For over a decade now, AIDAN BARTLEY has quietly been working up a musical catalogue of real, emotive beauty. Indeed, had either of his albums 'Listen To The Soundwaves' (2003) or 'Vaudeville' (2005) been the work of, say, Tindersticks or The Blue Nile, they'd have been critically lauded across the board and he'd have been weighed down by awards from the likes of Mojo and Uncut.
Bartley's latest album 'Fragments of a Daydream' was released on Phonector (through www.aidanbartley.com) towards the end of 2008. This time it's almost entirely an instrumental album, though such are the strength of the cinematic melodies that the album stands up beautifully without either vocal input or the distraction of visual counterparts. It's more than reason enough for W&H to discover more about the creator of these tremendous records.
Born in Belfast, Aidan's early years were inevitably affected by the Northern Irish Troubles of the early 1970s. The peaceable Bartley family got caught in the crossfire when Aidan's Dad's chemist shop was firebombed around the time of the notorious Bloody Sunday. They decamped to York and as a result Aidan later went to college in London and was well-placed to grow up with the movers and shakers of the Post-Punk era.
“Yeah, I was into the Buzzcocks early on,” Aidan recalls. “I remember seeing them at the Manchester Apollo with Joy Division supporting them. They seemed really weird at the time, but very powerful.”
Aidan is attentive, intelligent and a fascinating conversationalist. It turns out he has a lot of creative touchstones in common with this writer.
“I was into a lot of the Manchester stuff from the time,” he continues. “I loved and still love The Chameleons. They were always a big influence, I loved Mark Burgess's manic passion. I had a bit of trepidation going to see them when they're reformed, but I saw a show they did in Glasgow and I was delighted they were still so good.”
Like most of us, Bartley would prefer to gloss over his earliest attempts to make music around the age of 14-15. He first fell in love with his adopted home city of Berlin during the 1980s but recorded what would become his first album 'Between The Gutter & The Stars' in Barcelona during the early 1990s.
In a story akin to Shack's 'lost' classic 'Waterpistol', the album wouldn't actually see the commercial light of day until 1997. A good five years after it was recorded.
“I actually recorded it in a week during 1992,” Aidan laughs. “I'd spent two or three years living in Barcelona and Zaragoza. I got a deal to make the album in studio down time, but I never had the money to pay the guy at the studio (El Laboratorio - Ed) and the master tapes then got stranded in the studio's basement for five years.”
How did it finally see the light of day then?
“I had a three-song cassette I'd been hawking round in Berlin and a label here offered to pay for it and put it out,” Aidan replies.
“It's since become a comedy of errors, though. The master tapes never saw the light of day again and about two years back I wrote to the guy at the studio asking him for the master tapes. Now he swears he doesn't have them and he only has a DAT of it.”
Such things really could only happen in the music industry, it seems. For all that, though, there are some great moments on 'Between The Gutter And The Stars' and songs such as 'Foreign Legion' and 'Weeping' show Bartley's sophisticated sound beginning to fall into place.
'Soulstream' would be its' 1999 follow-up. Between these two releases, Aidan moved to Berlin, but this wasn't the only change.
“Musically, I'd started listening to people like Philip Glass and Michael Nyman by this time,” he reveals.
“I'd really started getting into repeated piano melodies and that sort of minimalist approach, but I wanted to try and put that into something like a 3-minute pop song format.”
'Soulstream' also features a cover of Kurt Weill's 'The Soldier's Wife'. We're really getting to the heart of pre-War Berlin here. Weill – in conjunction with Berthold Brecht – has penetrated the 'rock' lexicon thanks to The Doors covering 'Alabama Song' and Ian McCulloch recording 'September Song' but is Aidan a big Brecht and Weill man?
“I'm certainly not an authority on them,” he replies.
“There again, it's true to say I discovered Brecht – and also Hans Eisler – from coming to Berlin. There's something very futuristic and modern, even now, about them. It's very atonal, slightly dissonant...grating, but harmonic. The German language word for it is Schrag.”
Sounds good to me. But let's face it: Berlin is surely one of the most atmospheric cities in the whole world and Aidan has lived there permanently for a number of years. I'm certainly a great one for an environment influencing an artist, so how does Aidan feel Berlin has seeped into his work?
“There are lots of great things about Berlin,” Aidan enthuses.
“It's great for non-mainstream people here, because it's very affordable compared with Paris and London. Friends of mine are always amazed how friendly and laid back it is.”
Knowing Berlin reasonably well, this writer can certainly concur.
