It feels as though it wants to be a “love letter” of a sort. But it isn’t really there yet. It’s not intensely passionate; it’s not yet full of those deep and personal codes that arise from having spent time as lovers or as the closest of friends. It’s more like a very early and tentative venture, saying that I’ve been seeing and hearing you, I’ve been watching you and feeling the growth of some kind of friendship, but I wonder if it is (or could be) more. I’m afraid, too. Afraid of how you might respond, or even more afraid that you will not respond. Afraid that if any blood flows into my words, you might miss it and find flattery alone, perhaps sprinkled with a spur here, a barb there, if that’s how you take some of it. Do I dare ask for your patience when you don’t really know me?
Anyway, this is mainly about our third time “alone together,” as I truly tested that “together”: It seems to have “tested positive” as the medical folk say. I can’t refrain from this reaching out, from this speaking (though with a computer keyboard that may not be quite as clumsy as a voice). It may be selfish on my part. But isn’t it true that everything may be such, for all of us?
The Underfall Yard was where we first met, right after our mutual friend BB (no T) pointed you out to me with undisguised awe. I heard, I believe, that at which his awe was aimed, or that which called to it. Then the first installment of English Electric seemed to confirm it, in concert with some reaching back to earlier efforts. You seemed so familiar, but also to move so easily and sensually beyond the familiar. I was brought to an emotional dead halt by “A Boy in Darkness.” I must confess, it had my attention locked in its cold embrace for days, haunting every other element of my everydayness. I wrote a brief note about that before.
[And so it begins. . . the reviews of the latest release from Big Big Train, English Electric Vol. 2. You can pre-order now, as the official release date is March 4, 2013. BBT is already shipping. Our Progarchists will be reviewing the new release intensively and extensively between today and March 4, 2013. Indeed, let us declare the four days of BBT an official holiday of leisure, truth, and beauty in our little Republic of Progarchy–Brad, ed.]
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“English Electric Pt 2 – Pictures at an Exhibition”
by Alison Henderson
I like to think that listening to English Electric Pt 2 is like visiting a rather exclusive sonic picture exhibition. You walk into the gallery and you are instantly surrounded by seven exquisite works of art, each with its own character, telling a different story, but somehow all inextricably linked. As the album begins to play, you are drawn to each of them individually, especially the detail and care that has been taken into bringing them to life and you are filled with admiration for their creators, and with awe for the effect they have on you.
East Coast Racer is a tour de force of the collection, big and certainly epic enough to cover a whole wall because of the detail and precision that has gone into its making. At its centre, you see this legendary steam locomotive the Mallard taking shape through Danny Manners’ intricate piano lines that start and end the piece, introducing us to its sleek lines and curves, before it bursts out of the canvas at breakneck speed, David Longdon’s voice soulfully expressing the pride and passion felt by the men who crafted and engineered this beautiful mechanical masterpiece. Ever changing, ever evolving, this work shifts up and down the gears several times, the attention to detail paid through the painstaking instrumentation, adding texture to the Turneresque picture evolving in the music.
N.B. AP is Andy Poole, DG is Dave Gregory, DM is Danny Manners, GS is Greg Spawton. Progarchy interview conducted by Brad.
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Progarchy (BB):When you put EE1 and EE2 together, how do you expect the listeners to see the whole EE? Say, 20 years from now, few will have had the experience of getting one, then the other. It will most likely be just EE. Do you expect your listeners–me, for example, or anyone else–interpreting EE1 differently in light of EE2? In particular, I think about a track like Hedgerow. As you probably know, Greg, I consider this the single finest conclusion to any album. Ever. Period. Even better than Abbey Road, which had that position for me prior to hearing EE1. But, when I do get to hear EE2, I will now see Hedgerow as the middle song.
