I found this on a site somewhere and thought since a lot of people are into him here, would appreciate this information on it.. its very insightful.. and I didnt wanna stick it toward the end of the last post.. due to so much content. enjoy



Darkness
Previous Titles
House In The Woods


Notes
The Virgin press release says that "you are drawn into 'the house in the woods', where the fears and imagination of childhood are explored and gradually accepted."

Richard Chappell on the production, "The quiet pulsey sound right at the beginning is a triggered keyboard sound. It's a gated treatment that's running along triggered by a groove, and then we cut it in and out and laid it at the front of the track. The aggressive, loud noise that comes in is actually a conga going through a distortion box. It's all drums and percussion, although there's a guitar underneath it as well. We used the Jam Man for the distortion, and there are a lot of percussion loops on that track created with percussionist Mahut Dominique. The distortion on Peter's vocal is a combination of the Sansamp and a Line 6 plug-in. It wasn't added in the mix, we always had the vocal like that."

Richard Chappell on why the album opens with this track, "Peter has been asked that question quite a lot. We played with the running order a lot, and we always kept coming back to this track as the first track. It is one of the first tracks that we finished, and it was one of the easiest we worked on, to get it right. It just has so much muscle and it seemed like a fun idea to have the quiet intro and then the loud assault. Some people have actually broken their hi-fi because of it. A few people became quite upset during the discussions about the running order, but Peter wanted to come back and show some strength. I really respect that."



Peter's Comments
"The song was going to be called 'House in Woods'. In the woods where I was growing up, there was an old lady who lived there, and she had newspaper all over her windows, and we were terrified of her...She seemed like a witch to us small boys. Of course it was ridiculous, but at the time it was very real."




Growing Up
Previous Titles
Wet One



Notes
The Virgin press release descibes the track as looking "at the fleeting nature of things and of how man tries to find his place in the structure of the universe and the structure of his or her life."

Richard Chappell on the production, "The elephant-like sound is a vocal treated by the Jam Man. This is the only track that has a sample from a library -- a cello coming from a normal Akai library. What sounds like DJ scratching is in fact Tchad. He put a bunch of drum fills onto a tape machine, hit go on the tape machine and spun stuff in."



Peter's Comments
"The first track we're going to get a little bit of is called 'Wet One' or possibly 'Growing Up', as I keep changing titles. Its number 79 from our very long list of songs we've been working on for the last few years."

"It sort of builds the world up from dots. The first dot is on and off, what is and what is not. Two dots are the first things that a baby recognises as a face and 3 dots would be the means of triangulation and defining any point in 3 dimensional space. With 4 dots you can include time and have definition there and also have a base, a foundation, on which to build. So its bit like trying to find your place in the world and growing up in the meantime."


Sky Blue
Notes
The Virgin press release states that this track "is about losing the way in life and love, and in the vastness of nature finding a way to deal with being alone."

Features "atmospheric guitar" from Daniel Lanois.



Peter's Comments
"Its actually something I started on the last album and I've re-recorded it in another key this time. I'm glad its finished because its been a favourite for me for a number of years - probably in part because when I was a kid at school some of my first exposure to live music was blues bands and some of the British blues bands and so I think there's some of that washing back in me."

"When we did the soundtrack for the film Rabbit Proof Fence...the end section of this song gets used as the end of the film and goes, in that situation, from these aboriginal voices to these fantastic gospel voices of the Blind Boys Of Alabama...who we were very lucky to work with at RealWorld. So in a way this is probably this most rootsy song on the record and goes from this more expressionistic, ethereal blues into a very grounded vocal but, for me, very moving chant - a chorus chant that the Blind Boys pick up."

"The oldest track on the record. The original riff is probably 15 years old but it was something that I always liked and felt had good emotion in it. As a teenager I was very influenced by soul and blues and it was my starting point for a lot of music. I think this was definitely an influence on that track."


No Way Out
Previous Titles
Man Juan
Don't Leave



Notes
The Virgin press release state that in No Way Out, "ordinary life 'swimming around in a plastic bag' is torn apart by a road accident."



Peter's Comments
"One of the luxuries about making a record very slowly is that I've been able to travel around the place getting little bits of influences from the places I'm in. In fact this one began in Senegal and I had a very differnet sort of groove on it, an African groove. In fact 2 or 3 little musical sections aren't in the song any longer, but then the song began to change shape."

