Kirk Barley’s Marionette is an album of details and movement. Melodic passages dance in stray moonlight, glowing like beacons in a welcoming darkness. There are fractured ideas recontextualized into glittering aural dreams. Resonance pulls us in for an up close view, but as tempos flicker and change, the picture becomes less clear. It’s part of the allure, though, with the shifting cadences making this music feel like a living, breathing organism. Barley sculpts gentle arpeggios, glossing them with familiar textures until they become a paean of rhapsodic sonic whimsy. Marionette is an absolute joy to get lost within.
Marionette is out now on Odda Records. Grab a copy HERE.
Nectar
I actually started out as a pitch for a phone advert, which didn’t quite hit the mark. I don’t think the use of a 5/4 time signature and non-western tuning did me too many favours.
It’s been sitting on my hard drive for ages, but I’ve always had a soft spot for it, So it was really nice that Thea from Odda picked it up on it, and suggested including it on the album. Most of the track is made from one-note samples that I recorded of a zither that my brother bought me. Which I layered in counterpoint riffs in a kind of pop minimalist style. It’s got a quite primeval feel to it and makes me think of bees buzzing away collecting pollen, so that’s why it’s called Nectar.
Courtyard
Courtyard inspired the gorgeous artwork that artist Oliver Pitt created for the front cover of the record.
Listening to it has always given me slight regal vibes for some reason, perhaps it’s the fact I worked a lot with string and cello parts so it’s got a kind of classical feel to it.
To me, it evokes images of overgrown Victorian architecture, fountains, and statues, which you will often stumble across in parks and around towns in the UK, that kind of faux ancient Greek thing they did. These were often the kind of places I enjoyed climbing on as a kid, unaware of the dark colonial history usually associated with them.
Also, these kinds of buildings and gardens are romanticised in so many films, tv shows, and books, and that’s maybe what I started drawing from aesthetically, as the track progressed, but it wasn’t a conscious thing.
Seafarer
In Seafarer, the tempo slightly fluctuates each time the sequences loop around, and this is emphasised by this consistent swelling water texture in the background/
These two sounds working together gave the track wave-like qualities, But in a quite intense and slightly jarring way, which made me picture being out on the open sea when it’s particularly choppy. Or think back to scenes from classic films where boats get stuck in storms at sea, I always seemed to find those bits particularly moody and scary when I was a kid.
Marionette
This one is pretty eerie and has this kind of creepy antique vibe to it.
I think that mainly comes from the detuned melodies making things sound a little uneasy and the vinyl crackles giving it that old feel.
My friend describes it to me as “pretty Lynchian”, which I’ll happily take.
Lake of Gold
Lake of Gold started out from live looping processed guitar riffs, the processing gave the guitar an almost harp-like quality, which I really dug.
On top of this, I decorated it with some other parts and textures and then recorded my pal Matt Davies playing drum and percussion parts along to it, which I then sliced, looped, and layered to help give the track a bit more of a climax. I’ve always thought it sounded a bit soupy, like a load of tuned guitars and bells clattering together in a stream or something.
The Night
This one I approached in a similar way to ‘Lake of Gold’ but it started out by sampling one-shot guitar and bell notes and playing them in a midi sampler rather than playing in real guitar parts. On top of this, I peppered in some other sounds and textures and again recorded and edited in layers of Matt Davies playing drums along to the track. It’s another pretty reflective-sounding one on the record.
Kites
Kites came together pretty quickly although it was a bit of a pain to get to sound right afterwards. Something I’m sure most producers are familiar with haha.
It’s pretty simple compositionally, mainly, just a single guitar note in a sampler which I played on a keyboard and then layered counterpoint riffs on top, again in a pretty pop minimalist style. it’s got a quite calming feel to it, which made me picture Kites blowing in the wind.
Gate
Gate was the first track that I made out of field recordings after a long period of doing mostly synthesised stuff (as Church Andrews). At the time I was getting a bit tired of the synthetic sounds I was making and was craving working with some organic sounds for a bit.
Also, I thought my field recorder was broken so I hadn’t used it in over a year, only to realise that it wasn’t broken, it just had the hold function turned on to stop it turning on by accident. So I guess this factored into the absence of field recordings in my work that year haha.
Anyhow the track was made entirely out of some pretty haphazard recordings of a field gate squeaking, Which I pass through on most nice days when I go out for a walk.
I was pretty impressed by the almost orchestral string-like sounds I managed to squeeze out of the recordings by processing them. It’s got a quite cinematic feel too which is nice, a vibe I’d like to explore more.
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