Released: | 6/9/2024 |
Condition: | New |
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GILMOUR,DAVID - LUCK & STRANGE
Price:
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Format: Compact Disc
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CD
Album plus two bonus tracks.
Digipak and booklet with photography and design by Anton Corbijn
Black Cat*
Luck and Strange
The Piper's Call
A Single Spark
Vita Brevis*
Between Two Points** - with Romany Gilmour
Dark and Velvet Nights
Sings
Scattered***
BONUS TRACKS
Yes, I Have Ghosts
Luck and Strange (original Barn Jam)*
LONDON 24th April 2024 David Gilmour today announced his new album ‘
Luck and Strange', to be released
on 6th September on Sony Music. The first track from the album, ‘
The Piper's Call', will be released this
Thursday, 25th April, following a world exclusive first play on the BBC Radio 2 Breakfast Show.
‘
Luck and Strange' was recorded over five months in Brighton and London and is Gilmour's first album of
new material in nine years. The record was produced by David and Charlie Andrew, best known for his work
with ALT-J and Marika Hackman. Of this new working relationship, David says, “
We invited Charlie to the
house, so he came and listened to some demos, and said things like, “Well, why does there have to be a guitar
solo there?” and “Do they all fade out? Can't some of them just end?”. He has a wonderful lack of knowledge
or respect for this past of mine. He's very direct and not in any way overawed, and I love that. That is just so
good for me because the last thing you want is people just deferring to you.”
The majority of the album's lyrics have been composed by Polly Samson, Gilmour's co-writer and collaborator
for the past thirty years. Samson says of the lyrical themes covered on ‘
Luck and Strange', “
It's written from
the point of view of being older; mortality is the constant.” Gilmour elaborates, “
We spent a load of time
during and after lockdown talking about and thinking about those kind of things.” Polly has also found the
experience of working with Charlie Andrew liberating, “
He wants to know what the songs are about, he
wants everyone who's playing on them to have the ideas that are in the lyric informing their playing. I have
particularly loved it for that reason.”
The album features eight new tracks along with a beautiful reworking of The Montgolfier Brothers' ‘
Between
Two Points' and has artwork and photography by the renowned artist Anton Corbijn.
Musicians contributing to the record include Guy Pratt & Tom Herbert on bass, Adam Betts, Steve Gadd and
Steve DiStanislao on drums, Rob Gentry & Roger Eno on keyboards with string and choral arrangements by
Will Gardner. The title track also features the late Pink Floyd keyboard player Richard Wright, recorded in
2007 at a jam in a barn at David's house.
Some contributions emerged from the live streams that Gilmour and family performed to a global audience
during the lockdowns of 2020 and 2021; Romany Gilmour sings, plays the harp and appears on lead vocals on
‘
Between Two Points'. Gabriel Gilmour also sings backing vocals.
The album's cover image, photographed and designed by Anton Corbijn, is inspired by a lyric written by
Charlie Gilmour for the album's final song ‘
Scattered'. Of working with his family on ‘
Luck and Strange',
David says, “
Polly and I have been writing together for over thirty years and the Von Trapped live streams
showed the great blend of Romany's voice and harp-playing and that led us into a feeling of discarding some
of the past that I'd felt bound to and that I could throw those rules out and do whatever I felt like doing, and
that has been such a joy.David Gilmour's first album in nine years ‘Luck And Strange' began life with Gilmour and
Polly Samson - a songwriting partnership that's currently celebrating its 30th anniversary -
working together in what Gilmour calls “a tiny house in London, with one room set up as
a little studio and the room above it set up as Pollys writing room". “We just got really,
really comfortable at home during lockdown, walking in the same woods, looking for the
same mushrooms, we didn't really un-lockdown,” says Samson. “I had bits of songs, David
had bits of music, but there was a feeling we might never actually do anything if we didn't
make a change. Something had to give.”
That something was when Gilmour unexpectedly sent producer Charlie Andrew a DM on
Instagram, impressed by his work with Mercury Prize-winning - and decidedly un-Pink
Floyd-esque - indie band atl-J. After Andrew established that it really was David Gilmour
contacting him - “I'm not sure he'd actually heard of David Gilmour,” laughs Samson - they
had a meeting. “We invited him down to the house and he came and listened to a demo or
two and he was sort of like: “well, why does there have to be a guitar solo there?”,” laughs
Gilmour, “and “do they all fade out? Can't some of them just end?” He has a wonderful lack
of knowledge of, and respect for my past. And he's very direct and he says what I think and
he's not in any way overawed and I loved that. This is just so good for me, because the last
thing you want is people just deferring everything back to you.”
Luck and Strange's story begins in early 2020 when Gilmour and Samson had plans. Samson
had a new novel ready due for publication, A Theatre For Dreamers. They'd worked on
music for the audiobook and planning on going on tour together, albeit to literary festivals,
rather than rock venues. Their set designer son and daughter-in-law had even built a stage
set, then came Covid, and lockdown, the latter literally the same week that A Theatre For
Dreamers was published. “I was in floods of tears because my book was coming out, and I'd
worked on it for 100 years and suddenly no one was going to be able to read it. And then
my son Charlie kind of went “oh God, just do it online”. We both went “what?” And that
became the livestream.”
