In 2022 I received a test pressing of our first album, Sparks Lane, originally released in 2002. It was due to be released on vinyl and my job was to check that the pressing was up to scratch. As I was listening through, it brought back fond memories of the time Marty and I spent recording those songs. That’s when the idea came to me - perhaps people would be interested in hearing the story of how we recorded these albums? After all, back in the old days, every LP would have sleeve notes on the back cover and part of the pleasure of listening a new record would be to read them. I suppose they became outdated and unfashionable when pop and rock arrived in the 60’s.

 

So now is your chance to sit back, relax and listen again while you read the sleeve notes. We hope it will give you a deeper insight into the world of Marty and myself as the entity known as Noctorum - how we wrote the songs, our recording methods and along the way I will introduce you to the supporting cast of friends, musicians, artists, technicians and business people that helped us to realise our musical ambitions.

 

Dare Mason

 

Many thanks to Noctorum friend, Hud Saunders for editing these sleeve notes.

 

                                                                Scroll down or click on one of the album covers to take you to the relevant sleeve notes. Enjoy!

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Sparks Lane (2002)

 

For five or six years Marty and I had discussed collaborating on an album. I had already produced his solo albums, but we had never worked co-creatively on a project, mainly because we were too busy to find the time to meet up and begin the process. For ten years I had been a freelance producer and engineer based in London, but also working in Sweden, Canada and the US. At that time Marty was a full-time member of two touring and recording bands, namely The Church and All About Eve. No wonder we found it difficult to be in the same place at the same time!

 

However, in the summer of 2001 an opportunity presented itself. Earlier that year I had moved to Penzance, Cornwall and had opened my recording studio, the VIP Lounge. It just so happened that All About Eve would be doing two unplugged shows at the local arts club, the Acorn Theatre, which was situated literally opposite the VIP Lounge. This was our chance! While the rest of the band returned to London after the gigs, Marty was able to stay in Penzance for five more days. 

 

I prepared for the event by rifling through Marty's considerable vinyl collection and taking some samples that may come in handy later. We had a vague plan to record an ambient guitar album along the lines of Fripp/Eno. I had already released two ambient albums (Dive and Mother of Pearl) and Marty’s speciality was electric guitar; it seemed the obvious choice.

 

 

In the early 90’s I had the pleasure and privilege to produce Sometime/Anywhere by The Church. Whenever someone asks me which record I enjoyed working on most, it’s always that one. Why? Well, I had been a fan for years and my best mate played for them. But also, it was their method of working. Steve Kilbey and Marty (there were only two of them in the band at this time) would start jamming, usually over a drum loop, and write the song on the spot, while I recorded them. 

 

So it was natural for Marty and I to adopt this approach when recording our album. For each song we would choose an instrument and just jam with it and see what came out. “Hey that’s a good riff, let’s repeat that four times and come up with another bit." "Great, we’ve got a verse, a chorus and another bit that could be a middle eight or an instrumental.” 

 

Sometimes I would play bass while Marty played guitar. Sometimes it would be me on keys with Marty on bass. We would try all sorts of combinations. Usually we would jam over a drum loop. I had a huge collection of drum takes that I had recorded on my travels as a producer. Sometimes, we would programme a beat and sometime we would use my old Roland rhythm box.

 

I remember that while I was programming a loop on the very first day, Marty had his Takamine 12-string lying across his lap and he started to play an unusual arpeggio. “Hey, listen to this," he said, "can you record it?” That became the chord sequence to Hey There and we were away! I added the electric arpeggio on Marty’s Strat and, as I did so, Marty sat on the couch and wrote the lyrics. This was to become our pattern of recording. We would write and record the basic backing track, and while I arranged and tweaked it on the computer, Marty would miraculously write a whole set of lyrics. I’d turn around, having done my engineering bit and he would say, “Right, ready to record the lead vocal?”

 

It soon became clear that this would not be an ambient guitar record. It was also clear that we would have to work our proverbial asses off to record an album in five days. Rather than think about it or discuss it, we just got on with it. We had no distractions. Marty was staying at my house, which was only ten minute’s walk away, so we would get to the studio at midday and work through till two or three in the morning, pausing only for refreshment. At that time Marty was still drinking, so we must have got through a fair amount of beer! In the middle of the week I caught a bad head cold, but I just ploughed on through. We had dreamed of making a record together for years and nothing was going to stop us.

 

 

 

 

Hey There was the only track that didn’t have drums on it and we wanted it to stay that way. I asked Matt Pharaoh, a local percussion player, to lay down some subtle congas. My long-time friend Duncan Bridgeman happened to be visiting, so I took the opportunity to get him in to jam over a few songs. Duncan is a double Grammy-nominated filmmaker, musician and producer, with credits too numerous to mention here. But the important one, listed in Discogs, is his credit on our first record! His sensitive and delicate flute melds beautifully with the recorder, played by local musician Sigge Hawken. The backing vocal was by a sixteen-year-old school girl, Stacey Williams. At this time, I was working part-time at the Humphry Davy secondary school in Penzance as a teaching assistant in the music department. Stacey had a lovely tone to her voice and I thought it would be nice to give her the opportunity to do some professional recording. We were very pleased with the results. The finishing touch were the playground noises at the beginning of the song to reinforce the innocence (or so I thought) of the lyrics. Marty has since told me that the song has far more sinister overtones.

 

One day I arrived at the studio before Marty, found a groovy loop and wrote the piano part to My Museum. I had three sections that would become the verse, the bridge and the chorus. Marty added the acoustic guitar to drive it along and I anchored it with the bass. I also found various weird sounding samples to add to the foreboding atmosphere. My idea was to have an extended instrumental outro featuring viola and cello. In the 90’s I had produced a band in London called The Unsophisticates, and they introduced me to that particular combination of stringed instruments which created a brooding, melancholy feeling. Again, two local players, Rachel Didcot and Allen Samuel, did the honours. However, there was something missing. It still needed Marty’s touch, so I sent the track to him in New York and he managed to grab an hour in the studio and sent me a superb lead guitar track that takes the song to another level. This was one of only two songs where we did not replace the drum loop - it was the perfect sound for the song.

