounts-committee/news/165001/government-failure-to-learn-pandemic-lessons-will-come-at-high-cost-to-generations/
It is impossible to discuss Cygnus without a discussion about the impact the pandemic had on the frontline staff. Please provide us with your personal thoughts and experience of this period.
I had, co-incidentally, retired from medicine shortly before COVID struck. I have enormous respect for those people who risked their own lives to protect the vulnerable. My understanding from talking to friends in the medical field is that many found the experience deeply traumatic. Every life lost, and every life changed by long-term illness is a tragedy.
You have had to retire from medicine as you have Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome. This is a hereditary disorder of connective tissue. My readers can find out more at https://www.ehlers-danlos.com/ and I encourage this, but I would ask you, please, to set out how this condition has impacted upon your life, the clinical and life support which is available for people with the condition, and how we can find out more and provide any assistance in the wider community.
How this group of diseases affects people varies a great deal between individuals, and from day to day. For me personally the main problems are chronic pain, vomiting, and problems with the autonomic nervous system leading to 'brain fog'. For many years I was gradually having to cut down the amount of time I spent as a doctor due to my physical limitations, but it eventually got to the stage when I didn't feel I could safely continue, so I had to make the very difficult decision to retire from medicine.
All Empires Fall – a truism which I believe that modern political leaders would do well to remember. However, my understanding is that you were referring specifically to the autocrats of the modern world, so your personal thoughts on the background to the lyrics on this would be most welcome.
The lyric is the expression of a fairly positive version of nihilism. I don't personally believe in life after death. Although this is generally regrettable, there is something positive in the equality of our eventual non-existence. No matter how much a dictator steals, they will eventually die, and even the most powerful seeming empire will eventually fall.
I am interested in the writing process and the collaboration in this and recording between you, Mark, and Kathryn. Please provide my readers with a sense of this, please.
Usually I come up with a song outline and send an audio file to Mark. He then makes suggestions, and adds bass and/or other additional synths or guitars. I then select ideas, sections, or whole parts from these to edit into the track.
We might have a guide vocal, which sounds horrible at this stage, as I’ll have made it just sitting on the bed, mumbling something into a laptop. We then record the vocals properly together at home (standing up with a pop-shield), usually with Mark, or Mark and Kathryn producing/engineering while I sing. Mark and I select the vocal takes we like most, and I then work on the editing/production to hopefully get the voice sounding tolerable.
I then make a new version of the track, and send an audio render to Mark for feedback. We keep going back and forth until we feel we are very close to being finished, when we then meet up to go through the tracks in obsessive detail, making tiny alterations together. I then master the tracks, which again is an iterative process of making changes and bouncing renders between us. Perception of sound is non-linear, in the sense that when one thing changes, it can affect how everything else in the track sounds. Our unusual way of working, recording, mixing and mastering ourselves, making changes to the tracks and mix in response to a draft master, and going round and round until we are happy is time consuming, but seems to work for us.
Kathryn contributes flute parts and backing vocals to some of the tracks. and gives her feedback on the songs and production, and listens and gives suggestions on them all. She wrote the main chord sequence on 'End Of The Line' and I'd be delighted if she wanted to be more involved with the songwriting in the future.
Okay, let’s go back into the history of the project and your solo music. In my review of The Confidence Trick, I referred to the fact that you and your music are compared to many of the classic progressive artists. I prefer to concentrate on the unique attributes of an artist I review, and Hats Off have that in spades, but my readers I am sure would love to know who your greatest musical influences are, and why.
Both Pink Floyd and Marillion have been big inspirations for us, and I've also been influenced by the classical composer Steve Reich. I love the soaring guitar lines that David Gilmour and Steve Rothery excel at. Reich was important for me in that he helped reintroduce pulse and consonance as legitimate components in contemporary classical music.
Live music – you performed at Hard Rock Hell in 2017, and this is where the band came to a greater national prominence. Please describe your performance and how it was received.
This was a wonderful experience for us. Another band had had an injury, and we were invited to step in at very short notice. I think it was the first time we'd played as a duo plus laptop, and alongside bands with amazing drummers in the show, I was worried that we'd go down badly, but it seems not, and Hard Rock Hell's own magazine kindly called us 'unlikely stars who stole the show'.
