‘Lord Skywave’
Album Release Date: 9 June 2008
Label: This Is Music Ltd

www.myspace.com/lordskywave
www.thisismusicltd.com

Ex- Simian man and Black Ghosts member Simon Lord releases new solo album on This Is Music Records, sampling three generations of music-making to create a highly compelling work of leftfield song-based electronica.

The album was written and recorded over the course of 2007 in Lord’s Hackney studio, and has a variety influences at play- Jamie Lidell, Tim Hardin, Prince, Raymond Scott, Brian Wilson, Serge Gaisbourg. The name, and all the electronic and bass sounds on the album, come from the Lord Skywave synthesizer built by Simon’s dad in the 70's- he only built 10 of them and Simon is the proud owner of one.

Tracks 2, 3, 7 and 11 contain sections of Lord’s grandmother, Madeleine Dring’s (1923-1977) music. It was always at the back of his mind to try using some of her music in his own recordings, and a couple of summers ago Lord spent some time at his grandad’s house going through his collection of old reel-to-reel tape recordings and 78's of Madeleine's music, and converted them onto CD as an archive. She was influenced by such impressionist composers as Debussy and Poulenc, the first of their time to explore atonal harmonies and dissonance. In a similar way to the parallel impressionist movement occurring within writing - people breaking the rules of composition to express the inner world, Baudelaire’s surreal perception of city life- Lord combines the ideas of impressionism, both in music and writing, to twist the modern sounds of dub step, R'n'B and soul. He mixes an 'urban' sound with a more abstract or psychedelic sensibility, in what is at heart, a bit of a reaction against most music from the city 'keeping it real' (or being really unimaginative!)

And so with the opening track- musically influenced by dub step, but with more of an R'n'B pop song structure- lyrically the song is surreal, and is really Simon playing with the whole boasting thing that is so cliched in rap music; here it is about ridiculous and surreal stuff- 'my name is Lord Skywave, come to turn you on my lathe'. Slow Movement is the first track that features on Lord’s grandmother’s music. Not wanting to 'sample' her compositions in the usual way, yet leaving some sections unaltered, Lord re-arranges other sections and adds beats and bass for a more modern interpretation.

Idyll combines the feel of two-step garage with a more psychedelic soul, in a song about love in Hackney. Next, a nod to both Moondog - the cult New York figure and a hero of Lord’s, who meshed jazz, classical, Native American rhythms and poetry- and back to Lord’s own ‘Garden’ album released in 2005 on Static Caravan, with its gentle recurrent motifs in both lyrics and instrumentation. Everybody is a proper pop song inspired by the sweet soul sounds of Funkadelic and Sly Stone, and is counterpointed by I am a Dead Man - probably the darkest track on the album, a full-vocal, dubstep- influenced epic. This takes us on a surreal journey again around Hackney, messing with abstract versions of cliched R’n’B and rap lyrics, and describing the things you see, hear, and feel when walking the streets. And then, to offset this heaviness, we have more of Madeleine’s music in the shape of Dialogues- a kind of meditative breather, which runs into the stepper-style track Half Forgotten (listen for traces of Radiohead’s My Iron Lung!).

Something is essentially an R'n'B pop song with a soulful vocal that is stripped down to a more raw and dirty sound; lyrically minimal yet infectious, with the repeated line- “Time is pulling the wool over our eyes”. Melodically the stand-out track, Maybe I Need To, is a D’Angelo- influenced R’n’B number, with a more psych- poppy chorus, calling to mind some of the English psych greats- Kevin Ayers, McDonald & Giles, Robert Wyatt, and even The Super Furries. It’s a gorgeous song about facing up to fears and the challenge of commitment- all the things that we need to do before it's too late.

The final Pavane caps off the structure around the Madeleine pieces- starting off very simply, it weaves the listener into more complexity without sounding 'difficult', with a satisfying sense of optimism at its end.

Find yourself, then, in equal parts swaying to the smooth, laid back jazz cuts, humming back the unique yet catchy lyrics of Skywave’s richly coloured vocal tones, and moving faster to the more pitched up beats; as Lord embraces such a dynamic array of styles that span so many musical eras, there is somehow a cohesive strand of charming groove and melody which unites the whole. An album influenced by various musical mad men with strong ideas, which still has broad appeal. “I think that’s my favourite thing”, says Lord, “pop with big ideas.”

Lord Skywave will perform a selection of live shows to support this album release.

Track- listing
My Name is Lord Skywave
Slow Movement (from trio for oboe, piano and flute)
Idyll (Just Like)
Back into the Garden
Everybody
I am a Dead Man
Dialogues (from trio for oboe, bassoon and piano)
Half Forgotten (Keep The Best Bits)
Something
10) Maybe I Need To