 

The simplicity - and possibly part of the appeal - of Hymn is that it is an 8-bar chord sequence that just repeats throughout the whole song. I think I originally came up with the chords on our little Casio keyboard. Later it was replaced by John Bickersteth’s accordion. John was introduced to me by Paul Hunt, the same guy who recommended our drummer, Mark Wilkin. A multi-instrumentalist and an eccentric to boot, John was a great addition to our collection of session musicians and we would use his services again. But the star of this song is undoubtedly Colin Smith who plays the dobro guitar. At the time, he was working in The Granary, the local health food shop, and playing the odd open-mic night. I loved his style of playing and his humble attitude. When he came to the studio and played what he had written I was blown away, and I knew we had the crucial part that would make the song work.

 

I remember that High As A Kite was one of the last songs we wrote in those hectic five days. Marty sat down with his trusted 12-string and started playing the chords. They just flowed out of him and I believe the vocal melody came to him at the same time. I chimed in with the middle eight. This is the pop song on the album and we always say that in a fair world it would have been a big hit. The song itself was fairly complete by the time Marty left and my job was to make it even more poptastic. To that end I added nylon string guitar in the bridges (uncredited on the album sleeve!), brought in an organ in the second verse, wrote and recorded the Beach Boys-esque backing vocals, played bouzouki in the third verse and added the lush strings.

 

After Marty wrote the twisted lyrics to Ask Again, my job was to exaggerate the atmosphere of peril and impending doom. The first sounds the listener hears are two samples from my EMU sampler that I just happened to discover that day. I thought they sounded cool, so I sequenced them and found a drum loop that complimented them. We kept the arrangement fairly sparse so that we could add strange, unsettling samples and noises. Really the song is based around the funky loop and Marty’s bass riff. I knew that the focus should be on the spoken, almost deadpan vocal, which leads the listener into a journey of mishaps, blind alleys and bad directions - a feeling of being lost in a dark, dangerous and unfamiliar place. 

 

Often I listen back to tracks I have produced and wonder where on earth I found the sounds I’m listening to. That’s very much the case with this song. I do remember recording the traffic sounds on a portable DAT recorder in Portobello Road, London. There is also a sample from a well loved 70’s prog record. Tom Green of Another Fine Day and The Orb was passing, dropped in and played some funky organ. And finally, I had just met a Penzance legend by the name of Billy Burman (except everyone called him Indian Billy), who was a reggae DJ and a fine watercolour artist. I was determined to get Billy on the album so I got him in to scratch. I think he ended up using a Diana Ross record.

 

I think it would be fair to describe Things To Do And Be as a tour de force. It certainly was for me in terms of the difficulty of arranging it and producing it. This was the last track we recorded before Marty had to leave. By this time we were both exhausted, physically and mentally, but not creatively! We started with a loop from The Insect God by Michael Mantler from his masterful album, The Hapless Child. This established a frightening, doom-laden atmosphere, the type we specialise in! We then introduced a loop of John Bonham’s drums from Rock And Roll on Led Zeppelin’s fourth album (which Mark Wilkin later replaced). Then we just took it in turns to play guitar and bass over that loop. There must have been seven or eight tracks of guitar and two of bass running through the whole song for about eight minutes. As I was sitting in front of the computer screen wondering how I was going to sort this mess out, Marty announced that he had written the lyrics. Really? He did warn me that this time they were a bit different. He then proceeded to get behind the mic and did the whole thing in one take. I remember thinking, this is brilliant, only MWP could come up with something like this! Despite the muddled cacophony of the music, I could occasionally hear some magic and I knew that if I had the necessary patience and perseverance I could make something out of it. I must say I am proud that I managed to make this song work. It took a lot of creative editing. I would listen to sections of the song, decide which guitar tracks to use, and make sure that each section flowed into the next. Listening back to the song now, my only regret is that I didn’t have the vocals a bit louder in the mix.

 

Finally, we decided it would be wise to contact Michael Mantler to clear the sample. We were secretly hoping that he would say something along the lines of, Oh don’t worry about it lads, but alas, he put his manager on to us and she started mentioning fees and royalties. We were disappointed, but I was not to be beaten, so I recreated the feel myself, using the instruments at my disposal. If you ever get the chance to hear The Insect God you can judge for yourself whether I did a good job.

On the cliffs of Cornwall

 

I don’t know why Sparks Lane has such a strong French language influence. Perhaps it’s because Marty and I are both fascinated by the language and the culture. All I know is that, when he went into the recording room to jam lyrics over this piece, he kept saying "Qu’est-ce que c’est, ca?" and so we decided to make a song out of that phrase, which also provided the title: Qu’est-ce que c’est. This proved challenging for two reasons - how could we make this simple question interesting, and how do you spell it! Marty came up with a solution by bizarrely imagining that someone was being interrogated. Enter Sigge Hawken for her second appearance on the record. She does a fantastic job of sounding increasingly distressed, pleading "Ich weiss es nicht" as a Frenchman asks her repeatedly, “What is that?” We wrote this with Marty on guitar while I played his ancient Roland Vocoder using the strings sound. We proceeded to throw in the proverbial kitchen sink. This was another song that really had no form until I got the digital scissors out and started to edit it. However, we did have a direction in mind. We are both fans of Space Rock, as epitomised by Hawkwind, and this song is our homage to that genre.

 

Once I had finished all the recording, I began to mix the songs. For those of you that are not familiar with this term, mixing means balancing the sound levels of the various musical elements of the song and adding effects like reverb and delay. As I finished each mix, I would send them to Marty for his input.

 

The next stage - sequencing the tracks - is consistently challenging for the Nocky lads. The problem is, our albums are so eclectic. We had a gentle acoustic song, a space rock number, an epic ballad, a narrated song, a dark atmospheric song….and it seemed like everything in between. Albums are so much easier to sequence if you stick to one style. But that’s not how Noctorum do it! We are both fans of many different genres, so we don’t see why we should limit ourselves. On every album we try many different sequences, but what we find is that once we get the opening track right, the rest follow. Hey There was the last song we imagined would open the record, but as soon as we had made that decision, we had solved the puzzle.

 

Once the mixes were done, the tracks had to be mastered. This is the final process and is usually done by a dedicated mastering engineer. He or she will make sure all the tracks are the right overall level and will apply subtle tone changes if they are needed. At the end of the process, the album should sound ‘radio friendly’ and should flow from one track to the next without any jumps in volume or tone. This task was undertaken by Dan Grigsby, a friend of Marty’s who lived in New York. Marty was present at the session and told Dan he wanted our record to sound as loud as Definitely Maybe by Oasis, which had just been released. Dan did a great job of extracting maximum volume while retaining the overall dynamics of the album.