Prog The Forest in December 2022 at Camden – please provide us with a strong plug for this event where the band are performing. Who else will be there, please? Why should readers of this interview pitch up and part with their hard-earned?
Thanks - it is a great pleasure for us to co-organise Prog The Forest with Chris Parkins, of London Prog Gigs. The event is an annual mini-festival of progressive music, raising funds for the World Land Trust - a charity that buys threatened habitat to put in trust to be protected for the benefit of the environment and local communities. The reckless damage to our environment is an existential threat for our species, and I think needs to be taken more seriously. Economic issues are important, but the economy only exists in the long run if there is an ecosystem in which it can exist. Our historic disregard for the environment is I think another example of our flawed cognition - we set up systems that reward those who offer short term gain at the expense of long term harm.
We are very fortunate to have had so many stunning musicians perform at Prog The Forest, including the legendary Soft Machine guitarist John Etheridge last year. Our next event is on Sunday 4 December, at the Fiddler's Elbow in Camden. We will be joined by The Dame, Ruby Dawn, The Emerald Dawn and Ms Amy Birks.
The Emerald Dawn are a multi-instrumentalist, symphonic progressive rock quartet based in Cornwall. Amy Birks first came into the spotlight as the vocalist, lyricist, songwriter and art director for the award-winning, dark-classical-pop trio Beatrix Players. The Dame come from the Hague, and perform a captivating and unique form of jazzy-vintage-prog. Ruby Dawn are musically somewhere between Massive Attack and Pink Floyd. Their front-woman gave a well-received solo set at the event last year. There may be some additional surprises to add to the bill, but these aren't confirmed yet.
We were delighted that last year's event raised enough money to save 15 acres of threatened habitat.
Are there any further plans for live music going forward into 2023, please?
Our next gig is on Sunday 18 September 2022 in Southampton, then we are playing in Streatham on 9 October. We are looking forward to playing in Yorkshire on 11 February 2023 with This Winter Machine.
Further to this, are there any plans for a Hats Off live album or DVD?
We haven't explored that yet, but it is an idea we should consider.
Okay, let’s concentrate on some history. Hats Off first album, Invisible, which in addition to the three of you, also featured Rudy Burrell on drums and Ibon Bilbao on guitar. Your Bandcamp page makes it clear that this album revolves around your disability with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome. It has a very raw feel to it, mixing blues (I love that guitar on By The Water), orchestration, some achingly beautiful more “traditional” progressive rock, but with a definite post punk attitude. There is a lot of anger and defiance on it, is there not? Me Again is especially emotive with you wanting to wake up and be you again. How do you look back on this album, please?
Thanks. This was an album largely about me expressing my frustrations about living with an invisible disability (Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome). I think my singing and production skills have improved since then, but there are still songs on there which I like. It has more of a folky element to some songs than most of our later music. By The Water I think is Kathryn's favourite song of mine. I remember that song very suddenly popping into my head, pretty much fully written, and saying to Kathryn at the time "what do you think of this". Because it is so simple, I'd probably have been a bit embarrassed to release it if she hadn't been encouraging. It is also the only track we've released so far with acoustic drums. I didn't have a mic stand available at the time, and I remember sitting at the drum kit with a drum brush in one hand, playing the snare, and the other hand holding my vocal mic, pointing it at the drum. Some later tracks have included drum parts that I've made using loops that Rudy had recorded into a midi drum kit, and I've then edited and put into Addictive Drums 2 in my laptop. Rudy is a wonderful drummer, and it would have been great to have had him more involved in the albums, but playing with him live has I think influenced how I think about and write drum parts. Similarly, Ibon is a wonderful guitarist, and I'm delighted that he is on Invisible - we share half the solo each in 'Frail Hurricane'. He also wrote a riff that was used in 'I Still Remember You', and he did the solo in 'My Clockwork Heart' on the subsequent album.
On this album it was mostly just performed and written by me. Kathryn played flute on two tracks ('While I Still Can' and 'Wait For The Storm'), Mark played bass on 'While I Still Can' and 'Frail Hurricane', and Ibon shared the 'Frail Hurricane' solo. There's also a sample of my older son, when he was a toddler, saying 'hello' in one of the tracks. That track is followed by a song that was largely written by him when he was a bit older ('Just So Love You'). Other than that, it was just me. Our more recent albums are much more collaborative, which I much prefer.
