St. Gregory Orange
St. Gregory Orange
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The Compression
About St. Gregory Orange
Maybe this could have been a comic book. Only I'm no Adrian Tomine, no Daniel Clowes. Or maybe a Vincent Gallo indebted, slow-pan encumbered short film, crowned with self-conciously lengthy dry-tounged dialogue that tries ever so hard not to progress the narrative or anything as worthy as that. Only none of my friends'd hold the camera straight. So it is a record. A Kind-Of-Pop record. A Document too (and "there, I said it. I said the Dee-word"). A collage of a few things that happened and far more that probably didn't. I can't really remember. It was years ago. So it is A Kind-Of-Pop-Doctronica record. Full of ghosts, and half-remembered, half-slurred apologies for some things that probably didn't matter in the first place, and for some things that maybe didn't even happen in the first place. Maybe that sounds self indulgant. I think it probably does, dosen't it? Ill try do this a little more coherantly. Months ago, maybe a year, maybe more, I made some music for my friends who were shooting a film. I started to piece together compositions, using swatches of treated guitars, manipulating the recordings on my computer, reverb-to-eleven kinda deals, creating drone beds and things, the kind of thing that Wire Magazine might enthuse about. I became obsessed with creating these little film scores, and continued making them long after I'd ruined my friend's film. I quit my job and spent whole nights at the computer. I was preoccupied with sound manipulation, accumulating a tragically unattractive pixletan, and masses of field recordings with my dictaphone. Mutating familar sounds digitally, trying to create completely emersive enviroments, soundscapes, scenes to imaginary films. That sounds self-indulgent too, dosen't it? Never mind. Then, months later I found an old notebook. A kind of half-diary, but filtered through an ever-present persona. Most of it was trash. I tore it up and forgot about it. But I kept the persona. I called him St Gregory Orange. I don't remember why. Meanwhile, I'd been recording electronic pop songs on the crappy mic that'd come free with some sordid sing-along-with-pop-idol game. I was probably dealing with a bunch of things, but the beauty was that I didn't have to engage head-on with any of it. I had St Greg for that. Besides, I always hated those "woe-is-me, here's how Im feeling on a silver platter, I miss her, him, or it" records. I thought Greg had a good enough sense of humour to bypass those maudlin tendancies. The glass was always half full, untill of course he drank it dry and stumbled to the bar with the money he borrowed from his so-called-friends. I had an idea for a kind of cinematic pop album. A project whereby the imaginary-film scores, and the electronic pop songs could converge. I decided to call it Things We Said In Bedrooms, which was for a long time the prospective title to a film I'd kind-of written, but secretly knew I'd never shoot. I really did try the comic, too. The record began to assemble itself into something resembling a narrative. Nothing akin to one of those terrible 70s prog rock records or anything. No wizards. No flute solos. Far more vague. Just completely compatible, totally kindred in tone, thats all. It began to feel just like shooting a film, inserting 'scenes', scrapping 'scenes', trying to establish pace, and things. I collected what was left of the notebook. Scribbled out anything too cringe-worthily personal, and scattered the remainder throughout the record. Between tracks, and behind them. It was perfect. The swatches sounded exactly like what they were, half-forgotten, petrified ghosts. Things I barely remembered. The record isn't really a pop record is it? It isn't unflinchingly truthful enough to be a Document either. Its a stream of conciousness from whenever-ago. And an apology, to whom it may concern. St Gregory Orange x
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