"Cindytalk is me",quips Scotsman Gordon Sharp,"plus a cast of thousands".
Including John Burn and Alex Wright,who-with Gordon-form the nucleus of the current Cindytalk incarnation on the "In This World" albums.
Yes-albums:two distinct and distinctively-packaged vinyl LPs of the same name.Confused? you will be (and why not?).
Gordon's previous work has included collaborations with the Cocteau Twins
("They came from the same area of Scotland as me and I've known them for quite a few years",he explains,"and did a Peel session with them"),and the first of 4AD's This Mortal Coil projects,
as well as Cindytalk's previous Camouflage Heart album".
Gordon ascribes the delay between Cindytalk releases to "exhaustion.
Basically,I wanted to collect ideas,throw them into a pile and listen-out for new things.
Finding new people to work with can be painful,so I chose to wait for a purpose to do something else,rather than just supply follow-up product".
Rest,recuperation and rethinking led Gordon to consider as an eventual follow-up an album of piano music."But then I decided to do a one-off single,exploring one noisy idea.
At the same time,I was recording something for a Midnight Music compilation,which I thought ended up too good to lose and wanted to add to the single,which was rapidly becoming a mini-LP.
Things were changing shape and form and almost getting out of control.So that's why there are two albums with the same title,as the material grew up together".
But,Gordon,why not then release a double-album?
"That would have been too conceptual.
This way,each record has a similar,but separate,identity.It's not contrived or meant as a ploy,it just happened.Though I like it being playful and mischievous.
That it might be confusing is a pleasing notion to me".
A confusion resolved on the CD release,which contains all the material on the albums.
And,next?
"I don't know.I like to start afresh each time,it's a process of rebirth with each project".
(From "The Catalogue" Issue 57 March 1988)
6 comments:
There is another reference to ITW in a Midnight Music new releases add in the same magazine that states:
"The long-awaited follow-up to "Camouflage Heart" is 2 compatible LPs".
"Compatible"?!?!
That is one funny way of putting it.
I love these pictures. The vulnerable isolated figure who comes to realise, it's really not a problem - for him at least. The picture on the right makes you want to put your arms around him and console him, but just as you approach and get close you are greeted with the snooty "fuck you" picture on the left. Two picures never summed someone up so accurately as these. I've got a tee shirt that says "I live in my own little world, but it's okay... they know me here." That should have been on the sleeve notes of ITW.
... it's a metaphore for the 2 not so compatible albums. These 2 pictures, these 2 records, there's a lot more going on here than meets the eye.
it's funny that you read the picture on the right as snooty.
hmmm,i saw it as bracing.it were cold and wet that day if
i recall and i was traipsing about in the water for hours,so
it's less of an aloof pose and more a can we go home yet
pose.it was the day before the big huricane that whacked the south of england in 1987.did that one ever have a name.or is it just known as michael fish?i walked shaman
at about 3 or 4am the morning of the storm,i remember thinking it's a bit blustery out here.hehe.then i went to bed and slept through it,got up late morning to see the "devastation".
i'd like to point out that it's you,plastic accordion,that has the t-shirt with them words written on it.mine says
dysfunctional.
i'm curious about the word compatible being questioned in this context.why?it's certainly not a very poetic way of putting it but it's not incorrect.oftentimes people would be a bit shocked,or surprised maybe,that cindytalk music would lurch between such disparate poles but it never struck me as anything other than er,compatible.
It wasn't a hurricane, so it didn't qualify for a name, it was just a "Great Storm" as Michael Fish quite accurately pointed out. The day is also famous for Gordon Whatsisname from Allo Allo getting a tree on his head at the height of the storm. It does look pretty cold on that beach now that you mention it.
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