noah (descend in peace from us)

horsemouth was up at howard's recording 'noah' this friday (he will will have to sort out the sore throat vocal some other time). while there he repo'd some books;

typee - herman melville,
christ stopped at eboli - carlo levi,
to the finland station - edmund wilson,
the marvellous adventure of cabeza da vaca - haniel long,
friedrich engels (his life and thought) - terrell carver,
goodbye london (an illustrated guide to threatened buildings from 1973) - christopher booker and candida lycett green.

christ stopped at eboli both film and book are great - horsemouth thinks the film wins - Gian Maria Volonte is amazing in it. he must bring out the 'goodbye london' next time they go wandering - if only to see what survived and what didn't.

so horsemouth now has a thumbnail sketch of the song noah courtesy of a recording session with howard. horsemouth played a demo version on or about the winter solstice at his solo gig. horsemouth's guide vocal on it is a bit froggy - he's singing at the top of his range using a 'head' voice after a cold (honey and lemon would help probably). he's not averse to having backing vocals to hide his nakedness (hint). the ukulele part gives it the necessary lift and variation that horsemouth's guitar and vocal version did not have.

noah is a song partially written with bibliomancy (book diviniation). the flood abates, the ark settles on mount ararat, the trees and grass begin to grow again, a less than omniscient god (or the song's narrator at least) looks to see if someone has survived, he looks for them among the trees, he looks for them among the grass. but they have not survived, they are among the drowned. (it is strange that horsemouth, who was raised by atheists, should indulge in such god bothering).

the great advantage of being able to hear something outside of your own head is to be able to think about varying it - horsemouth thinks a little extension on the final verse, he thinks a ukulele introduction, he thinks a possible repeat of the intial theme as a middle 8, broadly the verse and chorus are two sets of two chords that are related to each other (G and F, Dsus4 and Aminor) and will sit over each other comfortably - a little more should be made of this. sometimes while recording horsemouth would fail to ground the chorus with a firm d bass note at the start - this may be worth repeating (it's an interesting effect).

broadly he wants a version for himself. the way he wants it - and with himself as lead vocal (even though his vice is not realy suited to itl) because he wants to do, if not a solo album, then a 'horsemouth to the fore' record. probably he will be using max's excellent photo from the gig as a cover. to do this he envisages recording over the summer (by some means or other), recording new versions of the better songs from his horsemouthfolk incarnation - the devil song, la fille au cheveux de lin, etc. he could dig up the versions of these currently malingering on myspace or on the harddrive of his mothballed computer, but really he needs fresh modern versions.

the musician of bremen stuff horsemouth would gladly keep doing as a joint project with howard and yet its key ingredients as it stands are howard's voice and howard's songs. horsemouth wants something of his own.