 

We still had to come up with a title for the record. At some point during the recording we had decided to call ourselves Noctorum, the name of a village close to where we grew up on the Wirral, near Liverpool. We thought the word sounded dark and ghostly. So it made sense to use another place in that area as a title for the album. We toyed with Landican Lane and Thingwall Corner, but eventually settled on Sparks Lane because it was the road equidistant between our houses.

 

In Penzance, a friend called Martin Cassar (who gets name checked on a later release) introduced us to the artwork of Greg Daville. We loved the image of 'The Plate-Spinner and the Orrery' and sought his permission to use it. He was delighted that we bought the exclusive rights to that image. Marty’s good friend, Rachel Gutek, kindly offered her services for layout and design. Rachel was in-house designer at Warner Bros and is an award winning art director, so we count ourselves very fortunate to have her on board the Nocky train.

The CD was released on Heyday in the USA and on Um and Ah in Australia in June 2003. It was released in Europe on Shaoline a year later. Copies still exist on the internet if you are prepared to search.

 

Eighteen years later, in 2021, the album was released on “moody grey” vinyl by Schoolkids Records for Record Store Day. A limited edition of 750, there are still a few copies available.

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Offer The Light (2006)

 

In 2001, I moved from London to Penzance. I had no idea what I was going to do in this quaint Cornish fishing port but I knew I wanted to escape the busy-ness and the pollution of the Big Smoke. 

 

After three months of sharing a flat with a friend and getting to know my new home town, I was desperate to get back into making music. The only trouble was that all my equipment was in storage and I had nowhere to set it up.

 

Then one evening I bumped into Steve Slimm, a local artist I'd recently met and befriended. His studio was twenty miles away in the old mining town of Redruth and he told me he was looking for premises much closer to Penzance. The following morning I walked into a local commercial estate agent, and the next thing I knew I was being shown around the premises that would become the VIP Lounge. It was the basement of a large Victorian granite building, rumoured to be the one time home of a Cornish sea captain. I felt very positive about the space and was delighted when Steve said he’d like to share it. He would have the larger, lighter room as his art studio and I would take the two smaller rooms.

 

One of those rooms was an obvious choice as a control room. It had natural light and it was not perfectly square. Acoustically, this is an advantage because the lack of parallel walls means less chance of standing waves (Google it!) The other room was more of a conundrum. Its walls were whitewashed stone, it was damp and it had no natural light. I think the captain must have used it as a wine cellar. A friend of mine, Hud Saunders, who was visiting from London, came up with what seems in retrospect an obvious solution - to use it as a live room. After all, when I was working at the Townhouse in London, its most famous live room was Studio 2 - the “Stone Room” as it was known - where Peter Gabriel first came up with that drum sound on his second solo album. So the whitewashed stone room became my live room, and became affectionately known as “The Cave”. 

 

In the winter of that first year in Penzance we recorded the first Noctorum album (Sparks Lane) in 5 crazy days that Marty snatched from his touring schedule with All About Eve.

 

In 2005 the lease came up for renewal and Steve told me he'd found other premises that were larger and lighter. His room was now vacant and I had to find a new tenant. At that time Marty was renting an apartment in New York but he was hardly ever there. I knew he needed a base and somewhere to store his musical equipment and vast record collection. Taking over Steve’s room made complete sense to him, so he moved in and the 'In Deep Music Archive' was born. Or rather, reborn: the original one was situated in a basement in Stockholm in the 90’s.

 

The immediate effect that this had on our subsequent work was that we had more time. We continued to write the songs in the same way - jamming over a loop - but now we could deliberate over arrangements and parts. I could edit basic tracks while Marty chilled out in the Archive. Instead of having five days to write and record the album, we now had two months before Marty was due to leave on Church business. By that time, all the songs were in good shape and, as with the first album, I was left to complete them by adding overdubs and getting drummer Mark Wilkin (who had played on Sparks Lane) to replace the drum loops.

 

This was also a much more social time. The Music Archive was a cosy, convivial space, so all sorts of friends and musicians would congregate to chat, hang out and listen to Marty’s huge collection of records and CD’s.

 

In Deep Music Archive 2007

 

Alain Delon began with me playing some organ chords over a slowish, loping drum loop. It reminded us of “How’s That” by Sherbet - that boom-cha b-boom-cha rhythm. Marty played the bass but there was no obvious guitar part. Everything we tried sounded wrong. However, I knew it needed another rhythmical part and, as we couldn’t afford to hire Nile Rogers, I had to come up with another solution. An electric piano might work, but I knew I didn't have the necessary skill to play the part convincingly. It was time to call John Bickersteth, who you may recall played the accordion on “Hymn” on our first album. John is what you might politely call a 'musical eccentric'. Son of the late Rt. Reverend John Bickersteth, Bishop of Bath and Wells (1975 - 1987), John was equally gifted on keyboard and guitar and had an enviable collection of vintage instruments. The only problem with John was that he had too many ideas. The trick was to identify the best one and then pin him down to it. 

 

The date was fixed for him to come in and he arrived armed with his Wurlitzer and Rhodes pianos. Much to my delight and amazement, John had rehearsed his parts and they were perfect. Before he had a chance to alter them, I pressed ‘record’. The electric piano drove the song along beautifully and now we had a solid foundation of drums, bass and keyboards.

 

Marty was now inspired to write the lyrics. Both he and I are fans of Arthouse cinema. I remember sitting in his flat in Stockholm watching the films of Ingmar Bergman and our trips to see obscure French films (sometimes starring Alain Delon) in Arthouse cinemas in Sydney, surrounded by “so many empty seats”. The title is a little misleading. It should read “Alain Delon - It Never Feels Lonely” as in when you watch a brilliant arty film, you never feel lonely.

 

Earlier in the year I had recorded some demos for a talented young singer/songwriter called Hollie Rogers who was only 17 years old at the time. She brought in two of her friends, Louise Bedford and Hannah Pinkertt to back her. They sounded great together, so I invited them to sing the backing vocals on this album. Hollie Rogers now has a successful solo career; Marty and I saw her supporting Suzanne Vega at the Falmouth Pavilions in 2008.

