felt mountain

Goldfrapp wanted our minds with the utopian magic hour murmurs of this deliciously wired electronic cabaret.   As a child, Alison Goldfrapp sang in the choir at the Alton Convent School before being expelled for her grades.  She moved to London at the age of sixteen and then went on to study art at Middlesex University:   "They taught me that it doesn't matter whether you have any money - 'the idea' is everything. Also, that I could do music, and that it didn't have to be pop."

She did some musical theatre work before doing guest vocals on various projects, including Orbital's  "Are We Here" from Snivilisation, Add N to (X)'s "Revenge of the Black Regent" from Avant Hard,  Bryan Ferry's "San Simeon" from Frantic, and Tricky's "Pumpkin" from Maxinquaye.   Goldrapp reveals:   "It took two years for me to get my head back to what I wanted.  Things were complex because I was good friends with Martina, who I effectively replaced. It was highly acrimonious between those two and I was in the middle. I mean, I like Tricky. As much as he's a fucking nightmare. Offensive? He's totally offensive! But I can give it back.  His best stuff was done in his living room.  I'd be standing in the hallway with one working headphone while he went out for chips. When he came back, the track was done." 

It was around this time that she connected with Will Gregory (who had worked with numerous artists including Tears For Fears,  Tori Amos,   Peter Gabriel,  and  Portishead).   Gregory remembers:   "We both had been in music doing various things, as you do trying to earn your living as a musician. It seems like you have to be flexible, to say, at the very least. Looking back on it, I guess you could say that we'd come to a point in our lives, respectively, where we felt we needed to just stop doing all those little things that feel like a compromise, and try and do something that feels like it's really what you want to do. But at the time, I think it was just that I heard her voice. I heard her singing on a very early version of a song that later became "Human," and it sounded great. I just thought, "This is someone I'd really like to meet. Wherever she is, I want to be there too - because I feel like I already am." I just felt that there was a connection there...I think that, having done a lot of writing for TV and film and stuff, you begin to realize that, OK it's fun, the idea that you're a chameleon - that you can put on any fancy dress music pastiche costume - but actually, what's more interesting is finding your own voice, your own style. I got to a point where I think I'd found that, to some extent, and I wasn't usually allowed to do it, because it wasn't appropriate to the project. But when I heard Allison, I thought, "That really is appropriate," because wherever I am, I imagine that she can be there too...After that, we spoke a lot on the phone and we also sent each other -- because, at the time, I lived in Bath and she lived in London - compilation cassettes of our favorite tracks, just to see where our heads were...I've not had much experience working [with other people]. It was intense. That's all I can really tell you. I think that the first thing we wrote was "Lovely Head," and that was lucky in a way because we were really pleased with it. We wanted to continue in that vein, and that set a kind of benchmark. And the next track we wrote was "Horse Tears," and that set another kind of direction up - the kind of slow space that we really enjoy - that intensity. So between those two, we really kind of covered the gamut, and they ended up being the first and last track on the album, but they were actually the first two things we wrote. I think that that was lucky for us, because it meant that we had a standard, and we had a benchmark and we knew that, if we'd written tracks as good as that - we felt they were good - then we had our work cut out. After that, it was sometimes harder, because we were trying to recapture that direction." 

'Felt Mountain' was recorded over six months starting in September of 1999 in the solitude of a rented cottage in the countryside of Wiltshire.   Goldfrapp considers:   "It was mad and I wouldn't do it again," she says. "My social and private life collapsed. Because it was a bungalow, it felt really vulnerable. Big windows. Mice in the roof. I like extremes but, at the end of that six months, I really did feel I was going bonkers. I remember spending three days in a raincoat, scrubbing the side of the bungalow because there were all these spiders hatching. I became obsessive about the wildlife I thought was taking over the bungalow. It was disgusting, moths everywhere. You could hear the mice scuttling across the roof."

Gregory and Goldfrapp produced the sessions together.  Gregory says:   "All I can really tell you is that we both write the music together, and Alison writes the lyrics. How we get there, I don't really know. We haven't found a formula for doing it. I think that's probably a good thing ... I think that it's interesting having counterpoint. I don't write the lyrics, so I'm not fully qualified to talk about them. What I will say is that I think we tend to go with the emotion rather than the kind of politics. And I think that the emotion behind the idea that we are potentially in control, scientifically, of creating how we're going to be in the future - we're moving into a position where we can play God to a pretty extreme extent - has an emotional significance. And then you imagine some futuristic alien human being that's been the product of all this genetic whats-it. What's going through their mind? That can be a very torturous, sad place to be, I suppose. So that creates a certain drama straight away, even though it's quite comical at the same time. "

Goldfrapp says their process involves delving deeper:   "What is the scenario behind this song? What are the emotions?... ['Felt Mountain' evokes a] total loneliness where something horrible is happening...It's sort of beautifully macabre.  I love all that David Lynch, Midwich Cuckoos thing. But it isn't cinema. It's real."

