The Day I recorded with Syd Barrett

 20 Aug 2021 A rainy day

Syd Barrett

I’ve no idea why but I became obsessed with a Syd Barrett song, No Man’s Land. Recorded in 1969 for his solo album The Madcap Laughs, the track is a stand out for me. There’s something about the babbling, and not quite being able to hear the words that I absolutely love. So much so that I decided to try and cover the song, but in doing so stumbled on something really eerie. 

I made a recording of the song and loaded it into my DAW so that I could play along, I had the idea to play along for a while, then record myself, then remove the original track. This went really well, but I couldn’t for the life of me nail the vocal. My voice just isn’t up to it.

Then I stumbled across an online AI site when you can isolate the vocals from a track, I tried it out, and there I was, playing along with Syd himself. Talk about spooky, it was like having him in the room! If I’d said I did this a few centuries ago, I would have burned at the stake.

I could literally hear every blip, I decide to keep the track that way, with Syd’s vocal, even though I can never release it, and never would of course without permission. I didn’t add too much, just a bit of knarly lead guitar, and some synth, job done. When I listen to it now, I can still feel the hairs stand up on the back of my neck, like the first time I isolated that vocal, I don’t believe in ghosts, but there is something ethereal about making a song with someone who has already passed over.

A few years back I was fortunate to hear Vieux Farka Touré play live at End of the Road festival, on one track he duetted with Alice Farka Touré, his father ,who had not long passed away. Once again to play music again with a dead person would have been regarded as witchcraft a few centuries ago. Now it’s taken for granted. To hear that wonderful voice coming through the sound system was unbelievable. RIP Syd and Ali, long may your musical souls live on. 

Winter solstice for the last generation 

I’ve always been obsessed with the hours of darkness in different locations when the equator is furthest from the sun.

I decided to create a bass line around the numbers on my CMS sequencer I included a long drone as I watched the sun set.

It makes me feel connected to the past. I am affected by this season, it feels heavy and closing in.

Others around me share that feeling, it makes us want to hibernate, as winter solstice on the 21 December marks the start of winter, this is a sensible response.

The chords are minors, but they feel triumphant. I imagine massed voices chanting, maybe I’ll look for or create some of those to add in. 

 It made me think about the power of nature, and how it must have felt to people in the past who knew what was happening to the light and the dark, but not why. Finally, why the last generation? A group of climate activists in Germany named themselves Leztze Generation, I find this a really poignant and alarming recognition that they could be the last generation, and it makes me question where we will all watch the final solstice together? 

 

They could smell the crackle of the air as the sun made its low arc across the sky returning to the horizon for the final moment, never to be seen again by their eyes... 

Music Links: 
BandCamp Solstice Fur Letze generation
Apple Music solstice-fur-letze-generation 
Spotify Solstice Fur Letze Generation

Karl Magi, Synth reviewer kindly posted this review of the track 

Synth Single Review: "Solstice Für Letze Generation" by PolarvoidX

Author:

Karl Magi

PolarvoidX’s Solstice Für Letze Generation mingles misty desolation with an undercurrent of threat. Intensely shining chimes ring out above a gruff, swirling lower sound that trembles below. Chimes flicker and ring out, forming a pattern as wide, flashing sounds slice through and intertwine as broken bass throbs.

Sweeping sounds float through as the music creates a sense of hidden, misty shadows. There’s a feeling of omnipresent danger hidden just out of reach. Hissing, metallic sounds shiver and dense bass slowly shifts while reverent notes breathe. Crunching, gritty sounds vibrate hungrily as the swirling, misty background sends out seeking tendrils.

Diffuse sounds add dark undercurrents as raised notes flit past. There’s something desolate in the slowly gliding background to contrast with the animalistic, snuffling synth. Metallic notes scrape through as the reverent underpinning flows past and silence falls. The inevitability of loss is keenly present in the emotional tenor of this track.

© 2023 Karl Magi

Aviator, Ghosts, Hauntology and Music

Inspiration for 'Aviator' by PolarVoidX. 

I have a tattoo on my arm, part of a montage, its an aviator. I don’t know why exactly, but the tragic story of my uncle Terry, told to me when I was a small boy stuck in my mind. A kind of moral warning not to behave irrationally.