The Von Trapped Family, as it became known, mushroomed into a weekly series that
quickly became one of lockdown's unexpected pleasures. It starred Gilmour and Samson's
extended family - and, indeed, pets - and its topics took in everything from Charlie
Gilmour's superb memoir Featherhood to Gilmour ruminating on his childhood friendship
with the late Syd Barrett and performing the latter's song Dominoes. In fact, it featured a
lot of music, usually performed by Gilmour and daughter Romany. “It started off with
everyone singing - me, Charlie, his baby and then, gradually, the rest of us started to realise
what we sounded like and left them to it,” says Samson.
“It showed us what a great blend Romany's voice and harp-playing could be to things,”
adds Gilmour. “And that sort of led us into a whole extra sort of feeling of discarding the
past that I was bound to, in a way. I could chuck out all those rule books and we could do
whatever the fuck we liked. And that,” he adds. “has been a joy.”
It's also a feeling that informs Luck And Strange, the first David Gilmour album since 2015's
Rattle That Lock, an album that somehow manages to sound exactly like David Gilmour –
there's no mistaking who's responsible for the guitar solo at the start of the title track –
while sounding unlike any album he's made before. It involves a young producer and a new
set of musicians with a fresh approach to Gilmour and Samson's songs. And whatever you
thought David Gilmour might release in 2024, it's unlikely to have involved a cover of a
track by dimly remembered early 00s indie duo The Montgolfier Brothers. But there it is,
on Luck And Strange: a version of Between Two Points, a song both Gilmour and Samson
thought had been a hit - they've had it on a playlist for years - and which features vocals
by Romany. “Her voice has got a slightly diffident thing to it because she didn't want to do
it: “Oh God, I've got to get a train home and write an essay!” We made her do it before she
left. She was really cross.”
Charlie Andrew, as well as offering a sharp critique of the material, proved an impressively
hard taskmaster in the studio. “He was doing a session with [legendary 78-year-old session
drummer] Steve Gadd,” remembers Samson. “He flew in from LA, this is his first session
with Charlie and he was there for 12 hours every day, hitting things, while Charlie said
“another one just like that with the brushes! Right, now another one but change the snare!”
We've both seen other producers at work and they don't do that. At the end of the first
day, David went “oh my God, what if Steve Gadd decides to just fuck off?” But he didn't.
Not a word of complaint. He just got on with it. And Charlie did exactly the same thing to
David: “Right, another take, sing that verse again! OK, we've done that verse, now do it
like this.” He's really, really on it, he doesn't mind listening to hundreds of takes.”
Andrew also brought in brought both alt-J arranger Will Gardner (“a genius,” says Gilmour)
and a selection of fresh musicians into the album sessions, which took place in a repurposed
Salvation Army hall in Brighton: drummer Adam Betts, bassist Tom Herbert and keyboard
player Rob Gentry. All have backgrounds in jazz - Herbert was a member of Seb Rochford's
Polar Bear and Acoustic Ladyland; Betts plays with punk-jazz sextet Melt Yourself Down,
although he's also known for his ability to replicate the complex rhythms of drum & bass
as part of Goldie's live band - and all are, in Gilmour's words “dynamite”, capable of pulling
the music on Luck And Strange in different directions. “Tom Herbert turned up with a bass
guitar and all these strange effects pedals. He was doing something I don't really
understand, that created a whole different vibe on the song. It took me a while to get used
to,” laughs Gilmour. “I was quite grumpy for a day or two, but we got some really good
stuff down.”
There's also an unexpected posthumous appearance from Rick Wright on the album's title
track ‘Luck and Strange “I toured in 2006, and Rick asked if he could be in my band and I
said ‘of course',” explains Gilmour. “And when we finished that tour, in January, I got
together that touring band and said, “come down to the house and we'll jam for a week in
the barn”. What was going through my addled brain I don't know - it was fucking freezing
in that barn. Anyway, the first jam we did on the Monday morning was the one that became
that song - I added a chorus and middle-eight, rebuilt the stuff on top with different chords.
There's bits where Rick's playing a Hammond lick and I've put guitars on since and I'm
playing with him, bouncing off his keyboards and it is a bit weird, but I'm not phased by
that element of Rick being there at all at the moment. I just think: “ah, it's Rick, it's me,
we're playing.”
Samson's lyrics, meanwhile, ruminate darkly on mortality - “the constant,” she says,
“something we talked about a lot during lockdown: ‘what am I going to do when you die
and I'm left all alone?'” - and, on The Piper's Call, what Samson calls “The Faustian pact –
it could be with celebrity and fame, it could be with using up the planet, or it could be with
hedonism”. The title track, meanwhile, attempts to place the recent horrors of the 21st
Century into some kind of context, albeit a fairly despairing one. “That song really came
from the time of the Ukraine invasion, thinking “this is awful, what's going on - plague,
then war. And then someone said to me ‘maybe if you look at history, you'll see this is
normal, you've just lived through periods that didn't have those things and that's
abnormal'. And I think that's chilling, really chilling.”
