Leo Abrahams – musical speed-dating
Thursday, September 3rd, 2009Almost 2 months since my last entry… and despite it being holiday season I haven’t been on holiday. Well, I sort of have – for the best part of a month I was on tour with Marianne Faithfull. A punishing number of flights notwithstanding, I had a great time hanging out with my friends in various parts of Europe. I felt really grateful to Marianne – she’s been very kind and encouraging to me and she gave the music her all every night, which really helps when, half way through the tour, everything becomes a bit like Groundhog Day. Once the music gets familiar it’s sorely tempting to start embellishing, but because everyone else is doing it too the whoe thing can veer dangerously close to jazz. On this tour, I found that I was almost completely relaxed onstage – hardly even aware that there was an audience. It made me play so much better, because although at times I felt almost weirdly complacent, it let me play very honestly.
In the London-based gaps between dates, I put in a bit of an effort and finished my new album, on which I’m singing. It seems like every record is harder to make than the last, purely from a perfectionist point of view. My plan to get this one finished was to get other people in to build up the tracks and give me impetus. Cleveland Watkiss and Lisa Lindley-Jones contributed some amazing vocals, and helped me up my game. Pat Dillett, who mixed the Eno/Byrne album that I co-produced, is going to mix it. I’m proud of it, and so relieved to have it finished after sporadic fits of pique and doubt.
Speaking of David Byrne, he asked me to guest on a couple of songs at his show at the Barbican, playing some of the parts I played on the record. Virtually his entire show is choreographed, and the whole band is dressed in white. Plus they all wear headphones instead of having monitors onstage so it was very odd to put on white trousers, sneak onstage for a bit and then sneak off again to watch the rest of the show from the audience. The whole band were so incredibly friendly and happy, and I thought that mood would definitely be encouraged by playing such euphoric, energetic music for the best part of a year.
I did some co-writing with a new artist called Bahia, which was great because she was the type of artist who comes in with already-brilliant ideas and all I had to do was help with varying the chords a bit and developing the lyrics. In other situations it can be weird, when you basically end up writing the whole thing then handing over 50%. I also did a couple of days co-writing with Brian Eno; the method of working was that each of us took it in turns to contribute one thing to the track, and every half-hour we started a new one. Sort of like musical speed-dating.
Kate Schermerhorn, from whose documentary my EP ‘Searching 1906′ was taken, asked me to write the music to her new film, which is a wry study of marriage. For each of the cues I chose a different palette of sounds, but based the themes on peals of bells to give everything some unity. I actually found it quite difficult to watch the film at the same time because parts of it were very moving, so I had to try and just maintain the memory of it as I worked on the music.
Lastly, I’ve started producing a couple of albums. One is for Iarla O’Lionaird, who I’ve worked with for a while. Producing and writing with his feels like a big reponsibility because I have such respect and love for what he does. But Most of the time I manage to feel inspired and lucky instead of intimidated! His lyrics are mostly in Irish, but he frequently explains to me what they mean, and the meaning behind them. This affects the production, as the sounds need to reflect quite precisely what is happening in the words. I find this interesting, because of course not many listeners will know exactly what he is saying, but the story is somehow told in his singing and in the sounds. He is such a vivid communicator that I feel like I know what he’s singing about even when he doesn’t tell me.
The other artist is Josephine Oniyama, whose music manages to be simultaneously unsentimental and extremely moving. It is her first record but she is an incredibly accomplished singer. It is a huge relief when, hearing someone sing for the first time, it becomes clear that instead of having to really work to get a good vocal performance, you will be choosing between ‘very good’ and ’sublime’. Musically, I’m going to try and follw my engineering hero Tchad Blake’s approach – schizophrenic contrasts between sounds, extreme panning, and no reverb. a guy called Fred Thomas is playing on both records. He plays piano, double bass and percussion – all extravagantly well. He has many projects of his own, my favourite of which is Magic Lantern. Check ‘em out!