STACK November 2016 Issue 145

60 / 128

The prince of classic romance, Dutch violinist
and conductor André Rieu, has just released
one of his most incredible productions ever on
CD and DVD. Falling In Love In Maastricht
was performed in the musician's
titular hometown earlier this year,
and these releases comprise all
32 pieces performed, including
Dorogoi Dlinnoyu's classic Russian
song Those Were The Days,
Lara's Theme from the epic
Doctor Zhivago, the triumphant
Maastricht Anthem, and Mambo
No. 5 with Lou Bega.
KATY
STEELE
FALL FOR
ANDRÉ RIEU
Falling In Love In Maastricht
by André Rieu is out on CD and DVD
now via ABC/Universal.
C elebrated political and counter-
cultural fimmaker Emile de
Antonio's documentary about the
VietnamWar, In The Year Of The Pig,
was incredibly controversial when
it was released; it came out at the
peak of the conflict in 1968, and was
nominated for an Oscar the following
year. One of its enduring images was
of young Marine Corporal Michael
Wynn, who had scrawled the dictum
'Make War Not Love' on his helmet. For The Smiths' second album,
the band decided to repurpose the image with the record's title, Meat
Is Murder, in place of Wynn's words. It became the English group's
only album to hit #1 in the UK during their career, and remained in the
charts for 13 weeks.
WHAT'S THE STORY?
We have a look back at the fascinating tales behind some
of our favourite album covers.
INTERVIEW
This month: Meat Is Murder, The Smiths (1984)
Q1/ There’s a lot of creative percussion on here – I
read that you didn’t want to use any pre-packaged
beat samples. Is percussion something you’ve
always been interested in?
Well, percussion is not something I would have guessed
would have featured as heavily as it does, so I can't take
complete credit for that one! I'd say the vocal effects
and the overall grandness of the strings and choirs were
definitely more of my vision, so the percussion element
was a nice, welcome surprise that I have completely
learned to love and appreciate.
Gio [Matt Gio, Producer] is a multi-instrumentalist, so
his abilities were in high demand in the studio.
He is one of the most patient, hardworking
and persistent people I've met, so it really was
his attention to detail that gave the album all
those final intricacies. I tend to be a lot more
loose when I'm recording home demos. But
with that looseness sometimes comes gold, so
I think you've got to have both elements, which
is what I think gives this album its strength.
Nothing is too perfect or calculated; there is
still some roughage around the edges. A lot of
the time, mistakes were instrumental in leading
us onto something even cooler.
Q2/ It seems it'd be easy to spend a lot of time
on something as intricate as those percussion
instruments, as well as vocal effects – how do you
know when to draw the line?
That's a great question. It just naturally got to a stage
when we knew we were finally done with a track. We
visit
60 NOVEMBER 2016
MUSIC NEWS
continued
FACTOID: Katy Steele's older brother Luke is songwriter, guitarist and vocalist in electronica duo Empire Of The Sun - who have just released their third album Two Vines.
really did take our time though, with that process, to
make sure everything was exactly where it should be.
I think it's really important to have space when you are
in the studio. You've got to have time to go
away and come back a week later with fresh
perspective and vision.
Q3/ You mention Kate Bush as an influence; not
her melodic choices, but the production over her
voice. What is it you like about how her voice is
presented on recordings?
I was just so into the vocal production when we were
recording. I had come back from America; I had always
been in charge over there, but I needed to find exactly
the right vision and know in my gut what I wanted. I got
back to Perth and found myself focusing on the voice
more than ever before. Something about the power of
layering up vocal upon vocal to form a choir inspired me
so much. I was attracted to the idea that such strength
and power could be conceived from a human and their
vocal chords. The effects were just a different
way to modernise this concept, and then
combined with these really simple songs I
was writing, I thought it was a good flavour
for 2016.
Q3/ Lonely is a beautiful closer. Where
and when did you come up with the
piano chord progression?
I actually remember distinctly writing this
song. It's not that often that I remember the
moment I wrote a song, so this one is unique
for me. I wrote [it] in the family underground
studio called The Dungeon. This one was written very,
very quickly, and I knew as those chords were being
formed that this song would end up on the record. I
could feel it. I think generally with this album, I got to
a point where I felt like being vulnerable, and showing
that to the world, was OK. I felt like telling the world
one night how I felt like the loneliest person in the
world, and I feel better now that it's out there.
Andre Rieu
The former Little Birdy frontwoman
with the inimitable voice has
released a towering and intricate
debut album, entitled Human.We
spoke about how it came together.
Human by
Katy Steele is
out now via
Create/Control.