Brian Lavelle » www.brianlavelle.org

August already: it’s been a while since I posted something other than news of new releases here, and in the last week I’ve taken the opportunity to merge my previously separate blog (’Hundreds of Things’) into this site: it seemed to make sense to do that, given that I’m not good at the whole split personality thing. It’s tidier too, I suspect.

One reason for this post is to announce that I’m starting work on a series of limited releases, which have yet to take form, but which will I think be entirely guitar-borne pieces; attempts to distill what I normally do, which is labour-intensive, multi-layered and, ultimately, the source of much metaphorical wringing-of-hands, into something more immediate. I’d also like to do more with the physical form of these releases, which are likely to be fairly limited in nature, but which should be on CDR. I’ve been inspired to do more with packaging recently and I’m hoping these items will be a little more special than what has gone before. More on this as the project takes form, but if you’re interested in getting hold of these releases, let me know.

I’m also glad to report that work is gathering pace on a trio of connected releases which are made up only of live Theremin and effects, with no subsequent processing, layering or overdubs. This trilogy is called Aegean Sea Blue and I like to think it will be finished shortly. If others don’t feel keen to release these discs, they will come out on Dust, Unsettled. Again: more soon.

Also, my first ever LP, Magdalena, which is again a guitar-only album should be out this Autumn on my good friend Kyle Wright’s excellent label, Diophantine Discs. I’m very excited and honoured that Kyle wants to put this out as an LP; it was written for that format and I hope it works over two sides of vinyl. (Having said that, Supernaturalist was originally intended as a double LP set, but the financial implications of that were, shall we say, a steep climb…)

The first Space Weather album has got some very nice comments from people and seems to be doing well. Of course, it’s still available from me (and from Alistair and Paz) if you’d like to get a copy. Although I have difficulty sometimes with the intent behind the write-ups on the Volcanic Tongue site, David Keenan was kind enough to name-drop Popul Vuh when describing the album, which made me smile.

That’s all for now, but I’ll have more news very soon including details of two new releases (not by me, I should say!) on Dust, Unsettled. Keep listening; and thank you for lending your ears thus far.

To whom I owe the leaping delight
That quickens my senses in our wakingtime
And the rhythm that governs the repose of our sleepingtime,
The breathing in unison

Of lovers whose bodies smell of each other
Who think the same thoughts without need of speech
And babble the same speech without need of meaning.

No peevish winter wind shall chill
No sullen tropic sun shall wither
The roses in the rose-garden which is ours and ours only

But this dedication is for others to read:
These are private words addressed to you in public.

—T.S. Eliot, A Dedication to my Wife

William Gardiner
29.VIII.1920 – 23.II.2009

Well, I promised at the start of the year that I’d post more often about tea, which was really one of the reasons I started this blog in the first place. So here we are, just one tiny month later, with a post about tea: it’s almost unbelievable…

The tea in question is slightly mysterious. It’s a very generous free sample from Nada – my thanks go to him for this experience. I got this a few months ago, but haven’t had the right opportunity to try it. Today it’s a cold Sunday, the start of February; Jill is “recovering” from her hen night yesterday; I’m on holiday tomorrow; and so this afternoon is a free (and guiltlessly free) one, almost designed for a serious tea session.

The handwritten insert with this small sample simply says “60s loose leaf sheng”: essentially it’s an aged Chinese puerh tea, without artificial fermentation, although I’m assuming from the description that it was always loose leaf and has never been compressed into a cake or brick. The dry leaves certainly don’t look as though they have, although after at least 40 years, it’s probably difficult to tell. It’s quite humbling to have this tea which is older than I am, perhaps by several years. That is one of the pleasures of exploring a tea like puerh which lasts.

There’s about 4g of leaf, so I used a small (100ml) pot, the smallest I have. The aroma of the dry leaf in the pre-heated pot is interesting: damp earth mustiness, with faint hints of spice or cinnamon. A curious mix.

