An
interview with
Hugh
Hopper (2003)
—————-
By
Beppe Colli
Feb.
10, 2003
It
was in 1999 that I had the pleasure to interview Hugh Hopper for the
first time. Since then, just a few CDs have been released: first it
was The Swimmer, a pleasant album by a nice quartet (piano, drums, bass
and vocals); then Cryptids, the second chapter of his collaboration
with singer Lisa S. Klossner: an album that to me sounded more successful
than their first joint effort (and I’m really sorry that not too many
people seem to have bothered to listen). Very recently there was Jazzloops,
his new solo CD. So I thought the time was right for a conversation:
to discuss the new album and tie some loose ends. I sent him some questions
via e-mail on Saturday February 8. You can read our exchange below.
If you don’t mind, as a first topic for this conversation I’d
like to ask you about your recent CD, Jazzloops: what was the initial
impulse behind this new collection?
About 18 months ago I started to get a small recording studio together
– not to record bands, but to work on sampling and assembling soundscapes.
It’s a Cubase VST Audio system working with a PC – not the most sophisticated
set-up but OK for the personal sort of music I like to produce. It’s
really just a modern version of all the loops and soundscapes I have
been doing since the 60’s, except that now I don’t have to cut up and
paste together real tape – the computer does all that (and much faster).
I have always been attracted to the atmosphere of loop-music since working
with Daevid Allen in London and Paris in 63-64. He really showed me
the way and sowed a seed for me. I like to play live with other musicians
as well – that’s a different buzz – but there’s something special and
very personal about working away in intricate detail on soundscapes.
What’s the source material? There seems to be quite a lot of real-time
playing on quite a few tracks: was it overdubbed over the loops or was
it the other way round?
Mostly I start with a rhythmic loop, like bass and drums from a live
gig, either natural or pitch-shifted or slowed down/speeded up. That
sets the rhythmic feel. I then add colours and solos – myself on bass
or guitar (even some backing vocals here and there!), or sax players
like Simon Picard and Pierre-Olivier Govin, who both came down to record
at Delta, the studio next to mine. In some cases I have sampled solos
that I had already recorded on gigs and maybe stretched or twisted them
to fit the atmosphere of the piece, like the sax solo by Didier Malherbe
on Sfrankl.
The CD credits are a bit on the vague side – i.e., the players
are not credited for each individual track (though I think Elton Dean
and Didier Malherbe are quite easy to spot). But what about a track
like Nigepo – is it Nigel Morris + Pierre-Olivier Govin?
Exactly. It’s a loop of a drum figure by Nigel from Isotope days,
over which I added bass and other colours and then had Pierre-Olivier
solo over the backing track. He’s great, my favourite alto sax player
at the moment – such a singing, flying voice on sax.
Here’s the line-up. Almost all of the bass is me. There’s a lot of
unidentifiable loops and samples of course, from various very obscure sources, but the featured musicians
on the tracks are:
| T3 | Simon Picard (sax) Christine Janet (tpt, vx) |
| Afrik | HH (fuzz bass) Simon Picard (sax) |
| Garrisoi | HH (vx) Simon Picard (sax) Christine Janet (tpt) Francois Verly (tabla) |
| Sfrankl | Didier Malherbe (sax) Steve Franklin (synth) Pip Pyle (dms) |
| ACLoop | HH (fuzz bass) John Marshall (dms) Elton Dean (sax) |
| Calmozart | Pierre-Olivier Govin (sax) Didier Malherbe (vx) HH (fuzz bass, gtr,vx) John Marshall (dms) |
| Aintpo | Pierre-Olivier Govin (sax) HH (gtr, Hammond org) |
| 1212 | Pierre-Olivier Govin (sax) Patrice Meyer (gtr) Kim Weemhoff (dms) |
| Digwot | Pierre-Olivier Govin (sax) Robert Wyatt (vx, pno) |
| L4 | Pierre-Olivier Govin (sax) HH (gtr) Francois Verly (dms) |
| Nigepo | Pierre-Olivier Govin (sax) HH (gtr) Nigel Morris (dms) |
Is it a Jimmy Garrison sample on the track Garrisoi?
It certainly sounds like him, doesn’t it? It came from one of those
discs you can buy of different riffs, and it reminded me of Garrison,
the sort of Coltrane drone things he was so good at and which influenced
my own playing and writing very much. I never saw him with Coltrane
but I saw him with Archie Shepp. He grunted all the time, like Elvin
Jones does. The pair of them must have been scary as a rhythm section
– grunting away together while Coltrane sailed away on sax.
The CD is on the Burning Shed label: is it available in the shops
or via mail order only?
On the web only, at burningshed.com. They are a great new company.
