Profile AutoPlay
Adult Content|
Opus Raven
[BLUES /] [UNITED KINGDOM]
Currently: "Walking on one leg." Info
|
I am a singer songwriter and long serving muse of Tin Raven.
My bands were Opus Fluke and Muses Fluke. I am a sculptor and painter. Musicaly influenced by Gong,Led Zep, Joni Mitchell, The The and Richard Thompson and in that order. Artisticly influenced by Jean Tinguley, Louise Bourgeois, Brancuzi and Bill Viola and in that order. Please call me Julia, Jules, J or Opus all are fine by me. About Blow You Away I am indeed blown away by your response to my Sound Awesome debut. I have meet some seriously groovy people here and am digging the positively and generosity of Snak who is without doubt the Master Builder on this particular FTP. May all your PHP’s fill your teapot up with tea. Blow You Away was written for Tin Raven in 1993 or thereabouts. This is just before we formed Opus Fluke and working together became a platform for both of us to get creative and get some feedback on our ideas. I was at Central St Martins Art College at the time studying sculpture and was starting to spend more time on my music than in my studio. (I would love to think I was Jarvis Cocker's inspiration for Common People but I am not from Greece. In fact I hail from Hayes (locally pronounced Ayes) which is far less romantic as a concept) Tin was if I remember correctly working nights for the un privatized British Railway with an engineering job that involved isolating fire panels. He told me it was important and responsible work but whenever I called him he was asleep under the desk or listening to music. The track was written as you hear it which is why the quality is, well, hissy, and I was no expert on recording myself, but it was a step up from recording on two tape players with just the built in mic’s which is what I had been doing up to that point. Tin gave me a few pointers and left me with his Tascam Porta 07. In a revelatory few evenings I recorded everything, even the washing machine for a track not dissimilar to B&H’s "Going Down" called "Socks", I recorded street noises, my friends smoking, Jim of Hair singing Fill My Buttocks Full Of Custard and add just a hint of Dijon Mustard" to a Bonzo esk riff and finally after a few smokes on my own "Blow You Away" happened. I had been tinkering around with some bass sounds and then after fiddling with the Yamaha RY20 drum machine the track just happened. Listening to it again I still get a bit of a tingle at its raw un-produced honesty. So this track was really the start of it all for me becauseit’s the point when I started to believe in myself as a musician. Blow You Away Shiva Rewind ten years. I had been a groupie in my rather overactive and miss spent music, art and smoke addled teens I tagged along and inveigled my way onto a lot of local bands gigs,partiesand guest lists e.g Heretic (known locally as the Hairy Ticks), The Last of The Teenage Idols, who became The Babysitters, THE SWITCH (Billy on Guitars and Malc on Drums fromFlutatious) who became The Mustard Seeds and others I have enjoyed and forgotten in the smoke. I knew the sound and the people I wanted for Muses Fluke. A few years previous I had been watching The Seeds at The Old Trout in Windsor and had been thinking if only I could get kick that over confident git of a vocalist off the stage and steel his band coz that’s a cool sound. (I did infact get on stage at that Seeds gig but it was in a gigantic white bag with a lunatic artist called Stef during the interval in the name of performance art. We went on just before the Rainbow People yet more loonies who did a tuneless but happy flower song.) Between that and the cakes that were floating around it was a very odd night. Fast forward about four years. I gave Billy Forwell a bell to find him sans band and looking for a project. I lacked confidence and experience but Billy could see potential in Opus Fluke and me as a guitarist and vocalist so he pushed it on where we needed to be.MalcolmBailey on drums signed up and the gigs and recordings and festivals followed. Muses Fluke Shiva is my thank you to Billy who produced, encouraged, nurtured, cajoled, bigged me up while drinking all the booze in my flat on a regular basis. He put up with my musical tantrums and I found my feet. After a lot of sticks under the bridge (band-split, marriage, baby, mortgage, career in education, chicken keeping and musical confidence crash) It seems I am finding my feet once again. Tin and I are talking about joint creative projects again and my confidence is returning. Thanks for listening, being so positive and generous in yourcomments and helping me put down some musical roots. I think I have just found the turning point. Cheers.
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
|
Now Playing on SoundAwesome FM
|
|
