L.A.NOIRE REVISITED

Quite a few people have been asking how I got involved with writing for L.A. Noire. It seems it's a massive success with advertisements everywhere and amazing reviews, including some substantial pieces in the the more highbrow newspapers.

I have never played computer games and I don't have a television so I had been quite unaware of all the fuss.  

This is how it happened: my US publishers Primary Wave got in touch just before last Christmas to ask if I would be interested in writing a song in a 1940s style.  Of course I was interested and we had a conference call on Christmas Eve with Ivan the music supervisor at Rockstar Games.  We hit it off musically  because I loved all his references - Billie Holiday, Dinah Washington, Ella Fitzgerald and so on.  The brief was to write a song sung in the nightclub scenes by the character Elsa, a heroin addicted possible arsonist.  Lyrically, many songs from that era follow the same pattern - they are either straight out love songs or love songs wrapped in some metaphor - food, gardening, dancing, moonlight or whatever.  For L. A Noire, obviously that metaphor would be be 'Crime'.  (Actually, there are many songs already like this  - 'Murder, she said', 'Pistol Packing Mama' etc.).

Anyway, I ended up writing four songs - three of which were actually used: "Guilty', '"Torched Song", "(I Always Kill) The Things I Love".  Writing songs is actually my favourite activity (apart from collecting taxidermy obviously) and these came quite quickly.  Actually, 'I Always Kill.." was already in progress. My own version of it is on "The Last Werewolf" soundtrack to be released in July.  I demoed the songs with my friend the Scottish singer Pinkie Maclure and we sent them back and forth with Rockstar until we got the musical and lyrical vibe that suited the character best.  Here is 'Torched Song':

TORCHED SONG

Well I need something to soothe this pain
To cool the lava you pump through my veins
'Cause I'm burning
I'm burning up for you

And I need someone to quench this fire
Before it becomes a funeral pyre
Yeah I'm burning
With yearning so much for you

You struck the sparks
You fanned the flames in me
And now my heart's a blazing ruin
You say that you were only foolin'

Don't walk away, don't do me wrong
Don't leave me singing this torched song
When I'm burning
I'm burning up for you

You're love's a drug

I have to drop

It hurts me so much
But I can't stop
I can't stop burning
I'm yearning so much for you

You struck the sparks
You fire the flame in me
And now my heart's a blazing ruin
You say that you were only foolin'

Don't walk away, don't do me wrong
Don't leave me this way singing this torched song
Don't leave me burning
Burning up for you

------------------------------

You can hear it here.

I recorded the songs in London with a traditional jazz production - double bass, brush drums, upright piano, Gretch, sax, trombone or clarinet, no reverb.

Rockstar wanted the vocals sung by Claudia Brucken of Propaganda and Act. I had never met her before - but it was a real pleasure to work with her. In the end we used the takes recorded by Claudia's partner Paul Humphreys of Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark.  They have been working together for years and Paul knows Claudia's voice very well.  I sent stems (meaning the mix as seperated parts) to the Rockstar sound guys and they placed them in the game as they needed with a suitably vintage aged sound.

You can buy the songs on the official soundtrack from the usual places.  I was a bit surprised to find they just used my basic demos but still, they sound pretty good.

There is also an album on Verve with various remixes of some of the original 1940s songs used in the game. I wasn't involved in that although I have done remixes for Verve before. I have actually been backing off the electro-swing thing a little of late because so many people are doing it but it is always a pleasure to work with such amazing music.

Roll on 'L.A.Noire II' or 'London Noire' - even better.

L.A.NOIRE

Here is a clip "Elsa sings' from the very stylish Rockstar Games Blockbuster 'L.A. Noire' with "Torched Song' - one of three songs I wrote and recorded for the game sung by Claudia Brucken of Propaganda.  The others are 'Guilty' and 'I Always Kill the Things I Love'.  I am not a gamer myself but I am a fan of Elmore Leonard and of course the period itself so they were a pleasure to write.  All the reviews of the game I have read say it is amazing  so I am contemplating getting in a take away burrito and hunching down with a console myself to solve some murder mysteries soon.