After a first flash rinse (not drunk) of the leaves, the aroma is more mushroom-like, with that same damp earthiness. The first drinkable rinse of 10 seconds gives a resultant liquor of a glorious deep-amber colour, verging on ruby red.

The taste is smooth, earthy and relatively “creamy”, for want of a better word. Hard to describe.

I’ve enjoyed young, green puerh for a while now. It has a crisp, refreshing and biting taste that I really like, particularly if you can find a good quality tea. On the other hand, I’ve yet to taste an aged puerh, and moreso any fermented (shu) puerh, that I really like. MarshalN posted a great piece on his blog recently about what it is we may actually be tasting in the first few infusions of an older tea: those infusions of an aged puerh which I have trouble getting through. The initial taste might be effect of how the tea has been stored.

Given the age of this tea, and based on MarshalN’s observations, I wondered if I would start to taste a difference round about the fifth infusion and thereafter. The infusions had been: 10s, 7s, 12s, 15s and 20s up to that point. From that fifth infusion, and the next (30s), I didn’t notice any perceptible difference. Perhaps it was slightly less earthy and more drinkable, but that could have been that I was used to the taste. I felt the tea liquor coating my mouth, in a not unpleasant way. I didn’t notice any massive qi with this tea, but I generally don’t for some reason. Perhaps I’ve never had good enough puerh!

I kept going with seventh and eighth infusions (45s and 75s) but again didn’t notice any change in the tea. It certainly kept going too! As the infusions went on, I got a slightly fishy note in the aroma, which wasn’t pleasant. I’ve read about people experiencing that before – I hadn’t up to this point.

The session with this tea was an unusual one for me. I don’t know how much of that is born of disappointment based on my own desire for this tea—after all, a 1960s sheng, for goodness sake—to be delicious. I am going to keep it until tomorrow and try longer infusions to see where that takes it.

I’m grateful to Nada for this experience – I just don’t know what to make of it! Did I actually enjoy it? Possibly not, but it gave my some interesting insights into what I like in tea and what I know I don’t. I just hope no one thinks it’s a lack of respect for my elders!

I’d like to wish a happy and healthy new year to all my family and friends, and to everyone else who stumbles upon this blog. One of my resolutions for 2009 (one of many…) is to post more often, and to post more often on tea.

It’s a big year for us: Jill and I will be married on 21 March, the vernal equinox, and I’m a month into a new job which is going very well.

Hope to see you all in 2009!

I’ve been listening to the Weather tonight, and for a large part of this week in fact.

By that I mean I’ve been listening to the fruits of the Space Weather recording session last Saturday in Glasgow. The line-up was as it is now and ever shall be, amen: Alistair Crosbie (electric guitar), me (synthesizer) and Andrew Paine (electric bass guitar).

It was another excellent session, full of laughter and joyous camaraderie, and it makes me think that for all we strive to do our solo recordings on our own to the best of our abilities, there is nothing like playing good music with good friends. I begin to see why certain people hate all the faff of studio work and live to play live together, whether that’s in front of an audience or not. There are some moments and extended passages of real beauty in what we did at the weekend, and that’s down to the three of us doing more or less with what we have in front of us.

There were pieces from the session which were just beautiful: understated and contemplative, but slowly burning with that strange SW magic that infects the first album we’ve already done (the cover is image at the top of this post).

There are also moments of pure wonderment at how these tracks come across in their recorded form, when compared to how I remember us playing them. Did we actually do this? It seems hard to believe. But the actuality of the smiles on our faces as we played them, and the memory of those smiles now, are the greater rewards in all of this.

One of the pieces essayed on Saturday was a long floating instrumental, which reminds me quite a bit of the work of a US group called Alien Planetscapes, who were stalwarts of the 80s home taper scene. They worked in a few experimental styles, but this kind of eerie space rock, with brilliant free floating bass (courtesy of Mr. P), was the kind of thing they did best I think.

