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CD-DETAILS SEEING DOUBLE [LLOYD, DUNCAN]

Lloyd, Duncan

Seeing Double [Rock / Alternative]


RELEASE: 10.10.2008


LABEL: Warp Records

VERTRIEB: Rough Trade


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Duncan Lloyd, bestens bekannt als Gitarrist von Maximo Park, veröffentlichte mit "Seeing Double" sein erstes Soloalbum. Es verblüfft mit erhabenen Melodien und Songs im Soundgewand US-amerikanischer Helden der 90'er wie Pavement, Dinosaur Jr und Sonic Youth. Man wird gefangen genommen von der Natürlichkeit und Spontanität, die dem bewusst kurzen Enstehungsprozess geschuldet ist. „Seeing Double“ hilft nicht nur die Wartezeit bis zum nächsten Maximo Park Album zu verkürzen, es legt eine ganz neue Facette frei, die unbritischer nicht sein konnte. Man hört und staunt.

Tracklist:
1. Seven Letters
2. Make Your Escape
3. Suzee
4. Nightfly
5. Misfit
6. Victory And Surrender
7. You Are Partly To Blame
8. Seeing Double
9. 3 Times Over
10. Another Chance

(Quelle: Verstärker, 30.10.2008)



For many musicians, the Recording Studio is something of a Shangri-La, a paradise where all their dreams of sonic creation and creative fulfilment can be achieved, if only they spend long enough tinkering with the many technological gadgets and gizmos at their disposable, and try out every possible arrangement of every one of their songs, just to be sure. Legendary are the tales of visionary producers and their bizarre perfectionist methods, of groups who've disappeared so far into the creative labyrinth a squadron of St Bernards couldn't rescue them, chasing after some impossible ideal. Sometimes great art results; more often, you end up with music that's so overcooked, the original spark of inspiration is lost forever.

For others, the Recording Studio is just a part of the process, a tool, a means for turning the ideas, melodies and words a songwriter plucks from the air into records, CDs and mp3s, getting the music out there, to the people. Count Duncan Lloyd in among that second cadre of creatives, on the evidence of his debut solo album.

As guitarist with Maximo Park, he's worked alongside his bandmates as they collectively sculpt their brilliantly angular, romantic songs, working hard in the studio to make their albums sound the best they can. For his first solo release, however, Lloyd has changed his approach.

The songs are all his this time, along with the words, which he's singing himself for the first time. Studio production has been minimal, however, simply a process to get those songs down on tape, while the original idea is still fresh, so the charm of the song remains vital, intact. "I guess the album's the sound of someone writing songs," he suggests, "Capturing that initial excitement of a new idea, and sharing that with the listener."

Lloyd is intimately familiar with that excitement, forever finding new melodies and ideas within the six strings of his guitar. Typically, he'd save these up and share them with his band-mates, for Maximo Park song-writing sessions. Sometimes, though, caught up in the heat of the creative moment, he'd pull out his home recording gear and get straight to work, to get the idea down on tape. "Not being a natural singer, I'd just go with the feel of the songs," he remembers. But he soon found himself enamoured by the raw charm of these scratch recordings. "Once you get something down on tape that you like, you don't really want to change it."

As months passed, Lloyd found himself with a growing collection of such tracks. "I didn't really plan to make a solo album, and certainly not so soon, but I guess I had developed a backlog of songs. People around me were telling me I should put the songs out. So I did."

Such simplicity is the hallmark of this endearing and addictive record. Lloyd says songwriting sessions with Maximo Park can be productively intense, ideas pounded into shape by the group's five members, changing arrangements and trying to push as many envelopes as they can. By contrast, the solo album was "very much a case of writing a song, and then recording it as soon as possible, with the most natural arrangement. The idea would come first; it was more instinctive, I wasn't trying to develop the songs."

Lloyd recorded most of the instruments himself, although the music contained herein – the explosive dynamics and nagging guitar interplay of 'Misfit', the chiming, cerebral power-pop of '7 letters' – sounds like the work of a living, breathing, sweating rock band. Maximo Park drummer Tom English added live drums to eight of the ten tracks, playing over the drum-machine parts Lloyd had already recorded. "He took two afternoons to record them all," says Lloyd. "I played him the songs once, gave him one or two run throughs, and then he'd record over the original drum machine parts. You can sort of hear them bleed through in places, and I kept those moments in there, because it was sort of a record of how those songs were born."

Such moments help make the album such an intimate pleasure, balancing out the perfect-pop songwriting Lloyd displays on songs like 'Make Our Escape' (a sun-dappled dash of murmured harmonies, whimsical jangle, and breath-stealing chord changes), 'Suzee' (a playful and puzzling sort-of-love-song, juggling nursery rhyme verses and a surging chorus), and the sleepy, radiant 'Nightfly'. Reference points are cast all about, nods to Wire, to Guided By Voices, to Eugene Kelly, to the wiry Beatles of Revolver-era. But most of all, the album sounds the work of Duncan Lloyd, every homely track bearing his instinctive thumbprint.

While work continues apace on the third Maximo Park album, Duncan is planning a series of low-key shows across the UK to promote the album, having already debuted his live rhythm section at a handful of unannounced shows. "It was pretty nerve-wracking," he admits, of taking the microphone for the first time, "It was a challenge more than anything. I sing backing vocals with Maximo Park, but to actually go ahead and do this, I had to learn how to use my voice to express the song idea. Sometimes it's a bit out of tune, but like the album, that's all part of the charm, I guess."

Lloyd guesses right. Perfect imperfection seems his game and, on his debut album, there's not a bum note out of place, not a song that isn't blessed, rather than cursed, by the album's deftly-played, dextrously homespun warm pop sound. He shouldn't change a thing.

(Quelle: Verstärker, 2008)


FORMAT: CD


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