APPRENTICE GREEN

TimeBomb was written and recorded in a dream-like 12 hours, overnight of October 27th 2022 in my old garden shed home studio, on Sanday Island in The Orkneys. It's a hypnotic, dreampop / shoegazing slice of aural synaesthesia, laid back and driving at the same time. The lyrics describe an ecstatic state, when the veil is torn asunder and we glimpse the numinous. A peek behind the wizard's curtain, when we peep a little over the How and into the Loop. 

The psychedelic sound and title gave me the idea to re-work my old demos from 2003, so it gets the best seat at the head of the table. 

Written in a basic form in 2003 or 2004. The lead guitar line suggested the words. We were living in Treforest outside Pontypridd in Wales, in student squalor in a Victorian semi detached. There's a lot of weather in the valleys. The title was cribbed from a T.S. Eliot poem. I don't remember why I used it but it's the kind of thing I used to do way back when.

My favourite bassline I've managed yet. And a flavour of Syd Barrett in the lead guitar.

Apprentice Green founding member, name-giver & rhythm guitarist Alan, had these chords on guitar. Still awake early one morning in 2003 or 2004, after a night of mycelial fun, I read an article in the Guardian newspaper about a mountain climber & the rigors of climbing said mountains. Fingers so cold they can be peeled off. I wrote the lyrics, called it 'Thoughts Of All'. Next day I realised I'd misspelled ALL as AL, as in Alan & the lyrics fit his chords perfectly. Cosmic man.

I gave this version a deliberate Cure-like plod, sang the lyric as weird as possible and attempted the world's slowest guitar solo. The demo version from 2003 is still one of my favourite things I've ever recorded. Just for the ragged, joyous soul in it. The recording was, at the time, way above my skill level, another one-night magical act of improvised creation.

The first year at the University of Glamorgan, probably late 2002. I only attended 3 lectures or so my entire career, preferring instead to plumb the depths of my soul and examine my mind from both micro and macro viewpoints, like a man standing between 2 parallel mirrors. After doing something that tends to keep you awake for too long, then doing it again, again, & then again. A marathon. 3 days later and still no sleep, a spider absailed down the curtains in my Halls cell-like box room. For some reason this produced an intense few hours of nightmarish arachnids lurking on ceiliings, chasing me down corridors, webs thick across the common room. God knows what I looked like, tearing wild-eyed past the silent doored & slumbering student rooms. Eventually managing to wake Matt, Apprentice Green's drummer, multi-instrumentalist & all round good egg. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the incursive spider invasion had not occurred & I had not, in fact, been whisked off as the Devil's plaything to the caverns of Hell. Even the original rappelling spider merely a prosaic bit of fluff, suspended on a thread of curtain material. Ah well. Stay in school kids.

The song was written a year or so later, morphing through a few forms. Special mention goes to Brummy's loping bassline & Matt's guitar overdubs. All recreated here. I have no idea how I wrote the piano riff. Probably just mashed the keys until it sounded good. Much like I do now.

Built on 2 chords thrummed incessantly throughout 2003. I was famous for my two chords songs. And I really, really loved those particular 2 chords. Obsessed actually. I taught myself to strum swinging between that A minor and that Fmaj7. The little embellishments with the pinky finger. The me in the hand of 5. A simple 2 line refrain, what is now the chorus. Dusted of cobwebs and re-animated with my new-fangled music skills. 

My songs aren't typically about any one thing, the best of them being created in a trance-like haze, where snippets of comprehension and inspiration are allowed to reveal themselves. Imagine a lyric that makes perfect sense, now scoop up a handful of those words and throw them back on the page, in random patterns. The original meaning is still there but obsured now. A picasso. Eyes on cheeks and mouths distorted. 

Suitably Waterline is a song of sleep and of dreams, the soul leaving the body as we slumber with a gently swaying, tidal feeling.

Written a few years after the others, 2007 I think. In a nonsense, Lewis Carroll stylee. I tried to make the music sound like an old BBC radio play. There is an actual story, it's about an old kingdom, some soldiers and a stubborn orange tree. Maybe I'll tell it to you sometime. 

Probably my favourite song on the album. It's creation was like a magical act, it still seems miraculous to me. I remember sitting in my bathroom, let's say 2007 again, probably around 3am, acoustic guitar, microphone, 4-track cassette recorder. Strumming a single chord with a bit of a riff around it. Eyes closed. Sing the first thing that comes to mind. Remove, in fact, your mind. Get yourself out of the way and let the words come through. After a few minutes of frankly unusable nonsense, still singing, a scene flashed forwards from murky subconscious. A walk in the snow. An overbearingly large full moon. Darkness. Green coats and shoes. A girl. I described it as best I could in real time. Getting the feel across more than the logic of it. Scrambling to keep up with the live feed. I haven't changed a single word. I've tried that same process so many times before and after to no avail. Improvised a song. Magic.

The music reminds me of something Scott Walker might have sung over. My best Chamber Pop. The guitar didn't survive the final version. The repetitive riff taken up by the cellos, basses & tubas of the keyboard orchestra instead. Tubular bells give an appropriately Christmas feel, peeling on the clang association of the word 'trigger'. The main vocal was supposed to be the supporting harmony, in 5ths I believe. I liked the breathy sound so much I pushed the main vocal back in the mix and brought the harmony part forward. I tend to prefer the songs that sound unlike anything else I've done. Magic.

Another subconscious tone poem. Automatic writing. Streamed consciousness. A night I remember writing a few poems in one great rush. Candles in wine bottles on the table. Wheels greased & words a'flowin', an image formed. A small boat, silhouetted against a gigantic sun, setting on an ocean horizon, 3 birds flying back to shore. A storm gathering. I can still see it. I just wrote it down. A daydream. The easy lyrics that flow out almost unbidden are always the most beguiling & dream-like. Already written somewhere, you just have to put them down on paper. 

Another 2 chord masterpiece. Key changes inserted in the final version. I'm trying to sound like the tide and the swelling sea. A jazz sea I suppose. A sea of jazz? The sound of an actual sea that bookends the song is from Sandquoy Bay, the beach behind my old house on Sanday in Orkney, where the album was recorded. 50 meters or so from the garden shed studio.

I honestly don't feel like I did this song justice. The original demo was so awesome. Around 2003/4 I worked at Domino's Pizza in Treforest. It was literally next door to our house, inside a roundabout, next to a church. Anyone who knows the area will know where I mean. All day at work I had these words popping into my mind, to the tune of Syd Barrett's Milky Way. Got home & wrote them down. Picked out a few chords on the guitar. Spent a few weeks slowly overdubbing it. 

A straight up Syd song, my most accomplished recording at the time. The lyrics were magpied from our life, we had a pet rat called Rat Face. Other in-jokes & references will be known only to those who know and care to remember.

The most radically altered song on the album. Fittingly in last place, it has it's own sound. The original song was guitar-based and had lyrics about stumbling around on Eglwysilan Common up in the valley above Treforest, chasing your mind's eye. I probably thought writing about butterflies & brains was very Syd Barrett. Have I mentioned him yet? 

Crashing doom-laden piano chords, synth bass, end of the world trumpets, a guitar sound like Johnny Marr joined The Cure, a coda leaning into 90's rave. What's not to like?