Music from big, Pink…

Back on the 7th of April there was a Pink Super Moon, the biggest, or rather closest, we will have this year. In some cultures it is considered an indicator of the end of days; and while it might be a bit superstitious to worry about an approaching apocalypse based on the Moon’s natural cycle, it was certainly a harbinger of a world transformed in ways we couldn’t imagine at the start of 2020. As Nick Drake sang in the Autumn of 1971, “And none of you stand so tall, Pink moon gonna get you all”. 

When I first started listening to Nick Drake (and at first I couldn’t stop) he’d been dead for over a decade, and while he wasn’t quite a lost genius, he was an esoteric pleasure. Indeed he was talked of by those who had heard him as the British Robert Johnson:  a tragic troubadour whose dark genius was not entirely natural, who left behind a small but perfect oeuvre. In my late teens as I was then, I found his songs compelling, and matchless. Then his legacy really started to be acknowledged in the ‘90s (when his work finally got released on CD)  and with this reassessment his third & final album eventually came to be considered the magnum opus. Drake’s last record is an artist baring his soul, paring his art to the bone, staring into the dark night at a pink moon. It is deceptive in it’s simplicity and it is devastating in it’s complexity. 

Sometime in the middle of 1965 John Wood and Geoff Frost opened an 8-track studio called Sound Techniques in a former dairy at 46a Old Church Street in Chelsea, West London. Nick Drake’s first session there was in 1968 when he recorded his first album Five Leaves Left while still a student at Cambridge. The album’s producer, in the traditional A&R sense, was Joe Boyd, who booked the studio and the musicians, but it was John Wood who was responsible for the record’s sound, right up to the finished product. Boyd and Wood had developed a good relationship and many regular clients of Sound Techniques were signed to Boyd’s production & publishing company Witchseason. Artists on his roster who recorded there include The Incredible String Band, Fairport Convention, Vashti Bunyan, and of course John Martyn. Martyn’s landmark album Solid Air, with it’s phenomenal titular tribute to his friend Nick Drake, was recorded over a couple of weeks at the end of 1972, a few months after Pink Moon was released. Two years later, with Drake’s death from an overdose of anti-depressants, it would become an elegy. John Martyn's best selling album was recorded at Island’s Basing Street studios and Sound Techniques, and co-produced by John Wood with Martyn himself. Wood had produced Martyn’s previous album Bless The Weather at Joe Boyd’s request, using Fairport’s Richard Thompson and Danny Thompson from Pentangle on the sessions. 

Joe Boyd was a Harvard graduate who started his career as an assistant producer at Elektra and first came to England tour managing artists like Muddy Waters and Sister Rosetta Tharpe. In 1965 as one of the noise-boys working the PA at Newport when Dylan electrified folk, Joe was there when they ignored orders from the axe-wielding Pete Seeger to turn it down. By 1966 Boyd had opened the cradle of the psychedelic movement in the UK, the UFO Club on Tottenham Court Road, and was producing & recording for bands like Soft Machine. As 1967 got going he took a band by the name of Pink Floyd into Sound Techniques to record 'Arnold Layne'  — three days later they signed to EMI and it was released as their first single. The Floyd went on to do rather well at making & releasing records. Frustrated that Elektra were ignoring his recommendations to sign bands like Pink Floyd and The Move, Boyd set sail on his own and set up Witchseason. In his entertaining autobiography White Bicycles Boyd said his company name came from the Donovan lyric: “Beatniks are out to make it rich, Oh no, must be the season of the witch.” Most of Boyd’s artists were released and distributed on Chris Blackwell’s Island Records and most were recorded by John Wood. During his 11 year tenure Sound Techniques recorded The Who, The Yardbirds and Elton John among others, as well as a host of artists in the folk-rock scene like Sandy Denny, Richard & Linda Thompson, Jethro Tull, John Cale, Gerry Rafferty, Cat Stevens and Focus. 

