Out of all the nine tracks I produced for Ape last year this is my personal favourite.
It’s got this strange dark undercurrent going on- with monks chanting and a lot of dissonance-some people find it quite hard to listen to but it seems absolutely perfect to me—balanced-but just teetering on the edge of disaster.

I played it to someone once in headphones and they said it felt like their head was being pulled apart!! Someone else described it in a blog as sounding like “making filthy love in a railway arch, whilst on acid, in 1940s New York”. Which of course I was thrilled by.

When it was in its early days as a bunch of unconnected noises put together by me and Andy, I played it to some other singers to see if they were interested in contributing to it- the reaction was “no- its shit!!”.- hahah – But Jen took these completely random bits of music and glued them into something completely different. From then on it just needed organizing and arranging. I spent months lovingly tweaking and moving it about in a dark obsessive manner.

The video came about as I was messing about watching old cartoons and simultaneously listening to music. I slowed down a Little Audrey cartoon from 1949 to half speed and it’s as if it was made for it- quite spooky really.

It’s on the Hard Listening EP which of course everyone should buy.

 

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Hello, your dear helmsman Andy Partridge here. I want to pick your brains and I have my hand whittled cocktail stick at the ready. XTC would like to release an APE version of RAG AND BONE BUFFET, hooray! lots of new notes, photos and a sparkling remastering job. Thats all good, but we also think there is a sister volume to be found. Yes, another herd of B sides, extra tracks or odious oddities that found themselves escaped into the wider world and we’d like your help in rounding them up.

The new disc has a working title, BRIC-A-BRAC BREAKFAST, and we already know some of the songs that will be included. Tracks like SPIRAL, SAY IT, WHERE DID THE ORDINARY PEOPLE GO? etc. What we’d like you to do is if you can think of a favourite piece of missing work from XTC {the 12 inch remix of KING FOR A DAY anyone?} then post your suggestions as comments below. What tracks can you think of that may have slipped the net? That aren’t included in RAG AND BONE, or aren’t sitting snug on a regular album somewhere, something you would like brought back from the grave?

Happy tapping, and i’ll be over to look at the results shortly.