Marty Willson-Piper

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Marty Willson-Piper

May News

We are in Cornwall as May arrives and another large-numbered birthday looms (May 7th). We are working on the instrumental Atlantium album’s release and considering the financing for the second MOAT album’s recording (all songs written). In the wake of the ongoing PledgeMusic scenario and the attempts to recover and honour the outstanding monies owed to all the artists and the music that the pledgers contributed to, we are left patiently wondering what the outcome will be as we hope for a sign that this can be resolved positively so we can move on.

Although the MOAT album wouldn’t be released until next year, at some point we have to decide on a crowdfunding platform but recording has to commence so at the end of a campaign, it’s ready to go. These days records are often recorded over longer periods as you try to raise money, try to match up schedules with your collaborators and try to survive in a world where the price of two coffees, a muffin and a croissant would buy you an artist’s latest CD but the value of one seems to seriously outweigh the value of the other. As Mark and the Chameleons said, Strange Times.

Also trying to figure out how Olivia and I can play more shows in the world as we enjoy the synergy of violin and 12 string and the reinterpretation of songs from all the albums that I have been involved in. There is of course the album version of us that Olivia and I need to make together – old songs, new songs and songs yet unrealized.

One wonders if time itself needs to stand still in order to complete all these projects, plus, there’s more collaborations on the horizon that I will share with you as they become real.

In the meantime another amazing review came through, this time for the RSD release of Hanging Out In Heaven.

There are still some copies available at Schoolkids Records online store – if you’re quick.

Marty Willson-Piper Hanging Out In Heaven 2019

Record Store Day 2019: HANGING OUT IN HEAVEN

Marty Willson-Piper Hanging Out In Heaven Record Store Day 2019

Hey All,

I’m very happy to announce that on Record Store Day 2019 and after nearly two decades of floating in digital space, I finally see the vinyl release of Hanging Out In Heaven. It will be a blue-tinged double record, set with two extra tracks – Queen In Her Jeans and Dressed Up As You. These additional songs were recorded in London around the same time and were always intended for the vinyl version.

Hanging Out In Heaven began in LA with Shep Lonsdale, engineer on Starfish and GAF, helping me record some songs at his home studio. Shep was also a drummer and played on half the record. I’d written some songs since the release of Spirit Level in 1992 but I’d become very busy in the period between Spirit Level and Hanging Out In Heaven, touring and making records with All About Eve in England. The Priest=Aura US tour had been cancelled due to disappointing sales in relation to the previous two releases so I had plenty of time for All About Eve.

Marty Willson-PiperI was living in Sweden at the time and during a break recording for HOIH continued in the town of Gävle with Andreas Ahlenius (After Everything Now This and A Box Of Birds were recorded at Andreas’ Blue Room studios). HOIH was somehow suspended in mid-air after leaving LA and I had some new songs that I wanted to add to the album. I had worked with Andreas as my engineer when I had produced an album for Swedish artist HĂĄkan Ahlström in 1997. Christer Björklund from the HĂĄkan Ahlström project stepped in for the remaining drum tracks for the new songs. I must add that encouragement to finish the project came from Robert Rankin Walker at Heyday Records. After hearing the LA sessions he supported me in adding the new tracks and mixing the record to completion.

Marty Willson-PiperThe album opened with fan fave Forget The Radio and featured many songs that have appeared in the live set over the years – the lilting You Bring Your Love To Me and an early version of I Don’t Think So, recorded live in the studio. It also contains Sanctuary, a song that everyone likes but is hard to play live without a band plus playfully suicidal After Eight. Wreck has featured live as an a capella sea shanty, more often played in seaside towns and Wondering featured desert dweller Patti Hood on her century-old harp. Then there’s Andreas’ creaking foot pedals on the piano for All That Remains. The song was written singing into a cassette recorder whilst on holiday in Fiji as a stopover from Australia to Europe. It also includes What Is Her Name, written for, wait for it, Charlie Cox age 12, who is now Daredevil on Netflix! Whilst on holiday with his family in Queensland, he asked me could I write a song where you saw a girl that you liked and you didn’t know but wondered what was her name? This was the result.

Marty Willson-PiperThere’s an interesting fact about Wondering and I Don’t Think So. Both were written as jams to tape and rerecorded later as they went down on the day they were conceived – the lyrics, the melody, the chords, the arrangements, were all realised on the spur of the moment. Swan featured me playing friend Keith Joyner’s black Gretsch duo jet guitar. It was Keith that replaced Johnny Marr when he left The The. He also played guitar on Goodbye.

I hope you enjoy the album, I always wanted to see it out on vinyl. I will also add that we had to cut the vinyl from the CD copy as the original master tapes are long gone. One track, Waves Towards The Moon, has some distortion that is also on the CD and we weren’t able to do anything about it in the transfer. Overall the record sounds fine to me. One thing we were able to fix was the readability of the lyrics. On the original CD version the lyrics were so small you could barely read them, plus they were written like handwriting which made it extra hard.

