4. Super! Structure.

Knee 1b (Big Tree)

Welcome back again. It’s lovely to have you here :-) This week I’m talking about the fourth track to be released from ‘You Could Be Happy’. It’s called ‘Knee 1b (Big Tree)’, and below we find out why.

Knees

My mother never wore anything even vaguely short on the lower half of her body on the grounds that, apparently, the world wasn’t ready for her knees. They’re funny old joints. Despite the spectacular attention they received in Salman Rushdie’s novel Midnight’s Children, I couldn’t quite shake the vague sense of the ridiculous every time knees were mentioned. Although in fairness it’s years since I read it, so I might be remembering it wrong. On the other hand, if I’m right, I have a strong suspicion the ridiculousness of knees was kind of Salman Rushdie’s point.

The knees in this album have a more mundane purpose, in that they’re simply joints. It’s a concept I have borrowed from Philip Glass’ epic opera Einstein on the Beach, where larger scenes are punctuated by ‘knee plays’ which serve as smaller joining pieces, and sometimes commentary on the main action. I suspect to be completely fair I should say that the concept originated with the director and co-writer of Einstein on the Beach, Robert Wilson, and I think he still uses it, but my partner suggested that these emails might feature one too many references to odd people she hasn’t heard of, so I’ll just draw a line under that tangent.

In some ways the knees on this album also have a role similar to a Greek chorus, in terms of breaks and commentary. In ancient Greek drama, the chorus, a crowd of people, used to shuffle on stage in between the exciting bits and have a bit of a chat about what just happened, or explain stuff happening offstage, or just comment on things. Sometimes the knees on this album are commentary, sometimes they’re more part of the story, sometimes they’re just a little bit of respite from everything else. Cages, the first knee from a couple of weeks ago, was one of those respite pieces. Ish. Often the knees are solo piano pieces; but not always (unhelpfully, today’s isn’t).

The structure of this album is the ‘story’ tracks, punctuated by knees, which are sometimes also story tracks. The album has nine story tracks, six knees, and is divided into three sequences consisting of three story tracks and two knees each.

If that all feels a bit maths-y, don’t worry. You don’t really need to know any of this to enjoy the album. And here’s a sort of table as I suspect it’ll make more sense than trying to describe it.

I might keep this table up to date in our weekly emails so you can keep track of where we are.

Knee 1b (Big Tree)

The most prosaic part of this explainer is that there is a big tree outside the window of the room where I write music. That big tree looks sort of like the one on the cover, and I named this piece after it. But as with everything on this album, there are more meanings sitting under the surface.

I love trees for all sorts of reasons. I’m sure there’s a whole album of tree related music in me somewhere (so that’s something for us all to look forward to, yay). There is something spectacular and otherworldly about just walking around the streets and sharing our day to day lives with these giant organisms that are hundreds of years old. If you were as thrilled as I was to see Loki weaving Yggdrasil at the end of the last season of his show, you’ll kind of understand what I mean.

This tree is a pretty specific tree though. It’s a childhood tree, one that makes you think about how safe and magical the world was when you were young. It is overflowing with nostalgia, and a sadness for the things lost early in life, the opportunities missed, the bad decisions that brought you to this point… It is sickly sweet with self pity, the weirdly comforting place where you can simply give in and surrender to feeling very sorry for yourself.

I suspect this is the place where the Oslo barman and his friend actually went; not to true depression, but into this warm comforting childhood bed of lamenting your own misfortune and inadequacy. You can hear this represented by a very simple melody, played on a deliberately child like 8-bit synthesiser. Factoid for the truly geeky; that sound is a SID chip emulator, a SID chip being the sound processing unit in a Commodore 64. That sound is our protagonist lost in his own head, turning over the joy and shame of his life to date. And you can hear his depression in the background at the end of the track, in the form of the cello solo from I’m Not Going putting in a slight return.

As I’m never one to turn down the opportunity of stating the bleeding obvious, you’ll also hear time passing in the form of a clock ticking. Well, if it’s good enough for Pink Floyd, it’s good enough for me, and there is a lot in this track that calls to the sentiment of probably some of the best lyrics ever written, from Time. If you’re going to feel sorry for yourself, do it in style -

Every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time
Plans that either come to naught, or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way
The time is gone, the song is over, thought I'd something more to say

What next?

Glad you asked! Firstly, thanks for reading this far. You’ve already been part of the creative journey of this album, and I very sincerely thank you for paying attention. All I’d really like is for people to listen and be part of what I’ve made. Job done. However, if you have friends or people you think would enjoy this, please encourage them to sign up to these updates via www.thesixteenth.net. It would mean a lot. And maybe actually listen to the songs in whatever way you enjoy!

You can listen to the music here… and it sounds pretty awesome…