TIME OF THE MONTH

Here is the Canongate trailer for Glen's book. Music by yours truly - although that isn't me singing of course. That's the very lupine Joe Guillotine from Lazarus and the Plane Crash. He gargles with ground glass.

It is a curious idea isn't it - a trailer for a book? I like it. We did this one too a little while ago for a Stephen King book collection. Quite disturbing I thought.

Whatever next - a trailer for an a record? - Oh yes, we did one.

The Last Werewolf album is done. As ever, it grew into something bigger and hairier than will fit on a disc or an overnight bag and like the moon it has a dark side and a light side.

I will share some of it soon.  In the meantime, I would appreciate any strange moon related anecdotes or facts from my friends here -  or any pointers to beautiful moon imagery.

JAKE THE NIPPER

Now, I don't know about you but I intend to be wearing one of these guys every full moon from now on.  Our dear friend, the very eccentric Ms Za Za made him as a limited edition for Antique Beat to celebrate the publication of Glen's wonderful novel The Last Werewolf.

Handmade with a gold plated fastener, he's gonna grab you by the throat and sink those vicious teeth in.  He's not quite the last but he is one of a select and dying breed.  He will be joined, or perhaps mourned,  by his girlfriend Tallulah in the autumn when the paperback comes out.

You can get him from the antique beat boutique where there are also a limited number of hardback copies of the book signed by Glen himself.

But most importantly there is a preview of the new The Real Tuesday Weld album 'The Last Werewolf - a Soundtrack'  It is called 'The Moonrising Suite' and you can hear it and hear more about the whole thing here. The album will be released from July around the world - but more on that soon.

"My, what big teeth you have Grandma.  And what big eyes you have.. "


For my friends here, for a limited time there is also a special sneak preview of a wolf song I made with my friend Little Red Piney Gir
at this place.  Shhh!

"If you go down in the woods today, you're to sure to get a surprise"

RIVER'S END

Early on Saturday morning there was a dead body lying spread-eagled face down in the shallows at low tide by Lambeth Bridge.  A suicide or an accident? A drunk perhaps who became lost and got stuck in the mud? Or a victim of foul play?There has been nothing in the news so probably not the last at least.  An hour or so later the body was gone - in all likelihood taken to the Wapping River Police Station and then on to the mortuary at Poplar.  But then to where?

In the old days it would have been landed at the stone stairs you can still see under Tower Bridge where it meets the north bank.  This place was formerly known rather un-subtly as 'Dead Man's Hole"

The corpse was just another of the fifty or so who are found in the Thames each year.  Until fairly recently the number was double that  - mobile phones have meant that more people, whether jumpers or tumblers, are rescued.  Of course in past centuries, the Thames was virtually a liquid cemetery - an unholy Ganges.  Bodies were indiscriminately dumped there - the murdered, those who could not afford a funeral, unwanted children and many more suicides.

It has always also been the site of strange and unexplained murders.  In 1982 the Italian Roberto Calvi known as 'God's banker' was found hanging under Blackfriars Bridge  and in 2001 the headless torso of a child 'Adam' was found  near Tower Bridge.  Investigations revealed it to probably have been a victim in a South african voodoo ceremony.

Rivers and bridges have always been symbols of our journey to the afterlife. Glen and I made this little piece a few years back about the river as final voyage.

I suppose we will never know much about the dead person lost and found last Friday night Saturday morning.

Will they be missed?  I hope so - this is for whoever it was and for all the dead the river has taken.  

Onwards.

HEAVENS ABOVE

It is a cosmic time.  Monday is the Spring Equinox and today sees the largest full moon for twenty years. That means it really is the time of The Last Werewolf.  