'Wait For The Storm' is an important song for me, because it is the one that my dad asked to be played at his funeral. He said that the lyrics resonated with him when he was undergoing chemotherapy. The chorus lyric for 'Me Again' came from a friend on a disability forum who posted that she 'just wanted to wake up one day and be me again'. I thought that was a moving and powerful phrase, and asked her permission to use it in a song.
There was a three-year hiatus before the sophomore album, When the Kill Code Fails, was released. Firstly, this concept album revolving around an artificial intelligence construct got a very strong endorsement from no less a figure than Steve Hackett. You must have been delighted.
That was a huge boost for our confidence, and was greatly appreciated. Having such a major figure expressing support was so helpful for me, particularly in relation to my confidence in singing.
In addition, an endorsement from my friend Eric Blackwood of Edison’s Children is something very special. This interview joins one I did with him and Pete a few years back, and I think that they and your project exemplify the best of modern progressive rock music, in that it is simply impossible to categorise into a “this sounds like that band”, or “this is classic neo-prog” and so on and so forth. The diversity of your music is what strikes the discerning listener immediately. So, if you were forced to describe Hats Off to a complete musical stranger, how would you describe it, please?
I think the variety is a key part of our style, but on average our tracks are probably prog/alt-rock, with elements of electronic, ambient, classical, minimalist, and sometimes folk, funk or jazz. Hopefully in a way that feels integrated and genuine.
Listening to the album, there is a definite leap forward in the production as compared to the debut. I believe that you and Mark are jointly responsible for the engineering and production of the band’s output. How do you feel this aspect of the project has developed over the years?
I have written/mixed/edited/mastered all of our releases on my laptop. I do the technical side of the producing on the computer, and send renders of songs to Mark to discuss. On the more recent albums he has been more involved as a co-producer, and I greatly value working with him on this. I agree that the technical aspects of the first album aren't as polished as I hope our more recent albums have been - I've been learning as I go along, and hopefully improving. I now also use decent headphones which I think is helpful, as standard consumer headphones are designed to be flattering to the sound, rather than to help you clinically identify problems that need fixing.
Broken but Still Standing was released in 2017. It featured James and Ethan Galloway – the relationship, please?
They are my children. They contributed backing vocals on one of the songs. James also wrote a keyboard part and the chords for 'All Alone Together'.
The concept behind this is fascinating, following the story of human evolution, from LUCA, the last universal common ancestor of all current life on earth, via Lucy (the ancient skeleton discovered at or about that time), one of the possible precursors of our species, to conflict and eventual symbiosis with artificial intelligences. Please expand on this for my readers.
There is often a misunderstanding of evolution, suggesting that it always favours brutal competition. That certainly is there in nature, but many of the great advances that led to complexity in life, and civilisation, have been in relation to co-operation rather than competition. We only developed the ability to become multi-cellular when one primitive creature moved inside another, and became the mitochondria on which we depend for energy. Later on, the expansion of humanity was only possible through people co-operating in groups.In Broken But Still Standing, the album follows a story of human evolution from the early stages of life, through to symbiosis with machines, with a focus on the value of co-operation.
I would like to concentrate on the wonderful three track segment starting with Almost Familiar, a dreamy laid-back blues track, which is followed by two instrumentals, Luca to Lucy which is starkly effective in its minimalism (Mark’s bassline is gorgeous) and thence to Lucy, which features a bass flute. Indeed, Kathryn is absolutely at the heart of these and so much else. I am interested as to her input in the creative process, please.
I am delighted that Kathryn has been increasingly involved in the albums. She is a wonderful musician to work with.
Broken But Still Standing starts with 'Vent', which is supposed to represent the beginning of complex life in the thermal vents at the bottom of the sea. She wrote a beautiful floating flute line for this. It then leads into Almost Familiar. This bluesy, laid back track has fairly impressionistic lyrics (in contrast with a lot of my songs in which the lyrics tend to be quite specific), and was supposed to represent the way similar patterns recur in nature and history. The song ends with a passionate flute solo. For the solo flute parts, I tend to leave a space in the track where I imagine Kathryn's part will go, and then we record a few takes. Kathryn's performances during the recordings tend to be spontaneous reactions to the music.
