Annette Peacock LE GUESS WHO? TREASURE GUIDE PAGE 7
Artist bio: Annette Peacock’s wondrous, immersive trailblaze across recorded music’s rich history has marveled the likes of David Bowie, Brian Eno and one-time collaborator Salvador Dalí. Peacock once jokingly told The Quietus she has been fighting her way back to reality ever since taking LSD at Timothy Leary’s Millbrook estate in the early 1960s. Her plunge into otherworldly sonic wellsprings made her one of the first artists to synthesize her own vocals, pioneering the realms of minimalism, free jazz, rap, classical music and psychedelic funk along the way. After Robert Moog gifted Peacock one of his elusive prototypesynthesizers, she started implementing the makeshift device into her already individualistic, free-form lingo of songwriting and composing. To hear music skip so radically across exotic new touchstones, who needs reality, right? Timing and an unwillingness to compromise are key terms for Annette Peacock. After the recent rerelease of her debut album, Revenge, she will be releasing new material this autumn for the first time in fifteen years – hopefully in time for Le Guess Who? festival, where she will be performing as part of the Sunn O)))-curated program.
Author: René van Peer / Artist bio: Jasper Willems / Translation: June ten Have, René van Peer, Jessica Clark / Interview originally published in Gonzo (circus) #129, 2015 There has been silence around Annette Peacock for quite some time. While a few of the albums made by this remarkable singer-songwriter and Moog-pioneer have been rereleased, her last ‘new’ songs come from 2000. Interviews with her usually focus on her pioneering record I’m The One, which originates from 1972; it is here that Peacock goes to extremes of expression in her singing, feeding her voice through the circuitry of an early Moog. “Everybody kept telling me that could not be done,” she says, in a triumphant tone, still relishing the fact that she pulled off something which was considered impossible; but also that she managed to forge a trail blazing position in an industry that’s still dominated by men. She does find it regrettable that people keep focusing on that early period. “I can understand it though,” she sighs. “There have been long gaps in between albums. It has been fifteen years since An Acrobat’s Heart was released at ECM, and before that I went on a 12 year hiatus. After I’m the One, it took
“I hope the timing is finally right.”
six years for X-Dreams to be completed. Musicians who aspire to a career will release something each year; that’s not the way I work. I only start a new project when I have something important to say, when I want to solve a musical issue or when I want to enter uncharted stylistic and musical terrain.”
“Another reason why there was so much time in between releases is that people and the cultural climate in general could not follow what I was working on at the time. The market and the cultural tendencies evolve slower than individuals who do not want to conform to genres that are popular at a specific moment. Why would I want to record new material if people will not grasp it? I can wait until the time is right, and the market and I are on the same level. Yet it is incredibly depressing to have to wait 20 to 40 years for people to start to value my work. I’m enthusiastic about each of my records after I have finished it, and it’s disappointing to meet with such a lack of response. If possible I want to avoid that feeling. The consequence is that people will mainly look at what I have done in the past.”
“I want to get up with the feeling there’s something new to discover” IMPRESSIVE SPECTRUM It is not only Peacock’s albums that are quite rare; the same can be said for performances, which makes it even more special that she will be performing at Le Guess Who? Festival in Utrecht, the Netherlands, by invitation of Sunn O))), and that it will be paired with the release of a new album. She is high-spirited about this prospect, but a little insecure at the same time. “I use the recording studio in a way that’s completely new to me, quite reminiscent of what I did back in the sixties with the Moog. I’m no stranger to digital editing, but have only used it to convert my music from analog signals to a digital medium to make it suitable for re-releases on CD. That was very complicated and frustrating, because computers compress the files and make the sound very brittle. It takes a lot of effort to compensate. This time I’m doing everything in a digital environment, which has been a revelation: You have control over every aspect of sound. When you play the piano, the aspects of the tone are related to and limited by the physical makeup of the instrument, but in a digital environment you can build up a sound from scratch. Just like using a synthesizer you decide the entire envelope of a tone, from attack to decay. You can extend the tone for as long as you wish, and colour it in minute detail. All those possibilities become part of the creative process - and, to a certain extent, even serve as its foundation. It’s fantastic! You’re in total control of the sound, and that’s incredibly exciting.”
