Talk

“The Forests Of Your Mind“ – an interview with Paul Newland aka Clevelode

„Round, like a circle in a spiral / Like a wheel within a wheel / Never ending or beginning / On an ever-spinning reel…“ Well, that‘s another song, but leading on the right track. “Muntjac“ by Clevelode took me by surprise. In many ways. At first it may be easy to speak about a wonderful balance of song and ambient worlds. But there is so much more revealed in this epic, minimal, grandiose, ascetic, captivating, „less-is more“ cycle of songs and atmospheres than any clever amalgam of styles may suggest. 

I wanted to send my questions to multi-instrumentalist, singer and composer Paul Newland quite soon, after first listening, but then they seemed like take from the standard book and doing no justice to the album. I returned to this work, again and again, and there is no other way than to do it in the old-fashioned way, from start to end (being aware of the fact you might get lost on the way). 

As time went by, I felt myself walking through Epping Forest, or, better said, through those green power spots of younger and older days on the margins of Dortmund. Though there are references here and there, „Muntjac“ is a completely idiosyncratic work of art, far away from any rip-off from other classics of this and that genre. Which genre anyway, you may ask after another deep walk & listen. Though the geographical coordinates seem crystal clear, this journey is „Where-am-i-music“ in the best sense. So many ways inside the shades of blue, the trees of green… but the easy access doesn‘t take away any of its mysteries!  

Michael: The second piece of the album, ‘High Beech’, is a fantasy and reflection at the same time: the importance of that forest as life‘s company, and a time travel experience from a distant past to future times. A figure appearing here, like a ghost, is the poet John Clare. Apart from being a quintessentially romantic poet, can you tell something about his role here, in a kind of key track of the whole album? 

Paul: It’s nice that you think ‘High Beech’ is a key track, Michael. I agree. And I think your reading of the song is spot on. 

Clare’s link to the area was very much in my mind when I thought about making an album about Epping Forest. But the song ‘High Beech’ was written very quickly, with barely any editing of the lyrics. I kind of came out of nowhere. I didn’t set out thinking about Clare. But he appeared as I wrote. It was as if he was lurking in my subconscious. Perhaps I was also projecting myself – as a lone ‘poet’ wanderer in the forest – onto the figure of Clare – although that sounds rather pretentious! 

My interest in psychogeography and stories of east London have been profoundly influenced by the writer Iain Sinclair, whose book on Clare, Edge of the Orison, was probably lurking in my mind somewhere too.  

I was aware of the asylum in High Beech as a kid (my grandparents lived near there), even though I only learnt about Clare and his time up there as an adult. In one of my favourite Clare poems “The Gipsy’s Camp” he writes: “My rambles led me to a gipsy’s camp, / Where the real effigy of midnight hags, / With tawny smoked flesh and tatter’d rags, / Uncouth-brimm’d hat, and weather-beaten cloak, / ‘Neath the wild shelter of a knotty oak, / Along the greensward uniformly pricks / Her pliant bending hazel’s arching sticks.” I think some of the lines in ‘High Beech’ probably owe a debt to these lines – the reference to the gypsy train, for example. 

The song ‘High Beech’ is also influenced by the late-Victorian novel After London; Or Wild England by Richard Jeffries. I wanted to use the lofty forest landscape to imagine a future in which High Beech actually becomes a beach, after Essex and London are flooded. So there is an almost post-human ecological slant to the song – and to the album – too. The forest as portal to the past, present and future. 

On the title track, ‘Muntjac’, the transparency  and the airy jazz bass bring to mind – in moments – a kind of ECM-‘space’, soundwise. Do you have a close relationship to some more or less ancient ECM albums, maybe even some with a direct link to nature like Jan Garbarek‘s „Dis“?

Yes, I’m a fan of Garbarek, and of Dis in particular. I’m a fan of a lot of ECM music. Keith Jarrett. Ralph Towner. Chick Corea. Terge Rypdal. Eberhard Weber. Weber’s The Colours of Chloë is a big favourite of mine – I love the picturesque, romantic, minimalistic and harmonically interesting nature of the music. 

One of the things about ECM that I like is how a lot of the music they put out refuses to acknowledge boundaries between genres. I think ECM’s motto is „the most beautiful sound next to silence“. My music is often quiet! They put out beautiful recordings. Such care and attention to detail. 

I also write about film, and I’m aware that ECM has a special relationship with film, and has released some interesting soundtracks, such as Histoire(s) du cinémaby Jean-Luc Godard. 

It is easy to speak about a melange of song structures and ambient music. But there’s a lot going on in these long instrumental pieces. For instance, the first track, ‘Loughton Camp’: looking back on it, can you feel some more or less hidden, unconscious influences that may have crept into the making that,  interestingly enough, begins with very high notes that normally signal danger…

I think I’m a songwriter first and foremost. Recently I’ve been trying to think about more experimental ways to write. Tim Noble was a huge influence on me when we worked together in the Lowland Hundred. He really encouraged me to think and work more experimentally. To take risks. 