'Almost Familiar' leads into 'LUCA to Lucy'. It features manipulated flute sounds, combining my production techniques with some of the extended flute techniques familiar to Kathryn from her training in contemporary classical music.
‘LUCA to Lucy' fades into 'Lucy', a bass-flute led instrumental. I love her sound on this. We should probably use more bass-flute in the future.
Out of Mind was released a year later. The concept of this is described as inspired by memory, from a variety of perspectives, from the role of memory in defining identity, to historical remembrance and dementia. About dementia, when we first exchanged messages, you clarified that End of the Line from The Confidence Trick concluded with the protagonist trying to find out the truth, but never does owing to dementia taking over, so there is a commonality in concept here, which I would appreciate you expanding on, please.
I have had both professional and family experience of dementia, and it is a terrible group of diseases, eating away at the memories that create so much of our sense of self. It must be heartbreaking for families caring for someone who is being lost to dementia.
I have a strong interest in the brain and mind. In Out Of Mind I aimed to explore the question of the relationship between memory and identity. I don't have an answer to this, but am interested in to what extent do our memories create and define us. There are several science fiction stories that explore this issue, including by Philip K Dick - a protagonist has had their memory removed, and then when it returns they find out they are now on the opposing side of a conflict. I wonder how our actions might be different if we didn't remember how we have previously behaved.
The album saw you reduced to a core two piece, with Kathryn guesting on flute. Please explain how and why this came about.
I've done most of the songwriting and performing on all of our albums, but over time Mark and Kathryn have become more involved in the production and writing, which I like. Bouncing ideas between musicians is a great joy to me. Kathryn has always been primarily a classical musician, with her own separate career, and helps me out with my projects where she can, for which I am very grateful, but because of other commitments isn't able to be as involved in as many tracks as I would like. Rudy and Ibon contributed parts on some tracks on earlier albums, but were much more involved in our live performances than in the recording side of things. Rudy had to move for work reasons, and Ibon wanted to concentrate on his other projects, so our live setup became myself on voice and guitar or piano, Mark on bass (sometimes with some keyboards), backing vocals, and running the laptop, and Kathryn when she was available. This simplified setup ended up making it much easier for us to rehearse and to commit to gigs. Mark and I work very well together, and the band has evolved into us being the core duo of the group.
I adore that cover. Talk us through this, please.
Thanks - that's something I made with Nightcafe Studio, an AI assisted art piece of software, then edited in Photoshop. For our albums I tend to mock up many different options for cover art, and then we see what feels right in the context of the theme of the album. For this one we liked the ambiguity of the image - it could be a distorted face or torso, while also being somewhat abstract, and the colour palette is quite bold as if the colour scheme is ignoring the content of the image. The gap in the middle of the image felt to me like the over-confident figure has something missing inside.
Indeed, the album artwork is clearly a very important element of the bands project, is it not?
Yes - for this album we made new artworks specifically for almost all the songs, and included them in the CD booklet. I've already got folders full of possible art for future albums. I'd also be interested in exploring writing songs that have been directly inspired by artworks.
We discussed Refuge from the new album above. The historical remembrance element on Out of Mind has a very stark, and musically quite beautiful, link on the final track, Lidice, a village which was destroyed by the Nazis in retaliation for the assassination of Heydrich. It is so important that we never forget these atrocities, and remind our children that freedom and respect for life is so critical to our future, is it not?
I agree - if we don't remember what we are capable of doing when led astray, then we will keep making the same mistakes.
In terms of the vocals on this album, the anger which I discussed above is still there, but I feel that it is far more focused and, if I may say so, matured as the project has developed. Is this a reasonable comment?
I think that's fair - I think my voice has become more controlled with practice and experience. I hadn't really thought of myself as a singer for most of my life, but then started writing songs, and it was simpler for me to sing my songs than to try to get someone else to. Over time I've enjoyed singing more and more - it feels like a very direct way of communicating, particularly in live concerts.
De Humani Corporis Fabrica – opening the human body to the cinema. Please discuss this song concept and the starkly gorgeous music.
Andreas Vesalius (1514-1574) was a pioneering anatomist and doctor. His 'De Humani Corporis Fabrica Libri Septem' (On The Fabric Of The Body In Seven Books) was enormously influential in developing the science of anatomy. He believed that we should learn by looking at reality, rather than assuming that what has been previously written is correct. The song lyrics are basically saying that we should look for evidence rather than assume in science. The word autopsy literally means 'see for yourself', which inspired the lyric 'De Humani Corposis Fabrica, open your eyes, see for yourself'.
