Legendary UK producer Tim Friese-Greene presents the video for his latest music project Short-Haired Domestic with vocals by musician, songwriter and wife Lee Friese-Greene.
‘A song in Latin about the importance of comfortable shoes’ is the first song they wrote after coming up with the new album concept. In the meantime, they have released the debut double A-side single ‘A song in Latin… A song in Hindi…’.
“This is a song about always wearing your own shoes and choosing your own path, because other people’s shoes never feel right even if they appear to be the same size,” says Lee Friese-Greene.
Best known as producer and unofficial member of Talk Talk, but also for his work producing Catherine Wheel, Lush, Thomas Dolby, Sidi Bou Said and Firefly Burning. Friese-Greene “renowned for his unerring sense of atmosphere and nuance, Tim Friese-Greene was among the most innovative — albeit underrecognized — producers of his era”(AllMusic).
After 1995, he shifted his primary focus to creating music as a solo artist, issuing various releases under his own name and as Heligoland. Short-Haired Domestic is the next step in a logical progression for this producer.
Each track on the new album features vocals in a different language. At their heart are a breakbeat loop, sampled fragments, scratching, insistent funk and Latin rhythms, surprising appearances of acoustic guitar and just about every sound that’s possible to wring from a WASP synthesizer.
The result is melancholic and driven with a pop edge and sensibility. Avoiding any whiff of ‘divaness’ in the vocals, these songs instead allow emotion to be largely generated by the music as a response to the lyric.
“I was interested in heavy slowed-down funk, with a lot of abstract noise, and generally embracing dirtiness and imperfection. I had the idea around 2017 to make a slow funk album, but didn’t want to get bogged down in drummers or drum programming, so I picked 9 breakbeat loops off some 90s DJ vinyl that I had knocking about,” says Tim Friese-Greene.
Lee Friese-Greene was a member of early 90’s London Riot Grrl band Sidi Bou Said. 20-odd years was pre-occupied with parenting, teaching, doing up houses, and dabbling in music, including performance of back vocals for Tim’s projects. More recently, Lee is the songwriter, lead singer and guitar player for Devon-based band Pavlova.
“The video was informed by, defined by, framed by and limited by, going into Lockdown just at the point when we thought about making a video. We wondered if it would even be possible, but luckily we had our son Jake at home with us with his decent enough camera, and youngest son Dylan stuck in a student house London just about to finish his degree in Film Production, so we decided to give it a go,” says Lee Friese-Greene.
‘A song in Latin… A song in Hindi…’ is out now, available via Bandcamp. Later this summer, the duo shall release their debut eponymous album on vinyl and CD, as well as digitally across the main digital platforms.
CREDITS
Video production by Dylan Friese-Greene
Camera operator by Jake Friese-Greene
Written and performed by Tim Friese-Greene and Lee Friese-Greene
Recorded and mixed at The Hold, Totnes
Mastered by Caspar Sutton-Jones at Gearbox Records and
Steve Kitch at Audiomaster
Sleeve artwork by Left Bridge
Calcium Chloride CaCl 009
Photos by Jake Friese-Greene
TRACK LIST
1. A song in Latin about the importance of comfortable shoes
2. A song in Hindi for insomniacs
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