PC: MK was extremely ill. My reaction at being so far away from the situation (distance wise) was to get something musical happening. The bass lines were written to a drum program that my good friend Ian Vaughan composed. I immediately sent them to P.S. to see if he could add some of his ideas to it. The original demo made me feel that it had a spirit, but had to find a home. When I heard Robby’s transformation of the piece (and knowing his friendship with Mk), it felt to me that the song had come full circle.
RA: when Paul C. originally got in touch with me about the idea of collaborating on a track, I was feeling paralyzed in dealing with my own grief and had no idea if I was even going to be able to contribute to it... especially with musicians I only knew from a few email exchanges. At that point I didn't want to allow myself to be in any way vulnerable, I was just feeling too fragile. Putting oneself in a creative situation, especially a collaborative one, while it opens you up to new and interesting things, can also potentially set you up for getting wounded, as you are under intense scrutiny. But then i figured well, it’s only one track; maybe just see if I can pull some ideas together.
It was unsettling to me at first how so like MK the bass line was, especially the sound of the instrument; it took some getting used to that it wasn't MK playing. Finally I said to myself, "ok, it's an homage" and so I approached it in that spirit. I decided the track had to have a very distinct and unusual shape and incorporate a lot of characteristics that existed in opposition; such as high detail contrasted with extreme untidiness, or atonality crashing up against gentle lyricism... loud passages and silence, understated vocals overwhelmed by drum & bass mayhem. There were something like 12 or 14 stems, across which I did a lot of cutting to create an arc for what was obviously going to be a "song"... whatever a "song" was going to be for BTF. At this point I had no idea at all where any of this might be going. When we had been touring together, MK was always pushing me musically to stop being so "careful" in my playing and to just, as he would say, "go f'rit..." so I wanted to untether my guitar playing a bit in the track and above all attempt to jettison idiom from my vocabulary. He hated stuff that sounded like other stuff. As for the lyrics, I meditated on the title A Portrait In Amber and asked questions about its inception but neither Paul's could really shed any light on what it meant; it just needed to be the title. So I had to extrapolate my own set of meanings. There's a little roadside shop not far from where I live, at least there used to be... where among other oddities, they sell "watered amber". Amber is basically fossilized tree resins, and often you can find organisms like insects trapped inside these drops of hardened tree sap; and these who knows how old... well, you can carbon date them I guess but beyond that,... they’re just unimaginably old. As a kid, I was always fascinated by the phenomenon, and even think I had a piece of it, but it didn't have a bug in it and I finally lost it somewhere. As many know, MK was an incredible artist and I saw several of his cast sculptures when I was visiting him in Cyprus... a few of them were cast in bronze, a few in resins, with an amber coloring. Musing on all of this, it brought me by the hand down a path of remembrance and the imagery began to fall into place..."now it’s caught forever, trapped forever in the trees..." and "...tracing the trees the color of bees..." MK hated bugs, especially spiders... also, he was always calling you "dear" or "my dear", it was so very old-world of him, very Charles Dickens, and it always made you feel warm and cared about. And yes, he was notorious for not returning any books you might have lent him. Once when we were touring in Europe, there was a 10 or 12 day break between legs and it was more economical for the production if I was to stay in Europe rather than fly home and then to just return a week later. So it was agreed I would go to London and stay with MK, saving them not only the airfare, but hotel costs as well. But something went haywire with the travel, I don't quite remember, but the upshot was I would get to London a full day before MK. So he gave me the keys to his flat in Kensington and I was to fax him when I got there to say if everything was sound, etc... this was in the '90's, well before we all had mobile email, or mobile phones. So I made my way on my own to his digs in Kensington and it was an adventure finding the place and letting myself in; it was no big deal at the time, but now it hits me rather hard when I think of it, that bunch of days just screwing around while we were on break. I laundered all my clothes at his flat, but he failed to tell me how hot the water was and all my white shirts turned permanently grey. I remember he had the book Songlines by Bruce Chatwin which I had read before, and so then, working on this song, out of the blue the idea of ley lines hit me and found its way into the lyric and I thought, ok; now this has finally connected my own experience with MK to these new friends I've made down in Oz. There was my connection; the idea that all people, things, times are connected by mysterious forces hidden within the earth... I started delivering rough mixes and from the reaction I got, I guessed they liked what I was contributing, because before I knew what was happening we had decided to do an entire album project as a threesome, with lovely MK as our patron Saint
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Originally Posted by Dave (in MA)
although I started in 1978 after buying Japan's debut. The result so far are recordings from:
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