One more session like last Saturday’s and we will have a second album to contend with before the first is even out. It makes you think…

We stood by a pond that winter day,
And the sun was white, as though chidden of God,
And a few leaves lay on the starving sod,
–They had fallen from an ash, and were gray.

Your eyes on me were as eyes that rove
Over tedious riddles solved years ago;
And some words played between us to and fro–
On which lost the more by our love.

The smile on your mouth was the deadest thing
Alive enough to have strength to die;
And a grin of bitterness swept thereby
Like an ominous bird a-wing….

Since then, keen lessons that love deceives,
And wrings with wrong, have shaped to me
Your face, and the God-curst sun, and a tree,
And a pond edged with grayish leaves.

At school, I had a fundamental difficulty with Robert Hardy’s work. I read Return of the Native in my last year, and I recall not enjoying it at all. Worse than that, Hardy’s Wessex was colourless, plodding and its denizens devoid of hope, at least as far as I could tell from my limited reading of that novel twenty years ago.

The poem above (’Neutral Tones’) is from the 1898 volume Wessex Poems And Other Verses and I was amazed to drink in its bleak outlook. It rejoices in its lack of colour and now that seems to me to be an integral part of its beauty.

Our tastes changes over time; what was once dull for me because it seemed colourless is now emotionally effecting precisely because of that colourlessness. I should try Hardy again in longer form. Perhaps twenty years later I’ll be able to take some pleasure from its joyless panoply.

I received a giant parcel from the great Scott Wilson at Yunnan Sourcing today. The main bulk of this order is a set of seven pu-erh beengs of the Menghai classic recipes 7542, 7582, 7512, 7532, 7262, 7572 and 7592, called Six-Famous-Tea-Mountain (I love that hyphenation and awkward singular/plural!).

The whole caboodle comes in a lovely woven basket:

The overall package is so beautifully put together that it almost feels wrong to start drinking the tea. Perhaps that’s why, with the purchase of these 7 cakes, Scott has also included a 50 gram sample of each tea. A great idea; and I can’t wait to get started on these, allowing the seven full cakes to age gracefully. I will enjoy them, I think, in my new Yixing Zisha Shi Piao Hu pot from Stéphane Erler of the Taiwan-based Tea Masters blog:

And aside from contemplating the climbing of mountains of tea, I’m really delighted to report that I’m in a band again for the first time in years. Space Weather is a trio consisting of Alistair Crosbie (electric guitar), me (synthesizer) and Andrew Paine (electric bass guitar). As these fellows are some of the nicest people you could hope to meet, the decision to join them was one of the easiest and quickest I’ve ever made.

We’ve had a couple of recording sessions so far and the music seems to come so effortlessly and interconnectedly that I think we’re definitely on to something. The pieces are simple, linear, largely melodic in the conventional sense and entirely improvised. Although we’ve all recorded in separate duo combinations over the years—Alistair and I, and Alistair and Paz, as well as a possible forthcoming Lavelle/Paine outing—this is the first time the three of us have worked together as one. The two sessions have been relaxed, warm, funny and wonderfully joyful experiences: good company and great music (well, we think so anyway: there should be some samples up soon at the MySpace page linked to above, so you can judge for yourself). You can’t really ask for more than that.

Our little power trio already has enough material for an album, just from these two afternoon sessions, which is astonishing in my experience given the melodic nature of the music. Next time we meet, we’ll just need to decide on titles, some fine editing and the sequence of the pieces—and probably just keep recording. I can’t wait. Expect at least some if not all of the tracks, or indeed the album itself, to be called Space Weather…

Here are my first efforts with this camera. The film is Ilford Delta 400 and these are scanned from prints, which were developed locally. They’re straight scans, without any processing or cleaning.

I’m not sure I like the tints which the developing process has added to some, although not all, of the five I’ve posted here. I’ll need to investigate developing at home!

There were quite a few of the photographs I wasn’t happy with; I certainly need more practice with the camera, but these five at least confirmed my FED-2 seems to work well enough and the FED 50 lens is clear. More soon.