Nostalgia for Infinity followed two years ago. The science fiction theme is maintained here based upon the novels by Alistair Reynolds. I am not familiar at all with his works, so please provide my readers and I with the background to this concept.
Alastair Reynolds is a Welsh science fiction writer, and a former astrophysicist, which I think helps provide a strong scientific realism to much of his writing. He is also a long-standing prog rock enthusiast. The album 'Nostalgia For Infinity' contains several tracks inspired by his novels. Nostalgia For Infinity was the name of a spaceship which had been melded with its captain due to a nanotechnological plague.
The title track has a dreamy synth built around a very strong bassline and features Kathryn on vocals and that distinctive flute. It starts off as a quite dreamy psych number, almost Floydian in its impact, but as it progresses, there is a distinctive funky feel to it, whilst the flute and synths begin to soar. The lyrics talk about us being flawed and broken but talking to someone who does not appear to want to listen. This track to me exemplifies all that I like about your music, so a discussion by its creator would be appreciated.
Thanks - in the album version of that song there is a long, floating introduction. The single version is trimmed and goes straight to the funky bit. The song is about a character trying to persuade the captain/spaceship hybrid to help with an evacuation of a planet. The protagonist is trying to say that even though the captain/ship has done terrible things in the past, it doesn't mean they shouldn't do something good now. It is never too late to make a positive contribution, and nobody is without flaws. On the other hand, it is saying that even if they do this compassionate thing, it doesn't mean that the bad things will be forgotten or forgiven. I'm increasingly drawn to songs where I'm singing from the perspective of another character. Here this character is frustrated, trying to get through to someone who isn't overtly responding (at least at that stage in the story). When writing songs, so far I've generally been more interested in expressing the emotional situation of a character at a particular time in the story, rather than verbally telling the story as a narrative.
This brings us completely up to date. So, what does the future hold for Hats Off Gentlemen It’s Adequate?
I'm always exploring ideas that might become songs or albums. There are several possible concepts for future albums we're currently considering, and we are also getting ready for our next batch of festivals and gigs, bringing some more songs from the new album into our live repertoire, plus possible songs from previous albums that we've not played live before.
You very kindly sent me a link on Bandcamp to your classical minimalist album, Patterns, released in August this year. I have seen Sid Smith’s review of your work (a journalist I admire hugely) and he made the point that these tracks are anything but background music. I agree, and as I prepare the questions for this interview, I am listening to the hypnotic Slow, which does remind me quite a lot of Fripp’s ambient music – I do not mean this to mean derivative, but in terms of mood and execution. Music which demands being listened to and experienced. Please expand on this element of your musical career.
This side of my music is influenced by the minimalist composers of the 1970s, particularly Steve Reich. I'm very interested in patterns, both in nature and in music. I like developing larger scale patterns from the interaction of simpler elements, which has some analogy with how the brain develops.
Shelter is only a short piece at 3:45 but strikes me as being quite dystopian. What is the background to this, please?
I'm quite interested in ambiguity and multiple meanings with words and lyrics. The word 'shelter' implies warmth and safety, but also the presence of an external threat. The piece features atonal groups of notes, gradually fading in and out, mostly on strings, interspersed with pizzicato notes on strings and piano poking into the texture. I think it has an odd mixture of unsettled elements and almost static notes. Listening back to it again today I would agree that it feels quite disturbing.
Contemporary classical music – it evolves as much as modern progressive rock, does it not?
Hopefully. I think the classical music world is a bit more open minded than it used to be. Before the rise of the minimalists such as Reich and Glass in the 1970s, the contemporary classical world could seem quite dismissive of consonance, melody and pulse. Music doesn't need to have any of these, but to exclude them on principle I think was quite alienating for most people. These elements have a direct biological impact on us - which is probably why they are so widespread in music from so many different regions and periods. The palette of sounds available to a composer is now enormous.
To close, thank you very much for agreeing to do this interview. Do you have any closing comments for my readers?
Thank you very much for your support and interest in our music - there is a great deal of wonderful music available, and if someone chooses to spend some of their time listening to ours, then I'm very grateful.