GS: You’ve put your finger on something that has caused us a fair bit of soul-searching Brad. At first, we had a fairly straightforward view on this which was simply: ‘it’s a double album, but we’ll split it into two separate releases’. Our reasoning was that 2 hours of music is a lot for the listener to get their head around which can initially cause under-appreciation of the double album in question. We were also aware that if you release so much music at one time, you get one round of publicity then the world moves on. If you split the release into two, the band is in the spotlight for a longer period of time. The only downside to this release strategy is that English Electric becomes seen as two separate pieces of work and so we always planned to release a special double edition bringing it all together. The thing is though, and as your question makes clear, it’s not as simple as we thought it would be. If you’re splitting an album into two you do have to try to make two satisfying separate halves, which is what we have tried to do. And that isn’t the same as sequencing a whole double album. So, the question we began to ask is: what do we do when we prepare the double Full Power edition? Do we simply stick Part One and Two together or do we start from scratch and re-sequence it as a double album? You mention Hedgerow as being a strong concluding track but we’ve also got Curator of Butterflies which is, we think, another strong end-piece. Which one of those takes precedence and gets to close the double album? And what happens with the three extra tracks we’re including? Where do they fit in? What we now think we’ll do is to start again from scratch and re-sequence Full Power as a double album without any reference to the orders on EE1 and EE2. It may be that we find some of the sequencing on EE1 and EE2 also works for EEFP and if it does, it does. Or it may be that the sequencing is completely different. In any case, the additional tracks will inevitably change the feel of things. The other question you raise is what happens when EEFP is released? Does that mean that EE1 and EE2 should go out of print? If not, will any new listeners buy them or will they go straight to EEFP? This is, I think, something we’ll have to keep under review. If EEFP turns out to feel like a very different listening experience to EE1 and EE2, then it makes sense to keep them all in print. Of course, the extra tracks will also be available on an EP and as downloads to make sure listeners don’t feel obligated to buy a double album just to hear three new songs. So, for many people their experience of English Electric will be as three separate releases.
Progarchy (BB):Tell me about the additional songs added to the full package? Will there be much new artwork?
GS: There are three strong new songs. They are not leftovers from the original sessions but have been recorded specifically for EE Full Power. One of them is a sort of bookend love song to go with Leopards. Another builds on the main album themes of working communities and the English landscape. And the final one is something very different for us.
AP: As regards the artwork, I’m working on a lavish design with a comprehensive booklet telling the stories behind the songs and behind the album.
Progarchy (BB):After EE2, you’ve announced plans to release Station Masters. Can you give us some details about this? Will it be reworked older tunes? Are there some new tunes?
NDV by Willem Klopper.
GS: It’s a triple CD which aims to tell the story of the band. All recordings will be with the new line-up so songs from albums prior to The Underfall Yard will be entirely re-recorded. Some of these are radically re-worked, others are fairly close to the originals but with the strong performances that the current line-up is capable of. Even more recent material may be reworked to some extent. For example, I always wanted to feature violin in The Underfall Yard but we didn’t have a violinist at the time. Rachel Hall will feature on the updated version. Wherever we look back and think something could have been better, we’ll make it better.
Progarchy (BB):Will anything else come with the CDs? Any kind of BBT timeline or a poster? Concert DVD?
AP: There may be some video or other visual material. We haven’t made any final decisions on that yet.
Progarchy (BB):Where do you see BBT’s place the history of rock and the history of prog rock?
GS: I think it’s too early to make an assessment. There are many drafts of history. I hope we’ll find ourselves as more than just a footnote when later drafts are written. However, progressive rock is a fairly contained world and we’re a long way away from making any sort of breakthrough in the broader rock and pop worlds.
Progarchy (BB):You have an immensely large and loyal fanbase. How does this affect you or the band’s approach to music and the music world?
GS: We’re really lucky with our fanbase. They seem to us in all of our interactions to be a thoroughly decent and likeable bunch. The feedback we’ve had over the years has been really important. To hear that what we like to write about resonates with others and particularly that we’ve moved people with our music makes a huge difference.
Progarchy (BB):What is your view on packaging the material? You sell lots of downloads, and we live in a download world (for better and worse), but you also put a lot into the packaging of your CDs. Which I love. As you might remember, after I downloaded all of your albums up to The Underfall Yard, I contacted you because I wanted to purchase physical copies. And, it was worth the investment. Why do you consider it so important for BBT to have such beautiful packaging, especially in day and age? And, would you say such quality packaging should be important for all bands?
Andy Poole by Willem Klopper.
AP: The ideal package for us is a presentation of the words, music & images. The artwork is integral and we have been very fortunate over the years to have teamed-up with Michael Griffiths, Jim Trainer and Matthew Sefton who have each provided inspiring works that both complement & advance the sensory delivery of our albums.