Science Fictionesque Synthesizer Sounds The influence of Peacock’s investigative way of working on her music is evident on her first two albums, Revenge (re-released last year as I Belong to a World that’s Destroying Itself) and I’m the One. On both albums she displays an impressive range of emotions. She whispers and beguiles; but it is her tempestuous outbreaks that make your hair stand on end. Even without modifications she knows how to move you with her voice. The intensity reaches scorching heights when she squeezes her voice through the circuitry of the Moog--mounting and ever-changing modulation boost her expression to even higher levels of intensity. On I’m the One, her possessed, beyond-human vocals and her uninhibited use of the synthesizer, with its bleeps and bloops and science fictionesque wails, make a wonderful contrast with the unmistakably relaxed and funky accompaniment. I Belong to a World that’s Destroying Itself is significantly more rough around the edges. More free in form. It is evident that she had been moving around in the American jazz-scene for some years when she recorded it. “The sound on I’m the One is balanced and seductive, because I was able to record it in excellent conditions in the RCA studios. Revenge was done at different locations with musicians that happened to be available, during the cheapest hours of the day. We played everything in one take. It was spontaneous; very young, very wild, rough and punky. You can hear the ingenuous self-confidence of youth, but you can also hear that the technicians didn’t have a clue about recording live synthesizers.”
The Moog synthesizer was Peacock’s trademark in those early years, as she was one of the few musicians to play the instrument back then. Together with her husband, jazz pianist Paul Bley, she picked it up directly from the inventor’s workshop. “A music journalist from The New York Times played Walter Carlos’ Switched-on Bach to us during a visit. The Moog had just been invented. It was very exciting: an entirely new instrument! I just had to have one. I was working on some music with extremely low paces during that time. I imagined that if I could control the length of the tones, I could slow down the music even more, to a point where I could enter a world of pure vibrations.” “We visited Robert Moog and convinced him to give us a prototype. There were no manuals; nobody knew how to handle the machine. There were a couple of guys in New York who used the Moog in commercials, but they were being very mysterious about it. They didn’t want to share their knowledge. I figured out my own ways of working with it. I found a way to put my voice through the synthesizer, something everybody kept telling me couldn’t be done. After that, the question arose how we could include the Moog in live shows. I did not want to go on stage. Until then, I wrote the compositions that Paul performed, but I never joined him as a musician. My first idea was to do it from behind a curtain, like a musical Wizard of Oz. Of course Paul declined; he wanted to put this attractive young woman in the spotlights.”
Every moment counts Peacock is quite frank about it: she may be a singer, but performing live is a nail-biting experience for her. “Performing is good for your music. In the end, it’s all about the response of the people you play for. You want to communicate. But I don’t feel at ease on the stage. I have to be totally focused. That’s good, because in that mood I can make every note and every moment count. Each concert feels like I’m doing it for the first time – nervous, but spontaneous as well. I didn’t start out as a band member, I started as a composer. I didn’t have a chance to build confidence as a performing artist. When Paul had talked me into going on stage, I was terrified. I threw up before the show started. I have never done many concerts. When I’m the One was released, RCA wanted me to go on tour with a rock band. I preferred to play with jazz musicians, to keep my work free and improvised.” What that sounded like can be heard on the album Improvisie, credited to Paul Bley but in fact the brainchild of Peacock and percussionist Han Bennink. The recordings, made in Rotterdam in 1971, are two long improvisations in which Peacock and Bennink propel the music with boundless energy and imagination. In one of the pieces, Touching, Peacock weaves her voice through the wild convolutions ripped from the Moog and Bennink’s crushing strokes. “He had such incredible power. When I heard him for the first time, I had this vision of a drummer who also happened to be a butcher. I wanted to work with him, but Paul was taken aback by his energy. ‘He will beat us to a pulp,’ he said. I replied that we had the power of electronics. It was a wonderful experience. He is one of few musicians who know how to play freely within the beat.”
No repetition Annette Peacock is somewhat apprehensive about the reception that her live show and new album. Her performance at Le Guess Who? will be her third gig in five years. “I never know how the audience is going to respond to the music. Even if they know my albums, the music will sound different. I will most definitely play a couple of songs from the new record. I really hope the timing will be right at last. I know it’s exactly what I want it to be. It is going to be a pop album, something that I’ve never done before. It sounds exactly the way I envisaged it, but will the people and the market finally grasp my intentions? I have noticed a growing interest in what I do, so that seems to bode well.” “One of the keys to success, however, is repeating yourself. If you do that, people know what to expect from you, and can buy every next album without first listening to it. I don’t care for that approach. I want to get up every day with the feeling there’s something new to discover. Doing this I effectively thwart my own chances for success. Nobody knows how this album is going to turn out. The only thing I can say is that the music is not experimental. I’ve had lots of fun working on it, but now I can only await its reception.” Annette Peacock will play Le Guess Who? 2015 as part of the program presented by Sunn O))) on Sunday November 22, at TivoliVredenburg’s Grote Zaal.