saz, guitar and derelict building improv with Tim C

me - saz
Tim - acoustic guitar, ambient sound


Ilford Park Polish resettlement camp - photo by George Harris
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Tim recently moved from Plymouth to Exeter and got in touch via the Children of the Drone website about possible musical collaboration. I went to meet him and after a quick up of tea we were into some lovely modal jamming, with him bringing in some ambient sound from his laptop. He'd recorded it in a derelict building near Newton Abbot (part of a resettlement camp for Polish refugees immediately after WWII), slowed it down and layered it. Dripping water, stuff scraping along concrete floors, etc. It was a good idea, as the strings felt less exposed so that we could relax into the jam more, and the recording ended up sounding more interesting than it would have otherwise.

Tim's into bleak arthouse films, Pessimist philosophers and a lot of miserable music, but he's got a sense of humour (I notice the complete works of Morrissey among his CD collection). He told me about his partially-succesful attempt to get a group called "Relentlessly Depressing" together in Plymouth (with track titles like "Total Psychological Devastation"!), the idea being to take dirgey music so far it becomes hilarious.

He also pointed out that Henry Drone's drumming is rather like that of Jim White from Dirty Three. I'd not heard them (turns out to feature Warren Ellis from The Bad Seeds), so he played me some - melancholy instrumental music, and rather good.