By Imogen Day, First Year Classics
Psychedelic effects, a huge range of instruments, layered textures and the dramatic mood swings and feel changes in each song all make up Crayola Lectern’s upcoming album, Disasternoon.
Crayola Lectern and Chris Anderson are almost one and the same.
‘I woke up one morning with the words Crayola Lectern in my head, whether I was dreaming or not there was no conscious thought in the name’, he explains.
‘Slightly sinister’, he goes on, ‘a bit like Hannibal Lecter, but also playful and childish, a bit like Crayola Crayons. It epitomises a bit of my identity - not that I’m a serial killer! There’s a darkness and a light…. It came about the same way that the music came about.’
We’re talking about Disasternoon, released on 15th August, his new album which is seven years in the making. Featuring tracks that swing from the bright and triumphant to hauntingly mournful, it’s an atmospheric, off-kilter wall of sound with influences ranging from the Cocteau Twins and David Bowie to Chet Baker.
The album begins with ‘Sad Cornetto’, epic both in texture and its 8-minute length. A taste of the album as a whole, it mixes instrumental sections with a more conventional rock structure.
As a musician myself, I was interested in the use of effects in the album, and ‘Sad Cornetto’ is a prime example of this. Loaded with fazers, tremeloes, reverb and loops, the psychedelic feel is all around, but he also compares it to that of The Cure, This Mortal Coil, and other releases from the label 4AD.
‘You forget about what the notes are, you’re much more into the sound, the sonic influences influx of what’s going on. You don’t really need the song bit at that point because the music is doing something different, but sure enough the song comes in later’.
It was not titled ‘cornetto’ to refer to the ice cream. Instead, it makes reference to a form of trumpet, also a cornetto, or cornet, which you can hear. Chris felt it had the ‘sad, woozy’ sort of sound he was after to complement the opening riff - which he played, piano on hand, during the interview.
Something similar was the plan for the last song of the album. ‘Coscoroba’ was originally meant to be ‘Sad Viola’, although it also ended up being played with a trumpet. But nonetheless, Chris remains cheerful.
‘The whole album’s flawed in that way, but I think the flaws kind of bring it to life.’
However, you’ll be pleased to hear that Cornettos (the ice cream, this time) made an appearance at the end. ‘Old Magic’, a track by Chris and his musical collaborator Alistair Strachan from their first album, ends with the same cadence from the old Cornetto TV ads from the 2000s. By this point, ‘it’s a bit of an in-joke.’
Mispronouncing it in the process, I turn to ‘Stars Over Louth’, which has already been released as a single.
‘Louth is a little market town in Lincolnshire,’ Chris explains to me ‘and it’s where two of my favourite people live, Robert Wyatt and Alfreda Benge, his partner. She does all of his album art and collaborates very heavily in the writing of the lyrics of Robert Wyatt’s music. I was really blessed to be invited to their house and I spent an afternoon with them’.
Robert Wyatt was a mainstay in the 70s music scene in the UK. His band Soft Machine were one of the foremost British psychedelic acts and he played with The Jimi Hendrix Experience and Pink Floyd.
‘[Wyatt] has been paralysed since 1974. Famously he fell out a window at a party when he was getting drunk with Keith Moon and he’s been in a wheelchair ever since’.
‘Stars Over Louth’ was written ‘like a dedication or a lullaby’ to them, with a poignant feel to consider the struggles a musical hero faces in old age.
With Alfreda Benge creating the album art for Disasternoon, Chris sums up the couple’s relationship with him as ‘Unwitting mentors… I like what they represent and what their art represents'.
I’ll always remember how to correctly pronounce Louth, now.
Featured Image: 369 PressWill you be listening to the new album?
