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An
interview with
Is it a Jimmy Garrison sample on the track Garrisoi? It certainly sounds like him, doesn't it? It came from one of those discs you can buy of different riffs, and it reminded me of Garrison, the sort of Coltrane drone things he was so good at and which influenced my own playing and writing very much. I never saw him with Coltrane but I saw him with Archie Shepp. He grunted all the time, like Elvin Jones does. The pair of them must have been scary as a rhythm section - grunting away together while Coltrane sailed away on sax. The CD is on the Burning Shed label: is it available in the shops or via mail order only? On the web only, at burningshed.com. They are a great new company. They burn CDs on demand, they have an interesting catalogue of ambient and other music building up. They are musicians, Tim Bowness and Peter Chilvers who have started the company. It was funny how I came in contact with them - they already had a CD called Hew Hopper's Base by a group named Sebastian. It's nothing like my music really, Sebastian called it that as a tribute to me. I emailed them to see what was happening and they invited me to send some music if I had some available. With my new recording studio I have been producing so much new stuff that I immediately offered them a collection of loops, which was Jazzloops. One of the true original bass players - John Entwistle - passed away. Who do you consider as doing quality work nowadays? There are lots of technically very good bass players, but I don't hear anything really new or startlingly different. That guy in Morphine was great - two strings! But he died. I listen more to ethnic music these days, as well as all my old jazz records. I think I am more interested in different sounding tunes and the overall atmosphere of the music than focusing on single players, especially bass players. In fact I am more attracted by good drummers or sax players than fast tricky bassists. Thanks to the CD reissue phenomenon, all the musicians who've had long careers - I think this to be true both of the Rolling Stones and Evan Parker - find themselves competing with their own past. Since the old Soft Machine catalogue is still in print - and with CDs of unreleased stuff constantly surfacing - do you ever get the feeling that your present work does not get the proper amount of attention? Well, I understand why people want to hear the old stuff - I do it myself with other musicians. But I have to keep producing new music. It's like breathing - I don't have the choice: it just keeps coming. What about the quartet that put out the Swimmer CD? Any chance of a Vol. II? No plans at the moment. Jan Ponsford who sang on that record has also been down to Delta Studio to record some voice over my loops - that'll be on the next collection. She's a marvel. Great improviser and can also sing great harmonies to songs. In our previous conversation you talked about your collaboration with Lisa S. Klossner, Different, but at the time I had not listened to it. I have to say I enjoyed the second CD more: Cryptids was more clearly recorded and had quite a lot of "humans" playing on it. Any news in this department? We have about half of another CD recorded already - continuing the trend away from midi to real musicians. Patrice Meyer and Phil Miller on guitar, Andy Ward and Charles Hayward drums on different tracks. I was listening to the first one recently for the first time for a while and I still like a lot of the songs. Yes, it's very minimal - mostly just synth and Lisa's voice. But its day will come! Hughscore have quite a few fans here in Italy - as they do, I suppose, everywhere. Please, keep me current on this. We played at the Progman Cometh festival in Seattle last summer, 2002, (the first real Hughscore gig), but it's hard to get together to work on a new record - Fred Chalenor and Elaine Di Falco have divorced and she's living in California, and Tucker Martine is always so busy in his own professional studio. But we are officially supposed to be doing another CD for Cuneiform when we get a chance. Last topic: I've heard of a project called Software. Would you mind telling me more? It's now called Soft Works. Allan Holdsworth, Elton Dean, John Marshall and me. Leonardo Pavkovic's idea. He's an enthusiastic New Yorker (from Croatia, Bosnia, Italy and other places) and a Soft Machine fan. We recorded in London in June 2002 and Allan took the tapes back to Los Angeles to mix and do his guitar solos (he's never satisfied with first takes, or second, or third...). We also played at the Progman Cometh festival - so far our first and only gig. The record, Abracadabra, is released first in Japan March 2003 and we'll be touring there to promote it, and then later in Europe and USA. Allan is a strange person to work with. Very nervous. Stands at the back of the stage like a haunted owl, plays very quietly. I'm more used to players like Patrice Meyer, who can rattle your teeth with a storm of sound when the moment is right. If there is anything you'd like to add, please feel free to say it here. I still like playing live with the right people and I still enjoy working on my own projects in the studio. I am producing more music than ever before, doing a lot of collaborations. Sometimes it's with musicians I have never met! There's a CD coming out soon on Cuneiform called Uses Wrist Grab. The band is called Bone and it's Nick Didkovsky from Dr Nerve, John Roulat from Forever Einstein and me. Nick recorded some stuff in New York, I recorded some in England, we shuffled it to and fro across the Atlantic. John added drums and finally Nick mixed it in New York. And we've never met each other! Another project is recording songs with a friend in New York called Virginia Tate - her words, my music. She sings and we have various guests like the Connecticut musician Jim Matus on guitars and Greek lutes. I'm starting a new collaboration with Tim Bowness of Burningshed, also David Willey of Hamster Theatre. And I just did a remix of a track for Theo Travis, who is the latest sax player in Gong. I hope to die happily working when it's my time to fly! © Beppe Colli 2003 CloudsandClocks.net | Feb. 10, 2003 Want to know more about Hugh Hopper? |
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