 

I’m a big fan of Steely Dan. They are possibly my favourite band. When I was considering how to fill the instrumental sections of this song, I thought, “What would Steely Dan do?” That’s when I came up with the idea of the brass arrangements. I decided to use the combination of trumpet, sax and flute that Joni Mitchell had featured on her jazz influenced albums, and to make the section more interesting, I introduced a key change. Now I needed some real players to replace the sequenced parts I had written. I had just produced an album for a local guy called Tony King. Tony fancied himself as a singer, but he was a much better trumpet player. The sax was played by Phil Smith, a one-time member of the 80s pop band Haircut 100. Playing the flute parts was Gillian Poznansky, a highly accomplished classical flautist who tours the world with the pianist Mark Tanner.

 

By now, the middle section was sounding lush but, as Marty pointed out, there was still a lack of focus. That’s when we realised we needed some lead guitar to complete it. The icing on the cake was the arrangement for strings. If we could have afforded it, we would have booked a string section and a studio to accommodate them, but we were on a tight budget. A way I've learned to get round this problem is to combine one or two real players with sampled strings. The combination sounds fuller and more authentic. We used this method on all our subsequent Noctorum recordings.

 

 

Let Me Tell You A Secret began as a jam - Marty on his trusty 1978 Fender Strat and me on the early seventies Fender 6 string bass. This bass has a particular sound - you can hear it on nineties Church albums like Priest = Aura. I came up with the harmonic riff that starts the song and Marty did his glam rock thing on guitar. The bulk of the song was written in one take. 

 

When Mark Wilkin came to record the drums I had to ensure that his part built gradually through the song. I also had to replace his snare sound with a sample because his original snare sounded too high pitched. Similarly, we brought in different guitar parts as the song progressed in order to build the dynamics.

 

Sometimes I will get Marty to record two or three “vibe” tracks. I will roll the track from the beginning and he can just play whatever he feels from the top till the end. Mistakes don’t matter - we’re just looking for background atmospherics or hooky riffs that we can chop up and slot into the song when needed. There’s a lot of that going on in this song!

 

For the guitar solo, I’m pretty sure we used one of Marty’s 'Big Muff' distortion pedals. We might even have used two! I purposely mixed it loud and up front - bold and beautiful! The bass goes down to a bottom D to make this section even more deep and powerful.

 

Lover’s Head is one of those songs that really splits opinions. A dark tale of gruesome revenge, delivered in a matter-of-fact monotone, set over a techno-jig backing track. People either love it or hate it.

 

This vicious little monster began life as a preset drum pattern on my Yamaha DX7. For a few months in the nineties, the DX7 was the must-have instrument among keyboard players and producers. It was essentially a cheap techno sequencer, with great factory presets. It was great for jams, great for busking and great for writing songs on. A friend of mine wrote a whole album on it!

 

I had a bunch of synthesizer sequences I had programmed on my Korg Wavestation, so I matched the tempos of these with the drum loop and built up a track. There was enough there to inspire Marty to write some lyrics - some very twisted lyrics. The task now was to arrange this basic track in a way that would enhance the feeling of impending doom. Congas, played by Matt Pharaoh once again, are introduced after the second verse. Suddenly they drop out and Marty’s funky bass line takes over. Ominously, the lead vocal is delivered in a harsh whisper as the track breaks down to the drum loop and some strangled guitar tones. Then all hell breaks loose as the Queen opens the box “to stare down at her lover’s head”, Marty repeating the line three times - in case you missed it.

 

Marty plays guitar in a very particular style on this song. I don’t know how he does it but I will say, “I think we need a bit of Terje here” and he will proceed to play lead guitar in the style of Terje Rypdal. It’s a combination of a tone and an unusual musical scale. We use it sparingly but it really works on this one.

 

At this point, the listener needs a break. Enter the mellow, almost ambient The Guessing Game. This began as a chord sequence on our little Casio keyboard. It’s often a good way for us to start a song as neither of us is completely au fait with the keys. We place our fingers on it and move to the next chord intuitively, often surprising ourselves with a harmonious movement. As I was experimenting with chords, Marty started to play this sumptuous, very unusual bass line, that enters in the second verse.

 

The next day, as Marty was recording the lead vocal, I had a strong feeling that this was one for my voice. So he laid down a guide vocal and I replaced it while he was away on Church business. The chorus lyrics were not quite complete, so I remember finishing them before checking they were OK with Marty. I didn’t bother to ask Mark Wilkin to play on this one - we were happy with the sound of the original drum loop.

 

I had a vision for the outro of this song: I wanted it to sound cinematic and ethereal, like a mellow version of Pink Floyd’s The Great Gig in the Sky, so I called in our young backing vocalists and invited each of them to jam over the ending. My friend and collaborator in FOLD, David Bickley, describes this end section as one of his favourite pieces of music, ever. Thanks, Bickers!

 

When I listen to The Muse what strikes me is its warmth. It draws you in and enfolds you like a cashmere blanket. The bass guitar is full and prominent here and mixed higher than usual. The rhythm guitars, one played by Marty, the other by myself, are perfectly in sync and sound delicate and sensitive. It came as a surprise to me when I recently looked at the credits and realised that I played the piano on this one. Not bad, Dare!

 

I suppose this is the closest Noctorum will ever get to writing a love song. Even then, the subject of the adoration is not a human being but a goddess, the elusive muse that inspires us to write these songs.

 

The middle section is introduced by a lovely bass melody and then descends into a different world, where a plaintive lead guitar soars over pulsing strings in a minor key. As the section ends, we rejoin the major key and the muse is once again “imagined into reality”.

 

On The Striker, we began by playing complementary arpeggios, Marty on his Strat and me on his 1966 Rickenbacker 12 string. The lead line that appears at the beginning and end of the song was played by Marty on the 6 string bass.

 

I have no idea what inspired Marty to write the lyrics. Perhaps, because we are both football fans, he figured it was time to write a song on that subject. 

 

As you may know, we grew up on the Wirral, a rural peninsula between Liverpool and Wales. Everyone in the area supported either Everton or Liverpool. So when my family moved to the area, my dad said, “Well, son, who are you going to support?” On discovering that Everton played in blue, I chose Everton simply because blue was my favourite colour. Marty went through exactly the same process but chose Liverpool because he preferred red and liked the idea that the shorts were the same colour as the shirts. Thus decisions of massive consequence were based purely on adolescent whimsy. From that fateful moment, we have remained loyal to our respective clubs, enduring the good times and the bad without a thought of changing allegiance. It’s strange and poignant to think that, of all the relationships we have had, the one with our respective football team has endured the longest.

