|
|
 |
Grand Salvo.
 "I think I'm growing up," confesses Paddy Mann, known to the musical world as Grand Salvo. "I just had a job interview this morning, actually, for a full time position that I don't really want. It was my first ever job interview. I've just been a dish pig... You know, there's a note in the front window, kitchen hand needed, and you turn up, and either you look too much like a serial killer or they hire you. I drifted into library work, and this is the first kind of official job-job I've ever gone for. And I'm twenty-nine. This is ridiculous."
However, he might not be growing up anytime soon. "I can't say I want to make a habit of it, either. It kind of sucked, actually. You really have to lie, basically," he realises.
Growing up wouldn't be his top priority, anyway; after all, he wouldn't want to lose the inner child into which he has been tapping artistically for the last three years. "It's an album I've been kind of working on, which was going to be an EP of songs which tells a children's story about this group of animals. Except it grew and grew and grew until now it's a double-album length and I'm basically going to need a small orchestra to do all the instrumental parts. It was making me go crazy. And I realised suddenly that it had been three years since I had released something, so I figured this was the only way I was going to do it."
'This' is Grand Salvo's third album, 'The Temporal Wheel', his first since 2002. Recorded for the dubious purpose of distracting Mann from his major project, it's still an absolute corker. It also marks a great change from his usual artistic methods.
"I'm usually really kind of precious about things, I guess. I like to have things planned, I kind of want to formulate, I see an album as the opposite of being a collection of songs. I like to build it up as something that exists in itself. So this was exactly the opposite, I just went into it and thought 'okay, I'm going to make up some songs and see what happens'. That was the initial idea anyway, and I wasn't exactly sure whether it would work or not. I had the idea of going up to this Saddleback place, this beautiful country environment to see what happens - I'd never really recorded in that way before and it worked out well. So I went back a couple of weeks later for another two days and kind of finished it off with some more songs which I kind of had kicking around, which were kind of similar thematically. Even though it was kind of off the cuff, it ended up kind of being pretty focussed on a couple of themes. I guess that's the way you hone stuff in when you're reaching in all directions and forming it as it sets."
Although Mann tells me that 'The Temporal Wheel' is mostly set in "that early-morning-after-waking feeling," the arrangements sound purely nocturnal. "That's true, it was more in the instrumental kind of stuff, and I guess in a lot of the instrumentation I've added to songs that kind of, you know, suggest night time, I guess, because I think I find it easier to... I mean, it's not kind of sinister, but it's a darker sound, I guess. And I find my songs end up sounding to sweet and fey sometimes, to me, and I like to kind of add more kind of, I don't know, a creepier kind of atmospheres on top of it. I guess a lot of the night time songs are the instrumentals."
He seems to be having great difficulty articulating it; but listen to the record, and you'll hear exactly what he means. It's an album of intriguing songs matched with incredibly creative arrangements, and some of the closest and most affecting harmonies I've heard all year. The two voices come in and out in something of a harmonic jostling match, each with their own individual personality, emotion and message. And they're all just one guy.
"I know what you mean. I mean, some people's voices they do an octave apart, or really large intervals between their harmonies, and there's no real change in the timbre of their voice. With mine, I guess it changes a lot when it goes up or down. I guess that's why."
And as for the future, it seems Mann has something of a one-track mind. "I'm going to get this other album finished. That's my next project. I've been saying that for two years, though..." Don't worry, Grand Salvo; we believe you. Judging by this record, I think it could be the perfect soundtrack for any sinister fable.
Ben Revi
 | Grand Salvo plays at the Grace Emily on Wed 2 Nov with Jack Ladder and Kes. |
|
|
The latest issue
available now!
|
