Following yesterday's exploration through Peter Scion works here are 3 more.
The Amethyst Dream
THE EMERGENCE OF 'THE AMETHYST DREAM'
NOTES BY PETER SCION
'The Amethyst Dream' concludes the entirely unintentional trilogy of albums that begun with 'Devachan' and 'Tree Music'. Initially I wanted it to be an album that you could have playing in the background while doing other things--which is one reason why much of it relies on instrumental themes and passages--as well as to listen to it with greater attention. Not much of the original idea went into the finished album. When deciding what songs were going to be included, it turned into an album that somehow makes a point.
One aspect of 'The Amethyst Dream' is that it's a cyclical album. Song sequence is very important to how you perceive an album, but sequencing is always an intuitive thing to me. It's about listening to what the songs tell you. They 'know' how they want to be grouped, and they're right most of the time. 'The Amethyst Dream' is like ebb and flow, and the songs correspond to each other with a certain regularity. First song 'Spring Fair Tune' corresponds to the closing track 'The Garden'. 'Permanent Green Light' to 'Death Comes from the Sky'.
'Death Comes from the Sky' is important to the album, and represents another aspect of it. The idea for the song came to me one extremely hot early summer's day. I hate heat more than almost anything else, and I figured the most painful end to mankind would be if the sun killed us. Really, I was terrified by the thought! I had visions in my head of bodies lying on the ground with the skin burnt off and only a few survivors trying to get away from the end no-one could escape. If they survived the sun, the poison wind or water would kill them anyway. A not very original image of an environmental Armageddon, but it came alive very vivid in my mind and scared the shit out of me! I think of 'Death Comes to the Sky' as the question to which other parts of the album offers one plausible answer. The question is somehow political, while the answer is spiritual.
'The Amethyst Dream' is, by the way, an album I'm rather satisfied with.
NOTES BY PETER SCION
'The Amethyst Dream' concludes the entirely unintentional trilogy of albums that begun with 'Devachan' and 'Tree Music'. Initially I wanted it to be an album that you could have playing in the background while doing other things--which is one reason why much of it relies on instrumental themes and passages--as well as to listen to it with greater attention. Not much of the original idea went into the finished album. When deciding what songs were going to be included, it turned into an album that somehow makes a point.
One aspect of 'The Amethyst Dream' is that it's a cyclical album. Song sequence is very important to how you perceive an album, but sequencing is always an intuitive thing to me. It's about listening to what the songs tell you. They 'know' how they want to be grouped, and they're right most of the time. 'The Amethyst Dream' is like ebb and flow, and the songs correspond to each other with a certain regularity. First song 'Spring Fair Tune' corresponds to the closing track 'The Garden'. 'Permanent Green Light' to 'Death Comes from the Sky'.
'Death Comes from the Sky' is important to the album, and represents another aspect of it. The idea for the song came to me one extremely hot early summer's day. I hate heat more than almost anything else, and I figured the most painful end to mankind would be if the sun killed us. Really, I was terrified by the thought! I had visions in my head of bodies lying on the ground with the skin burnt off and only a few survivors trying to get away from the end no-one could escape. If they survived the sun, the poison wind or water would kill them anyway. A not very original image of an environmental Armageddon, but it came alive very vivid in my mind and scared the shit out of me! I think of 'Death Comes to the Sky' as the question to which other parts of the album offers one plausible answer. The question is somehow political, while the answer is spiritual.
'The Amethyst Dream' is, by the way, an album I'm rather satisfied with.
TREE MUSIC
THE BIRTH OF 'TREE MUSIC'
NOTES BY PETER SCION
After my first album 'Devachan' was finished, there was no turning back. Music kept flowing through me and into my 4 track tape recorder, and I couldn't have stopped it even if I had wanted to. In the spring of 1997, I was working on two albums more or less simultaneously. The working title for the first one was 'The Secret Garden', and the other one was named 'The Amethyst Dream'.
The 'Secret Garden' sessions provided the bulk for what became my second CD, 'Tree Music'. It's the old trial-and-error principles at work, without omitting the errors! I wanted everything to be there, I wanted the music to be free, keeping whatever entered the music. And I'm happy that the people who played with me on this album went along with this--thank you all!