 

This poignancy is reflected in the fate of the striker. His best days are behind him but he knows, if only he is given the chance, he can make a difference. Perhaps it’s an allegory for the modern man. Stuck in a meaningless job, under appreciated, he longs for the chance to shine and rise above the mediocre.

 

Talking of Led Zeppelin, Robert Plant would sometimes play harmonica to good effect on one or two of their tracks. Check out “When the Levee Breaks”, for instance. That was what inspired me to ask Barnaby Flynn, another local musician, to come in and play. He did an amazing job - just what I was looking for.

 

You may hear a banjo in the second and third verses. I didn’t credit myself for this part because I played it as a sample from my keyboard. You may also hear some atmospheric sounds in the background. These are from a trip I made to India in the 90’s. I took a portable DAT recorder with me and sampled various indigenous sounds - prayers, chanting and some music.

 

Sometimes, as we are working on a track, Marty will get an idea for a vocal melody, so he will sing it using words that come to him spontaneously. Occasionally, these ‘scratch vocals’ will contain words that suggest a feeling that may inspire a finished lyric later in the process. On this song, he kept singing, “I tried to find something inside you”. After he had completed the lyric, we realised that those words were entirely relevant to the sentiment of the song so we kept them. Perhaps they were uttered by the convicted murderer’s judge, his attorney or even his victim.

 

Hopes and Fears began its life as the opening interplay between Marty and I on 6 string and 12 string guitars, respectively. Just for a change, I had programmed a loop in 3/4 timing, the same time signature as a waltz. This timing always imparts a lilting, folksy feel. Perhaps that is what inspired Marty to write these outstanding lyrics about a couple of young lovers, living in a Northern industrial town before the outbreak of war. They may “pray to live in peace,” but the listener knows that the sirens that “call from the factory walls” may soon be the sirens that warn of impending attack.

 

While Marty was away playing with The Church, I asked another talented local musician, Adam Reeve, to come in and play piano. It was his idea to play the 40s style piano in the fade out.

 

Marty returned from his travels and felt that the song was not quite ‘organic’ enough and the arrangement could be improved. I agreed with him so we dropped one of the electric guitars and substituted an acoustic. Marty suggested the stripped down organ section in the middle which works as an interlude before the denouement. The song closes with a beautiful, understated melodic solo before the lonely piano reappears to accompany our couple into an unknown future.

 

The Control Room featuring the Mackie 24 channel desk

 

Once again we called on the services of Dan Grigsby in New York and his superb mastering skills. Once again, he did not let us down.

 

We were more than pleased with Heyday’s handling of the first album’s release so we asked Robert Rankin Walker to take care of our second offering. The CD album was released in a jewel case on Heyday Records in August 2006 and then as a digipak on Second Motion Records in 2010. The album was then released on vinyl on Record Store Day in April 2023.

 

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Honey Mink Forever (2011)

 

By 2011 the VIP Lounge was well established as the go-to studio for Cornish bands, and when I wasn't working with local artists, I was producing tracks for the likes of Cinerama, Brix Smith and French acts Les Nouveaux Heros and Arno Sojo, so I hardly ever had a weekend free from the studio.

 

Meanwhile, Marty was heavily involved with The Church, having recently become their manager which left him very little time to pursue other musical interests. However, early in the year a window of opportunity appeared when neither of us was involved with a major project, so we were determined to use the time to write the third Noctorum album.

 

As with our previous albums, we wrote the music by jamming over a drum loop and recorded most of the guitars, bass and vocals together. Afterwards, while Marty was away with The Church, I recorded the drums and overdubs.

 

False Flag emerged from the germ of an idea that we had recorded two years earlier. Marty had played the chords to the verse on his blonde 60s Rickenbacker, while I played bass on our trusty Fender 6. On revisiting the song, we believed it had potential to be an epic, but there remained a lot of fleshing out to be done. 

 

The intro is an interplay between Marty and I, each playing different arpeggios, leading into the first guitar solo. All of the solos on this track are intentionally simple and melodic. I think Marty was influenced by Dave Gilmour at the time. We were looking for feel and mood as opposed to flashiness.

 

We also decided to let this song be as long as it needed to be. In the end, it came in at over nine minutes, the longest track to appear on any Noctorum album. It features three guitar solos, an extended instrumental outro and copious lyrics, none of which are repeated.

 

The lyrics are based on the 9/11 attacks in the United States, and a lesser known, but equally infamous event, the sinking of the USS Maine, which took place during the Spanish-American war, and which I had discovered when I was reading A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn. In this song I express my belief, based on extensive research, that the 9/11 attacks were staged, there were no foreign terrorists involved and the subsequent investigation was a cover up. Having read the lyrics, Marty stressed that he did not share my beliefs, but generously agreed to them being used. It was his idea for us to sing the lead vocal together, an octave apart, a technique that Pink Floyd have used to great effect.

 

The lead guitar in the outro was played through a Big Muff effects pedal and, to my ears, seems to be howling in protest at the heinous crime that was committed on that fateful day. The sound effect as the song fades makes me think of W.B. Yeats’ "rough beast" (from his poem The Second Coming), its hour come at last, slouching towards Bethlehem to be born.

 

The redesigned Control Room featuring the new mixing desk - the TOFT ATB 36

 

After the bombast of the previous track, the opening piano chords of Cry gently lead us into this luscious, poignant ballad. This time, the protagonist is female, a mature woman who has tragically lost the love of her life. We follow her through the frantic, busy streets as she reminisces her past, only the memories sustaining her.

 

Musically, the song was constructed around Marty playing a Rickenbacker 12-string, with me on piano. The bridge (known as the pre chorus in the US) has some interesting chords. It was one of those occasions where my lack of familiarity with the keyboard came in handy. As for the chords, please don’t ask me to identify them, I still have no idea what I played!

 

We asked Matt Exelby, a talented local guitarist and keyboard player, to replace my piano parts and he did a great job. Then we asked Sue Aston and Becky McGlade to supplement the sampled strings with violin and cello, respectively.

 

When producing this one, I had in mind those old 60s ballads - the ones sung by Dusty Springfield, Dion Warwick and Diana Ross. Hence the inclusion of the harmonica in the verses and the strings in the choruses. I love writing backing vocal parts. These are often harmonies or octaves to the lead vocal, but one particular technique I am fond of is the pre-lead vocal part. You can hear it in this song where Tiare Helberg and I sing “And I fall onto my bed” and “And I can’t get by”, pre-empting Marty singing the same line.

