An Awakening
Where on earth did January go? I remember many years ago driving home in the half light along Ripponden Road towards the M62 motorway junction thinking the same thing. January has a silver light about it, especially as the sun lowers in the sky. The dark descends very quickly and can feel like a light being turned off, when the intensely bright, low sun drops out of view. It’s almost a relief when you’re driving into it, but then there is a long dark night ahead. When January is over it feels like a form of awakening.
It may be an age thing, but this year’s January seems to have disappeared like a rocket in orbit, faster than in previous years. We lost our fabulous Springer Spaniel on 8th after 14 wonderful years and it felt life changing because it’s the first time in nearly 35 years that the house has not reverberated to the noise of children or animals. So the trauma of the loss and subsequent readjustment seemed to take up most of the month.
It has also been unexpectedly busy on the recording front. I finished last year by recording cittern tracks on a rap record, and that was one of a number of collaborative projects that came along at the end of 2019. Others are still either to really get started, or may have to take a back seat for a while. On 15th I went into Ali Karim’s studio with absolutely no intention of recording, and no real plan of what we would do, and emerged a few hours later with “Breathe”. One week later we followed the same format of starting with lyrics only and no preconceived musical ideas, and emerged with “Solitude”. Thus, “Breathe went from being a single to an EP, and the week after we added “Descent”. Now “Breathe” has moved from being a single to an album.
Creativity comes from surprising sources sometimes. I was already writing for another project, and in the hours before we recorded “Solitude” Ali and I put our final touches to a song called “Pauper’s Son”. We were very privileged to receive an immense music and vocal contribution from Jo Beth Young early in the year that took the song to a new level. Her work is hugely intuitive and provides atmospheres that really complemented our original work. More of the same please Jo!
On 28th January, I had felt the urge to put a flag firmly in the ground against the whole Brexit farce and wrote “The Fast and the Furious” so that we could release it on 31st January in protest at the triumphalist plastic flag wavers who seem to think it’s a good idea to rub our noses in the filth of their fragile victory. We recorded the song in the hours before we recorded “Descent”, and it felt that somewhere between the end of last year and the start of this one the writing and the originality had stepped up a gear.
Perhaps it was the political trauma. Perhaps it was the trauma of losing Ozzy. Perhaps it was both of those things that unlocked something different. It feels like the kind of release that can come from closure, where suddenly from out of the darkness comes a new start, with all the optimism that tends to carry with it. I have long since learned not to be optimistic about politics because it’s something over which we mere mortals exercise very little control, but I do have faith in community and in people, that there will be better times ahead and that actually when times are tough creativity can be at its best.
It is in that spirit that I enter February now knowing that “Breathe” will be an album. I genuinely had no intention this year to spend any more time and money recording new songs, but already two of them have crept into my ‘live’ plans for the year. The expense of recording when compared to the pittances that musicians earn from music had completely turned me off the idea of recording new songs, but because this new work is a collaboration, and because I will not be spending even more money on physical CD or vinyl output, it feels okay to give it another shot. There is also that feeling that I might be missing an amazing opportunity with “Breathe” project, crossing genres a little in the process. Exciting times!
Here are the two new single releases for 2020:
“Breathe” https://johnreed.bandcamp.com/track/breathe
“The Fast and the Furious” https://johnreed.bandcamp.com/track/the-fast-and-the-furious-single