"Its ended up one of the songs about death and dying, of which there seem to be a few, a nice cheerful subject, but I guess its more about people. So, this one's called, well it was called 'Man Juan' and that was a working title. And I don't know why, I think it was probably the latiny rhythm. But 'Don't Leave' is probably what I'll call it now, as that seems to be what I'm saying at the end. So, I hope you enjoy it. I've always loved surf guitar, its one of the most evocative guitar sounds for me. There's a drum loop here which Chris Hughes was programming on a thing called SuperCollider using a technique called granulation which takes solid lumps but cuts them up into little bits. But you get a very nice quality so, I think he did great work - I'm very happy about this rhythm."

"Being a failed drummer, I'm a big rhythm and drum fanatic as probably a lot of you know, and I think there are about four people working on this track. Steve Gadd did some brush work, Manu Katche did some kit work. Dominic from Reef, whom we know very well because they're always rehearsing here; he's a great drummer and he did some tom work. And then there was something I was hearing and so I ended up doing some tom work myself. But it was a lot of fun doing all that stuff."

"That is something that emerged from the early sessions and there was this sort of Latiny feeling to the groove, but that's pretty much buried now. In fact some of my favorite rhythm programming was on this track by Chris Hughes and a thing called Supercollider. It breaks everything up into lots of little pieces and then reassembles them, still very granulated. It has this strange mysterious percussive quality to it. I was thinking a little more Roy Orbison when I was doing some of the singing and I think there is that influence as well as the computer-mangled ethnic rhythm element."



I Grieve
Notes
This track first appeared on the soundtrack to the film "City Of Angels". It is thought that a different version will be on 'Up'.

Extra production work was done on this track by Stephen Hague.

The Virgin press release states that "The first rawness of grief and the moving on are experiences gently touched in 'I Grieve'."

Richard Chappell on the production, "The way that track ended up was very much Stephen. The way we'd worked on it, it was very dark, even on the 'up' section. There's one loop that remains from that, the drum loop that comes in and out. Stephen worked with a programmer called Chuck Norman and they got the rhythm track to happen the way it does. We did a mix of this track for the movie City Of Angels a couple of years before, and Stephen heard it and wanted to have another go at it. So we let him and it ended up on the album."



Peter's Comments
"I was thinking about songs as emotional tools. And I thought, 'What don't I have in my toolkit that I might appreciate?' And a good grieving song, I didn't have. At 52, you know, I've had a couple of friends who have died, and my brother-in-law the year before last of skin cancer, and then my Dad is 90. So as a young person, you know it's there, but you pretend, you certainly act like it isn't. But at 52, it's on the table."

"I think when you have a youth culture that's running away from death, it inevitably leads towards death, as opposed to cultures where they run to death and accept it as part of life. You know, I grew up on a farm where you saw animals dying and animals being born. It seemed to have a place there. I think then you have a better chance of being more alive. It's my theory."

"Now, here's an interesting point to consider. Death is instantly perceived as a depressive subject. But it doesn't have to be. Take, for example, if you live in a dominant youth culture that pretends death doesn't exist, you end up going directly toward it. But if you face it head-on and accept death as a part of the life cycle, which so many other cultures do, then you live life more fully. As you get older, you have to put physical life and its eventual end into perspective. Fearing death doesn't enhance life, it feeds into feelings of dread."

"Aging and death, in a way, are to us much like sex was to the Victorians -- unmentionables. And I think other cultures where they're more present seem more alive."

"There's a consciousness about death now that I didn't have in my twenties or thirties. I know people who have died and certainly my parents are getting on, and yet I'm lucky enough to have it all over again with my young son. I feel much more comfortable in my skin in my fifties than I did in my forties, when it was much more of a struggle."

"Death was never taboo to me. Growing up on a farm where you see animals born and dying all the time, it seems to have a place in life rather than be one of the great unmentionables."


Barry Williams Show
Notes
This may be the track that the Spencer Bright biography described as being "about Jerry Springer style talk show hosts."

The Virgin press release says "There is dark humour in 'The Barry Williams Show' which explores the outer limits of reality TV and the marriage of dysfunctional behaviour and mass television."

Richard Chappell on the production, "The treated loop I did on this came out of the 3/4 drum tracks that we had put down -- as we did for every track -- and me going, 'right, what can we do to make it different and right?' So I took some Manu parts and looped them up and started to treat them with some samplers and put them back on hard disk. I think you can just play with things and see what happens."



Peter's Comments
"I’ve watched quite a few reality TV shows and talk shows. It’s a little bit like going to the Coliseum and watching guys getting chewed up by the lions. It’s entertainment, but it’s also like junk food. You go in there really wanting it and feel sick at the end of it. It’s good to watch what we consume, because it reflects who we are."

