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impossible songs


impossible songs

Idiots guide to Progressive Rock

I think I’ve lost my way in music at the moment. I’ve been doing a lot of listening and background reading and web browsing but very little writing or playing. Of all our years of working together this one has been the least creative and productive. The good thing in all this is that I don’t feel too anxious about it nor have I the need to strive, wring my hands, sweat and kick and somehow produce something for the sake of it. It’s like a time of recharging or resting. I’m sure that the neurons and electrons and whatever buzzing things exist in the head are still in there spinning wildly but just making some different connections amongst themselves. The other thing is that we have a back catalogue of old half written, half baked songs that could be jacked up and worked on should some emergency occur but revisiting older material can be the hardest thing. Song writing needs to be generated from some place that is on an emotional edge, it can’t happen in a neutral or sanitised space or if lodged too deep in a comfort zone. Of course busyness and stress are creative killers if you let them reign and there’s been a lot of that this year so far. So what’s the next step? The darker autumn nights, the crack of the wood burning, the twist of the sobriety, the gate at the end of the garden, the sneak and scent of the hunt and chase, the closure and the openness, the pay off and the payout, the stretched perception and the withering backlog, some home cooking and a sharp frost on fingers and toes and the magic light in a loved ones eyes.

Recording music is the greatest thing – and then hearing it, fresh some time later: I was listening to some of our older stuff in samples on the web. I loved the little random chopped up songs sailing in from some clunking American server miles away. Mp3s edited by chance and ordered in no particular order. Heartburst sounded great and evocative and pink and the memories of the sessions back in Germany came to me, bright as buttons. That was a good time. Maybe this dip is no dip at all but a slow climb to the surface.