Frank Birtwistle’s Instrumental Reflections
While it’s safe to say that the concept of time is manmade, I would argue that music is not. You can find music everywhere in nature, placing it firmly in the living world. I think we can all agree that putting on music helps to pass the time, but have you listened to an entire instrumental record? Time disappears completely. You simply have no concept of it. Apparently Mike Oldfield’s ‘Tubular Bells Part One’ is over twenty-five minutes long. I can’t say I’m ever aware of that when I’m listening to it. The music of guitarist Frank Birtwistle is a great example, especially his latest EP ‘Volume Five’. So let’s put it on and drift away.
After taking more than a ten year hiatus from music, Frank Birtwistle was inspired to return in 2012, bursting with compositional ideas, over a hundred in total! Some of these ideas were turned into EPs beginning with ‘Volume One’ in 2019, and his current ‘Volume Five’ being released in the summer of 2020. As well as a sprinkling of singles, Frank has also teamed up with Sally Doherty and formed the duo Summerisle who are busy writing and recording. Frank’s solo music has been curated into the British Library Sound Archive where more than 90,000 other audio recordings exist, allowing his songs and artwork to be preserved for generations to come.
‘Stormgull’ opens Volume Five with speed. One of the things I love about finger-picking guitar is how performers are able to play both rhythm and lead parts, much like what can be heard here. Birtwistle’s guitar sound is rich, strung with steel strings, bringing natural sustain to the lead lines. ‘Reflections’ is much slower, allowing the listener to take in the notes more steadily. Reflections conjures up more of an image than Stormgull, like vast sweeping landscapes drenched in fog in the aftermath of soft rain. This one would do well to have an accompanying music video.
‘Blue Skies’ returns to the pacier feel of Stormgull, though has a touch of something more mournful about the chord sequence. The sound of Frank’s fingers sliding across the fretboard highlight the modest reverb used to enhance the feel of the piece, it’s a really beautiful sound. The pauses in the playing are refreshing, allowing you to take in the performance you’ve heard before Birtwistle resumes playing.
Halfway through Volume Five, you’ll find ‘Midnight’. Slower and with more reverb than the former, this is my favourite melody so far. In my own musical mind, I can imagine doubling the melody with a keyboard an octave higher. Midnight sends genuine shivers down my spine. ‘Forever’ is the shortest track on Volume Five, feeling like a walk in the country in Autumn, with all the colours in the leaves on the ground and in the trees. It almost feels like it’s over too soon.
Track six is aptly named ‘The Journey’, and is the longest composition on the EP. This feels like a car journey with things whizzing past the windows in a blur of colour. Frank again uses pauses in this composition to great effect and the melody is the warmest, most comforting on the whole of Volume Five.
‘Summerisle’ closes out this collection of music, curiously the same name as Birtwistle’s duo project with Sally Doherty. The sound of this one is the most ‘folk’ of all these songs, which is interesting because they’re all solo guitar compositions played on the same guitar. But this one, I could imagine lyrics to, as the melody lends itself well to a lyrical contribution. Continue reading to find out more about Frank Birtwistle’s writing and recording techniques, as well as his own personal history around his musical hiatus.
1. Your latest EP 'Volume Five' features just under twenty minutes of beautiful music. What inspired the titles for each of the tracks on this release?
As someone who has never tried to write song lyrics, naming pieces can be tricky sometimes. However, my music tends to be inspired by nature mainly, so during various trips out I may film a minute or so of passing scenery from a train window, or take photos of wonderful scenes and then be reminded later when searching for sounds on the instrument.
Stormgull – the motion of a gull riding the wind.
Reflections – rippling images on an almost still pond.
Blue Skies – quite literally inspired by wonderful blue skies out walking one summer day.
Midnight – the quiet mood achieved after a long and busy day – a sense of closure before tomorrow.
Forever – the unique feeling of playing/creating and wishing it could be frozen forever without life’s interruptions.
The Journey – one of the first pieces that I wrote during this particular chapter of my life represents the long path my musical effort had taken on and off up until that point – from starting to giving up and then to be inspired to start again.
Summerisle – a piece inspired by my love of the film The Wicker Man – the sound in my head of that kind of Pagan/Nature driven flow that the film evokes – coincidentally also the name that both Sally and I independently chose to call our duo a few years later.
2. What influenced the idea of calling your EPs 'Volumes'? Do they all represent the same idea?
When I started to write again approx. 5 years ago, it wasn’t my intention to be a solo instrumentalist. I have always loved female vocalists and wanted to form a duo asap. Despite placing regular wanted ads it wasn’t until 3 years later that I was contacted by Sally – by which time I’d written over 100 pieces. At that point it was obvious that I couldn’t really throw all those at her to wade through – so I chose some that stood up well on their own and decided to put some extended eps out whilst we worked on our songs. As I mentioned, I’m not a lyricist and naming the tracks after what I felt about them was tough enough - plus the eps didn’t each have a particular theme so I just followed the Led Zeppelin model.
3. You've recorded using both nylon and steel strung guitars across your releases, would you tell us more about the guitars you used?
There’s never been huge funds avaiIable for instruments, studio time etc., but luckily I have a knack for finding budget guitars that come out of the factory punching far above their weight.
The nylon string guitar on Volume One is a Cort AC120ce – very cheap but a nice warm sound.
The steel string guitar on Volume Two is a Tanglewood Roadster II – again, very cheap but a bargain – lots of sustain and volume.