I think 'Tree Music' is a happy album, albeit with strains of what we have learnt to define as darkness. The title track celebrates life, and 'The Flower of My Secret Garden' is a joyful love song. The second version of 'These Darkened Trees' changes the last line from 'I find myself alone' to 'I find myself'. The title 'Tree Music' wasn't chosen at random. It's an album dedicated to nature, green leaves are bursting with life, gardens are in full bloom, flowers reach for the sky with petals bathing in sunlight. Oh yes, there are what we might call darkness, but this too is part of nature. Besides, the powers of nature are neutral, and whether they are 'light' or 'dark' depends on what we make of them, whereto we direct them.
'The Flower of My Secret Garden' is an assemblage of several ideas that never got as far as becoming individual songs. It was fun to record, but a nightmare to mix! It's long and every channel is crammed with sounds and little details, and I really could have used six arms to get everything right! 'Cloak of Shame' was recorded live at home in early 1996, using a DAT. The sound effects was added later. For 'Willow Moon' I wanted to use a thunder storm as a backing track. However, the thunder and the rain wouldn't come, until early one morning when glorious thunder and lightning woke me up. I rushed out of the bed to capture the sound on tape. 'Dance to the Witch's Visit' is a jam with me and my friend Carita Forslund recorded in rehearsal for a gig in early May 1997.
From a technical and 'professional' point of view, 'Tree Music' is a perfect example of how to not make an album. You're not 'supposed' to leave everything there. Errors 'should' be corrected. Flaws 'should' be smoothed out. So called ugliness should be trimmed into controlled beauty. But I wanted an old overgrown, abandoned garden with an old witch house. I've loved those since I was a child, and the scary beauty of something taking on a life of its own. Don't know if I succeeded, and besides, that's only my idea of 'Tree Music' anyway.
NOTES BY PETER SCION
After my first album 'Devachan' was finished, there was no turning back. Music kept flowing through me and into my 4 track tape recorder, and I couldn't have stopped it even if I had wanted to. In the spring of 1997, I was working on two albums more or less simultaneously. The working title for the first one was 'The Secret Garden', and the other one was named 'The Amethyst Dream'.
The 'Secret Garden' sessions provided the bulk for what became my second CD, 'Tree Music'. It's the old trial-and-error principles at work, without omitting the errors! I wanted everything to be there, I wanted the music to be free, keeping whatever entered the music. And I'm happy that the people who played with me on this album went along with this--thank you all!
I think 'Tree Music' is a happy album, albeit with strains of what we have learnt to define as darkness. The title track celebrates life, and 'The Flower of My Secret Garden' is a joyful love song. The second version of 'These Darkened Trees' changes the last line from 'I find myself alone' to 'I find myself'. The title 'Tree Music' wasn't chosen at random. It's an album dedicated to nature, green leaves are bursting with life, gardens are in full bloom, flowers reach for the sky with petals bathing in sunlight. Oh yes, there are what we might call darkness, but this too is part of nature. Besides, the powers of nature are neutral, and whether they are 'light' or 'dark' depends on what we make of them, whereto we direct them.
'The Flower of My Secret Garden' is an assemblage of several ideas that never got as far as becoming individual songs. It was fun to record, but a nightmare to mix! It's long and every channel is crammed with sounds and little details, and I really could have used six arms to get everything right! 'Cloak of Shame' was recorded live at home in early 1996, using a DAT. The sound effects was added later. For 'Willow Moon' I wanted to use a thunder storm as a backing track. However, the thunder and the rain wouldn't come, until early one morning when glorious thunder and lightning woke me up. I rushed out of the bed to capture the sound on tape. 'Dance to the Witch's Visit' is a jam with me and my friend Carita Forslund recorded in rehearsal for a gig in early May 1997.
From a technical and 'professional' point of view, 'Tree Music' is a perfect example of how to not make an album. You're not 'supposed' to leave everything there. Errors 'should' be corrected. Flaws 'should' be smoothed out. So called ugliness should be trimmed into controlled beauty. But I wanted an old overgrown, abandoned garden with an old witch house. I've loved those since I was a child, and the scary beauty of something taking on a life of its own. Don't know if I succeeded, and besides, that's only my idea of 'Tree Music' anyway.
