Q: Did you play and record most of the songs from Listen for the Rag and Bone Man live, as you did for Further from the Truth ?
SHJ - Yes - Justin , Paul and Ian played the songs together in this big, old barn. It looked very impressive, especially with the double bass and gave a good warm, natural sound. I was singing the guide vocal in a different, smaller room. Once we got a good take of the drums and bass we moved on, that was the really important musical relationship to capture.
Q: Where did you record it ? Was it in a special place ?
SHJ - We recorded it in an ancient, oak, barn on the estate of an 11th century manor house called Hellens manor, in rural Herefordshire. And yes, it was a special place.
We didn't go out looking for somewhere as romantic and extraordinary as that - if we had surely we wouldn't have found it. We just wanted a space, preferably in the center of England, not too noisy and if possible not on a modern industrial estate.
Then Mathew Devenish the sound engineer we work with discovered this barn. It had just been very correctly renovated, as it's a listed building, using the exact same materials and building methods of the original construction and they had just started renting it out for special 'events'. Matt spoke to the custodians about renting it, they liked the sound of our project and were happy to rent it out to us.
The first time I went there was the day we started recording. It was a sunny morning and I walked from the barn through some trees and down a shady path. I came to an orchard where a pair of enormous shire horses were quietly grazing in the sun and beyond them the landscape opened out onto the rolling countryside of Herefordshire. Then, not far away, I noticed a stone pillar partially hidden by climbing roses and wild ivy. In fact there were two pillars and in between an ornate, wrought iron gate. As I walked towards it I realized it was the gate from the manors back garden to surrounding estate as through the gate I saw the sloping lawns, a box hedge maze and rising up above it all Hellens manor in all its decaying splendor.
And I though to myself... what the fuck is going on... have I just died or what?. This could only happen to 'And also the trees'.
It would have been nice to have recorded final vocals there too but despite some of the places we find ourselves in we are far from being an affluent band, so to economize we decided to look for a smaller place in a more convenient location. And fate decided to deal us another one of it's more interesting cards as the small place in London we were looking for turned out to be a chapel in a victorian building in the east end of London. The only problem with working here was that our recording was occasionally interrupted by the sound of what sounded like the deep, animated conversation and laughter of a room full of black men. We searched the building but never found them.
Q: Could you explain the title of the album for us ?
SHJ. Justin called me one morning and said he'd woken up in the night with it in his head that the album would be called '(listen for) the rag and bone man'. It sounded right to me too although I couldn't tell you why.
When we were small children living in Birmingham there was a rag and bone man who came down our street with a horse and cart... there was something mysterious and ominous about his visits although I don't remember what he looked like and suspect by the time he arrived at our house I was hiding under the sofa. Originally they used to collect rags and bones because they were used in the manufacturing of paper and china, but in the end they just took anything that wasn't wanted any more.
Q: Is it a coincidence if two titles refer to musical instruments (" Stay away from the accordion girl " and " A man with a drum ") ?
SHJ - yes.
Q: What about " Rive droit " ? What does it mean ? Is it an allusion to the " rive droite " from Paris ? !
SHJ - Nothing too interesting I'm afraid. There is a rive droite where I live in Geneva too but the song has nothing to do with either - it was a working title that became so much a part of the piece of music we couldn't separate them. (less interesting still we used 'droit' because we rehearse in an English town called Droitwich - for the album we'll use the French word 'droite').
Q: Your way of singing seems quite different on " Legend of Mucklow ". What can you say about it ?
SHJ - I felt something sinister was going on somewhere within this piece of music - there was an ominous presence coming through the lyrics too and I kept having fleeting visions of someone in my head standing in a wheat field. It made me think of a legendary character called Mucklow who was apparently hung for sheep stealing at a cross roads near where we used to live in Worcestershire.
So I cleared my mind as well as I could and let whoever it was that I could sense come and say what he had to say... and that's what he said. It's like a warning and it came out in an accent that isn't mine.
Q: Where did you found your inspiration for the lyrics of Listen for… ? Did you use the flow of consciousness method on some of the tracks?
