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damosuzuki - This Scott's For You! Scott Free Peter Walsh & Scott Walker: Producing Bish Bosch Scott Walker’s career has taken him from pop stardom to high art. In a rare interview, he and producer Peter Walsh lay bare their unique approach to recording. Tom Doyle Had Scott Walker disappeared from the music world at the end of the ‘60s, leaving behind him the towering orchestrated pop hits of the Walker Brothers and the stunning, cinematic run of four eponymous solo albums that ended with Scott 4 in 1969, his legendary status would already have been assured. Instead, the singer retreated into the margins and struggled through a bumpy creative patch in the 1970s, as record companies prevented him from writing his own — far more adventurous, if far less commercial — songs. Surviving this potentially career-snuffing period, however, he was to emerge with his music changed virtually beyond recognition. Having reunited the by-now country-flavoured Walker Brothers in the mid-’70s, with limited chart success, he used the band’s last throw of the dice to create an artful, experimental sound: the title song of 1978’s Nite Flights, along with other tracks such as ‘The Electrician’, were to influence Brian Eno and David Bowie and point the way to Walker’s future direction. Since then, making music that is increasingly conceptual and challenging, and apparently enjoying absolute creative freedom, he has produced a distinct ‘second act’ to his career. “Yes, that’s probably a correct assessment,” says Walker, the elusive singer granting SOS a rare interview. “Although absolute creative freedom... I don’t know.” Climate Change It’s widely accepted that this new period of Scott Walker’s remarkable career began when he signed to Virgin Records and produced the tangential, atmospheric pop of Climate Of Hunter in 1984. It was the first album he made with co-producer Peter Walsh, a fellow sonic adventurer who has worked with Walker on everything he’s done since. Together, the pair go to extraordinary lengths to craft the singer’s stark, theatrical music, whether it be recording the sound of a side of pork being punched in ‘Clara’ from 2006’s The Drift, or machetes being sharpened in ‘Tar’ from his latest album Bish Bosch. Walsh and Walker have different theories as to why their working relationship has managed to endure for close to 30 years. “I think where we fit together,” says Walsh, “is I’m very good at interpreting where he wants to go. He’s very concentrated and sometimes there can be a frustration because he has the image in his head, but he doesn’t want to divulge what it is. Because then everybody goes, ‘Oh, I know what you mean, you want it to sound like…’ And then it becomes too literal, too obvious. So he’ll kind of steer the boat, but he won’t tell you where’s going.” Walker, by contrast, reckons he and Walsh enjoy a “shared aural appreciation, as well as instinctual understanding and mutual trust. Pete’s a very stabilising presence in the studio and that’s essential, as we’ve faced many challenging problems together over the years. We still make each other laugh, though and, of course, he’s a fantastic engineer.” With Bish Bosch, Scott Walker and Pete Walsh have created their most ambitious and idiosyncratic record yet, full of high-concept, almost futurist-operatic sound collages that backdrop the singer’s wholly expressive and dramatic vocals. The singer reckons that it marks a further honing of the pair’s abstract sound. “I believe that we have finally achieved what can be called a style that you can identify if you’re a long-time listener of our records,” he says. “I would describe it, cursorily, as Hi Fi.” A huge fan of film, and always visually minded when working with sounds, Walker says that for many of the songs, he is almost trying to create the aural equivalent of Swiss surrealist artist HR Giger’s sci-fi Gothic drawings for the original Alien film. “A sort of glossy black and grey sound,” he says, “with occasional flashes of white.” =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= To read the rest of the article you'll have to subscribe to the magazine. It's free and as they state and I concur, The World's Best Recording Technology Magazine: http://www.soundonsound.c...walker.htm
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Thanks for the heads-up!
Scott Walker is one of the people who make music exactly the way I want it to sound - love him. It's a little sad for me to realize that I'm so out of the loop for music as to not even be aware that one of my all-time favourites (one who only releases records about once a decade) has a new album out. It's now in my Amazon cart. I really like the sound of Epizootics and the previews. | |
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