Sister Songs
A MEANS TO AN END – THE "SISTER SONGS" SESSIONS
It surprised a few people when I announced that I'll stop making music, and that "Sister Songs" would be my last album. But from my perspective, it's a highly logical move to stop doing things with the same conviction I once used to do them. As a matter of fact, hadn't I decided to quit, it's doubtful I would ever have finished "Sister Songs". The sessions stretched out for several months which is an unusually drawn out period for me making an album. Although I was pleased with how the first songs I recorded turned out and knew what I wanted the record to be like, what story I wanted it to tell, I just couldn't make myself write the remaining material.
It was during one of my e-mail conversations with Craig Williamson I actually made my decision. He encouraged me to give it up when I complained to him that music wasn't fun anymore, and that finishing the album was becoming more like a ball and chain than the creative joy it had started as. As soon as I had adjusted to the idea that it would be my final album (mind you, it wasn't an easy step to take!), I wrote the last songs I needed to complete the record and recorded them in short time. After all, it would have been unfair not to finish it. Unfair to the songs I actually had at that point because I liked them and in many ways were my most ambitious and worked-through material, and unfair to the person to whom they were aimed.
At a first glance, "Sister Songs" may look like an album of love songs. To some degree it is, but it doesn't deal with the kind of love you hopefully find in a traditional relationship. The songs are more like friendship songs, a friendship that goes deeper than what a relationship seems to allow, paradoxically as it may seem. It deals with a situation that truly changed my life, something that – to quote one of the titles on the album – offered me a sense of belonging. I know it sounds just as sad as pretentious, but that sense is something I've rarely felt and when I finally got it, I had to celebrate it in some way. So if you want an autobiographical album, there you go!
***************NEW LINK POSTED SEPTEMBER 2012***************
Get it here
It surprised a few people when I announced that I'll stop making music, and that "Sister Songs" would be my last album. But from my perspective, it's a highly logical move to stop doing things with the same conviction I once used to do them. As a matter of fact, hadn't I decided to quit, it's doubtful I would ever have finished "Sister Songs". The sessions stretched out for several months which is an unusually drawn out period for me making an album. Although I was pleased with how the first songs I recorded turned out and knew what I wanted the record to be like, what story I wanted it to tell, I just couldn't make myself write the remaining material.
It was during one of my e-mail conversations with Craig Williamson I actually made my decision. He encouraged me to give it up when I complained to him that music wasn't fun anymore, and that finishing the album was becoming more like a ball and chain than the creative joy it had started as. As soon as I had adjusted to the idea that it would be my final album (mind you, it wasn't an easy step to take!), I wrote the last songs I needed to complete the record and recorded them in short time. After all, it would have been unfair not to finish it. Unfair to the songs I actually had at that point because I liked them and in many ways were my most ambitious and worked-through material, and unfair to the person to whom they were aimed.
At a first glance, "Sister Songs" may look like an album of love songs. To some degree it is, but it doesn't deal with the kind of love you hopefully find in a traditional relationship. The songs are more like friendship songs, a friendship that goes deeper than what a relationship seems to allow, paradoxically as it may seem. It deals with a situation that truly changed my life, something that – to quote one of the titles on the album – offered me a sense of belonging. I know it sounds just as sad as pretentious, but that sense is something I've rarely felt and when I finally got it, I had to celebrate it in some way. So if you want an autobiographical album, there you go!
All note taken from Tree Music Webpage
Get all three cds by Peter Scion!Great dark mystical acid folk full of melancholy and spreading emotions eveywhere as if they were flowers.FANTASTIC!HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!!
Get it here
thank you so much! this is one of the best I've ever heard. The only track of Peter Scion I know so far, was from a Syd Barrett Tribute Record.
ReplyDeleteThanks for that!
thanks for the Peter Scion albums!
ReplyDeleteHey, thank you a whole lot for sharing this. Scion is so much a genius!
ReplyDeleteMind you, something is heavily wrong with the files, tracklists and song titles here. That which is posted here as "Tree Music" is in fact the first five songs of "Through My Ghost". And hence, the first five songs on your other post "Through My Ghost" is in fact the complete "Tree Music" album.
The last three songs on "Sister Songs" are comepletely muddled. The song "World You Are" is missing entirely. That which is titled "World You Are" in your post is in fact the WALKABOUTS cover "Lover's Crime" from the "Sweet Sorrow Man" album. Is it any possible to get a correct version of the last three tracks from "Sister Songs". Please let me know.
Thank you!