My new single is called Reach & Grasp. It is a track that has taken some time to put together.
At the tail end of 2023 I was about halfway through making a new album. It was to be called The Village Dreams, a very English, rural kind of an album. It was coming together nicely, I even released the track English Weather (an early out-take from those sessions) and Benita (another from Village Dreams) went out as a freebie. These were enjoyable sessions, I worked day and night until disaster struck… I suffered a cluster of heart attacks and found myself in hospital.
Spool forward a month or two and I am back home in recovery mode. I kept thinking ’as soon as I feel ready I am going out into my studio and continue work on the album’. This had also been the mantra going around my head as I lay on that hospital bed.
Eventually, I made my way out to the studio and powered up the machines. The control room felt cold and a little damp as it had sat dormant for sometime. I tried returning to the songs that I had started but it was no good, I felt like an outsider. This is someone else singing, pre heart attack me, I couldn’t relate. Every song that I tried to work on made me feel the same. There was only one thing for it…Put those tracks on ice and start something new, from scratch.
I had the lyrics for Reach and Grasp but no ‘song’. At first I tried it as a bluesy ballad but that never really worked. Then I hit upon a kind of Deep Southern Country Funk groove. The bottle neck guitars are parts constructed rather than played, little segments edited together, a painstaking and laborious task. Slowly I built up a wall of guitars over my bass and drum tracks and added some vocals and organ.
There were times I thought I would be working on this song forever but now that it’s done I feel spurred on and ready for another challenge. I hope that you enjoy the record.
A Zoom conversation with C.LT. in which he talks about his new single, forthcoming album, stage fright and studio craft.
Your new single is called Here Come the Good Times Again and yet, like a lot of your work, the song is darker than the title suggests.
Well, what are ‘Good Times’? You can’t have good times without ‘not so good times’, when we emerge from hard times or sad times any change for the better feels good.
That is why I thought that the accompanying 1920s imagery was appropriate.
The tracks that you issue as singles are always somehow apart from the rest of your work. How do you view the single as a medium?
For me it is a chance to work in different genres, I don’t have to worry about how these songs will sit on an album, they are one-offs. So, if I feel like doing a calypso or a Bollywood style number, whatever, I can indulge myself and hopefully the listener too.
Good Times was recorded very quickly, within days of finishing the mix of my album. Technically the album was a challenge and I wanted to clear my head, no better way than to get stuck into something fresh and very different (to the album).
So, for you, commerciality doesn’t come into it?
Not sure I would even know what is commercial. No, it doesn’t.
When did you last perform live?
(long pause) That would have been for the The The Inertia Variations film, that was a while ago (2017).
I was very, very nervous, to the point of brain freeze. It was weird, the people there were friends, Matt’s family and other singers and musicians. Maybe the cameras didn’t help but I had been aware for some time that I was losing my nerve on stage, may be an age thing, I don’t know.
I haven’t enjoyed the live thing for quite some time and I came to think that I just don’t need the stress. I tried to compensate by being as well rehearsed as possible but that uses up a lot of time, time that I could spend in the studio, my natural environment.
Not so long ago the idea that you could have a studio capable of producing masters in your home was just a pipe dream and I smoked a lot of pipes dreaming about it!
When that dream became real I just disappeared in there and worked. I suppose it is very isolating, unhealthy really, but there are so many ideas still coming that I feel guilty if I don’t act on them.
You would have a hard time performing the new album live that’s for sure.
It is called Terra Incognita which, I must confess I had to look up, my Latin not being so good. It means unknown or unexplored land?
Yes, that felt appropriate as I felt that was where I was heading, musically and sonically. When the term is used in calligraphy it can also mean land that cannot be mapped as it is ever changing. The album tells a story set in the wetlands of eastern England known as East Anglia. The sea ensures that this is an ever-changing place.
Keeping with the story the songs tell…it’s a Victorian melodrama, as you say, set in eastern England and yet there are sitars and Indian sounds in there.
I live in this area, where the sea meets the land. I was walking amongst the saltings and reeds, thinking about how to represent this environment in sound. Indian sounds just seemed right. The drone of the sea, babbling inlets like excited tablas. The mystical east.
When the story moves to the town the music becomes more western, more electric.
I said before that it was a difficult album to do technically. I did not do it as 12 separate songs or whatever it is, but one long album length track. I wanted it to be seamless.
You certainly achieved that, I found myself being carried along by its momentum.
I am at a slight disadvantage in that I haven’t seen the sleeve yet, you mentioned in an email that you are working with some local artists on the artwork.
Yes, that is right. Peter Rodulfo has painted three pictures that capture moments in the narrative and Vicky Phillips is doing the illustration for the inner sleeve. It is the same team that did the sleeve for my Shire EP.
Both are brilliant in very different ways and I am lucky that they are involved. It is true that they both have spent their lives in the east of England, not sure about the term ‘local artists’, always think that sounds like they are not like ‘real’ artists (laughs), just local ones. They would be great talents wherever they were but it does mean that they have a feel for the place so in this case its perfect.
When will the album be released?
I hope, late September early October. First there will be a CD, then an online release. A lot further down the line I would like to have a vinyl version as I think it would be well suited to that but queues for pressings are about nine months, so it will be a while.
We bid our farewells, Colin promises to send me the finished CD ASAP and I promise to review it.
In the meantime, check out Here Come the Good Times Again from Aug. 19 2022.
