A song sample of the track with Paul Buchanan can be found here:
http://www.bighelium.com/MichaelBrook.htm

"RockPaperScissors"

Track by Track:

Track 1
"StrangeProcession" -- I like that it begins with a Bulgarian choir,
ends with a Lebanese violinist, and has a rock band from Turkey in-
between. It develops at times into a tongue-in-cheek homage to Led
Zeppelin when they were doing their eastern rock thing
(i.e. "Kashmir").

Track 2
"Want" is a collaboration with Lisa Germano and I think she did an
amazing job creating personal and strong lyrics. The scenario for
this song is where someone in a relationship has essentially decided
it's the wrong thing. But they can't end it as the other person is
always happy and they don't want to rain on their parade; or the
person is always sad and they don't want to kick them when they're
down. Richard Evans did a great job of taking the original chord
progression played on a keyboard (which is slightly irregular but has
a very emotional quality) and orchestrating it for the Bulgarian
orchestra. The conductor of the Bulgarian orchestra was fantastic and
had a strong understanding of the feel we were going for, which was a
little more rigorous than romantic. And Lisa's vocal performance is
emotionally involving without being overwrought.

Track 3
"Doges" -- There isn't really a story behind this piece. In general
for me there is not an idea and then the music. I tend to play
randomly and improvise and then something comes out that I like; then
I record and develop it. You work on the music and each time
something there suggests what you should do next. It's an incremental
process and at the start I don't know what the ending will be. It's
making music that sounds good to me at the time.

Track 4
"Dark Room" has an amazing reading in it by Sir Richard Burton. I was
playing the track to Rich Evans and we thought there should be some
spoken word -- something that really appealed to me to try on this
project. I randomly heard a clip of Burton reading something from
Dylan Thomas's "Under Milk Wood"… the power and emotion of his voice,
and the abstract imagery that created with the words, suddenly
brought new life into the music. It's just a list of things but it is
done with such vigor that it creates a hard to specify but moving
experience for me.

The contents of the piece probably sound very weird: Burton
reading "Under Milk Wood", our amazing Lebanese violinist, a
Bulgarian orchestra and then the sort of slightly fake rock music
that I do. I think the thing that pervades the album is an
affectionate but also at times tongue-in-cheek look at rock music,
which is what I grew up listening to and playing. But I find it too
youthful in almost every way these days to hold much interest for me.
Yet it's still what I know how to do, and it's what comes out most of
the time.

Track 5
"RockPaperScissors" is a collaboration with Shira Myrow, a very
talented singer and songwriter whom I saw perform, and was impressed
by her lyrical ability. Then we were lucky enough to get Paul
Buchanan, the extraordinary vocalist from the Blue Nile, to sing on
the track, at Craig Armstrong's studio in Glasgow. The idea behind
this one was how it seems to me that people always envy what other
people have. The title is a sort of metaphor for the idea that what
we don't have always seems more attractive than what we do have.

I think Shira did a great job of taking the intellectual concept and
putting it into a flowing, song-like structure. It was interesting
for me as I tried to edit and add my own lyrical contributions and
found that they seemed flat, pedantic, and intellectual. But her
words convey the ideas and the spirit behind the concept of the song
but do it in an artful way. The music is in a small way an homage to
Timbaland, the producer who does a lot of Missy Elliot's stuff, with
a bit of a hip hop drum beat.

Track 6
"Tangerine" was one of the few pieces that was different in the way
it was created. In some ways I'm from the 52 pick-up school of
composition where I create a bunch of little snippets of ideas and
then I try to compose by editing. But this one actually started as
just a guitar arpeggio. And then the slide guitar, which initially
was the prime melodic force, is just a real time performance. Claude
Chalhoub doubled what the guitar was doing, and in mixing it I have
one or the other or both included it to give light and dark shades.
This piece is actually like what real musicians do. It's like a
performance and I like the simplicity.

Track 7
"LightStar," which I think has turned into a real winner, definitely
had a troubled history. It always felt kind of generic to me and I
felt uncomfortable with it. I was going to throw it out. But then we
asked the traditional Bulgarian choir we were working with to sing
over the music. It is was beautiful and moving, but the second part
of their contribution didn't work with the backing track. So good old
Rich Evans got a friend of his to transcribe what the traditional
song did, and orchestrate it, and he slipped it into a recording
session he was doing in Hungary. So this song has a rock band, a
traditional Bulgarian choir, a classical Bulgarian orchestra for the
first half, and then a classical Hungarian orchestra for the second
half. And then I thought it would be nice to take it to a sort of
dream sequence thing where it drifts in at the end to the choir
sounding like they are coming off an old `78' being broadcast over
the short wave. I really like this piece, it's a journey. What I
enjoy about a lot of this music is that often it doesn't use
repetitive structure.

Track 8
"Pond" -- This has a long and complicated history. It started out as
a just kind of white noise drone with a little dissonant melody in it
played on a synthesizer. Then we had an orchestra play it, which I
liked, and then added piano and percussion, and then added some
outtakes of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan singing, from one of the album
sessions I did with him. This song also has Djivan Gasparayan playing
duduk at the end. Two incredible musicians. Gasparayan is 73-years
old now and is considered a national treasure in Armenia. He's also
always a pleasure to work with.

Track 9
"Silverized" is a kind of transcendental cowboy song. I like the
mixture of elements. There is almost a spaghetti western Marlboro man
guitar, and then an ecstatic growing organ swell with the orchestra,
and then the choir. We were looking for words to have the choir sing
and Rich suggested that they could sing just any old Latin. His wife,
who is an Egyptologist, had a book from her university days of the
writings of Lucretius and I really liked a lot of the things he said
(he was a very skeptical philosopher). It was surprising how few
words you can get out with a choir when they are singing slowly…I
don't think we made it through one paragraph of Lucretius. I think it
ended up sounding really nice and I love the way this piece goes off
on this psychedelic thing at the end. So it's psychedelic,
transcendental, country and spaghetti western music. Sort of.

Tracks 10 & 11
"Pasadena Pt 1 & Pt 2" was a journey. It starts with a great
contribution from London-based singer-songwriter Ben Christophers.
The second part is an orchestral thing that was inspired by Arvo
Part. I really think he's great. He does simple, beautiful music.
Then it has Djivan Gasparyan playing on the third section and at the
very end there are these long sections of Claude Chalhoub. It is
another journey composition which I personally like a lot.

Michael Brook,
May 2006

Coming soon: www.michaelbrook.com

Fred