BARROWFULL / INTO THE MUSIC

 We were back at the Lock In today to record the written work produced by our writers group with our guest writer Geoff Cox over the last few weeks at Mind in Furness. The lads have all spent time polishing their work, adding and subtracting and  working towards a piece that both works on the page and a reading.  There is more work to come from Phil, who will be adding his own music to a recording made in his own studio at home. It was a great afternoon, the work has really progressed, the humour, honesty and clarity that has characterised  the sessions is all there in these pieces. You hear and feel the significance of records, tapes, music as company, nutrition, solace, social lubricant, and as territory to be explored.  The quality of the readings too is outstanding; it is a great thing to hear these stories delivered in these warm and characterful voices Robbie from the Lock In  manned the desk. It was the first time he'd heard any of the work and as we...

Saturday night at The Lock-In studio on Duke Street, Damian Rose Robbie Gallagher and myself gather make some music to underscore and link the conversations and readings we have so far.          For the most part this music  has to enhance the voices of our participants rather than draw attention to itself, so it'll be down to clipping short passages and looping them, working with the pace of the reader and the sound and texture of their voice.    Other sounds will feature too, from vinyl and field recordings, and a by-product will be a short collection of production music, which will come in handy. Thanks to Robbie and The Lock-In for this, it was  great to bounce ideas around, and emerge with something unexpected. This project has a lot to say about the personal and shared pleasures of music and it was good to be reminded of both over the course of a couple of hours in this valuable and welcoming addition to the local scene, and to then ste...

  We are beginning to draw together the written and recorded  contributions to Into The Music. Brendan Ashton  has got together with Martin Roberts to  produce a song  that draws on the traditional Calling- On  songs used by mummers, dancers and street bands. This one is based on the opening track on the Steeleye Span record Martin mentions , and its sleeve notes tell us that we are listening to something based on the words and tune of the Captain's song of the Earsdon Sword Dance Team, based 2 miles up the road from Whitley Bay, seen here in a silent film made by Lady Trevelyan round the back of Newcastle City Hall in 1937.  Maybe we should provide a soundtrack. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFjcjPfFu08      Brendan, (photographed  here by Martin wearing a plant pot during their  time at Holker Estates) has multi tracked his own voice to conjure a chorus line introducing and framing his and Martin's conversation...you'll hea...

I spent sunday afternoon with Brendan Ashton and Martin Roberts hoping to tap into a conversation that has been going on since they met at college in the 80's.  Martin and Brendan have shared and swapped music for as long as long as they've known each other, records and songs are points in the road, junctions in a long friendship.  They were City And Guilds Horticulture Students in Penrith, and both worked at Holker Hall in the Nursery where Martin was Kitchen Garden Manager "(A Genius at it, says Brendan.) They talk about listening to tapes at work among the seedlings in the potting sheds,  gradually changing and taking on each others tastes, of the voices of beloved radios and sound systems, and of experiments with Dorothy Squires.  Their ears are wide open; nothing gets shunned; at the core is a love for traditional music and an interest in what you can do with it and to it. Sharing second and third-hand finds they searched the ground opened up by the two key LPs ...

  This is Damo Rose, musician, and Robbie Gallagher from Barrow multi-media platform The Lock In, we met at Lock In HQ today to discuss recording our writers reading their work, and to chuck around some ideas for setting the work and the surrounding conversations against some  music.  The plan is to pastiche certain sounds and songs, to allude to others and reflect the pace and energy of the conversations.   We'll be meeting here with the group in a couple of weeks, and after that Robbie, Damo and me will begin recording. In another exciting development, we also know that alongside our efforts will be some original music from our contributors...there is a rich piece of work in the making here, and some valuable partnerships are developing. If you want to see the kind of work The Lock In does and promotes, here's their site and a recent podcast.. ... https://www.thelockin.live/post/twang-radio-saturday-12th-february-2022-w-big-mike-alison

Today's sesh with Geoff and the group at MIND was spent talking and polishing the written work with the intention of giving each piece its own dynamism. In most cases, it's about taking things out, paring the work down, and allowing the voice of the writer to show through. The plan is to record these pieces, and with that in mind we are looking at reflecting speech patterns within them. As they are, they can be linked to the recorded conversations that produced them, and to our group members interests and histories.  The work contains accounts of different scenes, private experiences, fleeting impressions and stream of consciousness as well as the accounts of analytic eyes and ears at work , We are planning to begin work with a further group in the next couple of weeks, and hopefully we will  leave with an established group of writers as legacy of the project, who will be involved in further  creative work.  

An unusual day on the project in some ways...lots of silence, thought and writing as well as the usual conversation,laughs and sharing of experiences.  Drawing from the notes made in the previous sessions, we are beginning to compose pieces of prose and other work that sits between prose and poetry. We have a new member of the group, Phil, who took us inside  the mind and body of a dancer, we have descriptions of drivetime and the music panning across the dashboard of a car, of  early experiences of the catharsis of punk, the haste to change with it, to find  new sounds and new haircuts, and further new directions...the social side of music, shared time, friends recalled, relationships with music itself and the images it can conjure and compliment. There was real sense of focus behind the work today, each piece currently rings with the voice of the writer; each writer's job now is to refine them while keeping those voices in the foreground, and to think about how thi...