My new album, Setsu / 節, is a tribute to Japan and the friends I made there.

Anyone who has lived in Japan any longer than a tourist will be bemused by Japanese friends' and co-workers' constant talk of the changing of the seasons (kisetsu / 季節), along with things that change with them: your wardrobe, the food you eat and, most importantly of course, the leaves. It's also the basis of about 50% of their English textbooks. "Japan has four seasons," I was proudly informed not long after arriving. I pointed out, mentally rolling my eyes, that there were four seasons where I came from too. It's an endearing habit of many Japanese that they kind of think they have a monopoly on lots of things, not just seasons, but skilful use of chopsticks, etc.

But after a while you come to realise that what they're saying is actually more profound: there is something fundamental to the way the year progresses that informs Japanese life and culture much more than where you come from. Sure you have brown and red leaves in autumn or blossoms in spring but they just do it more fully in Japan. And for the people there's a comfort and identity in these things, which are basically a by-product of how recently life there was still a feudal, agriculture-based existence.  

Setsu is an attempt to capture this spirit: twelve stories in twelve months told by twelve characters. The Chinese character Setsu / 節 by itself means occasion or time, so fits the concept of the album perfectly. It can also mean verse, stanza or melody. And, yep, it's part of that word for season, kisetsu / 季節. The title track here, representing September, is emblematic in many ways. But more about that in another post.

I'll be releasing a track a month via Soundcloud and the whole album will be available via Bandcamp (when I finish it).

I like David Bowie

I like David Bowie.  You like Bon Jovi.  We all like Meatloaf.  We can't really help it, that's just how it goes when it comes to music.

This tune was written sitting in the doorway of our bathroom the old, traditional-style house I lived in in Japan, perched on the threshold, mucking about with chords and a simple sing-along melody.

Now, I've resurrected it as the first track in Best of Barry Starr: the part I played, my new concept album following the fictional musical career of the eponymous singer-songwriter. More to come about Barry soon...

Hitting the snooze button

The chords to '5 minutes more' had been swimming around in my head for some time, I just hadn't been sure what to do with them. Once the concept for 'Me for a day' came to me, the relaxed, circular chords suggested that swimming half-consciousness in between cycles of the snooze on your alarm clock. For me this is one of the best feelings there is: I'm not a wake-up-and-up-and-at-them kind of person.

Aside from the inverted chord structure - where the instrumental bit is Em-A, which switches to A-Em for the vocal verses - the first sonic idea I tried to develop was the background vocals.  I've got a couple of early demo versions with about 18 vocal over-dubs saturated in reverb trying to get the choral effect I had in mind. No lyrics at all - just lots of 'ahhhs' over and over (a bit tedious with nothing else around it on the demos).

The lyrics did come eventually though, mostly improvised one sunny morning sitting in a red armchair by the window of our my apartment in Japan.  Unusually for me, when I came to record them I didn't have a set idea of how they would fit.  And this led to some happy overlaps in different takes that worked really well in the verse after the trumpet solo, adding to that dreamy, not quite sure if I'm dreaming or really talking to you kind of state.

Somewhere along the line I stumbled on the 'boodly' guitar sound (as I named it in the sequencer), which became a theme that I managed to insert in a couple of other points of the album. I was particularly pleased with that sound - though I've lost the preset I made for it so will probably never be able to re-create it, sob.  Oh, well, the wonders of fleeting beauty, etc.

And for those of you wondering: that is a NZ bellbird you can hear at the start and end of the track, merging in with the second track Frank Sinatra.  I guess that's one of the happiest sounds there is.

You never really know...

Failure in romance for me, as a teen, was never down to actually being turned down, if you know what I mean. It was more a completely abject failure to get up enough courage to ask anyone out.  That's at the centre of this tune.  The lyrics came together pretty quickly - though neither of the scenarios in verse one or verse two are exactly personal experience.  But I was very pleased with some of the run-on lines that create a sense of natural speech.

At it's heart the song deals with that sense of "if only I had..."  Actually, I always hate when people say "I wish I'd chosen such-and-such' because I see that as futile: if you had chosen that you could also have started a chain of events that ended up much worse than what actually transpired. "What if my parents had called me Sue / or I'd never set eyes on you."

Anyway, enough pseudo-philosophy.  This one has always gone down well live 'cause it rocks.

This was written on an the acoustic, hence the pushing acoustic rhythm that drives this one from its outset.