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Long Songs and a Loose Summer
A number of years ago I composed and recorded some music to accompany a summer fashion show. The name of the show was Loose Summer as it featured loose, flowy, light summer clothes, but it was also meant as a reference to the idea of summer in Newfoundland, which is loose at best.
I wrote and recorded this in the basement of my Mother-in-law’s house over the course of a week. It’s a dug out basement, with French doors, lots of sunlight, and a nice hard concrete floor. Since I was travelling I had my Yamaha electric classical instead of any of my acoustic guitars and I recorded DI with that. I also had a flute, a selection of wine and beer bottles, a smattering of rocks, shakers, bells(?), maybe a tambourine, pieces of wood oh yeah, and a shisha pipe. Some of the percussion is me banging beer bottles on the concrete floor. The bubbling sounds are me smoking the shisha pipe.
It’s five 3 minute episodes written in keys to spell BEACH using the Bach motif joined with bubbling shisha pipe and lots of harmonics. I don’t think I’d intended to have lyrics, but it turned out one of the models in the show was also quite a good singer so I wrote some lyrics about Newfoundland summer for her to sing. (it’s the fourth episode, and has since entered my repertoire.)
The show was a success, and the music fit it perfectly, but then I didn’t really know what I should do with this piece so it sat untouched on a hard drive for several years.
Last year my partner in life and crime went on a master and release rampage and this was amongst the material that got worked on. I wasn’t sure how to release this. It’s not really what people are expecting to hear at a Kyla Tilley show, (I’m not even singing on it) and it isn’t the work of any of my bands, but not wanting to start yet another side-project I decided to release it as a Kyla Tilley single. As soon as I made that decision I realized that I have given myself licence to release 15 minute prog singles as Kyla Tilley. Indeed, I already have a candidate in the archives that I wrote for Bareback that never came together.
As for album art, we followed the same strategy we followed for the Whimseys cover, which was to look through our photos and find one that seemed appropriate. We found it in a recent trip to Gros Morne National Park. The picture on the cover was taken in early July. I’m wearing two pairs of pants and a hoodie. Not shown in the picture is my back-pack with my winter-coat tied to it as I was warm enough from hiking that I was able to take off my winter coat for a little while. (Did I mention it was July?) The picnic table I’m sitting on was covered in carvings and was quite beautiful. I remember thinking that grove seemed quite magical and I should get some photos there.
You can listen to it via your preferred music source.
With other flutey folky stuff on spotify
And a whole bunch more that I don’t even know about.