 

Marty and I were very proud of this as a classic song and at one stage we were wondering how we could pitch it to Chrissie Hynde. Alas, to my knowledge, she has never heard it.

 

In the 1960s there was a radical shift in the way people wrote lyrics. Until that time, lyrics were rarely written from a personal perspective. The subject or the personality in the song would either be created from the imagination of the writer or would be a character in a film or a play. Songs were often written from a detached, observational point of view. The change occurred with the rise of the singer songwriters such as Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Jackson Browne and so on. Suddenly artists were writing about their own personal feelings and experiences. 

 

This trend has continued into modern times. Songwriters invariably and unquestioningly write about what they feel and what they think, so it helps if you have a fascinating personal life, an insightful mind and a wealth of interesting experiences to draw from. In Noctorum, we write both kinds of songs; some are personal, but a great many are written from the point of view of imaginary characters. They are glimpses into the lives of others. Cry is a perfect example. If you are a songwriter, and you find yourself stuck, just use your imagination, invent a character and inhabit his or her world for a while. You never know, you might write the next “Eleanor Rigby” or “Mac the Knife”!

 

 

In retrospect, Honey Mink Forever was probably our most musically complex album, certainly in terms of the number of chords we used. Sometimes you can write a great song using only three or even two chords. However, on this album, for some reason, we wrote songs that were extremely adventurous, chord-wise. 

 

When we were teenagers, Marty and I learnt the basics of the guitar from his brother, Nigel, who was 10 years our senior, and played in a local cabaret band called The Hiltons. They played classic pop tunes, mainly from the 60s, the likes of The Hollies, The Beatles, Herman’s Hermits, Manfred Mann and so on. Perhaps we were harking back to those days when we wrote Bad Dreams.

 

I play rhythm guitar on this song, using Marty’s Strat with a clean sound through one of his Vox AC30s. I felt we needed to do something a bit different in the middle 8 (the bridge if you are from the US). Inspired by REM’s “Shiny Happy People” I suggested inserting a section in ¾ timing. This is the part that begins “Making friends around the world...” In the end it worked a treat, Julie Elwin returning to add some accordion on the second part.

 

This is a song that Marty wrote through personal experience. You may have gathered that he likes to expose injustice, hypocrisy and stupidity, especially where religion is concerned.

 

This album is unique in that it contains not one but two instrumental tracks. The first of these, Honey Mink, was originally the outro of a song called Unforgiven. However, we came to the conclusion that it wasn’t quite up to the standard of the other tracks so it was dropped, never to be seen or heard again. I see this piece as an interlude between the first and second halves of the album; a chance to rest, reflect and prepare for what comes next.

 

Somehow, despite a lack of conscious effort, we seem to have written at least one catchy pop song on each of our four albums. Musically, Tora Tora Tora began as an interplay between me playing our little Casio keyboard and Marty on the Fender 6-string bass through a distortion pedal. Then Marty added the ascending riff. Later, I played a rough mix of the song to Martin Bowie, a friend who plays jazz guitar. He told me that the riff was a Japanese scale. How apt! “Tora, Tora, Tora” (Attack, Attack, Attack) is a 1970 epic war film that dramatises the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour.

 

The song recounts the pleasure of watching classic old movies on a Sunday afternoon on ITV, long before videos and streaming came along. In those days live TV was the only choice you had, and if you wanted a cup of tea or a snack during the film, you had to rush out during the advert break.

 

We had a lot of fun with the middle section. My old pal David Bickley announces the movie in his slightly upper-class BBC voice. Then we recreated the movie soundtrack by using samples of old fighter planes and explosions while Marty and I impersonated the characters.

 

The ever expanding In Deep Music Archive

 

Running Through Your Fingers began with a chord sequence I had been playing around with for a while. We just needed to expand it into a bridge and chorus. This is another song with a plethora of chords, none of which we remember! I do recall working hard to make the bridge work (after “what can you do?”) adding a zither sound and a synth to bring it to life. There was a space for a solo and I was inspired to suggest to Marty that he played nylon string guitar like Peter Koppes had done on “Almost With You” by The Church. Matt Exelby’s superb piano playing was the finishing touch to this song and is the reason we extended the outro. It is Noctorum’s one and only 'eco' song, a plea to appreciate and preserve what we have before it’s too late.

 

Mao Tse Tung Kiss is another song built around a riff. I have a feeling this is the fastest song we’ve recorded - it certainly does fly along. It’s handy on a song like this if your main vocalist can sing like a rock star. In fact we re-recorded the lead vocal, because we felt the original take was a bit too over the top!

 

I remember the intro needed a focus, so Marty said, “pass that slide,” and came up with the lead line that made sense of the first eight bars of the song. For the solo section, he suggested a Jon Lord type organ solo. He left the room for half an hour and by the time he returned, I had written and recorded it.

 

Lyrically, it seems to be about the contrast between the individualism of the West and the collectivism of the East. Somewhere in there is a suggestion of a love affair, but it’s all rather vague. Nonetheless, there are some classic lines, and the song is 2’55” of supercharged rock – in my humble opinion.

 

So now we come to possibly the most unusual track Noctorum have ever recorded. As if we weren't becoming too eclectic already, we came up with a five-minute-long jazz rock instrumental. In fact, New Scientist began as a bass line over a drum loop. You can still hear that bass line, played on Marty’s Hagstrom 8-string bass, in the first two bars of the song. From then on, local jazzer Ross Williams takes over.

 

This track took shape as Marty jammed over the rhythm track on his trusty 1972 Stratocaster. We wanted a special effect, so he played the guitar through an Electro-Harmonix Attack Delay pedal. Marty tells me he bought it in the Haight Asbury area of San Francisco and it was Linda Perry who paid for it. Whatever the history, this pedal is unique. It makes it sound like you are playing the guitar backwards. It achieves this by severely compressing the attack of the sound envelope then slowly releasing it.

 

So, at the end of the session we had some tasty, weird-sounding lead guitar over a bass and drum loop. The question was: “where do we go from here?” I must say I was shocked when Marty suggested we had an instrumental on our hands. We had never recorded an instrumental, and to some extent, it felt like a cop-out. However, neither of us could think of anything to sing over the backing track so we decided to proceed without any vocals.

