On the back of Brond finally making an appearance on DVD, I emailed Daryl about how he came to work with Bill, giving his more jazz orientated background, this is the reply I received:-
" Bill and I were put together by a TV executive whose name I’ve now forgotten. He must have been asked by the director for something weird and vocal. I was at that time in an avant-garde vocal group called Electric Phoenix as their tenor singer and resident composer.
The way the tracks were made was as follows. Bill would compose music in Yorkshire and send it on multitrack tapes to me in London (I seem to remember analogue tapes, though by then we were well into the digital era). I would compose vocals to go on the backings. The vocals were overdubbed onto the multitrack tapes at Angel Studios in Islington and mixed down there with Bill absent and me producing.
For the CD and 12” single the process was reversed. I took pre-recorded vocals up to Yorkshire and Bill and I put them onto the backings at his studio.
It was a productive collaboration and I found Bill a remarkable person. His spirituality in particular impressed me and I wish I’d got to know him better, but of course our two busy careers just carried on after Brond an we lost touch.
Thanks you for alerting me to the dvd release: my copy is ordered."
Very insightful, Bill, do you have any recollections? Listening again to the music there seems to be sounds that seem to be from the Fairlight, or something similar, how did you find using the technology that was very much at the cutting edge back then?
Mick
Some further info on the Secret Ceremony / Wiping a Tear recordings on the
Daryl Runswick / Electric Phoenix website
https://www.darylrunswick.net/1electricphoenix/eprecsother.pdf
Scroll down to page 3
Fascinating thread. I got the soundtrack record when it was released, and loved the music, but never saw the TV series, and knew little about it. Thanks (Machman?) for the original tip on the DVD, which I've bought and now watched. I think I'm going to have to watch it again to figure it out, although I enjoyed it a lot (but I wonder what Taggart fans made of it).
(Love that Daryl Runswick performance above).
Bill,
I passed on your recollections to Daryl, his reply :-
"Wonderful. My best wishes to Bill."
Thanks for sharing your perspective, Bill, I’m always intrigued when collaborations between musicians from different backgrounds occur although a quick gander at your vast body of work shows influence from just about everywhere! I’ll pass on your recollections to Daryl.
Mick
Back when we worked together on Broad, the initial instrumental parts were composed and recorded by myself in my home studio, working to edits of the drama series on VHS tapes.
I seem to recall that I didn't have any way of syncing the music to picture and so did everything using a stopwatch to try and hit all the cues where music had to underpin the action. It was a laborious process.
My home studio was all analogue and everything was recorded to tape. I seem to remember that I'd hired an Emu Emulator keyboard which could reproduce orchestral and string tones. This was an early digital keyboard and each sound had to be loaded in to the keyboard from a floppy data disc, which was slow and time consuming.
Once I'd composed and recorded the instrumental tracks, these were sent off to Daryl who then wrote the vocal parts for his group 'Electric Pheonix' to sing. The 'lyrics' were actually taken from Dante's Inferno, which suited the character of the drama's villain. The vocals were overdubbed onto my instrumental tracks in London. I always thought that I was present for the vocal sessions, but Daryl remembers differently. It was, of course, many years ago now and there's been a heck of a lot of water under the old bridge since then, so it's become a bit vague.
We later reworked a couple of the tracks for the Cocteau Records single which was released under the 'group' name of 'Scala.' I titled the B-side, 'Wiping A Tear From The All Seeing Eye' and this is my favourite piece from all the tracks we recorded. It's gentle and beautiful and still sounds wonderful today.
I remember going to see a concert that Daryl later did with a group of other musicians. One of the pieces was titled 'Loony Tunes', I think it was a musical commentary on American culture and politics, but it greatly impressed me. It was complex yet made perfect sense.
Incidentally, the man who commissioned us to work together was Andy Parks, a brilliantly perceptive man who had also commissioned me as composer for the tv series 'Map Of Dreams' which actually started out as an idea I had for a series based on esoteric and hermetic symbolism but which became rather less interesting when the production company changed it to a more basic astrological theme, which I guess was supposed to be easier to understand and therefore more likely to find an audience.
'Brond' was directed by Michael Cayton Jones who also directed 'Lucky Sunil' a tv drama which I also composed and recorded the music for. Michael went on to direct several big budget movies.
Daryl's birthday concert ...
Hi Mick, great to hear not only praise of Bill's ability but also complimentary about him as a person. Very interesting, thank you.