Sadly, just as with my grandfather who died between the wars, I never met uncle Terry. He tragically crashed his aircraft between the wars in a freak accident. Try as I might I’ve never found any details of the crash, or of his military service. Also strange is my grandfather's story from the navy, but that’s for another time

In search of the Aviator

I’ve spent many an afternoon wandering the Heavitree graveyard in the hope of finding his grave and that of my grandfather and grandmother. Searches of the local archive don’t reveal anything and no physical grave exists, despite the fact I can remember as a small child the cheery call of the bus conductor, “anyone for the boneyard” as my gran and I would get off the bus to visit his grave, she would take flowers and put them in the silver grey pot, it was very forlorn and sombre. Oddly I find a strange calm and beauty in the cemetery now.

Ghosts?

I don’t personally believe in ghosts, although I know a great many people who do. What I will say is that the pull of the past is very strong in that graveyard, the sense of collective history and personal tragedy seems very present. it doesn’t take much of a leap for a believer to assume that some souls stalk the grounds looking for loved ones or trying to find peace amongst the stones.

With that in mind I was inspired to place the aviator in that graveyard, forever lost searching, perhaps for his own resting place. Long forgotten as he indeed seems to be.

YouTube Music Video

On a windy, Sunday afternoon my long suffering friends and family wandered the graveyard looking for the grave of the lost aviator, this time with a not so subtle difference. Vinnie with the help of Phill was finely adorned in the costume of the aviator. We shot some footage of hime wandering amongst the graves. You can see the result here PolarVoidX. As it's a music video a not so subtle, fun ending was added for Halloween.

The Music and Process

I candidly decided, despite the seriousness of the topic, to make it tongue in cheek. I’ve always been a fan of Hammer Horror and Halloween tales, so not much of a leap to find a ghostly aviator stalking the cemetery.
The music began almost hilariously with an E minor take on the devils triad it also pays homage to Danse Macabre which I love. This underpins the entire thing. I love some of the classic horror music and with that in mind I created a grating sequence using a patch on the Korg I made named squeezebox. Once heard you can never quite get it out of your head. The other played elements hint at both Halloween and the exorcist in tone and timbre. the whole theme is designed to be unsettling.

To add to this I added a huge bass roll that plunges down, almost unnoticed except on a really good hifi.

the creepy effects were produced using a zoom recorder. I pinged the strings of an electric guitar above the nut, then slowed the recording down and passed it through a guitar effects pedal. Mixed with some distortion it sounds like someone is trying to tune a radio to a certain frequency but can’t get it to stick. Just as an Aviator in distress might do. 

The second unnerving effect is the vocal, heavily echoed and slowed down, this is the persistent, “Where are you? I can’t find you” it runs through the song and echoes through the cemetery too!

I added a second drier vocal to punctuate the words as they felt important to the sense of lost and loss.

Also present are footsteps, these were recorded as I recced the graveyard in the early evening with my phone. Oddly they seem to have doubled? I didn’t put any echo or reverb on them it must be the natural ambience. Its unsettling to say the least. I sat and isolated that track whilst editing and couldn’t help looking around to check there was no-one there!

The drums are understated, more of an irregular heartbeat than a drum beat.

Finally the diminished finish chords and reveal, it’s cheesy but fun, oddly I felt the need to take the edge off. The squeaky door hinge is my back kitchen door, slowed down a bit.

All the music is played on Korg synths and the effects are added in as patches so I can reproduce and play them live. I try to play everything in a way that I can replicate without a computer in a live setting. Recording often in one hit.

Listen to the music here: Spotify PolarVoidX AppleMusic BandCamp

See the Video Here: PolarVoidX

Conclusion

As I said I don’t believe in ghosts, but I do feel the resonant pull of of the past and the energy of certain places very strongly. I have a deep connection to this city, and sometimes when the sun is setting, the clocks are changing and the shadows are getting longer, I get the sense that that past isn’t as far away as I once thought it was.

The team

I couldn't have pulled off the video and the still images above without a great fun group of co-conspirators, special thanks to Vinnie for being the Aviator, I hope you can sleep at night! Thanks to Phill for the brilliant costume, I've always said you should do props for a living! Thanks to Paul for keeping us on the path, quite literally at times. And finally to Laura, my wife, for her excellent video skills.

Joe K Baker aka PolarVoidX Oct 2022