Growing up with vinyl in the 70’s, you had an ingrained sense of interacting physically with an album … the touch, feel & smell of a new gatefold release was savored and an essential part of the experience … quite apart from placing a stylus in the groove and being aurally transformed to a progressive world of music where none of the old rules applied.
The initial advent of hurriedly released compact discs in their horrid plastic jewel cases and Lilliputian inserts amounted to instantly inferior packaging largely forgiven by consumers for the promise of digital sound.
We migrated to digipaks for the enhanced tactile experience, albeit in miniature compared to vinyl, and greater flexibility to represent the visual artists who collaborate with Big Big Train.
Although it is tempting to suggest and hope that other bands disregard the importance of physical product packaging to our advantage, I actually believe that it behooves us all to raise the quality bar up high and to the reasonable limits of affordability.
DG: It was certainly a very important factor with XTC. Andy Partridge claimed that every time he finished writing a song, he’d design a sleeve for it just in case it was chosen as a single! But then, he’s a very talented artist and can’t help himself. I’m certain sales of many of our releases were multiplied as a result of the packaging, as well as boosting the band’s ‘arty’ credentials.
Progarchy (BB):I’m always amazed at what a community BBT is. That is, it’s clear–from the music as well as things such as FB posts, etc.–that you each really like one another. There’s no sense of brilliant radical individuals working next to each other (such as in certain early Yes albums), but a true sense of group brilliance, an organic whole. What do you think accounts for this?
GS: From my point of view I come back to something I’ve said before – surround yourselves with talented people and things start to happen. There is something else as well though, and that is that the guys in the band are all thoroughly good chaps. We’ll all hold strong positions from time-to-time and we say what we think but good manners are important. Speaking of Manners, you’re the new boy, Danny, do you have any observations?
DM: Some of it is simply that there are no huge egos in the band, whether by luck or by conscious or unconscious choice. (Medium sized, maybe, but not huge!) However, one musical thing that strikes me is that the band members aren’t over-specialized – BBT doesn’t consist of “the singer”, “the drummer”, “the guitarist”, etc., all vying for the spotlight. Everyone is a multi-instrumentalist to at least some extent, and everyone also has writing and/or arranging experience, so there’s much more focus on making the music work as a whole.
DG: Don’t forget also that we’re grown men, not ambitious youngsters. We are focused on the music at all times, because we love it. Both Greg and David, as writers, are extremely accommodating in terms of accepting ideas and contributions from all of us; they have yet to display any serious proprietorial tendencies when it comes to protecting their original vision. Which is not to suggest that it’s an open free-for-all; we live with the songs for months, plenty of time to assimilate their essence, so we’re generally united in the common aim, ultimately.
Progarchy (BB):And, how do you see the role of Rob as engineer or any guest musicians you bring in? That is, how integral are they to a BBT sound, if such a particular thing exists.
The Seventh Train and Phill Brown of our age: Rob Aubrey. Photo by Amy Mumford.
GS: It’s an evolving sound and it will continue to develop. We have some really important collaborators at the moment and I envisage we will continue to work with many of them in the long-term. Certainly, Dave Desmond (who plays trombone and arranges the brass band) and violinist Rachel Hall will have significant input into Station Masters. As for Rob, he’s the seventh Train and our dear friend.
Progarchy (BB):Where do you see BBT after Station Masters?
GS: I’d like us to be playing some shows at some stage. It would be good to do something around the time of Station Masters and then something around each release after that. As mentioned earlier, we have another album well underway and have started recording it so that is likely to come out in 2015.
Progarchy (BB):Any final thoughts on the current and future state of rock?
GS: In Britain, the last of the high-street record stores has gone into administration. I guess there are similar issues in other countries. The supermarkets have stepped into the breach and will only really sell music in the pop charts, so the route through traditional music-distribution is closing down to most progressive bands. However, online, the choice is very broad and the issue there is getting noticed amongst all of the competition. Making a living out of music is going to get harder still but it’s been a labour of love for most folk and jazz musicians for years and I don’t see why it should be different for rock bands.