'Felt Mountain' climbed to number ninety-eight in Switzerland, fifty-seven in the UK, forty-eight in France,  forty-four in Australia and Austria,  and thirty-six in Germany.  In the UK, it was nominated for the prestigious Mercury Prize.  








http://goldfrapp.com/








"Utopia"




"Pilots"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rK_B_M0MBcY




"Human"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fz3Yu6_Bt-Y




"Lovely Head"






'Felt Mountain'  full album:




All songs written and composed by Alison Goldfrapp and Will Gregory, except where noted. 


1. "Lovely Head"   3:49
2. "Paper Bag"   4:05
3. "Human" (Tim Norfolk, Bob Locke, Goldfrapp, Gregory) 4:36
4. "Pilots"   4:29
5. "Deer Stop"   4:06
6. "Felt Mountain"   4:17
7. "Oompa Radar"   4:42
8. "Utopia"   4:18
9. "Horse Tears"   5:10


  
live in Paris
June 21, 2001 





UK Girls (Physical)

black cherry

Goldfrapp moved away from the ambient sounds of their debut towards a driving synthpop strut for this sultry sophomore seduction.  Riding high on the critical success of 'Felt Mountain' the duo of Will Gregory and Alison Goldfrapp moved a bunch of synthesizers and musical equipment into a small studio in Bath, England and began working on 'Black Cherry'.  Goldfrapp reveals:    "It’s funny, because when we did that first album people would say to me ‘what are your influences’ and I’d always say Ennio Morricone and disco and they’d look at me and go ‘what’. This album isn’t a disco album but those records are my influences. What I loved about all of those old disco albums is that they were these big, opulent, fantastic string arrangements, fantasy and you could dance to them as well. When you are a musician, you take little things from lots of different things. What I find frustrating is that people are always trying to pigeonhole what Goldfrapp are about. But to me, this is only the beginning really of a whole load of things. We both have eclectic tastes, but also for me touring that album ('Felt Mountain') and singing those songs over and over again as much as I love them I found the immaculateness, the perfectness and the tempo of it in particular I found really claustrophobic after a while. I longed to express something else. I wanted to give it an energy that wasn’t on the last album...It was really great when we got back into the studio after 'Felt Mountain' and touring a lot to start jamming and playing more stuff ourselves; having fun with it, turning things up and getting a bit more physical with it...We just needed somewhere to put our gear and we had this little studio. We kept having these fantasies that we would go somewhere a lot more elaborate or somewhere with a nice view. But once we got going on the album we got scared to up root ourselves because it might stop so we ended up staying there. It wasn’t really a conscious decision...Ultimately we’re the same two people and where ever we go it’s us. You can’t run away from yourself. Obviously your environment is important but I don’t think it’s that relevant although it can be an inspiration...When I’m making music, the image, the place and where that is and what’s going on in a song runs parallel for me; there all part of the same thing. But then the image you present to the public, your self persona, is completely different which I find quite difficult. It’s not the same creative process as when your writing; making videos and photo shoots. I never look how I really want to look. I always think, ‘God I look crap in that’ or ‘shit, I wish I hadn’t done my hair like that’. You know that’s real whereas in your mind, the fantasy world in your head it all looks like the penultimate video epic film. Then the image is your perception of a personal situation so it’s really important to me but at the same time when your making videos and your doing press shots it’s kind of out of your control. It’s a bit of a weird contradiction, videos. I mean, making a video for a song is just kind of a crazy idea because the song already has a narrative and an image to it and then you make a video and your making another narrative and image and quite often the two don’t gel. You have agendas like what the record company wants, what MTV wants and all this other bullshit that goes into it, what the director wants so it’s very difficult where in your head it can all be much more exciting. But then accidents happen and you can never predict it when your compromising for other people. Sometimes you might not plan something and something fantastic happens. You can’t ever predict those things."

Gregory considers:    "I think we did more jamming on synths with this album. On 'Felt Mountain' we would tend to set up pads with a few other sounds and improvise over that. This time we'd set up a basic beat for a couple of them and improvise with the synths wildly over it, and then go back to find things we liked rather than go for a purposeful melody over a chord. There was improvisation on 'Felt Mountain', but this time it was improvising at a much more basic level — just making noises, really, or events or accidents or things that we liked the sound of that we could loop up. So there was a more fundamental approach, building from sound events. But apart from that I think we just wanted to turn everything up and get a bit more raucous and dirty — have a bit more fun...I think we followed our intuition more this time. We needed to write something that wasn't like 'Felt Mountain', so that was a mission, and we had some ideas about the vocals. Alison's very versatile and has a lot of other voices in her than we got out on 'Felt Mountain' — so we really wanted to explore how we could develop that. We wanted to do vocal harmonies, use layers and different vocal effects. For example, on 'Train' all the harmony is in the vocals, there's no harmony in the track. So we kind of slipped that round a bit."

'Black Cherry' went to number forty-five in France, thirty in Ireland, twenty-five in Germany, nineteen in the UK, and number two in Belgium.  








http://goldfrapp.com/











'Strict Machine' became the first of three consecutive number one hits on the US dance chart for Goldfrapp.  It hit number twenty in the UK.  




'Train' hit number twenty-three in the UK.