On the difficuly of getting airplay due to the subject matter, "That's a good question, and it didn't occur to me at the time. Because seeing what gets on TV and into newspapers, I thought that this would have no trouble. But already I'm being asked by the English record company to replace a few words with loops or run words backward...explain to me how that's going to be less offensive?"

On the different mood in this track, compared with the rest of the album, "In some ways it's more outside observation and less of an internal track. But somehow sonically it still feels of the same palette."

"I think we're probably just beginning with reality television in some ways. I can enjoy watching it myself sometimes, but it's a little like junk food - after consuming it, you feel like shit. And you're just conscious that some people's suffering is turned into advertising dollars, and it doesn't always feel very good."

"It's remarkable to witness what people will do for a slice of fame."

"It's old, tired and out of fashion, but at the time I was writing it, it was occupying a lot of people's diet. Based on the principle that you are what you watch it's quite interesting sometimes that there's an edge of that behavior which I'm certainly not above."


My Head Sounds Like That
Notes
Described in the Virgin press release as being "quiet and introspective, This track describes a state of mind in which numbness heightens the sensitivity to hearing, in much the same way that feeling that you are going to 'throw up' makes you very sensitive to smell



Peter's Comments
"The example I like to give is sometimes when you're about to throw up, suddenly your sense of smell gets really vivid. The same thing happens with hearing, whether it's a knife scraping on the toast or a guy hammering on the next wall. You just become very sensitive to that."

"Some chords in there are very old, but the mood was something I liked. And then there was this moment in Africa when one of the echo machines jammed and started malfunctioning and I liked the sound of that, and so the loop that begins the track is actually from this Delta Lab Echo which was crapping out at the time."

More Than ThisNotes
The Virgin press release states that this "is the most positive and uplifting track with a confirmation of "something else there". It is also one of the tracks that grew out of Peter playing around on guitar, which because of his guitar playing inability, he samples and manipulates."



Peter's Comments
On the existence of a god, "Who knows? I think I've always been interested in spiritual things. I've never practiced much. And, I guess, Buddhism is probably the most appealing to me of the world's religions. Yet I think in moments of panic and crisis, I suddenly start praying, back to Christian roots. So that's about where I am. So in the song, 'More Than This,' I mean, I do think there is more to life than what we see in our everyday world. But I don't really know what it is, or what form it takes."

"This came right at the end from a thing I started with guitar samples. I was mucking around with guitars and Daniel Lanois had left his beautiful Telecaster. I can't play guitar to save my life, but I can make noises on it. The first sound that you hear on this track is me manipulating my guitar samples on the keyboard. I'd always liked it, and I was driving through the Italian Alps and found this old cassette which had this stuff and I'd been playing around with a different groove, and it started to make sense to me at that point."


Signal To Noise
Notes
This track was first performed live with Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan at the VH1 Honors Awards on 28th April 1996. Unfortunately, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan died before his could record his vocals in the studio. It is thought that his vocals on this track on 'Up' are taken from this 1996 performance.

This track has been performed live at the 1998 Paris Amnesty International concert with Youssou N'Dour and again at 2001 Seattle Womad with Iarla O'Lionaird.

The Virgin press release says that the "signal referred to is a sense of personal morality and compassion."

Richard Chappell on the production, "The Oxford backward samples on this... Peter likes to have treatments come back again through the Oxford and use the EQs on the console, which are pretty dynamic. So he'll take his keyboard track and a drum track through the EQ and do some passes of the whole song running an EQ filter across it."



Peter's Comments
"I've worked a little bit with strings before, but this is the first time I've taken some two and a half weeks on one string part. It was very exciting to then go into the studio and hear them played, even though many thousands of people have done it before me. So I guess that was one way in which Western or European music came back into this record."

On having Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan singing on the track, "It means a lot to me because he's like a Pavarotti figure - one of the great singers of our time."

"One of the new songs on the album is Signal To Noise and I think its quite a big, cinemascope journey, which not all the album is. I was very lucky to work with Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, who I think was one of the greatest singers of our time. This was a piece we managed to record with Nusrat and I think Signal To Noise, in part, is a cry for activism - in the sense that there's a lot of noise out there and the signal would be a sort of goal at the end."


The Drop
Notes
The Virgin press release says "The starkest song on the record is called 'The Drop', Peter calls this his little sorbet. It is set up in the sky in an airplane, looking down through the clouds trying to imagine what lies beyond."


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[Edited 1/12/06 20:45pm]

his music sounds so dated and unfashionable right now...which only means that it's just a short matter of time before his sound comes back into vogue and becomes extremely influential once again.