Working largely on my own as Clevelode, I think I’m being a bit more experimental than I have perhaps been before, as a writer and as a musician/composer/arranger. Although songwriting requires structure, harmony, melody, rhythm, and tends to obey certain rules, I’m trying to embrace improvisation, chance, and even mistakes. This approach informs the songs, but also the instrumentals on the album. 

I’m also getting much better at editing. I enjoy editing as a kind of meditative, unconscious pursuit. I try not to think about it too rationally. I allow myself to work on feel, on hunches. I try to trust unconscious decision making. No doubt this is where some my influences come through. Probably a huge influence on me has been the work Miles Davis did with Teo Macero. Also, of course, Mark Hollis’s work with Tim Friese-Greene on the late Talk Talk records has had a profound effect on me. 

The long instrumental pieces have a unique sound field. Nothing here seems easily comparable. And in opposition to a strictly minimal approach, there‘s a lot happening, for instance, during the last two tracks: i remember, at one moment, out of nowhere,  the strumming of an acoustic guitar.  Your are not simply entranced by purely repetitive elements, you have to be ready for something unexpected at any time … can you shed some light into the ’tone poems’ or ‘tone stories’ of these last two tracks. Again, there may be some subtle influences…

The long instrumental pieces on the album are the result of improvisation. I’ve embraced the use of analogue synths in my work for the first time on ‘Muntjac’. I use a Prophet 5, a Moog Matriarch, and a Behringer Odyssey. These are incredible instruments. Part of the fun of this has been the ‘not-knowing-what-you-are-doing’ aspectof it. Just playing, mucking about with filters. Learning an instrument on the fly!

I like music to be unpredictable. I like to use different colours and textures, to create and maintain interest. The acoustic guitar in ‘Ambresbury Banks’ was a result of listening to what I had done with piano and synth and thinking ‘this needs another colour’, or another ‘voice’. I just reached for the guitar and improvised, first take. Sometimes on long instrumental pieces it is good to have a few sonic landmarks – interesting things the listener can navigate by. 

While the opening and ending passages of the album evoke the sense of Epping Forest, of nature, the more central pieces, often much shorter, do the storytelling… ‘Grimston‘s Oak’ reminded me at one moment of a Damon Albarn song on his fantastic song cycle ‘Everyday Robots“, the phrasing of your singing probably… strange coincidence? By the way, the sequence of the album is perfect. 

I admire Damon Albarn. An interesting artist. Like me, he is from Essex. Perhaps there is a link in terms of how we sing, phrase and enunciate words, as you say! He wrote a song called ‘Hollow Ponds’ (on Everyday Robots) which is about a place I lived very close to in Leytonstone for a while. I think Albarn lived in Leytonstone for a bit too. On the edge of Epping Forest. But I don’t listen to his music much, if I’m honest. Maybe ‘Hollow Ponds’ was lurking somewhere in my unconscious, though. 

I’m very happy you think the sequencing of the album works well. It’s so important to get the sequencing right! This took a lot of time! Having two long instrumentals bookending the album was an early idea. I think of them as portals into the world of the album. Both ‘Loughton Camp’ and ‘Ambresbury Banks’ are iron age forts in the forest. 

I know you love that long Miles Davis piece ‘He Loved Him Madly’ from Miles Davis… an influence, too, for Brian Eno making On Land… the trumpet as the figure in a ‘landscape“…  similar to your history with long walks and biking through Epping Forrest: do you love to return to certain musics  from time to time, like the Miles Davis composition, or are such pieces so deeply engraved in your memory, that they more function on a subconscious level in your present life?  

Miles Davis’s work from the late 1960s through the mid 1970s continues to have a huge influence, yes. I certainly return to his music as much – if not more – than anyone else’s.  For me, ‘He Loved Him Madly’ is just magic. This is Davis’s threnody for Duke Ellington. I love the organ drone. I love the tasteful and interesting electric guitar work by Reggie Lucas and Dominique Gaumont. Al Foster’s snare and bass drum work.  I love the way the piece slowly and patiently creates a sense of space through harmony and rhythm. You can hear this music being ‘built’. It’s architectural. Over 30 minutes! I love Get Up With It, but also the long tracks on Big Fun and Circle in the Round – particularly the 18-minute version of David Crosby’s ‘Guinevere’, and the 26-minute title track.

Recently I’ve been listening to a lot of music by Wayne Shorter (particularly Schizophrenia and Odyssey of Iska), Herbie Hancock (particularly Crossings, Sextant, Mwandishi, Thrust), Harold Budd, Charles Mingus, Bill Evans, Alice Coltrane, Pharoah Sanders, David Axelrod. Also Eno, who you mention, and Labradford, Mogwai, Boards of Canada. I imagine influences have crept through, particularly on the instrumentals on ‘Muntjac’. 

In our young days we were often listening to albums for weeks, they blocked our record players. Did you recently have had a similar obsession to listen to an album again and again, or have your listening habits changed? 

Yes – I’ve been collecting vinyl again over the last few years. Spending too much money!!! But there are so many gorgeous pressings of jazz albums being released. I can’t resist them. The albums I buy I tend to play over and over again on my inherited 1970s hi-fi. It’s like a fine dining experience. I like to really listen to music, to really savour it and digest it, I like to make it an almost ceremonial banquet-like experience!