To mark such events I have been attending services on Sunday mornings at St Pauls.  I've not been able to believe in the one God for a long time but I do very much believe in the English cultural tradition. The cathedral is a very good place to experience this.  Besides, it is built on a Roman temple to Diana the hunter and before that in all probability on the site of a pre-Roman sacred site.  


Christopher Wren and Hawksmoor knew this when they conceived the epic design of the new cathedral after the great fire destroyed the old one.    A great psychic axis climbs from within the depths of the earth up through Ludgate Hill into the sky.  It is this which attracted the Romans to the place.  The pagan temple was open to the heavens - merely circling this  axis but Wren successfully capped it - creating the conditions for London's development as a great international city.  It is the reason the building was able to survive the nazi blitz when all around it was laid waste.

I recommend a visit on Sunday - you don't have to pay and you will hear some wonderful music.  If you do go, try opening up to the ancient forces around you.  They may have some surprising effects.

The central intersection of the nave and the wings is effectively a giant roofed Stonehenge. This became apparent to me in what I can only describe as a psychic revelation - one of a series I have experienced around the Clerkenwell environs.  There is a twin psychic pole through that other centre of English culture, Westminster abbey and, as I have noted before, a corresponding horizontal axis along the line of the subterranean river Fleet.  The Fleet forms the boundary between the city of Westminster and the city of London. These have always had different gods  - power and money respectively - and, together with the spiritual axes through the cathedrals, form the forces around which the physical and psychic city spins.  

Long may it continue to do so.

THE LAST WEREWOLF

I have been working on the next The Real Tuesday Weld album.  It is a soundtrack to Glen Duncan's new novel 'The Last Werewolf'.  The book will be published in April by Canongate in the UK, in July by Knopf in the US and around the world during the rest of the year.

Glen and I are old friends - the album 'I Lucifer' was a soundtrack to his book of the same name.  They sort of grew up together in my place in Clerkenwell, as did we I suppose.

I read the manuscript to the new book at the beginning of last year.  He didn't have a publisher then but I knew right away it was going to be a success.  You see I think it may be his best yet. He has published seven previous novels and I recommend them all but this one combines his remarkable literary flair with a genuinely moving and page turning tale in a way people rarely manage these days.

The album is timed to come out in July with the US version but we will be making a musical suite drawn from it available to mark the UK publication in April.  We are intending various live events and all sorts of funny business too.  And as ever, there are some very special guests including Glen himself, Marcella Puppini, Pinkie Maclure, Piney Gir and Joe Guillotine from the very lupine Lazarus and the Plane Crash.

So, more soon -  only two more full moons to go..
In the meantime find out more about the book here

A DREAM OF THE CITY

The ongoing upheaval in the middle East reminds me that London was once considered to be 'The New Jerusalem"

According to legend, the ancient founders of the city came from Palestine about 2500 years ago, a lost tribe fleeing a cataclysm. 

This was a convenient belief in mediaeval times - it made the city older and more significant than Rome upon whom Henry VIII had viciously turned.

And it explains the meaning of the lines in William Blake's poem Milton:

"I will not cease from Mental Fight,

Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand:
Till we have built Jerusalem,

In Englands green & pleasant Land"

After the great fire in 1667,  Christopher Wren with Nicholas Hawksmoor and James Gibb planned to  rebuild the city actually as the New Jerusalem with St Pauls at the cosmic centre. They didn't manage to realise their dreams - their cosmically inspired geometric plan got lost in the labyrinthine archaic alleys and twisting patchwork of ancient ownership but they did manage to embed some of their occult ideas in the city fabric and, in Hawksmoor's case, in the buildings themselves.  Hawksmoor was a freemason, a sinister, secretive and strange man.  His churches are my favourites in the city.  Some, like St Mary Woolnoth, are deeply weird and Iain Sinclair believes Christchurch in Spitalfields actually exerts a malevolent force on the neighbourhood.  

But, when it comes to imaginary versions of the city, my favourite of course is the one depicted in Mary Poppins.  Walking up Ludgate Hill, I am always half expecting to see her bustling along with her umberella.

