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Strange Clouds
In July I went with Nelson Wright, Lindsay Sugden, Fiona Thom and Karen Austin to Arran for a weekend, carrying with us shedloads of instruments and some recording equipment.
On the Saturday night we set to composing something new. Everyone contributed something to what was a pretty satisfying little song, which you can hear here in the first of two takes. I've applied minimal editing - just mixing the backing vocals a little. The rest is captured exactly as it happend on a PZM ambient mic.
Strange Clouds (Austin, Lamont, Sugden, Thom, Wright)
Norman: vocal, v quiet electric guitar and lyrics
Lindsay: flute and backing vox
Karen: percussion and backing vox
Nelson: guitar
Fiona: mandolin and backing vox
Listen:
I write to you from the island
From this peaceful evening room
To give my notice, to say goodbye
You've no suspicion - how could you?
I've been debating with myself
Things I've overlooked so long
Strange clouds over stranger hills
Strange clouds, and stranger still ...
I take my care with words
Try always to observe
The dignity of a voice
Night settles on this hill
Birds gather as birds will
And just like them, I have no choice
Strange clouds over stranger hills
Strange clouds, and stranger still ...
All the earth I've sifted
All the layers I've shifted
All the vanished layers of the past
To the office where you sit
Look at the map where you sent me
How long did you think this job would last?
Strange clouds over stranger hills
Strange clouds, and stranger still ...
------------------------
At a certain point, as the form of the verses began to take shape I was despatched to the dining table with a notepad; I skipped backwards and forwards from the Guardian to a novel, picking lines here and there until I got a sense of someone, perhaps doing an investigation in some far off tropical plantation, where something mysterious is transpiring, bad enough to make him want to quit.
August 29, 2007 in Singletons | Permalink