 

Earlier I mentioned that I had a friend called Martin Bowie, an accomplished jazz guitarist. Invited into the VIP Lounge to play on the track, his unusual (to us) chord voicings helped to give us an idea of the song’s direction. After Marty departed for his touring duties, I called in the aforementioned Ross Williams to play bass, along with local jazz drummer, Damian Rodd. It was so exciting to hear these brilliant musicians bring the rhythm track to life.

 

We still needed a focus for what we called the “chorus” sections so I wrote a melody and called in another local jazz legend, Marc Hadley, to play tenor saxophone. Marc also did a fantastic job jamming in the long middle section. The cherry on the cake was provided by Rene Crouch on vocals.

 

In addition to Unforgiven there was another song that didn’t make it onto the album. It was called The Fugitive and it was inspired by an episode of The Sopranos, of which I was a huge fan. However, Marty was not convinced of the song’s worth, so he wrote a version with different lyrics and melody called Turn the Dial and Scream. In the end, neither version made it on to the record. You can make up your mind about which version you prefer in the MEDIA section.

 

Once again, sequencing the album was going to be very challenging. We had a tour de force prog track, an instrumental, some rock songs, a pop song, a folk song and a jazz rock track for starters! We tried a few combinations but, as usual, once we got the opener, most of the rest fell into place. At this point, I should mention the help given to us by my good friend and possibly our number one fan, Hud Saunders. Hud made a few trips down to Penzance from London and he would always drop into the studio for a listen to the tracks and hear how we were progressing. If it passed the Hud test, we knew we were going in the right direction. As I recall, he helped us sequence the record.

 

The title for the album arrived spontaneously. Marty and I were standing in my kitchen, no doubt waiting for the veggie sausages to cook, when he glanced at the cooker, saw it was called 'Honey Mink' and said, “Hey we could always name it after the cooker!” It sounded good to us, but I knew it wasn’t quite complete so I suggested adding “forever.” I thought it was the kind of thing Morrissey would have done. Sadly, the Honey Mink is no longer with us and has joined the great eye-level grill gas oven showroom in the sky.

 

Marty with Rachel Gutek, Lamorna, Cornwall

 

Once more, we turned to Dan Grigsby in New York to master the album, and once more he did a great job.

 

Honey Mink Forever was released in 2011 on Heyday Records. The album received little or no promotion and consequently did not garner the exposure or the acclaim it deserved. I cannot find a single review online. All Music and Discogs do not even feature user reviews of the album.

 

If you held a knife to my throat and asked me which is my favourite Noctorum album, this would be the one. Therefore, we were delighted when it was announced that it would be released on vinyl on Record Store Day in April 2024. However, when we came to send the masters to the record manufacturer, we discovered that the album was too long in its present form to fit on two sides of an LP. So, we decided to omit Honey Mink, The New Scientist and Mao Tse Tung Kiss. Judge for yourself, but we feel that dropping these three worthy, but eclectic songs, actually makes the LP more cohesive.

 

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The Afterlife 2019

Marty and I had arranged to begin our fourth album at the VIP Lounge in October 2016, but it wasn’t until I went to meet him at Penzance station that he introduced me to the new love in his life, Olivia, who was later to become his wife. Olivia would prove to be an invaluable asset to the band as a violinist, singer, creative artist and administrator.

 

By this time Marty had left The Church and was free to follow other pursuits, one of which was online songwriting tuition. This new venture was in its infancy and Marty spent a lot of these early sessions just teaching guitar. These slowly morphed into songwriting sessions with a variety of clients from all over the world.

 

At the same time, I had decided to realise a lifelong interest in human psychology, and had trained as a qualified psychotherapist. By 2016 I had a several clients and they took up two days of each week. So our extracurricular work meant that unlike our previous albums, this one took three years to complete, from inception to its release in 2019.

 

Before recording the album we had a discussion about the direction we would like to take. Our first three albums were so eclectic that this time we decided to limit ourselves to rock and pop; no folk, no dance beats, no jazz. We had satisfied our experimental urges on the previous albums. Now we wanted to make a more cohesive sounding record.

 

Recording and mixing took place exclusively at the VIP Lounge. We used the same equipment as on the last album, with the exception of the addition of a Rickenbacker 4003 bass. I should also mention that Marty and I paid a visit to Richard Christopher James, a local musical mate of mine, who I knew had an interesting collection of effects pedals. We grabbed a handful in the hope that one or two would inspire a new direction in songwriting.

 

The second track on the album, High Tide/Low Tide, began with a chord progression I had been playing around with for a while. We carried on building the song, and at some point I volunteered to write the lyrics. I had a melody idea for the verse, but was a bit stuck for the chorus, so Marty came to my aid and the words “High Tide” popped into my head. High Tide? So what was that about? Well, I had been working as a counsellor for a while and a couple of my clients suffered from bipolar disorder, so I decided to put myself in their shoes and attempt to write about their experience. After I had finished writing the lyrics, I sent them to our friend Big Bucks Burnett in Dallas, Texas. Bucks had actually been diagnosed with this condition in his 30s and I wanted to check that what I had written was authentic. To my relief, he gave me the thumbs up.

 

Marty and Dare with our dear departed friend, Big Bucks Burnett,

VIP Lounge, 2017

There was an exotic instrument sitting in the music archive that we had never used on a record. I think one of the reasons was how difficult it was to tune! This Swedish instrument, which resembled an autoharp, consisted of seven chords, each chord formed by seven strings. Patiently, Olivia began the painstaking process of tuning all 49 strings, until each chord rang out harmoniously. Marty then played the instrument over a drum loop which I later edited into sections. This is, in terms of chords, one of the most complex songs we have ever recorded. In fact, when Marty and Olivia tried to learn it in order to play it live, they found the chords were far too complicated to make the song work in a live situation.

 

Show was built on the foundations of a simple but haunting guitar arpeggio. Marty played his Strat through his Roland JC 120 Jazz Chorus Amp. This piece of equipment had been lying unused due to being damaged in transit.  Having recently had it repaired, we were keen to try it out on this record. Then he added acoustic guitar and to flesh out the rhythm, I played mandolin.

This track sat on the computer for a while. Every now and again we would give it a listen but Marty didn’t seem inspired to write any lyrics. However, the song somehow moved me, so I decided to take matters into my own hands; I had recently ended a long-term affair and, reflecting on the causes of our break up, I realised we never really fully connected. The word “show” came into my head and I decided to use this word as a theme to build the lyrical structure around.

