Homage

Here's a curious thing. For all the individuality of my music over the decades (I'm paraphrasing fans here), its progressive drive and it's relentless changing of genres and styles, there have been a small number of pieces I've done that were based on music I loved by other groups or artists. I feel ambivalent about this now. On one level, I don't like that “intrusion” of other music into my own, and part of me wishes I'd never done it. But part of me is curious about the pieces I wrote and recorded that were, in effect, homages. Here's a list of sources.

Pink Floyd, Echoes.

Yes, The Gates Of Delirium.

Porcupine Tree, Voyage 34.

Tangerine Dream, Poland.

Tangerine Dream, Cherokee Lane.

Mike Oldfield, Hergest Ridge (first three albums in general).

Klaus Schulze, Friedrich Nietzsche.

Klaus Schulze, The Beat Planante.

Pete Namlook, Air 2 (first section).

Ah, indeed… I really did record tracks as homages to Echoes and The Gates Of Delirium! Hard to believe now that I did that. But I also recorded more general homage-type music. On the six-disk I Dream Of Urs Amann, my love-letter to the 1970s, there are tracks inspired by the compositional styles and music of Steve Reich, Klaus Schulze, Mike Oldfield and Ashra. My “1960s Trilogy” explored the music of 1966-1968.

What then to take away from this? My ambivalent feelings are real. I struggle to reconcile myself with some of the music of my group Mooch in particular. It didn't have the “purity” of my Blue Lily Commission music. I think this retrospective feeling of purity is actually about emotional identity. Where the music on, say, Dr Silbury's Liquid Brainstem Band (the fan favourite) is I suppose alright, it feels contaminated to me by other music; not only Pink Floyd and Porcupine Tree, but psychedelia in general. An album like the Blue Lily Commission work A Cosmic Reverberation, however, is 100% me. Albums such as that are the authentic me.

But none of us are immune to or devoid of influences, and that's just the way it is. The early Mooch albums were 100% me and the group. That was a good period in my musical life. I think the “rot” (I exaggerate) set in around 2007, when I started Dr Silbury and conceived my 1960s songs. Then again, Stations Of The Sun, which initially I imagined as a Renaissance-style work, took on a life of its own largely thanks to the marvellous singing of Beck Sian, and of Shelagh Teahan. I still very much enjoy listening to that album.

None of us write and record music in a cultural vacuum. I am a child of pop and rock music from the 1960s and 1970s.

That's just the way it is!