[Well, what does one say after such amazing interview, except—thank you. Thank you to BBT for giving us so much time for this interview. An even bigger thank you for making the world just a little bit brighter.—Ed.]
I would love to give an elaborate introduction, but, really, I’ll be very honest with myself–you’re here to read the words of Andy, Dave, Danny, and Greg. They very graciously gave us a significant amount of their time. All Progarchists eagerly await the release of Big Big Train’s much anticipated conclusion to the highly successful English Electric Part One. The first half released only last year represents, for me at least, the finest album in the rock world since Talk Talk’s 1988, “Spirit of Eden.” No pressure, guys.
Ok, Brad, remember you promised to bloviate only very, very little. . . .
Progarchy proudly presents an exclusive interview with Big Big Train (though, feel free to make this less exclusive and repost anywhere and everywhere).
Photo by Willem Klopper.
N.B. AP is Andy Poole, DG is Dave Gregory, DM is Danny Manners, GS is Greg Spawton. Progarchy interview conducted by Brad.
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Progarchy: Greg, EE1 did extremely well in terms of critical response. Did its success surprise you at all? If so, what part of it surprised you?
GS: We believed we had made a strong album but by the time the mix is finished, all objectivity goes out of the window so you never really know what will happen when others get to hear it. I think we were a little anxious about the number of other albums being released last year, and English Electric started shipping at around the same time as Sounds That Can’t Be Made, so we worried about whether it would get lost amongst all of the attention that CD was going to receive. A couple of weeks ago, Prog magazine published its readers’ polls for 2012. It only really hit home to us when we saw the results of those polls as to quite how much reach English Electric has achieved. It was surprising and very pleasing to be up there with Rush, Marillion, Porcupine Tree and Anathema.
Progarchy: Does its success change at all what you think about BBT?
GS: BBT is six chaps making music. However well we do, that’s all I think of it as.
DM: We haven’t reached the stage yet where our rider has a “no brown M&Ms” clause.
Photo not by Willem Klopper.
GS: I suspect it has changed how others view us. I read a couple of reviews recently where the album was described as being ‘hyped’ and I felt a little indignant as that misrepresents us. We’ve promoted it sure, but not in an excessive way. If other people write or talk about something, that isn’t hype.
Progarchy: How much of EE2 was written before EE1? That is, how much of this album is a response to the last? Or, are they really two parts of a whole?
GS: All of the songs were written and recorded as part of the same sessions. Any of the songs on Part Two could have been on Part One instead and we had mixes of all 15 tracks before EE1 was released. However, once we knew the track-listing for EE1, those eight songs on the first part got our maximum attention to make sure they were ready for release. As soon as EE1 was out we then went back to the EE2 tracks and continued to work on them.
AP: We wanted to take full advantage of the 6 month gap between the two albums to make sure all of the songs were at their best. That sometimes meant a bit of a rethink about the arrangements. East Coast Racer, in particular, benefitted from us being able to spend more time on it. We always thought it was a good track but now I think it’s one of our best.
Progarchy: Was the writing process much the same as the last album and previous albums? David clearly offered much in terms of lyrics and song ideas. It it the same with EE2?
Nick, Andy, Dave, David, Danny, Greg. Photo by Willem Klopper.
GS: We’re really in a groove with the writing now and have very established way of working within the band. I’ve written more of EE2 than EE1, but that’s just to do with how the track-listing fell. In fact, David has already written a lot of material for our next studio album and we’ve recorded Nick’s drums for some of the songs. The other guys are heavily involved in arrangement and, in truth, there can be a blurry line between writing and arranging. The accepted practise is that the songwriter is the person that composes the chord sequence, the main melody and the words. However, sometimes the parts written by the musicians for those chord sequences and melodies can be as important as the underlying music. So, the songs evolve at the hands of all of us.
Progarchy: Can you tell us about some of the themes–musically and lyrically–of EE2. The titles are poetically enticing, and there’s, of course, a huge anticipation on the web as to what the titles mean. Curator of Butterflies? Worked Out? The Permanent Way? Keeper of Abbeys (my favourite title)? For better or worse, I have lots of James Marsh images floating around in my head as I visualize the possible meanings of the titles.
