The Story of Sparklemusik

Since the release of my last song-based LP "Starlightnight", in August 2012, I've been concentrating on soundscape releases and am now, probably, better known for those LPs, than the nine, song-based records, I released from 1997 to 2012, all of which are still available here.

But now, at last, these are the sixteen songs of "Sparklemusik", the follow up to "Starlightnight".

And here's how it happened...

It turns out, without knowing it at the time, I started writing this LP back in December 2012, while babysitting my then 8 year old niece, Kitty, who asked, "Uncle David, how do you make a song?".

We ended up writing "Break the Ice Around Us" that night.

And now, although she's just turned 17, her 8 year old self appears on backing vocals on her co-write, along with her brother Olly, who also sang on the original recording that night.

It was over eighteen months before the next song came along, in July 2014, when I wrote "Here Again", for an evening of songs and reflection on the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of "The Great War", basing it on a poem by Robert Graves.

It's turned out to be a favourite of my main collaborator, Edward Spark.

Two years later, around the time of the Eurovision Song Contest, I read an article in a paper about a formula for a winning song.

The result of my following said formula was a song called "Fly Across the World", which, until almost three and half years later, was going to be included on the "this seems to be taking forever" follow up to "Starlightnight".

The next song came quickly, relatively speaking - only 10 months later.

"Underground Like Doug McClure" was me trying to write a "tuneful" song, with simple chord sequences, quite quickly, the day after (I think) attending a Granddaddy concert with collaborator Stu Cobley.

Less than a week later, Edward Spark sent me an instrumental piece, asking what I thought of it.

I loved the chord sequence and had to make it a CBQ song. So I wrote some quick lyrics and this was kind of the start of what has ended up becoming quite a big part of "Sparklemusik" - me taking a Spark idea and turning it into a CBQ song - in this case "I Have Lost My Spark".

The original version, which contains very few lyrics indeed, was, if I recall correctly, one of two new tracks on my 40 year retrospective, "Rubinmusik", back in 2017.

It wasn't until over two years later that further verses were added, forming the new version included here.

A big "spark" for this project arrived in my inbox at the end of January 2019, when Ed sent me his completely reconstructed version of the song "We Drove", which he, Stu Cobley and I had worked on back in 2008 and which had appeared on the CBQ LP "Soundingfall", in 2009.

The arrangement of that song went through many different versions over the next two years or so, before finally being deemed "right". Of the sixteen, it's probably the one I've spent the most time on.

As with all the songs, there are different versions of "We Drove" dotted throughout the 114 pieces included in the six volumes of the full download version of "Sparklemusik".

Just four days after the arrival of "We Drove", I wrote "Happy is the Way" and let Mr Spark hear it. And this was the start of another phase of what became the album.

He asked if he could remove everything apart from my voice and construct a new track around it. Which he did.

I then asked him if he could do the same again but use the original chords while still employing his computer wizardry.

This proved a success and he then worked in the same way on "Break the Ice Around Us" (although the final version on the main album reinstates my original parts - and Kitty and Olly's backing vocals), "Here Again", "Fly Across the World" and "Underground Like Doug McClure", stripping each of them right back to just the vocal and rebuilding them all from scratch.

At that point, we had still not really realised we were doing a record together.

In fact, I was working on a retrospective project which would include the songs written between 2012 and now.

I was thinking Mr Spark was just working on some remixes. But, in the end, those mixes became the main versions.

In addition to reworking my songs, Sparky kept sending me instrumental tracks and I kept kind of stealing them and turning them into, due to the nature of the source material, more non-conventional CBQ songs.

You can hear the original ES pieces on "Volume Six", the three CDs of Demos and Outtakes.

In this way, a further four tracks, "No Last Tilt", “Super 8”, "Can I Speak to One of You" and "Beautiful Thing" were all written during July and August 2019 in quick succession, as I rearranged the ES pieces and added weird guitars, sound effects, field recordings, short wave radios, alternative rhythm beds and, of course, lyrics and vocals.

By the late summer of 2019, I had a version of what eventually became this LP but most of the songs created with Mr Spark were a lot longer - and those versions appear here in "Volume Three", the alternate/remix version of the album, for those who download.

I was so enthused with this new material that I started rehearsing for a live "comeback" for CBQ (which is yet to happen of course!).

My only appearance, other than the very occasional open mic night, since March 2012, a few months before the release of "Starlightnight", had been the "World War 1" night back in 2014, where I'd debuted "Here Again"; but I felt I could perhaps present these new songs well in a live setting.

The recordings of rehearsals for this resulted in another of the bonuses included here for downloaders, the "live set" ("Volume Four"), which contains all the songs above, in their early forms, apart from "Fly Across the World", which, I suppose, I must have been looking to drop from the record.