Five Leaves Left had been arranged with various instrumentation to supplement Drake’s voice & guitar, including strings, and occasionally a little piano & flute. Richard Thompson and Danny Thompson both contributed to Drake's debut, the former playing electric guitar on the opener and the latter supplying bass on about half the tracks. Drake’s second album Bryter Layter was more elaborate with a mainstream, pop sensibility and a proper rhythm section in Fairport Convention’s Dave Mattacks & Dave Pegg. There was brass as well as strings this time, again a single song with electric guitar from Richard Thompson — and a host of different instruments played by John Cale, who was producing an album for Joe Boyd with Nico at the time. Recording duties were once again assigned to John Wood at Sound Techniques with Boyd at the helm. The second album got better notices than his first, but Nick Drake was not happy with how slick and polished the results were. At the start of the ’70s Joe Boyd was working back in the US, as a producer at Warner Bros. with Stanley Kubrick on the soundtrack to A Clockwork Orange. He may still have been available to contribute when Pink Moon was recorded, but Drake had already determined to do things differently. He wanted to do a very stripped down session with John Wood as the only collaborator over just two nights, October 30th-31st 1971 at Sound Techniques. Aside from a small piano part in the album’s opening title track, Drake used only acoustic guitars and voice through the rest of the album. Wood later said "He was very determined to make this very stark, bare record” but also that “it felt like there was a kind of urgency about it”. Nick Drake was already suffering from clinical depression and his downward spiral would end in his death three years later, aged just twenty-six. 

Pink Moon is a truly seminal work that went unnoticed on it’s release in February 1972 (indeed it almost went unreleased — legend has it Drake left the master tapes at Island's office reception in a carrier bag), but is now a regular high scorer on those ubiquitous bucket list “greatest ever albums“ litanies that eminent publications like to decree. So to receive such a glowing commendation from another great guitarist really touched us. Buck Curran is not only a painter, singer-songwriter, record producer but also a guitar builder. After working at Ramblin’ Conrad’s guitar shop in Norfolk, VA, in the ‘90s he went on to work for acclaimed luthier Dana Bourgeois for 7 years in Lewiston, ME. While living in Maine he recorded 5 albums as half of the duo Arborea. Originally from Ohio Buck now lives in Bergamo, Italy and his music can be found just about any way you care to consume it. His new albumNo Love Is Sorrow has just been released and there was an excellent article on him in Premier Guitar a couple of months ago..

When Geoff Frost & John Wood set up Sound Techniques in 1965 their studio also had a workshop where they not only built most of their own recording equipment but also recording consoles for other studios. Considering they built desks for places like the Music Centre and Trident Studios (who would later become famous themselves for producing legendary consoles), our choice for New Cut Studios of the very desk that John had used seemed like a good decision. You can see John using the New Cut console in this excellent article in Sound On Sound . 

I never got to meet John Wood, we bought his desk through Larking’s List, but I did get to work with Joe Boyd. Joe produced and recorded with Kate & Anna McGarrigle in the ‘90s and after Kate’s death in 2010 he produced a memorial show to Kate at the Royal Festival Hall on 12 June 2010, as part of the Meltdown Festival, curated that year by none other than Richard Thompson. We did rehearsals at the late, great Terminal Studios in Lamb Walk in Deptford — which was one of our inspirations to build New Cut. I had toured with Kate’s daughter Martha Wainwright and her band in 2005-06, and on some shows when we supported her brother Rufus. Watching from stage right as Emmylou Harris performed Kate’s poignant 'I Eat Dinner' with Rufus Wainwright was a breathtaking experience. Kate McGarrigle’s friend, the author of The English Patient Michael Ondaatje, who gave a beautiful elegy at Meltdown, was kind enough to sign my copy of his Coming Through Slaughter which I’d had in my day bag for some time. It is a remarkable novel that bears repeated reading — when I finished eking it out for the first time I started at the beginning again. Ondaatje’s portrait of New Orleans jazz pioneer Buddy Bolden is a story of musical genius and descent into madness. It is a work every bit as enduring and unflinching as Pink Moon and I urge you to seek it out.