Fallingsky by Cloudland Blue Quartet

Seven of these eight songs were written and recorded in quick succession in July 2021.

The first song, though, which, in hindsight, set the project going, was created in May 2021, just after the completion and release of the last CBQ song-based LP, "Sparklemusik".

Edward Spark sent a sample of a bass playing a rather sad chord sequence, the chords of which he asked me to identify. I was unable to work them out but worked on the sample anyway, combining it with an orchestral excerpt from another Edward Spark recording and adding samples of my own guitarscape "Time Overcome by Hope, Love and Beauty (1627)" from my album "Disquietmusik III" - all the tracks on my "Disquietmusik" LPs are named at random after paintings.

I had a new instrumental piece.

[Note : On the morning the album was released, Edward Spark advised the sample was by our friend Tim Webb but Mr S. still did not identify it. I contacted Tim and asked him to take a listen - he advised it's the opening riff from his piece "Inner Voices" from his EP "Probability Theory", released on Bandcamp in March this year. The mystery was solved!]

Next, I wrote a lyric based around the description of the painting whose titled had been applied to the guitarscape I'd used in the mix and I also decided to try singing in a "different" way - note that, with the exception of a few lines in "Here We Are Again" (which it turned out had been sung in the wrong key!) all the vocals on this LP are "first takes".

For two months though, after airing this new song on my podcast, it sat alone on a hard drive - there was no intention of creating an LP using the methodology.

But then, in July, I started to curate a large number of loops and samples which I reckoned I might use to create further new pieces, editing, manipulating, treating and, finally, arranging them into brand new creations of my own.

In a burst of activity, over four days, I wrote and recorded another four songs and, together with "Time is Defeated", it seemed I now did indeed have the makings of a new album.

Then, on 12 July, the Exec Producer saw the film "Supernova". I read the synopsis and watched the trailer and decided to write a song around the idea of the story, searching for "sad" samples. By the end of the day, I had a sixth song done and dusted.

Nine days later, a seventh was added and, the day after that, the final piece of the puzzle fell into place with the last song on the record, "All The Things I Did". It's closing lines are revealing:-

"It's made up as I go along and now I'm at the end
I've stolen everything it's built upon, it's all within the blend
Hear me play the guitar, watch me cut and chop
Listen to the synthesiser, it plays in my laptop"

Over the next two weeks, I worked on both vocal and instrumental mixes of the songs, then created 7" mixes (vocal, instrumental and beatless) and ended up with the 40 tracks which comprise the download bundle of "Fallingsky".

I hope you enjoy listening to them as much as I enjoyed putting them together.

David Reilly
Edinburgh, 4 August 2021

A quartet in name only, initially influenced by Fripp & Eno's "No Pussyfooting" and The Velvet Underground's debut, songwriter & soundscaper David Reilly started musicking in 1977 by creating drones using sellotape on the keys of his dad's Bontempi Organ. The subsequent junk shop purchases of an electric guitar & fuzzbox and the acquisition of an old Beatles songbook, led him into songwriting...

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