Last but not least, the artwork has been changed for this release, despite Anthony Collins’ pic of me floating in a sea of blue being used for the original album, the effect used has also been lost to the analogue robots of yesteryear, so we decided to go with my Swedish friend Jan Uddenfeldt’s classic pics of me as a young lad, exploring the archipelago North of Stockholm, sometime in the eighties – we think (Jan has also taken the photo for the new MOAT record Poison Stream). Back cover is from the same day. Some of Anthony’s black and white live photos from the period feature on the inner sleeves.

Thank you to Olivia for art direction, Jan and Anthony for the pics, Lizzie for joining the dots. Shauna for the promo, all the musicians and Stephen Judge at Schoolkids Records for making this happen with Robert at Heyday who also managed to find the one copy of Queen In Her Jeans that was thought stolen by the corgis.

Marty for RSD 2019

RELEASE DAY!

Still in love with The Afterlife? The scent of roses is dissipating into the ether, the blood pumping through your heart is slowing, the last tacky Valentine’s Day card lies discarded on the bed. What now? For those of you that didn’t hear the new Noctorum album The Afterlife before today, February 15th is the official release date and it is now available to order and stream if that is your poison.

GET THE LP | GET THE CD

The reaction from those that ordered the album in advance has been somewhere between enthusiastic and rhapsodic. Those unsure about dipping their toes in the water for fear of a sudden chill can now test the album with the confidence of a warm bath. If you use Spotify, Apple Music and all the other streaming platforms like I do as a place to listen to the albums I’m going to physically buy, you can now look before you leap and confidently fall onto the mattress, into the arms of the fireman, safe and sound, rescued by the huskies, justifying your decision to choose this record to love in the war of choices.

THE AFTERLIFE on Spotify

Noctorum’s fourth album, The Afterlife, a collaboration between me and Dare Mason, is out today on Schoolkids Records. Vinyl first pressings are already selling fast, even the CDs are vanishing in a trail of dust, so get your physical copy, with all the artwork and the words now – while you still can.

Thank you to everybody that has sent such wonderful positive feedback to us about the album. See you out there somewhere on the planet Earth, come and talk to me about the music you love. đź’ż

Marty

O’ Stockholm

The lakes are frozen, skaters overtake the stumbling walkers. Around the shoreline the arms of the trees are decorated with white wings. To venture off the path surrounding the lake is to wade knee deep in a soft grip that is both warm and cold, sinking into the landscape like a crippled ship. The sky flakes busy themselves around the street-lamps, swarming like blind moths, a million floating unique crystals. Stationery, to contemplate this unprecedented deluge, looking back into the forest, the fairytale beauty is overwhelming perhaps exaggerated by the sense of silence. A blanket on a drum, a hand over the mouth, the black hand of space, suffocation in a submarine.On the lake itself, the ice so thick that the fear of accidentally falling through to the prison of darkness below is beyond contemplation but one wonders where in the season does the possible error of chance lie? But here everyone seems to know when it is safe and when it is not. As they know how to function in extreme winter conditions, keeping the children warm, avoiding multiple car crashes, keeping the buses and the trains running and employing an army of snow ploughs and operators to work through the night, shifting mountains of snow into the corners of the highways and beyond the footpaths onto the verges, allowing access for everyone – and everything.

It is so cold that your bones freeze under your skin. You must keep moving save you freeze to the spot, a translucent sculpture, a glass statue. Whilst walking, your arms are tense tendrils, your gaze determined and forward as you strive for the warmth of indoors. The yellow glow of assorted lamps beyond the triple-glazed glass, a beacon to your survival. Despite the gloves, the layers, the double socks and the heavy shoes you feel the chill penetrating your extremities. A slight wind makes it worse, stinging your cheeks.

Finally, a palace of light, your destination looms ahead, encouraging you to make those final steps, staggering onwards with hope in your overworked heart, furiously pumping blood through your veins and around your body – out of breath a cloud hangs in front of your mouth then disappears into the brittle air.

It is some kind of impending horror as your demise seems so possible, a simple slip away, a broken down car, the realization of your vulnerability, your weakness against the forces of nature, a fragile shell struggling through what is a normal and a repeating winter scenario – how did they survive here in the past centuries?

When finally indoors, deep into the night with the snow still falling at 3AM (it’s -13 Celsius, 8 Fahrenheit), staring out of the window at this most dangerous beauty, this frightening splendour, a woman walks home and disappears behind the trees, unperturbed by the threat of the winter or the threat of her own kind, unlikely to be attacked in the general safety of Stockholm. What might lurk in the woods, in the cracked bark of the trees, what may lay buried, lying in wait under the wind-swept drifts and unsalted ice traps, only exists in the imagination, but the soft kisses on your cheeks allay all fears as you flirt with death so serene, so welcoming, you almost wish to die here in contented, dreamlike exhilaration.