We spend a minute with Tangled Star and find out what’s what…
What’s going on in the world of Tangled Star?
I’m thinking of working my way towards a solo album, one track at a time. I have one new song almost finished — Al Smith is mixing it as I write … I’m juggling musical and lyrical ideas for another new song. It’s always interesting to venture something creatively, to begin something and to feel those mysterious forces in the world coming to your aid … For some reason I’ve been thinking lately about Samuel Beckett’s radio plays, and Glenn Gould’s haunting and evocative radio documentary on cold and remote communities called The Idea Of North. I’d like to somehow let these things influence the development of my new project.
What motivates you to make music??
In his poem There Are Diseases, The Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa wrote: “There are sensations / Felt only by imagining / Which are more ours than our own life is”. A lot of people say similar things. For Federico Fellini, the imagination was more powerfully “real” than everyday life because he felt it more intensely. For the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze, life is fundamentally a question of creation. I’ve pretty much only written pop songs, but I’ve always felt that somehow there’s some kind of life at stake in creative processes, that I have a mysterious ethical duty to preserve and to liberate. So I’m mainly interested in things at this level — once a song is written and recorded, I’m not so motivated to go and play it over and over again to people.
What have been the high and low points of your musical experiences so far??
In a certain sense, I lead a relatively autistic existence, so my highs and lows revolve mainly around creative successes or failures, which are often strangely reversible, or even co-existent. An example might be the release of a new album: just the fact that it exists is a kind of success, but for me I’m often painfully aware of how the reality of it falls short
of what I’d imagined for it.
What music are you listening to at the moment?
In relation to listening to music, somehow for me the question conscious will or volition has fallen away, so that I no longer actively engage in it as an activity. But, like most people, I walk around in the world and hear bits and pieces of songs all the time. I’d rather that things come to me this way, like fate … Plus, I have music in my head a lot — I’ve come to prefer imagined or remembered music, and silence.
If you were stranded on a desert island, which member of the band would get eaten first??
Tangled Star isn’t really a band as such, but I’ve been involved in numerous projects over many years with Jim Butterworth (Bass player), and he is a fair size — plenty to feed any number of anaemic Rock musicians.
Here’s an opportunity to bitch about something, whether music related or not. What really pisses you off? ?
I suppose I don’t appreciate anything that disturbs or interrupts my sleep — that could be anything from a barking dog, to the idea of Tony Abbott.
You’re putting together your perfect gig featuring Australian artists? Who would you get to play and where? Feel free to include acts/DJs/bands/venues that no longer exist.?
I don’t know much about Australian bands … I’d like to go back in time and see some of those anonymous amateur cover bands in beer gardens I saw occasionally as a child — hilarious and heartbreaking …
