Published January 17, 1998
| Although English
singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist Robert Wyatt's alchemical combination of pop sensibility and avant-garde daring is relatively unknown in the U.S., Thirsty Ear president/owner Peter Gordon believes that an audience may be primed for the label's January 20 release of Wyatt's new album, "Shleep". Gordon notes, "In the current wave of electronica, with a lot of technical and cold and sterile music, when you have an artist who's back to basics like this, who is a pure songwriter with a musical imagination, all of a sudden he sounds fresh all over again... He's really like an angel singing to you." In the 60's, Wyatt was a founding member of the jazz-slanted U.K. rock group the Soft Machine. He split from the band in 1971 to begin a solo career, but, in June 1973, he suffered a fall from a fourth-floor window that left him a paraplegic. Out of that catastrophic experience came Wyatt's 1974 solo album "Rock Bottom", a dark work that still reflects its creator's melodic bent and biting humor. Since then, Wyatt has crafted several solo albums (many of which have been only briefly available in the U.S.) that have fused left-tiling politics, far ranging musical textures, and spry pop alertness. Wyatt's singles have likewise mirrored his artistic restlessness: He has covered tunes as diverse as the Monkees' "I'm A Believer", Billie Holiday's "Strange Fruit", Chic's "At Last I Am Free", and Elvis Costello's "shipbuilding". Wyatt's 1992 album "A Short Break" proved to be aptly titled: He would not return with a record of his own until this past fall, when Rykodisc's U.K. subsidiary Hannibal Records released "Shleep". The album's leadoff track, "Heaps Of Sheeps", a tale of a sleepless man's torment by the sheep he is attempting to count, and the legend "Fat Chance To Dream" on the record's tray card reflect Wyatt's protracted battle with insomnia, which he says was reflective of a more profound malaise that kept him out of the studio for years. "In the early 90's, '93, '94, I had a very strange series of kind of mental events - I suppose that would be called some kind of nervous breakdown", Wyatt says. "We all get depressed, but this was something else. This was like a strange sort of fire storm in the skull. Whilst I'm not interested in people confessing their private problems in public - We've all got them, what the hell - it definitely is relevant to the lyrics. It was a very intense period of this, when I really found it impossible to sleep, so my whole life became a kind of weird dreams/nightmare". He adds, "I got such chronic stage fright that I even got nervous to sing in front of a single engineer. It [was almost] some sort of illness, really, that happens I suppose to people. But I've certainly broken through that, with Phil Manzanera's help, and other people being so helpful, really, helping me see stuff through". From autumn 1996 through spring 1997, Wyatt was granted the open use of Gallery Studio, a facility owned by former Roxy Music guitarist Manzanera. Armed with a brace of new songs - some somber, some witty, and many of them co-written by Wyatt's wife, Alfreda "Alfie" Benge - Wyatt enlisted the aid of an eclectic group of musical collaborators. "I try to make music that's kind of a living thing to me", Wyatt says, "so that it has to be people who [don't supply] just a flute sound or a harp sound but will be another person on the record. As different as people seem to be because of paths they take and the different languages they use in their music - it's corny to say it - people are people. They either have beating hearts, or they don't. That's really what I look for... Coherence, I hoped, came from the fact that I had got the stuff mapped out pretty clearly before I invited them in, so I wasn't just leaning on them to come up with something". The musicians on "Shleep" represent a radically wide spectrum of stylistic directions: They include Manzanera; his former Roxy cohort Brian Eno (who also produced and co-wrote "Heaps Of Sheeps", the only track not produced by Wyatt); Belgian jazz guitarist Phillip Catherine; Japanese classical violinist Chicako Sato; Trombonist Annie Whitehead, a veteran of U.K. avant-garde jazz and reggae units; British free jazz saxophonist Evan Parker; and former Jam and Style Council front man Paul Weller. Wyatt's experience with Parker, a longtime friend, and Weller, a relatively new collaborator, indicate how the musician is able to empathize with players in wholly dissimilar styles. He says, "With Evan, it's the hardest thing, because you