The steel string guitar on Volumes Three, Four and Five is the long overdue upgrade I had been wanting – a Baton Rouge AR21C/ACE – still not very expensive but so much nicer.
4. Tell us about the recording of your Volumes, are they done at home? The sound is gorgeous!
I have dabbled in classical guitar on and off so I play with nails and know how to get a strong sound out of the strings so I just recorded the pieces acoustically on all guitars – plus I don’t like the plugged in piezo sound generally to be honest. Volumes One to Four were all recorded at home into my mobile phone using the selfie cam. I’d then extract the audio from the video, process it on the phone using Audio Evolution Mobile adding eq + reverb and then export the mix and upload straight to Bandcamp etc. The method has its limitations but I was capturing such a natural vibe when keeping an audio library of new ideas, I just went with it – a good take was all that was required. Some tracks have a bit of hiss and background noises here and there such as the central heating boiler firing up or the dog’s collar rattling but only I seem to notice those really! However, during the first lockdown I found that I had enough time to finally do some decluttering on ebay and raised some funds for an audio interface and 2 microphones. Volume Five was therefore captured in true stereo at home for the first time.
5. Your releases are always accompanied by very beautiful photography, are these images taken by you? Where was the cover for Volume Five taken?
I don’t claim to be any sort of skilled photographer but occasionally I am inspired to take a snap of something that looks wonderful whilst on a day out so out comes the mobile phone again from time to time and I take a snap. The cover for Volume Five was taken near home whilst waiting at a bus stop one morning – the clouds were irresistible.
6. You've been playing guitar since the age of 12, what initially inspired you to take up the guitar as an instrument?
My Uncle was playing House of the Rising Sun one day on his guitar whilst I was visiting my Cousin – I was immediately fascinated by the wonderful sound that someone a few feet away could produce. I pestered my parents for weeks afterwards and was lucky enough to be given a Kay guitar for Christmas – it was pretty naff but enough for me to start learning on.
7. You took a ten-plus year hiatus from music, what was the reason for being away for so long?
From the age of 12 to 30 I was always playing. I had started writing from the age of 17 and by the age of 30 I was burned out after being in many bands. I’d been in a few that really should have taken off but we just couldn’t get any interest from the industry. Anyway – I carried on for a while afterwards by learning solo classical pieces but soon after lost my way – especially from a creativity point of view - and ended up taking a “short break”. Oops. It lasted much, much longer than I had intended and day to day life took over completely. A career in computing and family life became very time consuming and I spent a long time in a numbing daze of work/sleep etc. 12 years passed before I knew it.
8. And you were inspired by Lucy Rose's 'Shiver' to come back to music, how did it feel hearing that song for the first time?
I guess that would be around 2012. It’s hard to say exactly why it hit me so hard. Maybe it was just the simplicity of just one guitar and the beautiful crystal-clear voice of Lucy’s that pretty violently shook me out of my fog. The urge to get the guitar back out of the cupboard was immediate.
9. Then how did the thought process begin of wanting to come back to making music again?
Over the years I’ve always loved Kate Bush, Clannad, Goldfrapp etc. Hearing Lucy combined with the advent of Goldfrapp’s Tales Of Us – it was all too much and I realised what I’d been missing during the previous years and thought – that’s it – I need to work with a female singer asap. Songs – that’s where I want to be. The drive was very strong and I knew I had to have more music in me and after a few months of getting my fingers to work again the ideas came. I’d forgotten all the riffs and stuff I used to know and that actually seemed to be to my benefit – I started looking at the guitar in quite a different way and thankfully found lots of new voicings/progressions very quickly.
10. When anyone says they're a fan of Kate Bush, I always like to ask what their favourite period of her music is as she's had such a vibrant career. Which is yours?
Tricky one – all periods have their appeal…but my absolute favourite is Hounds Of Love. The first side has some amazing singles on it but the second side – “The Ninth Wave” really is other-worldly genius to my ears – the best I’ve ever heard by anyone. The Sensual World and Aerial are huge loves of mine too. There tends to be so much time between her releases these days that the style and voice timbre changes are quite significant from one record to the next. 50 Words For Snow was also very beautiful and now I wait patiently...
11. You're also in a duo with Sally Doherty called Summerisle, what's the progress been like of making your first EP together?
Sally has a similar back-story to myself and after we’d got a good set of songs together, assembled her old studio equipment in her attic back near the start of the 2020. We had just started to record the beginnings of few tracks by late February and then lockdown hit – that was the last time we were sat in the same room unfortunately. Since then I’ve been recording parts at home with the new equipment and sending them over and Sally has laid vocals on top – they sound lovely but it seems very hard for us to finalise the arrangements this way as we want other instruments on some of them and it’s not easy to experiment compared to when we are sat together. We have a dozen or so songs all at various stages. Hopefully things will improve soon and we’ll be safe to resume.
12. Looking to the future, could there be more Volumes to come in your solo discography?
I can’t see why not. I have lots of pieces that are in the “to record” list and they probably won’t all be suitable for Summerisle so that is a natural route for them to take. However, over the last 12 months I have released just under 40 tracks and that’s quite a lot for a new listener to take in I should imagine. I’m always thinking of what the next ep could feature though so I don’t think it will be that far away.
--------
Visit Frank Birtwistle’s bandcamp page to purchase CDs of his EPs and to download all his works.
Follow Frank on twitter and instagram @komakino1970.