GS: English Electric isn’t a concept album but it is an album with a number of themes linking many of the songs. On EE2 some of the songs pick up on the subject matter of songs from EE1 whilst others head off in different directions. Swan Hunter and Worked Out are both about lost working communities (from the shipyards and the mines) so those follow on from songs like Summoned By Bells. East Coast Racer is set in the 1930’s when a group of people designed and built a steam train called Mallard which ran very fast indeed. It’s a great adventure story. Leopards is a love song and provides an important contrast with some of the more epic material. Keeper of Abbeys is about a chap I met at a ruined abbey in the north of England. This man worked from dawn until dusk every day, tending to the stones. I got to know him a little bit but used my imagination to join up the missing parts of his story. Curator of Butterflies is inspired by a woman called Blanca Huertas who is the Curator Lepidoptera at the Natural History Museum. I read an article about her where she said the study of butterflies can allow so many tales to be told. The song is about how narrow the line is between life and death. I was very anxious about it sounding trite and so I wove a character into it to make it a story and tempt me away from spouting platitudes. Finally, The Permanent Way is the pivotal track where we try to bring everything together.
Progarchy: There’s lots of excitement about you joining, Danny. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and how you came to join BBT?
DM: Well, I started off learning classical piano from a young age, and later became very interested in twentieth century classical music – at one point I was fairly obsessed with Stravinsky and had serious ambitions to be a composer. In my teens I also took up double bass (and later bass guitar) and got heavily into modern jazz and jazz-rock. You could say I was always into “progressive” music in the broadest sense of the word. But also, I was at school in the mid-seventies when some of the classic prog rock albums were being released, or had recently been released, and handed round on vinyl. I remember really liking early Yes, and Gentle Giant – still a favourite band. After that, I was more interested in the Canterbury end of prog, probably because of the jazzier connections. At university, as the eighties started, I became fascinated with some of the new wave bands that were combining the more advanced musical ideas I was already into with the stripped-down aesthetic of punk, which I’d initially been completely affronted by! XTC became a particular favourite, and a big influence on a university band I played bass guitar in and wrote for. (It got nowhere, although the members all had interesting careers in music afterwards.)
After that I played a lot of jazz, and some free improvised music, on the London scene – on double bass. I joined a big band, The Happy End, which mixed up Kurt Weill, Sun Ra, swing, and protest songs from around the globe into a joyful, ramshackle stew, and got heavily involved for a few years gigging and writing arrangements for them – a highlight was working with Robert Wyatt, who made a guest appearance on a Happy End album. Gradually, I also became involved with various alt, leftfield or indie rock/pop singer-songwriters. The notable ones were: Sandy Dillon – that’s a female Sandy – originally from the US, whose band mixed blues and roots with the avant-garde, with Tom Waits and Captain Beefheart as major influences; Cathal Coughlan, one of the best lyric writers I know, whose voice and songs can range from beautiful ballads to corruscating anger; and, most importantly, Louis Philippe, a Frenchman resident in London, whose music mixes influences from the great pop writers like Brian Wilson or Burt Bacharach, classical music, jazz, French chanson…. I’ve worked with Louis for 25 years now, initially as a bassist, but later also as keyboard player and arranger, and as a participant in some of his production work for other artists.
In 1995, I think, Louis showed me a letter he’d been sent by a fan, who turned out to be David Longdon. David had included some of his own music, and was obviously hugely talented as a singer, songwriter, instrumentalist and arranger. So Louis had no hesitation in asking him to do a gig with us, and then to participate in Louis’s next few albums. (Also featured on those was Dave Gregory, who Louis had met when arranging and producing an album for labelmate Martin Newell.) I stayed friends with David, and he kept us informed about the Genesis near-miss, but we didn’t see each other for a while after that as we were both busy with young families. I do remember him telling me he’d joined a prog band, although the name Big Big Train meant absolutely nothing to me at that point. (I hadn’t kept up with contemporary prog at all.) Then a couple of years ago, he asked if I’d put down some double bass for a song called British Racing Green…
Happily, the band liked it. I think David had possibly recommended me for the keyboard chair earlier than this, but Greg and Andy may have been wary because I didn’t have any track record specifically in the prog field. However, when they started work in earnest on EE1 they asked me to see if I could do anything with the piano on a couple of songs. Again, it turned out to our mutual satisfaction, and in the end I contributed to almost every track, did a bit of arranging on Summoned By Bells, and stuck my nose in at the mixing stage as well. By the time attention turned to finishing off EE2, I was pretty much fully involved, so it made sense to them to ask me to join the band officially. I really liked the fusion they’d arrived at on EE, blending folk and acoustic instruments into the prog and other elements already there, and it was a great opportunity to work with fabulous players like Dave G and Nick, so I didn’t have any hesitation in accepting.