They burn CDs on demand, they have an interesting catalogue of ambient
and other music building up. They are musicians, Tim Bowness and Peter
Chilvers who have started the company. It was funny how I came in contact
with them – they already had a CD called Hew Hopper’s Base by a group
named Sebastian. It’s nothing like my music really, Sebastian called
it that as a tribute to me. I emailed them to see what was happening
and they invited me to send some music if I had some available. With
my new recording studio I have been producing so much new stuff that
I immediately offered them a collection of loops, which was Jazzloops.
One of the true original bass players – John Entwistle – passed
away. Who do you consider as doing quality work nowadays?
There are lots of technically very good bass players, but I don’t
hear anything really new or startlingly different. That guy in Morphine
was great – two strings! But he died. I listen more to ethnic music
these days, as well as all my old jazz records. I think I am more interested
in different sounding tunes and the overall atmosphere of the music
than focusing on single players, especially bass players. In fact I
am more attracted by good drummers or sax players than fast tricky bassists.
Thanks to the CD reissue phenomenon, all the musicians who’ve
had long careers – I think this to be true both of the Rolling Stones
and Evan Parker – find themselves competing with their own past. Since
the old Soft Machine catalogue is still in print – and with CDs of unreleased
stuff constantly surfacing – do you ever get the feeling that your present
work does not get the proper amount of attention?
Well, I understand why people want to hear the old stuff – I do it
myself with other musicians. But I have to keep producing new music.
It’s like breathing – I don’t have the choice: it just keeps coming.
What about the quartet that put out the Swimmer CD? Any chance
of a Vol. II?
No plans at the moment. Jan Ponsford who sang on that record has
also been down to Delta Studio to record some voice over my loops –
that’ll be on the next collection. She’s a marvel. Great improviser
and can also sing great harmonies to songs.
In our previous conversation you talked about your collaboration
with Lisa S. Klossner, Different, but at the time I had not listened
to it. I have to say I enjoyed the second CD more: Cryptids was more
clearly recorded and had quite a lot of "humans" playing on
it. Any news in this department?
We have about half of another CD recorded already – continuing the
trend away from midi to real musicians. Patrice Meyer and Phil Miller
on guitar, Andy Ward and Charles Hayward drums on different tracks.
I was listening to the first one recently for the first time for a while
and I still like a lot of the songs. Yes, it’s very minimal – mostly
just synth and Lisa’s voice. But its day will come!
Hughscore have quite a few fans here in Italy – as they do, I
suppose, everywhere. Please, keep me current on this.
We played at the Progman Cometh festival in Seattle last summer,
2002, (the first real Hughscore gig), but it’s hard to get together
to work on a new record – Fred Chalenor and Elaine Di Falco have divorced
and she’s living in California, and Tucker Martine is always so busy
in his own professional studio. But we are officially supposed to be
doing another CD for Cuneiform when we get a chance.
Last topic: I’ve heard of a project called Software. Would you
mind telling me more?
It’s now called Soft Works. Allan Holdsworth, Elton Dean, John Marshall
and me. Leonardo Pavkovic’s idea. He’s an enthusiastic New Yorker (from
Croatia, Bosnia, Italy and other places) and a Soft Machine fan. We
recorded in London in June 2002 and Allan took the tapes back to Los
Angeles to mix and do his guitar solos (he’s never satisfied with first
takes, or second, or third…). We also played at the Progman Cometh
festival – so far our first and only gig. The record, Abracadabra, is
released first in Japan March 2003 and we’ll be touring there to promote
it, and then later in Europe and USA. Allan is a strange person to work
with. Very nervous. Stands at the back of the stage like a haunted owl,
plays very quietly. I’m more used to players like Patrice Meyer, who
can rattle your teeth with a storm of sound when the moment is right.
If there is anything you’d like to add, please feel free to say
it here.
I still like playing live with the right people and I still enjoy
working on my own projects in the studio. I am producing more music
than ever before, doing a lot of collaborations. Sometimes it’s with
musicians I have never met! There’s a CD coming out soon on Cuneiform
called Uses Wrist Grab. The band is called Bone and it’s Nick Didkovsky
from Dr Nerve, John Roulat from Forever Einstein and me. Nick recorded
some stuff in New York, I recorded some in England, we shuffled it to
and fro across the Atlantic. John added drums and finally Nick mixed
it in New York. And we’ve never met each other! Another project is recording
songs with a friend in New York called Virginia Tate – her words, my
music. She sings and we have various guests like the Connecticut musician
Jim Matus on guitars and Greek lutes. I’m starting a new collaboration
with Tim Bowness of Burningshed, also David Willey of Hamster Theatre.
And I just did a remix of a track for Theo Travis, who is the latest
sax player in Gong. I hope to die happily working when it’s my time
to fly!
©
Beppe Colli 2003
CloudsandClocks.net
| Feb. 10, 2003
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