pieter nooten / michael brook - sleeps with the fishes

Sleeps With The Fishes is a moody, haunting, mainly instrumental album with a number of tracks containing equally moody haunted vocals. Swamped with gorgeous string arrangements, melancholy synths and highly atmospheric infinite guitar it is hard not to think of the album as entirely one piece, rather a set of separate tracks. 

 

Dutch musician Pieter Nooten began work on this record in early 1987. His band, Xymox, had formed in 1983 in Nijmegen in the Netherlands and was signed to 4AD records following some early support slots with rising 4AD stars Dead Can Dance. 1985 saw the release of the self titled debut album under the slightly expanded name Clan Of Xymox. The following year’s Medusa received unexpected praise and Xymox were fast becoming one of 4AD’s most talked about acts. But Nooten was tiring of the dark, overly gothic overtones and in early 1987 decided to quit the band. He continued to record and would regularly send fragments and home demos to 4AD supremo, Ivo Watts-Russell. Ivo was intrigued and granted permission for a full Nooten solo album. However Ivo had also decided that the demos needed something extra, and for this Ivo turned to Michael Brook, who’s 1986 debut album Hybrid had hugely impressed Ivo with it's ambient soundscapes. 

 

Brook had spent some years working with fellow Canadian Daniel Lanois and cerebral ambient pioneer Brian Eno. In 1985 Brook was heavily involved in the construction and sound design of Eno’s landmark 61-minute ambient piece “Thursday Afternoon” and Brook’s own Hybrid was the result of various sessions with Eno and Lanois throughout 1985 and 1986. The imaginatively swampy percussive beds of Hybrid were bolstered by many layers of delicate electric guitar. Brook had pioneered a method of sustaining an electric guitar note infinitely by taking the signal from a standard guitar pickup, amplifying it, and feeding it back into a separate pickup coil. The resulting continuously sustained note could then be manipulated to create whole new sounds. Daniel Lanois loved this set up and so Brook created one for him. Lanois’ infinite guitar was also coveted by The Edge during the sessions for The Joshua Tree and Brook created another one for the U2 guitarist (the beautiful results can be heard on “With Or Without You” amongst other songs.) 

 

Ivo figured that Brook’s mastery of the studio, and ability to create melancholy and mysterious soundscapes would complement Nooten’s fragmentary songs and music. Brook originally signed up purely as the producer but his involvement became such that Ivo suggested a joint credit. Although Nooten basically composed all the tunes, the overall shape and sound of the finished record would never have been arrived at without Brook’s considerable input. 

 

One the album's many strengths is the hazy sound that envelops the album. Brook's gently splashing percussion and murky glimmers of infinite guitar combine with gently buzzing washes of DX7 (borrowed from Brian Eno). Nooten's vocals are just as indistinct, and sometimes the only instruments to peak out of the fog are the occasional oboe and some mournful cellos. It's gorgeous. Eno once said that nearly every song in the world could be improved with the addition of backing vocals - to that I would add that most songs could also be improved with the addition of an oboe.

 

Most of the music on this record derived from Nooten's demos, but the duo also decided to re-record a couple of Xymox tracks. “Equal Ways” had originally featured on 1985’s Clan Of Xymox track and “After The Call” was reworked from the 1986 Medusa album. 

 

Although only about half the album is wordless, Sleeps With The Fishes always strikes me as an instrumental record, as it’s the music which really speaks, via the haunting strings, the eerie, wraithlike guitar, and the layers of synths that give the whole album a pleasing consistency. There's a wintery, frosty quality to much of the record, not unlike the The Pearl or the Plateaux Of Mirror where Harold Budd's piano is half lost in Brian Eno's chilly mist, music only partially heard on a foggy, chilled winter's morning. There's a truly ghostly quality to Sleeps With The Fishes, indistinct, hazy music from another place altogether.

 

The vocals are frequently low in the mix, mumbled and hushed, yet oddly the album doesn’t sound depressing or oppressive. Melancholy, reflective, sometimes sad and almost tearful, but it’s not miserable in the slightest and one of very few albums that manages to maintain the same quality throughout. And that’s a quality not only of the music itself, but the mood throughout - sad, beautiful, resplendent, and deeply affecting. The listener is completely drawn into the soundworld, and even after the album has finished its spine-tingling qualities remain. At times it veers close to Goth, but cleverly contains none of that genre’s bombast or melodrama, being quietly understated. The sleeve is similarly quiet and unassuming, lacking in all but the basic credits, black and with an obscure shape/design rather than the usual lush 4AD style cover. This is an album that refuses to announce its presence; rather it prefers to hide in a dark and cobwebbed corner and waits to be discovered. This dusty corner, (think of Miss Havisham's house, all pale drapes and ageing lace), might also contain the second This Mortal Coil album, Filigree And Shadow, which had been issued by 4AD just a year earlier, and which shares with Sleeps With The Fishes a great many traits. The TMC link would be cemented a few years later when “Several Times” was expanded into a full song by Nooten for the third This Mortal Coil album Blood.  There, the sonerous tones of Deirdre Rutkowski, accompanied by Gini Ball’s heartbreaking violin and Nooten himself on keyboards, give the song it’s final shape. And it’s breathtaking.