“Yeah, I guess it's more of an unconscious thing,” he muses, “but I think the geographical location of Berlin – as a cross-road between east and west and north and south - seeps into the music because it's attracted people from lots of different cultures to come here.”
“Berlin, as you know yourself, is a very atmospheric and evocative city. Often, just walking around it feels like being in a film and certainly provides me with a lot of mood material for writing stuff.”
You've provoked an obvious, but I feel relevant question there. There's no denying your music has an extremely cinematic quality about it Aidan. Are you a big film fan and how much do you feel film and cinema in general influence the way your music sounds?
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“I'm a fan of a lot of central and eastern European cinema, although I don't feel it has too much bearing on my music,” Aidan considers.
“I think, however, that film music has influenced me whether it's the dark classical stuff people like Shostakovich did for the Russian epics or the almost cheesy/ kitsch things Morricone wrote for '60s B-Movies – not the Hollywood epics!”
“But there again, while people often say my work is very cinematic, when I'm writing I have no visual counterpart, so again it's probably more of an unconscious thing.”
At a tangent, this writer also sometimes detects some hot-blooded tinges of Latin music in Aidan's work. There are sometimes elements of Tango or Samba in certain rhythms. 'The Priest Hole' – for example - from the new album has a lot of Latin influence. Is this a result of living in Spain or studying Latin music?
“No, certainly not through studying it, though a number of people have picked up on that aspect of my music,” he replies.
“My Mother swears our family's descended from shipwrecked Spanish Armada sailors,” he laughs.
“Despite these spurious claims, though, it's probably closer to the truth to say I absorbed a lot of latin music during my time in Spain. Certainly I became a big fan of Paco de Lucia and also the Tango composer Astor Piazzola and also Ennio Morricone's influence comes into play again.”
Talk of Morricone inevitably swings us back to film once again. Although 'Fragments of a Daydream' is very its' own entity, one of its' tracks has been used by a Berlin-based acrobatic troupe of late.
“Yeah, well I have done quite a lot of theatre and dance-related work,” Aidan reveals.
“'Smoke & Mirrors' from 'Fragments of a Daydream' was commissioned by a German-Croat acrobat duo called Oko Sokolo who are very striking. They specifically wanted a number which lasted 5 minutes because they share and swap a cigarette during that time, so it had to be five minutes or thereabouts. I had the idea, then they came to my studio and we honed it from there.”
It must be quite a different discipline to write specifically with this sort of commission in mind?
“Yes, it can be quite chaotic working with film directors,” says Aidan.
“They express what they want visually, which is air enough, but sometimes they have difficulty expressing just what they really do what. Sometimes, I'm given a rough cut and I'm told “we want music here, here and here” or whatever. I usually end up playing what I come up with to a director and then it changes and we get something solid from there.”
It doesn't sound as scientific as I'd imagined, so it's good you're flexible. Talking of which, do you have a specific way of writing a song Aidan? Are you still a guitar player first and foremost?
“Yes, the guitar's still my primary instrument,” he says.
“I did get into composing on the piano in more recent times because you have bass notes and more of a range, but if I have anything difficult to play...well, I get my wife to play it instead!” he finishes, laughing.
A wise man indeed. But finally, with 'Fragments of a Daydream' breathing in the daylight of the market place, are there plans to tour?
“Well, when I play live practicalities mean it has to be stripped down as rule,” says Aidan pragmatically.
“Usually the live thing is a quartet – drums, cello, piano, bass, plus myself on guitar and vocals. There will certainly be a Spanish tour in May and German gigs in June and July. I'd love to do the extended band thing, but it's prohibitively expensive unfortunately. Besides, most of the musicians I play with are professionals and have other regular gigs.”
That's actually something else I wanted to ask you about. You have several regular musical collaborators such as Snorre Schwartz (drums), Simon Ayton and Wilf Moss. Do they actually help you in terms of composing?
“Not in the sense of writing the pieces, but we usually rehearse with bass, drums and keyboards and hone things down, which involves collaboration” Aidan replies.
“I've worked very closely with Snorre for ten years now and he's very musical indeed. He plays in a Balkan band a lot of the time, they're very popular on their own circuit.”
“With me, I've still got a lot of my DIY bedroom boy ethic, working up stuff at home in my own space. I still enjoy working that way to this day.”
Well, if it's the ethic that has propelled Aidan Bartley's superb catalogue thus far, we can only hope he continues in the same vein. 'Fragments of a Daydream' provides us with one of the year's most glorious sensurrounds of sound and it cries out for wider exposure. Quit dreaming and get on the beam as soon as you can.
(http://www.aidanbartley.com)
(http://www.myspace.com/aidanbartley)
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