THE CASTING;

The Traveller: Owen Knight (Cincinnati, OH)

We had a kind of Lynchian vision for the accompanying dialogue, it almost seemed like nothing else would suit such a surreal experimental concept album. Skit and I are both fans of David Lynch (okay, “Dune” was shit, but aside from that), ever since we'd first watched “Eraserhead”, many moons ago, there was something about his work that was darkly enticing. We especially loved “Twin Peaks”, so much so that we make Sam walk around holding a log. When it came to voicing The Traveller, I had a shortlist of one; Owen Knight.

THE ARTWORK;

Cover caricaturist: Kevin Trundley (Cleveland, UK)

When you're doing a cover for a split album, the first thing that often comes to mind is a split cover. Bit conformist though, innit? And this wasn't two totally unconnected works being put together on one album, it was a conceptual collaboration, so I wanted to go one step further and bring the two halves of the cover together. Thus with Bryan's recording room taking the left of the image and ours the right, all we needed was the perfect picture of the three of us to go in the middle. As luck would have it, I knew just the man to deliver an appropriate caricature.

► Owen Knight - “Blacklight Braille Takes The Stand” (1:45)

(from “Dietles Tavern”, M&E 451 / Vetco 601x / 1991)

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My brief was; “Like a Lynch film about beatnik poets.” Kismet, see what I mean? A veteran of the underground music scene, going back to the 60's with the Bitter Blood Street Theater, then many creative years with Blacklight Braille beyond, to be honest, I wasn't sure he'd go for it.  After such a lengthy and fascinating career in the arts (Owen was already 70 when Blacklight Braille joined the roster at Music & Elsewhere!), I kinda figured he'd have his feet up and be enjoying a pleasant retirement. To my delight, he jumped at the chance, it was then just a simple matter of his recording his lines and sending them over. Et voila, we lucked out and had a genuine legend on the album! Quite serious about his life and career, it's a story and a half, I promise you. I had the pleasure of interviewing Owen for The Magic Net back in 2014, waxing lyrical about his journey from Calvin Coolidge to Barack Obama, very worth a read...
LINK: http://www.mickmagic.net/Owen%20Knight.htm

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For the role of The Hostess, I was looking closer to home. Sam had wanted to do something with me (musical, behave!) again for quite a long time, her last contribution being the backing vocals on “Lights Turn Blue” and “Rock And Roll Lifestyle” from MMATT's final opus in 1996, “Creavolution” (MMATT CD1), an analogue remaster of which was reissued on TMR Records in 2018 (TMR CD 8170). Of course, me and Skit don't do much in the way of lyrics these days, so this particular project provided a somewhat unique opportunity. My brief was; “polite, yet disinterested, kind of flat, almost mechanical.” Pretty good, no? Skit and I toyed mercilessly with the voices, as is our way, and I think it all came together rather nicely in the end. Our Twizz wasn't on the original script (hey, don't look at me like that, she's had her 15 minutes with the Magic Bullet already!), but ended up on there anyway when she came running though while we were recording the kitchen/diner piece. So we gave her a couple of lines at the end, just to make it official. Like a 7 year old would turn down the opportunity to say a swear word, slap-free, huh? ;->

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► MMATT - “Lights Turn Blue” (4:47)

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► MMATT - “Rock And Roll Lifestyle” (6:07)

Kev and I go back a long way, our underground paths first crossing 30 years ago, when he was running a distro called The Trundley Experience and before I'd even started Music & Elsewhere. I used to keep a scrapbook of photos of all our friends across the network (I still have it!), and the pic above was the one I got from Kev (he's quite grey nowadays, don't tell him I told you), never one for the conventional. How did I know he could draw such great caricatures? Well, there was this album cover he did for punk/pub rock fusion band Wat Tyler back in 1992. The album was called “I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles”, and... um, look, my 7 year old daughter has her picture just opposite, so she's going to want to see this page... if I just say think Michael Jackson, can we leave it at that for now? Thanks for that, appreciated. But trust me, the caricatures of the band stood to one side, voyeuristically watching Michael bonding with his chimp, were simply brilliant. Okay, you're only human, you want to see the picture, don't you? Not here though. Um, oh yeah, now I think about it, I interviewed Kev for The Magic Net in 2013, it's on the second page of that. Don't say I don't spoil you. These days Kev is making strange experimental noises under the name of Conny Plankton, you'll find him on Bandcamp, naturally, and there's no better place to get your Trundley experienced...
LINKS:

http://www.mickmagic.net/Trundley%20(1).htm

https://connyplankton.bandcamp.com

o

As for the actual track graphics, well, the two aerial views were provided by our visitor, who kindly sent us the images from the onboard computer of his interdimensional craft. In the first photo, our house (the Asgard of this dimension) is the one with the single floor annex to its left and a big empty drive. In the last photo, which I gather was taken from a higher elevation over Salt Lake City (this does make sense, the US has a bit of a reputation for shooting down UFO's, think Roswell), you'll have to ask Bryan to point out where his house is. The room by room photos were taken by Sam as she was showing our guest round, carefully positioning herself behind him so the picture would take in the part of his version of the house that could be seen through the portal. We were quite jealous to see that he had a bath, whereas we do not. I'd quite enjoy a nice long soak in a bath at my age, bless me. He can keep the wall-mounted plates though, how awful were they? We didn't say anything, naturally, ever the cordial hosts. And he left us a nice present when he went back too; one of his portals (yes, I know they look like indoor TV aerials, fools everyone), we shall certainly have some fun with that, exploring all the other dimensional realms of the multiverse. Not like we can go anywhere else at the moment, is it?

CONTINUED