 

Listening back to the vocal ideas, Marty wasn’t happy with the song’s structure. I decided to leave him alone to listen while I went out to buy a sandwich. When I returned he suggested removing a section and he was right - the song was more compact and flowed better. We had some sections that needed to be filled with an instrumental motif so I suggested Marty play some lead guitar on his Rickenbacker 12 string. This what you hear in the intro, after the second verse and in the outro.

 

When Marty heard the finished version he remarked that it was one of those songs that had a complex structure - not the usual verse/chorus/verse/middle eight/chorus pattern that so many songs follow. Listen to “Autumn Almanac” by the Kinks for an example of a complex and interesting song structure.

 

I had a chord sequence that modulated between a minor and a major key and this became the basis for A Resurrected Man. Marty played a very simple seven note lead phrase to bookend the song, leaving a space for Duncan Bridgeman to play an answering phrase on the flute. This one of a few tracks where we enlisted our old buddy to blow. Many years had passed since he had contributed to our first album and it was a treat to have him back.

 

At this time Marty was a member of the Swedish prog rock band, Anekdoten, which was handy, because when we decided some mellotron strings would be ideal on this song, Marty got in touch with Nicklas Barker, the leader of the group, who happens to own a real mellotron and suggested he make a contribution. I had some digital samples of mellotron strings, but there’s nothing like the real thing!

 

This is obviously a very personal song, but there is no prize for guessing who was responsible for Marty’s resurrection. I have no doubt that Olivia treasures Marty’s eloquent expression of his love for her.

 

 

The guitar solo is unusual in that it is actually a double lead part. Marty had his doubts about it but once again, I assured him that it sounded great and after a few listens, he agreed.

 

Trick was inspired by the drum loop we jammed over, Marty on guitar and me on bass. We liked the feel of the skippy beat and Eddie John did a great job of replicating it when it came to recording his drum part.

 

The intro features Marty’s atmospheric lead guitar with Georgia Dulcie’s ethereal vocals in the background. I copied and pasted this lead guitar part into the outro section to give it a focus. It becomes almost unrecognisable in the context of a different chord sequence.

 

Once again, Marty went into the live room and recorded a scratch vocal to nail the melody. In these situations, he sings nonsense lyrics, but on this occasion he actually kept many of the lines. As for the meaning of this song, I never asked him and it will remain a mystery to me.

 

I think, no, I know that Marty was determined to get a prog rock tour-de-force onto this record. Head On began with his muted arpeggio that you hear at the beginning of the song. He then added the lead part which I doubled by using a zither sample. Duncan Bridgeman added the flute part and suddenly we had a great intro on our hands. We felt it would not be out of place in a Bond movie.

 

As Marty begins to sing the first verse, I add a vocoder part. This was played on his Roland Vocoder that he bought from Steve Kilbey back in the 1980s. Sometimes we use samples on our records, but we much prefer the real thing, and although this keyboard is a pain to set up and to tune, it’s worth it, as you can hear.

 

Just when you thought you were listening to a Noctorum album that didn’t involve tragedy and death, along comes this song. The protagonists turn out to be lovers arranging to meet at a nostalgic location, she in her Sunbeam, he in his Corvette. The Hillman Sunbeam was a nondescript British saloon car made in the 1960s, notorious for its unreliability. It’s no surprise that our man wonders, “is that wreck gonna make it?” Nevertheless, he should have paid more attention to his own driving as they collide into each other on the bend, ensuring that they will never be apart.

 

This is where the song would normally end, but Marty was insistent that we write a second, instrumental section, to complete the track. Not only that, but he wrote an eleven beat arpeggio on which the whole outro is based. This is an extremely unusual and complicated time signature. You will be able to understand it if you count one-two-three-four, one-two-three-four, one-two-three and then repeat. Marty had to fight my reticence to even record this section, but he was determined to indulge his prog fantasies. Eventually I relented and we proceeded to build it up using Ed’s dynamic drumming, my piano chords, Marty’s clean lead guitar and Duncan going crazy on the flute.

 

The Afterlife, the title track of the album, began its life with Marty playing an arpeggio through the Electro Harmonix C9 Organ Machine. This time, we set the preset to “cathedral”. The song is built around two alternating eight bar sections. At first, the song was very simple and uninteresting. It was my task, as the producer, to bring the backing track to life by adding and subtracting instruments. I was guided by Marty’s lead vocal and, in particular, the lyrical content.

 

The pastoral section after the first verse took shape as I applied a filter to the cathedral guitar, which gradually opened over the eight bars. I then added pizzicato strings and finally Duncan added flute. When it was complete, it reminded me of Stackridge, a prog/folk band that Marty and I have always been fans of.

 

The next section, which begins: “I think you agree” is a complete contrast. The beat disappears and epic brass and strings take centre stage while the cathedral guitar retains some sort of continuity with what has come before.

 

We then move into another section, the backing chords ascending as the religious fervour of the protagonist becomes more and more intense. Following a reprise of the piano theme first encountered in the introduction, Marty sings the second verse before a breakdown section featuring the cathedral guitar and bass. This precedes the monumental last verse. In order to make it as epically heroic as possible, I threw the musical kitchen sink at this one - brass, strings, Georgia on soprano vocal, tubular bells, as well as electric guitar, bass and drums.

 

Our good friend, Hud Saunders, deserves a mention for the advice and encouragement he gave us on this record in particular. I remember inviting him and Duncan Bridgeman to listen to the whole album before we had mixed it and being bowled over by their reaction to it.

 

While Marty was doing a solo tour in the USA, I set about mixing the record. At one point in the proceedings, I flew to Dallas to meet up with him and Olivia. They played a gig in the studio where they were working and I joined in on backing vocals on some songs. This was only the second occasion that Noctorum had played live, the other being at the 12 Bar Club in London in 2004. Our third gig took place at the Willson-Pipers’ wedding celebration in August 2018.

 

Marty, Dare, Hannah Moorhead and Olivia at the wedding celebration

 

The Afterlife was released in 2018 on Schoolkids Records on CD and vinyl. The album received positive reviews and even entered the Billboard charts for a few weeks.

 

The Afterdeath EP was released digitally in 2019 and contains two tracks from the Afterlife sessions - Dancing with Death and The Mermaid, as well as two cover versions: Nowadays Clancy Can’t Even Sing - originally recorded by Buffalo Springfield - and I Can’t Escape Myself - originally recorded by The Sound.