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musicians Sitar guitar - A type of electric guitar manufactured in the 1960s by the Danelectro company (although the upmarket ones were issued under the Coral name). The idea was to give players the sound of a sitar (which was being popularised by the likes of the Beatles) but with the playability and convenience of a guitar. It had a special type of bridge (the part on the guitar body that the strings pass over) that made the buzzy sitar sound. The Coral model (which is what Mike owns) also had a set of drone strings that could be plucked to give a more authentic sitar type sound. It can be heard at 17:18. Glorfindel guitar - A guitar played through Mike's Roland GP-8 Guitar effects unit, programmed to simulate the sound of the Glorfindel Box (an effect used to create some of the distinctive guitar sounds on Tubular Bells - see the section on 'Guitars sounding like bagpipes' on the Tubular Bells page for more information). Highly strung guitar - A particular way of stringing and tuning a guitar. A 12 string guitar has a pair of strings where a 6 string guitar would have one. One of these strings is tuned normally, and one an octave above (except the high B and E strings, where it is the same pitch as its partner). Take away the normally pitched strings and you have a highly strung guitar. Steinway Piano - A piano made by the famous piano makers Steinway and Sons, founded by members of the German family Steinweg (anglicised to Steinway when they emigrated to the United States), with factories in New York, USA and Hamburg, Germany. The company is particularly famous for its grand pianos. This is perhaps another way of saying 'grand piano' without bringing to mind Tubular Bells. Shoes - used for the stamping sounds in various places, such as at 57:45. Hoover - A vacuum cleaner used by Mike to give a drone type sound, echoing the technique he used on his early demos for Tubular Bells. You can hear it's slightly wheezing motor noise fairly clearly at around 16:23 (although it comes in before this, and can also be heard behind similar acoustic guitar section between 16:58 and 17:18). Clay drums - Unsurprisingly, drums made of clay. Drums of this type can be found in many parts of the world, and are normally of a hollow clay pot type construction. Sticks - Probably something like the aborigine clapsticks, carved pieces of wood that are hit together to make a clicking type of sound, much like the 'claves' used by orchestral percussionists. Jew's Harp - An instrument consisting of a metal frame and a small 'tongue' of metal. The Jew's harp is held at the opening of the player's mouth, which amplifies the sound and allows the tone of it to be changed (by the player making different vowel shapes with his/her mouth). The instrument has almost certainly nothing to do with Jewish people, the name having probably evolved from some other English word (one suggestion is that it comes from the old English word gewgaw). The Jew's Harp can be heard at around 37:48.
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Long
thin metallic hanging tubes
- Similar to the way he uses 'steinway piano' instead of 'grand
piano', the Tubular Bells are being given this name in a tongue-in-cheek
attempt not to mention that instrument.
Paddy Moloney - What Paddy plays is not listed, but he probably plays the tin whistle. See
Ommadawn page for more information on Paddy Moloney as well as Clodagh
Simmonds and Bridget St John.
Amarok was originally intended as a sequel to Ommadawn. Mike had been playing with the idea of a Tubular Bells II since the late 80s, but wanted to try his hand at making a sequel to a less famous album first (possibly partly because he knew that his contract with Virgin was soon to end, so he could take Tubular Bells II to a different record company, thereby denying Virgin any success they might have had with it). Mike attempted working in a similar way to how he had back then, ditching his Fairlight and Atari setup and playing virtually all the parts by hand. Much of this was probably down to the influence of producer Tom Newman, who encouraged Mike to use his musicianship skills more, instead of doing so much with his computers. There
is speculation on what the word Amarok might actually mean. Mike
himself has said that it doesn't really mean anything, but it could
sound a bit like 'am a rock' (as in saying I am a rock, perhaps
a comment on his nature). Others say that, like Ommadawn, the title
is a corruption of Irish gaelic words, which mean 'morning' and
maybe most interestingly, 'happy'. The word 'happy' is spoken at
various times throughout the album Mike saw Amarok as parts of his goodbye to Virgin records. As such, he created in Amarok a completely uncommercial album. It's almost impossible to take any section of Amarok on its own without it sounding rather out of place, meaning that it wasn't possible to turn any part into a single, or play it on the radio. It may be co-incidental, but may well have deliberately done to annoy Virgin. Quiet parts of the album are sometimes disturbed by loud, raucous sounds. Mike said he imagined Virgin executive Simon Draper listening to the album in his car and turning it up loud, only to be suddenly frightened to death by a loud synth brass stab. Mike also hid a message in Amarok - at 48:05 some morse code can be heard (played on a bright synth sound). It actually spells out "F*** off RB" (with RB standing for Richard Branson). Mike was annoyed at Virgin's lack of promotion for the album (although if he really had made it deliberately uncommercial, Mike would surely have expected them not to promote it...), and so took out his own advertising campaign. Part of the campaign was Mike offering a prize of £1000 to the first person to find the hidden message. The
cover photograph was taken by Mike's old friend William Murray,
who also wrote the story found inside the CD booklet. Mike helped
spark off William's interest in photography during the mid 70s,
when he gave William a camera as a present. William later worked
as a professional photographer. His attempt with the cover was to
recreate the cover of Ommadawn. He admitted later that, although
the Ommadawn cover looks simple, matching the David Bailey original
was no easy task, with Murray saying that it showed just how good
a photographer David Bailey really is. The metal lettering was made
by Tom Newman. William Murray sadly died a few years ago.
The solo at 22:30 may sound like it has been speeded up...It's my
belief that it hasn't been, and that Mike actually played it at
that speed. In fact, I was so convinced that I slowed it down a
bit so I could hear the notes more clearly, and actually tried to
work out how to play it. It wasn't easy to work out what was going
on, but I did succeed in working out the first part of it and can
say that it is possible to play without any electronic trickery.
I believe he played that part in the open position, and uses a series
of hammer ons, pull offs and bits of fast fingerpicking in order
to get the speed. As far as I can tell, the technique is the same
as he moves up higher. This technique is not a million miles away
from the technique used to play the 'fast riff' at the beginning. Buy
Amarok now from Amazon.co.uk |
Amarok
- Released
June
14th 1990