If you are a fan of St Pauls by the way, you may be delighted to know that there is a tiny version of it held in the hand of one of the strange statues on Vauxhall bridge. 

It is pretty difficult to see without falling into the river so mind how you go.

LOVE IS IN THE AIR

I was in Moscow the other week for the Cardboardia festival which is organised by friends and which we are hoping to bring to London.  It is quite bonkers in a very creative utopian way.  A kind of cross between origami and Woodstock.

I really like going to Russia because of the wonderful people although this time, given the ensuing terrible events at Moscow airport, I was rather relieved to get out alive.

Ironically, I was there to DJ at a "Love Party" - a task I will be happily repeating this weekend for three Valentine's events in a row in the romantic grandeur of the ruins of Battersea Power Station.  I will be accompanied by those glamorous honey-traps The Bees Knees. 
It is called The Lost Lovers' Ball

Antique Beat will be sending out  a little Valentines present to friends on the list this week.  You can join here if you haven't already.
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Then it's back to work on the next The Real Tuesday Weld album - a soundtrack to my good friend Glen Duncan's next novel "The Last Werewolf" which will be published in a few months by Canongate / Knopf and subsequently by various houses around the world.  Books haven't gone the way of albums - yet - but we will be defying convention as ever and making something you can actually hold in your hands and give to people you like.

I've always felt a little like the Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz with his paper heart although of course mine is now made from Cardboard.

Happy Valentines to us all!

MUDLARKING

Here is the mouth of the river Walbrook where it exits into the Thames.  I have written elsewhere about the ghost rivers of London but the Walbrook is one of the smallest - and strangest. It is also one of the more difficult to trace.  This was the river around which the Romans built Londinium, the first incarnation of the city in what is now the old financial district.  It seems to have been sacred to them.  On its banks they built the temple of Mithras, the remains of which you can still see squeezed between two grim office buildings near Mansion House.  Some very beautiful treasures, such as the head of Mithras shown here, were found deliberately placed in its channel.  

Speaking of treasure, I was down on the river bank early yesterday for one of the lowest tides of the year and I came across several 'mudlarks'.  Now the original mudlarks were written about by John Stow in his epic seventeenth century Survey of London.  They were scavengers who patrolled the banks of the river up to their waists in mud seeking a living by collecting almost anything they could use, sell or eat.  An unpleasant, cold and smelly job no doubt.  Mind you, however unpleasant, it couldn't have been worse or more dangerous than that of the 'Toshers' who entered into the sewage system from the river bank to search it for whatever valuables could be found fallen from above.  The hard won knowledge necessary for both occupations was a closely guarded secret and seems to remain so today.   

You see you can still find many old things on the river bank.  Fragment of clay pipes from the 17th and 18h century are common.  Prior to cigarettes, these were the cheapest way to smoke.  You would buy a bundle of five, pre-packed with tobacco, smoke them and throw the pipe away.  Decorated and carved ones are rare and very collectable.  Coins, pots, and other more substantial finds are found fairly regularly. Such was the case a few years ago with the gorgeous Battersea Shield.  So on very low tides a new breed of scavengers descend and start digging and sifting and searching.  There are have been a few high profile treasure finds in England in the last couple of years - usually by guys like these operating on the fringe of legality.  

The contemporary mudlarks, equipped with metal detectors, spades and rubber waders, are a tight-lipped bunch. Yesterday, I tried to engage several in conversation without much success.  They are not genial, academic or enthusiastic collector types but hard-bitten, secretive grumps.  At least one tried to waft me away from where they were digging (the mouth of the Walbrook) to somewhere where he suggested the more easy pickings were.  They claimed to be looking for ceramics (finds of which have a different legal status than gold or silver) but that seemed unlikely given the vicious spade he was vigorously wielding and the metal detectors being waved by the others.  I didn't really mind. I was glad to find that such an old London occupation was still being practised.

Besides, there has to be an upside to spending Sunday morning up to your neck in sh**.