The instrumental versions of those initial songs are also included here for download, as "Volume Two".

Most are the backing tracks I was using at that point during my rehearsals - while the instrumental versions of the songs written since then, have been created specifically for the "Sparklemusik" download bundle.

At the start of October 2019, what seemed at the time to be the 12th and last song of the project, "Around the World" (or "Fuck the Old Fucks" as it was originally known) came about.

It was based on a very short piece Ed had created as an intro for his daughter's dance show (hence the shouts of "Let's Dance"), which I, of course, stole and turned into another CBQ song.

Next, after a chance glance over the Exec Producer's shoulder, of a passage in a book she was reading on a flight to Germany, I wrote completely new lyrics for "Fly Across the World", giving it a new life and, under the title "Wonderful Out Here", it was welcomed back into the fold.

I was now up to the 12 songs which I thought would be my new song-based LP.

Then, an offer came in for a 40 minute live appearance.

Of course, rather than not perform any of the 12 new songs, I created new short edits to use as backing tracks for the performance.

At the last moment though, due to a diary clash, after having made all the preparations and rehearsed the set, I found I couldn't perform on the date I'd been offered and had to pull out.

Instead, I recorded my vocals and made these new songs available for the first time for just one week, in the winter of 2019, in place of my live appearance.

Those short versions (and the live backing tracks) now form "Volume Five" of this release.

And so, into 2020 we went, pre pandemic and my live appearance was rearranged for mid January.

But I decided, rather than playing my own new songs, I'd do a covers set with Capital Models of songs by Eno, Bowie, Lou Reed and Roxy Music. That was very enjoyable indeed and a welcome break from this long drawn out project.

Over the next six months, I continued to work on the arrangements of the 12 songs, changing things round, trying out different versions and thinking I'd probably release what I was now referring to as "Sparklemusik" in the late summer.

With the advent of lockdown though, I started producing more and more soundscape music and, although newly recorded vocals for many of the songs and the "final" mixes for "Sparklemusik" were done in June 2020, all my soundscape releases, like "Satie", "Cage" and "Beethoven", meant there wasn't a slot to put this new song-based record out.

Then, in October, out of the blue, I wrote, recorded and released a completely new song-based album in just a week ("Disquietsongs"), using the Frippertronics from my "Disquietmusik" series as the backing for the songs, with lyrics based on short stories by Ernest Hemmingway, while Mr Spark provided some of the rhythm tracks.

It was a welcome distraction from the long, drawn out project "Sparklemusik" had somehow become.

In December, having not worked on "Sparklemusik" for almost six months, I had the idea of asking Capital Models' drummer, Johnny Wietzen to send me some "jazzy drumming".

He came up with just one short idea but I took that, elongated it, added my Frippertronics piece "The Surrender of Barcelona", added a full band setup and wrote a lyric based on the life of the artist who had painted the painting which gave its name to the track.

The resultant EP was just one more release that pushed "Sparklemusik" back yet again.

Into 2021 and a further 3 soundscape albums were recorded from scratch and released while "Sparklemusik" languished on the hard drives.

But then, in a rush of activity over the last couple of months, a quartet of new tracks has come about and kick started the final phase of the project.

First, a re-work of "The Surrender of Barcelona" with revised lyrics, re-recorded vocals and a remix for the new version included here.

Then, in mid-March this year, one of my favourite tracks, "Fallen", based on Edward Spark's chord sequence for his track "Emperor", was written, after working on a remix of his piece.

The lyrics are based on a WhatsApp conversation between me and ES wherein he talked about my propensity for stealing his ideas.

Before he'd allow me to release this version, I had to excise all but the very faintest of traces of his original track from my song.

And, at the end of March, Stu Cobley sent me a minute or so of very aggressive guitar playing, which I took and adapted into the ten minute closing track, "Crack a Smile".

That brought the album full circle by referring back to the opening song, "Super 8", not only as regards the sound effects deployed but the initial rhythm track and the final vocals.

Meanwhile, I was busy remixing all the tracks, having now become dissatisfied with my work from last June.

And then, finally, just two weeks ago, the last piece of the puzzle fell into place as I worked on another remix of an Edward Spark track and became enthused with the pulsing synth rhythm which permeated it.

I isolated the pulse and based the last of the sixteen songs to be written, "Talk the Talk", around it, adding new drums, Frippertronics, piano and vocals.

Then it was just a question of sifting through years of work to pull together all the bonus material.

And so there you have it, "Sparklemusik" - an 11 hour, 12 CD Virtual Box Set, almost 8 and a half years in the making.

I hope you enjoy it - one to one, on headphones, of course...

David Reilly
Edinburgh
6 May 2021