This song was an experiment with a twelve string guitar that only had ten strings on it and some elemental and psychological themes adapted from a story about a wooden lighthouse.

Weight Of The Sea

An initial groove settles into a subtle melody, memorable in a gentle, understated way, weaving stories from blasted evenings in the city and observations on the mysterious tightrope walk of being a human.

Cold But Bright

Pond Life

From the album 'Inaccurate Savant' -  Attempts at recording and producing relatively non-experimental song structures in experimental ways.

Inaccurate Savant

Meat Trails

Deconstructing familiar modes of songwriting and using beat, synth and loop machines to inform structures as well as textures.

Imperfect Liberation

Pulsar Not A Star

Deconstructing familiar modes of songwriting and using beat, synth and loop machines to inform structures as well as textures, the words disappearing altogether in this case.

Microjam

Wondering at some of our self-imposed constraints and problems and wishing for some simplicity, at the same time as revelling in what keeps us honest and free. In this kind of spirit it was played with a collection of available friends (nominally the 'Flaming Jets') on a collection of available instruments.

Tales From The Cuckoo's Nest

Cactus Face

Instrumental B-side to the single 'Ewar Woowar' with tech manipulated guitar samples, loops and overdubbed playing.

Ewar Woowar

Terschoon

B-side to the single 'Monkeys.'

Are you left betrayed by what they now say
About promises they made in their younger days?
When you reach out you wound
Scissor hands and noisy shoes
Will it end up just being you?

Just you
Just you

Savage in a brave new world
Try to tell them to be free
As free as your mind will allow you to be
They will not listen
They do not know how

You will not listen
You do not know how

Monkeys

Noisy Shoes

A previous song was the genesis of this one. I had been playing about trying to program beats for a live version of ‘Pulsar Not A Star’ from a previous album. I was using a newish drum machine that I was still finding my way around so I was probably doing things with it where I didn’t fully understand what the effect of whatever settings I was playing with was going to be. At any rate I couldn’t get the beat I had programmed to sit quite right with what I was trying to play on guitar but it was interesting in itself and some ideas for arpeggiated riffs and intertwined mazy lead lines came out of jamming with it and became some verses and choruses. The groove meant that I wanted some kind of breakdown section so that happens in the middle and I was able to have some fun with adding and subtracting rhythm and percussion elements while the guitar falls to pieces in jagged stabs before pulling itself together for a third and final section where I tried to pull out the Afrobeat-esque qualities of the grooves that remained lurking in the background until this point and spray some sunnier lead lines around the place on the guitar and synth.

The lyrics are (pretty transparently I think) about perspective and our difficulties with empathy and genuine constructive resolution in our discussions, debates and arguments. Especially in the context of our digital revolution and the online spaces it’s created and under the conditions of being constantly goaded into reaction to suit agendas often entirely removed from the discussion itself. But of course, you’re very welcome to argue for your own interpretation of whatever I’ve tried to express. These themes are probably in all of our minds these days whether they’re acknowledged or not.

We Are Not Where You Are

Mumpsimus

As with much of what’s on this album, this grew out of a jam on a synthesizer which became the bassline and defined the structure and chord progression. Although it was a jam it had chord changes that had been programmed intuitively on the fly and rather than go back and re-do the part, making the changes fit something I had written, I wrote everything else to fit the intuitive chord changes. This actually worked really well for me because it meant things happened and things changed from one section to another much quicker than I might’ve written the other way round and strangely, I feel like this has actually led to this sounding overall like one of the most ‘traditional’ song structures here. I worked quite hard getting the beat to swing in a natural sounding way against the regimented synth bass and when I had it, it was really nice to play the guitars along with it. It somehow left loads of space to play not too much in despite the quick (to me anyway) changes and I could really revel in that juicy tremolo I got from one of my favourite effects pedals: fairfieldcircuitry.com/products/randys-revenge

As for what it’s about, well, I suppose some of it is my own occasional well-meaning inefficacy, misanthropy and even downright bad faith and some of it is my judgement of others’ identical failings. On one level anyway it’s a recognition that none of us reach ‘perfection,’ if such a thing can even exist, and we might do a lot better to keep that in mind as we try to get on with one another or make an effort to very much remember it when we aren’t trying hard enough.

Trying

The opener on ‘We Are Not Where You Are’ began as a fairly straightforward song in a very standard structure and ended up as a meta statement on its own subject matter. I’d written some mildly intriguing words around the Zen concept of the ‘beginner’s mind’ and a not very original descending chord sequence to set them to, included a predictable chorus and a nice but inconsequential bridge and there was a song there. I was playing it in an altered, dropped tuning on the acoustic guitar and when I overdubbed some electric guitar I continued recording and playing at the end of the song, just enjoying the texture of the electric guitar and repeating three related chords, thinking in the back of my mind that it’d be faded out long before any of that which meant I wasn’t worrying at all about how ragged or scrambled the playing might be at this point. In returning to the track a few times trying to mix it and fiddle with the arrangement I had fun overdubbing and singing on the outro / jam out and once there were more elements there I realised I was far more engaged with this unplanned jam out than I was with the preceding song. In keeping with the Zen ethos behind the genesis of the song I tried to keep my mind open to the possibilities as well as unsentimental and trusting about my gut reactions and it seemed increasingly obvious that what needed to happen was to cut the outro free of the initial song. I did think this would be great because I ‘d have two songs but it rapidly became clear the only reason I’d been listening to the first half – the ‘song’ section – was to get to the interesting bit which was originally the ‘outro.’ Once I started adding the kitchenware percussion it really seemed to come alive and the song it grew out from withered in my imagination. ‘Beginner’ had always seemed like a natural title for it which seemed to make it a natural introduction for the album and contained a nice concealed irony in its origins as the complete opposite within the structure of the song.

Beginner

Forget all that you know 
Don't believe just what you're told
Find it out on your own 
Forget everything you know

Your corner of the chaos is the corner you keep clean
(Keep your eyes wide open...) 
Around the next corner you may find the next big thing
Big things can be pots of gold or monsters from the deep
Stairways into Shangri-la or tripwires for your feet

Forget all that you know
While I breathe I hope
Dum spiro spero

Hyperobjects

Forget All That You Know

Music maker from Aberdeen in the North East of Scotland, now living in Glasgow.  Since my first collection of skewed, folkish blues songs: ‘Cold But Bright’ I’ve tried to resist the artificial limitations of defining myself as a ‘singer-songwriter’ (admittedly, while writing and singing songs.) This has resulted in attempts to investigate some remoter sonic territories.. As well as more songs.

Jamie Flett

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