On EE2 I’m playing keyboards a bit more – including an honest-to-goodness, “I’m prog and I’m proud” synth solo – and it’s going to be quite exciting exploring further on future releases.
Part II tomorrow.–Ed. To order English Electric Part II, please go here–BBT’s official shop.
Nick, Andy, Dave, David, Danny, big red sign, Greg. Photo by Willem Klopper.
Great news today on Facebook from the station master himself, Greg Spawton of Big Big Train. Bassist and keyboardist Danny Manners has officially become a member of the band, joining Spawton, Andy Poole, David Longdon, Dave Gregory, and Nick D’Virgilio.
Spawton wrote:
We are pleased to announce that Danny Manners has joined Big Big Train as the band’s keyboard player. Danny made a significant contribution to English Electric Part One, playing keyboards and double bass and we are delighted that Danny has accepted our offer to join the band in time for the release of English Electric Part Two on March 4th. Danny’s past credits include Louis Philippe and Cathal Coughlan.
Manners’s training has been mostly in classical and jazz. He writes of himself at his website:
For those who have stumbled across me: I’m a double bassist, electric bassist, pianist, arranger and composer living in London, England. Starting with classical music as a child and teenager, I worked my way backwards through jazz and finally worked out how to play pop half-decently in my thirties. Along the way I’ve also been involved in improvised and “leftfield” musics. At the moment I’m lucky enough to be doing a little bit of all of these…
He also lists an impressive discography, having played extensively with Louis Phillippe, Louise Le May, Cathal Coughlan, Sandy Dillon, and Muse: http://www.dannymanners.co.uk/albums.html
I must admit, I’m (I–ed., Brad) thoroughly impressed with this addition. Over twenty years old, beginning with original members, Spawton and Poole, Big Big Train has never ceased to grow, take grand chances, and transform into what is arguably one of the greatest–if not THE greatest–rock band of our era. With their near collapse after the recording “Bard,” Spawton and Poole have developed the group tremendously with “Gathering Speed,” “The Difference Machine”, “The Underfall Yard”, and “Far Skies Deep Time”. Their 2012 release, “English Electric Part One”, has received rave reviews and has been labeled the single finest release of 2012 by a number of critics.
To this critic, “English Electric Part One” is not just the best of 2012, it’s the best rock release since Talk Talk’s 1988 magnum opus, “Spirit of Eden.” Before that, one would have to jump back to Yes’s “Close to the Edge” or Genesis’s “Selling England By the Pound” in the early 1970s or to Dave Brubeck’s “Time Out” to find comparable works of music in the last half century.
It should be noted as well that the engineer for Big Big Train, Rob Aubrey, is the Phill Brown of our era as well.
Finally, Manners has worked with David Longdon before, and–I assume–connected Big Big Train to the famous bassist and keyboardist.
The second part of English Electric will be released on March 4 of this year. American drummer, Nick D’Virgilio, a full-time member of the band, just finished recording the final drum parts for “English Electric Part Two.” Additionally, the band will be releasing a limited edition of the full “English Electric” in the fall and the re-imaging of previous tracks on “Station Masters” in 2014.
It feels as though it wants to be a “love letter” of a sort. But it isn’t really there yet. It’s not intensely passionate; it’s not yet full of those deep and personal codes that arise from having spent time as lovers or as the closest of friends. It’s more like a very early and tentative venture, saying that I’ve been seeing and hearing you, I’ve been watching you and feeling the growth of some kind of friendship, but I wonder if it is (or could be) more. I’m afraid, too. Afraid of how you might respond, or even more afraid that you will not respond. Afraid that if any blood flows into my words, you might miss it and find flattery alone, perhaps sprinkled with a spur here, a barb there, if that’s how you take some of it. Do I dare ask for your patience when you don’t really know me?
Progarchy 