really must respect the fact that he broke away impatiently from normal chord structures and indeed rhythmic structures many years ago. You can't abuse a friendship by making people do things that they find corny. My songs, as adventurous as I try to be, [are] basically quite simple, folky pop songs formats, which I then try to break out a little bit. He understood that, and as long as the setting is fresh and you're not dealing in clichés, he's very open minded about trying to do something with it". Weller, on the other hand, "just came in, and he paced about. The first thing he did was turn up everything to incredible full volume, so that the speakers were coming off the walls, saying, 'Quiet music's boring - turn it up'. He was the guest, and the guest is always right, so I turned the volume up". Wyatt pauses to chuckle. "And it was great, 'cause it reminded me of how it was 20, 30 years ago when you went onstage. Apart from anything else, he made an extraordinary amount of noise, and I remember that's what we used to do in groups. People say, 'Oh, that's not a musical quality', but in a way it is, because it turns music into a physical fact and gives it a kind of impact". According to Gordon, "Shleep", an engaging yet heady record that defies easy classification, was picked up by Thirsty Ear after Rykodisc in the U.S. realized that its release schedule couldn't accommodate such a work-intensive project". Gordon acknowledges that "Shleep" is a tough sell that required advance setup and "not a marketing 101 plan". He adds, "Quite frankly, we started pre-marketing this record in September for a January release, which is quite unusual. But we came to the conclusion that it has to start with press, because press base [a response] on individual feelings and not necessarily charts and normal pressures of the record industry. If journalists like a record, they tend to step forward and support the record". Gordon says that press response "has been overwhelming. We have everything from a Rolling Stone review, to features in Musician, Request, Ray Gun, Pulse!, Stereo Review, a drum magazine feature. Every music magazine has picked this up in some form or fashion". The label serviced "Heaps Of Sheeps" to commercial and non commercial triple-A and modern rock specialty shows in December and will actively begin working the record this month, hoping to build airplay out of the anticipated heavy press coverage. Gordon says, "We're trying to indicate to radio, 'You may not know this artist; this may not be one of your evergreen artists', but we're building a house in a step-by step fashion here, where the first floor has been built, which is the press response, indicating to radio, 'You can listen to this, you can have your ears tell you this is right, but at the same time, you don't need as much of a leap of faith, because look at the extraordinary press support you're going to get on this record". Though an American tour is not an option given Wyatt's wheelchair-bound condition, the musician has supplied Thirsty Ear with some tools for the stateside promotion of "Shleep". "We have a full audiotape [by Robert] of descriptions of all the songs that programmers can use, so that they have an interview with him pre-cut and ready to go, provided by [Hannibal in] the U.K.", Gordon says. "There's also a video of him describing all these things, which is tremendous. Additionally, we've made special press presentation pamphlets to indicate the depth and breadth of the support he has". Some U.S. retail outlets, like Rhino Records in L.A. have already done advance work for "Shleep" by stocking the import version of the album. Store GM Dave Crouch reports that Rhino has sold 20 units of the title and had to keep restocking because of demand. Crouch says of the impending domestic release, "Because there hasn't been a lot heard from Wyatt for ages, [and judging from] the import sales, with people buying multiple copies, it should do really well for us". "Shleep" is only the first in a series of U.S. Wyatt releases from Thirst Ear in '98. The musician now owns his catalog, and the label will reissue six full-length titles beginning in mid March with "Rock Bottom" and "Ruth Is Stranger Than Richard" (1975), both originally issued by Virgin. Four more albums previously on Rough Trade U.K. will follow later in the year. With a twinkling laugh, Wyatt says the reissue campaign comes at the proper time: "Coming out of this sort of dark period of a few years ago was a sense of wanting to take stock of the story so far, without feeling that I'd died and can't do anything more". |
