The music on this album is taken from my DVD movie ‘The Garden of Fifi Chamoix’ (2017). It has been re-mixed and edited in places, and is now intended to stand alone as a piece of instrumental music, rather than being a ‘souvenir’ of the film (there are no tracks entitled ‘Fifi prunes the roses’). This has therefore become my second purely instrumental album, the first being ‘The Vesica Massage’ (2006).
The fragmented nature of the music, originally determined by the many short scenes of the film, now appeals to me as a valid style of composition in its own right, and is one I have used since, on ‘The Solar Heresies’ (2020), for example.
The film is dreamlike, and the music seems, to me at least, to have that quality also. A double handful of contrasting musical themes circle briefly on the stage in front of us before vanishing, only to reappear later in different costumes. And if this music is dreamlike, then it is a restless, vivid and incongruous dream.
‘Music from The Garden of Fifi Chamoix’ features wonderful performances from David Jackson (Saxophones, Flutes and Whistles), John Ellis (Guitars & Electric Ukulele), Helen Lunt (Cello), and Ret Warwick (Piano in Parts Three and Seven).
I wrote the music, and played or programmed the Keyboards, Bass, Percussion and Shruti Boxes.
You can check out the DVD here.