SHJ - My main objective as a lyricist is to find the words within the music, the stream of consciousness method can be effective in this respect but, for me at least, the success rate is quite low. I use what I can from those experiments and the rest has to be thought out more carefully.
I haven't consciously taken inspiration from anything other than the music itself and my imagination, thoughts and memories - apart from one song which is based on a specific character from a novel. I will give a special prize to the first person who can tell me which song I'm referring to, the name of the character and from which book they are from.
Q: What part do instrumentals play in an AATT album ?
SHJ. They play different parts on different albums, in the past we have used them to give space and a break from the voice but on this album there was already plenty of space. One of the roles they play on this album is to emphasize or introduce certain sounds and instruments.
Q: What is the track which bears, according to you, the best interaction between lyrics and music ?
SHJ - Perhaps 'Rive droite' because as well the lyric interacting well with the music it also steers it away from the 'jazz vibe' which the nature of the double bass can create and could have taken us off in the wrong direction. A certain jazz influence has often found it's way into our music over the years and is an important part of our sound. It's most effective when it's offset by the lyric, vocal, or guitar - 'Rive droite' demonstrates this well.
Q: What is the track which contains Justin's fave guitar part ?
SHJ - I asked him and he said he didn't have a favorite guitar part. He said "the object was to orchestrate the music with guitars
instead of keyboards. This was the idea as it worked well with double bass
particularly when the bow was used. We used only real instruments on this
album, where possible real and acoustic to give the sounds an organic
quality. If it was made of wood it was good."
Q: For me, Listen to… is really different from the others, like a new step in AATT career. What is your feeling about it ?
SHJ - It is the first album we've made without Steven Burrows' creative influence and bass playing - so that alone will make it sound different. His absence is a big loss to us - but Ezer (Ian Jenkins) it a very creative guy and we encouraged him to express himself - the double bass is new to AATT and it was inspiring to work with this beautiful sound.
As for the future - it is no clearer than it ever has been. The next album might follow on from this or we might find a new direction and as always there is a chance there won't be another one.
Q: How many songs from the new album do you think to play live ? And what about the oldest songs ?
SHJ - At first we have to adapt them to the live situation and see how they sound. We will start by playing 4 or 5 I guess and work on introducing others later.
We will always play some of our older songs, so long as we enjoy playing them. These songs are our history and a part of us... as a performer the experience of revisiting different stages of our evolution can be powerful, we have to hope it can be the same for the audience.
Q: Any news from November ? Did this experience change your way of working with AATT ?
SHJ - 'The Young Gods' have been touring or recording most of this year so Bernard and I haven't seen much of each other. I saw the 'Gods' live collaboration with 'Dålek' and it was amazing. The most exciting concert I've been to in a decade and perhaps the most impressive performance by a drummer I've ever experienced. But we haven't had time to work together.
We have just started to communicate about new ideas for some future recording, which I'm excited about and we do hope to play live again at some point next year. I learnt a lot from that experience with 'November' but I don't think it changed my way of working with AATT.
Q: Could you tell us a few words about the artwork ? Did Nick Havas participate ?
SHJ - The photographs on the cover are by the French photographer Jerome Sevrette. I came across his work a year ago and thought it was exceptional, then when we were thinking about an image for the title '(listen for) The Rag and Bone Man' I went and looked at Jerome's photos again. When I saw the image of the house something seemed to click into place.
From the moment we contacted him he showed a great sense camaraderie... it has been a highlight of the latter stages of getting this album completed.
Nick hasn't been involved in this artwork.
Q: If you should compare Listen to… with a book, a painting and a movie, what titles would occur to you ?
SHJ - Finally, I can't answer this question as well as I'd like - I am still too close to it and I lost a good sense of objectivity some time ago. I feel glimpses of Dickens here and there and landscapes that morph from his bleak streets and backwaters to something altogether more vivid... almost like Dali's landscapes without the symbolist totems, which in turn change to softer more familiar vistas that remind me of Polanski's romantic English scenes or my own childhood memories of England.
JJ - The play. The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky
A good fit scene in that one.
The album is a wooden thing, closed in by wires. Locked away under a viaduct with vapours drifting high above the roof tops and looking down. We could have called this album 'Broken' or 'the view from here' its quite cinematic in some respects.
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