Puerto Montt City Orchestra: A Musical Tribute to David Sylvian's Red Guitar...
- 18 minutes ago
- 4 min read
When we heard the Puerto Montt City Orchestra's version of "Red Guitar", we all agreed that it was a huge musical achievement. I had to ask Angus Murray and Tim Salter a few questions...
1) 'Red guitar' was David Sylvian's debut solo single after the dissolution of Japan, a band which started as a group of friends. The song is a love statement to music. How much did that influence the way you worked on the remix?
Red Guitar was the first song I (Angus) ever bought with my own money and it therefore means a huge amount to me. The honest truth is I don't know what initially drew me to buy it, I was 11 and wasn't aware of Japan at that point (that deep dive happened later) I probably just thought he looked amazingly cool and wished I could have the same hair. I have always been interested in the drive for self-actualization and this song really speaks to that. Why are people compelled to write music, create pottery, cook etc - it often feels like a wonderful rejection of those things we are supposed to strive for.
2) The EP contains three different versions of Sylvain's composition, which blend elements of jazz and pop in an intriguing musical trip. You chose to go the Balearic way here, proposing an extremely ethereal vision of the song. Do you remember what element of the original song took you there?
When we first decided to try and do a cover of this song, we spent a long time just trying to work out the chords and all the key changes! Once we were happy with the main piano element I think this ultimately led the direction of the whole tune.
Stripping out some of the more musical flourishes allowed us to go for that more laidback balearic style, but I think it was the use of a female vocal that made us want to try and achieve an ethereal sound. This then meant using certain synth sounds to support that style.
3) What is great to see is that both PMCO and Coyote's mixes shine their way through, keeping the Balearic message intact. You all really went far on that one, musically keeping the musicianship found in the original song. Was it something you desired to achieve from the start? Transposing a song to a new dimension while keeping its complex musical core? It seems like a perfect tribute to me, intellectually speaking!
That is really kind of you to say because as we mentioned to Colleen if we had stopped to really look at how complex the track is musically I am not sure we would have attempted to cover it! When a song means that much to you it is important to do it justice.
We are super lucky to have 2 great musicians in PMCO (Ellis on guitar & Dave on bass), so our releases and remixes typically have a 'played live' element. That really helped with this song as it meant we could maintain some of the musicality of the original.
I am reading a huge amount in to the fact that David Sylvian liked one of our posts about the release - I think that is pretty much as close to official approval as we can hope for.
4) When listening to your version, we are surprised to see you didn't keep Sylvian's voice; new vocals being recorded by Maya Blandy. Why is that? Can you tell us more about the story you wanted to convey there using Maya's vocals and adding these spoken words to the final mix?
We wanted the song to be able to have a proper release and that couldn't happen with the original vocal (unless someone had very deep pockets to clear the samples). We had worked with Maya previously and thought her ethereal vocals would really match where we were taking the track. Tim's brother Jeremy has featured on a number of PMCO releases (most notably Our Patagonian Friends), so we thought his spoken vocals would work as a great counterpoint to the main singing.
5) We met before on the blog, and if anything, your remix perfectly represents Puerto Montt City Orchestra's musical DNA, the one taking a song to stratospheric and new heights, including beautiful and realistic-sounding instruments and effects. Sonically speaking, when do you know where to draw the line and not take out too much from the original song?
Our favourite remixes have always been those that take the original track into a new direction but still have a reference or some kind of lineage to the original song. If you are going to throw everything away you may as well write an original track. Ultimately, it is a balancing act and probably one of the most fun elements of doing a remix. This is slightly different to our remixes as it is a cover, there are no elements from the original track. We kept the original structure pretty much intact for the main mix, which gave us a bit more room to experiment with the dub version.
In the end, we wanted to do an updated version that would work in a balearic DJ set, but anyone listening who knew the original would pretty much instantly recognise it.
Thank you so much Angus and Tim!
Thanks for having us Artur, it was our pleasure.
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