 

This album is a terribly intimate experience. It works beautifully when you are alone, deep into the night and the rest of the world is asleep. There is real beauty to be found here, it's very precious, and to be cherished.

 

 

 

 

 

opal evenings

The real value of the iPod shuffle facility is that it throws up long forgotten music, forcibly reminds you what you've been missing, then makes you play old albums that haven't been played for way too long.

Two tracks recently, both from 1988, made me abandon my shuffling and delve deeper into the albums this music came from.

Firstly - "Balthus Bemused By Colour" from Harold Budd’s synth and reverb heavy White Arcades. It's a great piece of music, way too echoey, but that’s what you get if you hang around with Robin Guthrie for too long. The White Arcades is a lovely album, but is perhaps the only Budd record that sounds dated, or rather, of it’s time. All his other stuff is timeless.

But just when I was thinking - I must play the whole of The White Arcades again, I heard -

"Winter Music" by Roger Eno, from Between Tides. Interestingly this dates from the same time as the Budd track, but this one, as with all of Between Tides, really is timeless. The mix of strings and piano on this album is quite magical and although I adore Voices I think that Between Tides is perhaps the better album.

Roger Eno is Brian Eno's brother, younger by some eleven years. He worked with his brother on Apollo in 1982 and in 1985 Brian assisted in the recording of Voices, the ironically titled all instrumental debut album from Roger. The frosty synth embellishments contributed by Brian are excellent and give the album a real sense of a chilly winter’s night. But these also invite comparisons with the piano / synth albums Brian made with Harold Budd and at times Voices veers close to being Son Of Plateaux Of Mirror, a comparison which is quite understandable but is perhaps a little unfair to Roger. Whilst Budd's playing is pretty and sparse, much like the younger Eno's on Voices, in general Roger's piano work relies more on melody and is imbued with a peculiarly English flavour which sets it apart from Budd's minimalist beauty.

Roger worked without his brother on the 1988 follow up album Between Tides. Contributions and production from infinite guitarist Michael Brook, and the addition of gorgeously simple string arrangements mean that Between Tides is a large step away from the wintery ambience of the debut. Most of the pieces are wistfully melancholy, utterly beautiful, calming and reflective in a very English pastoral manner.  

In 1988 Roger Eno, Harold Budd, Michael Brook and electronic zither player Laraaji played a series of joint concerts under the title An Opal Evening. Opal was the record label set up by Brian Eno and his soon to be wife Anthea which had signed all four artists.

These concerts would typically allow for a solo set by each musician with joint ventures and improvs often joining the sets before all four would combine for a finale. The improvisational nature of much of the music extended to the casualness with which the quartet approached their stagecraft. Dr Martin and I saw the show at the Royal Festival Hall at which there was a surprising amount of laughter, not least when Michael Brook announced that Roger Eno would be onstage next, 'when we can find him'. Roger eventually arrived to huge applause which clearly baffled him.

One of the tracks played at the RFH went by the clearly ironic title of "Optimistic Prelude" at that point. A lovely, slightly wistful piece with a repeated piano motif overlaid with gently increasing strings, and a mournful oboe, this piece was wonderful in the hall, and this actual performance appears on Between Tides as "Winter Music".

A later Opal Evening, at a Festival in Lanzarote in December 1989 gave rise to a number of semi-official albums. It seems like the usual Opal suspects played at this Festival, which was televised, either just locally in the Canaries or across Spain, it’s not too clear. The artists, Budd, Brook, Roger E, and Laraaji (plus Peter Hammill, who was also on the bill) obviously gave their permission for the tv broadcast and possibly for the subsequent Spanish only home video of some of the performances, but it seems that was as far as it went.  

So when Sine Records issued half a dozen cds in the mid 1990s taken from these performances the artists weren’t terribly impressed. But there seems to be some sort of legal grey area here as the cds were apparently dubbed from the tv recording. Obviously these cds weren’t strictly bootlegs as I bought most of them in HMV in Oxford Street, but they obviously weren’t strictly authorized either. And that led to all sorts of made up titles on the discs. Check out Budd’s Aqua for a right old muddle with the track names. Roger’s Night Garden seems to feature all new pieces, so it’s unclear what the titles ought to be, and Laraaji’s music is pretty much untitle-able anyway! Michael Brook says he’s never been paid for his disc, so I guess the others haven’t either.

The sound quality isn’t bad on all of these but while most tracks have the audience / applause neatly faded out there are a few pieces that shake you out of your ambient induced reverie when some overloud clapping crashes in. But… despite all that, there’s some excellent music to be found on these. The Brook one is especially good I think.

Anyway, I have thoroughly enjoyed getting re-acquainted with Between Tides. Lovely music for a quiet evening unwinding with a glass of wine. Perfect.