Dark times or not, it's pretty clear that Gilmour and Samson feel energised by the
experience of making Luck And Strange. There are a handful of live dates planned - Rob
Gentry and Adam Betts are in his backing band - and then ensure that the next David
Gilmour album doesn't take nine years to appear. “Our plan is just to get this one out and
run it and then do another one straight away,” he says. “. I will be working with all these
people again. I've had this problem in the past, of wanting to throw myself in the studio
with a few people and just kick stuff around, but not knowing who those people should be.
And that is now a pressure that's evaporated, because I've got these phone numbers. It feels
like a team and I love being in a team - I didn't choose to be a solo artist. Being in a band
when you're young, you're equal members at the outset - you can shout at each other and
criticise and have any tantrum you like, but you still stick together. But when you have
achieved the higher levels of success, most of the people that come into your sphere are
going to look to you. They're not going to be like Charlie Andrew - Charlie is the kind of
refreshing thing that you want to have happen to you.
David Gilmour is guitarist, vocalist and writer with Pink Floyd, but is also renowned for his solo work. David
Gilmour and Roger Syd Barrett met as children in Cambridge, UK, and later began playing guitar together.
In 1965 Syd co-founded Pink Floyd, while David continued playing with a succession of his own bands. In
1968, David was asked to augment the Pink Floyd line up as the singer and guitarist, only for Syd to leave the
group five gigs later. Davids guitar playing, singing and songwriting became major factors of Pink Floyds
worldwide success, including his distinctive vocals and guitar playing on The Dark Side Of The Moon, the
third most successful album of all time.
In 1978, David released his first solo album, David Gilmour, which charted in the UK and the US. His second
solo album, About Face, was released in 1984, again hitting the Top 20 in the UK.
David assumed control of Pink Floyd in 1985, creating the new Floyd album A Momentary Lapse Of Reason
with Richard Wright and Nick Mason. It was followed in 1994 by The Division Bell, which contained the
instrumental Marooned, composed by David and Richard Wright, which won a Grammy Award. Both albums
charted at Number 1 on both sides of the Atlantic and were supported by sell-out world tours.
In 1996, Pink Floyd were inducted into the US Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, followed by the same honour in
the UK in November 2005.
David is one of the all-time guitar greats, with an instinctive and distinctive sound; he was voted Best Fender
Guitar Player Ever in a poll in Guitarist magazine, beating such greats as Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton. In
2005, David was made a CBE for services to music.
On 6th March 2006, David released his third solo album, On An Island, which entered the UK Charts at
Number 1, subsequently hitting the top position in the pan-European Charts, as well as hitting multi-
Platinum around the world. The tour for the album included a one-off performance in the historic dockyards
of Gdansk, Poland, with a 40-piece orchestra and a show at Londons Royal Albert Hall was filmed by director
David Mallet and released in 2007 as ‘Remember That Night - Live At The Royal Albert Hall', which topped
the charts upon release.
In May 2008, David was awarded an Ivor for Lifetime Achievement by the British Association of Composers
and Songwriters. In September 2008, Fender Guitars made available their David Gilmour Signature Black
Strat model, in Relic and New Old Stock models.
In 2009, David was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Arts from East Anglias Ruskin University of
Cambridge and Chelmsford for his outstanding contribution to music as a writer, performer and innovator.
In September 2014, Pink Floyd released The Endless River, and David confirmed that it would be the bands
final album and it topped the charts in over 20 countries.
David's next album Rattle That Lock was released in 2015 and went to Number 1 in 13 charts around the
world and Number 2 in a further eight, hitting the Top 5 in a total of 25 listings. The accompanying world
tour saw David perform two spectacular shows at the legendary Pompeii Amphitheatre in the shadow of
Mount Vesuvius, 45 years after he first played there for Adrian Mabens classic film Pink Floyd Live At
Pompeii.
The concerts were the first-ever rock performances played to an audience in the ancient Roman
amphitheatre, which was built in 90 BC and entombed in ash when Vesuvius erupted in AD 79. The film of
these shows directed by Gavin Elder, topped the box office In Italy, Germany and France and was Number 2
in the UK. David Gilmour Live At Pompeii was released on Blu-ray, Vinyl, CD & DVD in September 2017
and reached #3 in the UK and #1 in Italy.
In June 2019, David raised $21.5m from the Christies sale of more than 120 of his instruments and artefacts.
He gave the proceeds to ClientEarth, a charity which uses the power of the law to protect the planet and its
people.
Gilmour and Nick Mason reactivated Pink Floyd to record ‘Hey Hey Rise Up' on 30th March 2022 with
Andriy Khlyvnyuk of the Ukrainian band Boombox. All of the net proceeds have gone to charities to help
alleviate the suffering of Ukrainian people.
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