'Black Cherry' 
full album:

Black Cherry from Goldfrapp on Myspace.


https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHga8KdC9WqX6aRM--LRsTfWDMXCLLgsn
All tracks written by Alison Goldfrapp and Will Gregory, except where noted.

1. "Crystalline Green" 4:28
2. "Train" 4:11
3. "Black Cherry" 4:56
4. "Tiptoe" 5:10
5. "Deep Honey" 4:01
6. "Hairy Trees" 4:37
7. "Twist" 3:32
8. "Strict Machine" Goldfrapp Gregory Nick Batt 3:51
9. "Forever" 4:14
10. "Slippage" 3:57

seventh tree

Goldfrapp chilled out their club friendly grooves to create the folktronic ambience of this engagingly expansive emotional exploration. After the dance chart success of 'Supernature' the duo was ready to move in a new musical direction. Will Gregory explains: "I think we both felt the need to shut things down a bit. I think we felt that maybe with 'Supernature', the voice had been sort of caricatured or stylized and processed, and we wanted to go back to a much more intimate and personal solo voice where the character of the music and the emotion is coming from that. Sometimes we did some jams which were just with one instrument and her voice to do the writing with, and that just felt really nice, you know, that space. Sometimes we would look back at 'Supernature' and think we're working really hard on our drama here - maybe we don't have to work as hard as that. You can make things dramatic and startling with much more minimal resources and I think that was part of the enjoyment and the fun of working on [the album]. Or the exploration - trying to figure out another way of getting those moments in drama that we're always after."


Alison Goldfrapp reflects: "I think this one's been brewing for a while. A kind of aesthetic or sound that we've always been interested in-- which is probably why we made 'Felt Mountain' in the first place. And even though it's very different from 'Felt Mountain', it's a soundworld that we're fond of. And we've talked for a long while about doing stuff with harps and doing something more intimate. And as a result of touring 'Supernature' for so long, it felt time to do something that had more space, and was a bit quieter."



Gregory says: "We're very lucky in that we've got a record company who are keen to experiment and try different things. I think in some ways we were more scared about it than they were. We were kind of thinking, 'What are we doing?'. And we played them a couple of tracks, early demos, and they loved it. So that was great. Because I think our record company are quite unusual like that-- they like music, and they like being stimulated. They're quite like us, aren't they?"


Goldfrapp reckons: "Saying that you've got acoustic instruments and that's traditional and so people will think it's more intimate, that will always be the case. It's a more intimate sound, so it's going to sound more direct whatever you're singing about. I mean, it is a more personal record. But I think by the nature of having a voice that is more upfront and the way the vocals are set against the music, it's always going to feel more personal, even if the lyrics weren't, if you know what I mean? So it has it's moments of being more intimate or being personal, it's true. Some of it's confessional, but some of it is complete and utter gobbledeegook!"




They produced the album in their hometown of Bath, England with Alison Goldfrapp on lead vocals, backing vocals, production, engineering, mixing, art direction, and owl drawing; and Will Gregory on production, engineering, and mixing; with Jonathan Allen as string engineer; Flood on additional production, co-production, keyboards, guitar, mixing, and additional stems mixing; Nick Batt and Max Dingle on additional drum programming; Cathy Edwards on art direction; Richard Evans on guitar; Steve Evans on acoustic guitar; Chris Goulstone on drum samples and guitar; Isobel Griffiths as string contractor; Tony Hoffer on mixing, overdub engineering, and bass; Nick Ingman on string conduction and string orchestration; Charlie Jones on bass and twang bass; Paddy Lannigan on double bass; Serge Leblon on photography; Alex Lee on acoustic guitar, Nashville guitar, bass, and electric guitar; Aidan Love on additional programming and keyboards; Mat Maitland on art direction and design; Stephen Marcussen on mastering; Stephen Marshall as assistant string engineer; Justin Meldal-Johnsen on bass; Metro Voices as the choir; Bill Mims as mixing assistant and overdub engineer; Kit Morgan and Andrew Murphy on acoustic guitar; Everton Nelson as string leader; Jenny O'Grady as choir master; Tim Oliver as additional engineer; Damon Reece on drums and percussion; Simon Rogers on Indian guitar; Mary Scully on double bass; Leila Stacey as assistant string contractor; Adrian Utley on fuzz bass and fuzz guitar; Ruth Wall on harp samples; Denny Weston, Jr. on drums; David Daniels, Robin Firman, Cathy Giles, Paul Kegg, Melissa Phelps, and Chris Worsey on cello; Peter Lale, Andy Parker, Chris Pitsilides, and Katie Wilkinson on viola; and Alexander Bălănescu, Mark Berrow, Chris Clad, Dermot Crehan, Patrick Kiernan, Boguslaw Kostecki, Ann Morfee, Stephen Morris, Everton Nelson, Tom Pigott-Smith, Joanathan Rees, Jackie Shave, Sonia Slany, Cathy Thompson, Chris Tombling, and Debbie Widdup on violin.  



Gregory describes the effect of the rural setting on the music: "Just outside of Bath, in the Somerset countryside. It was a happy experience, yeah. The thing is, writing an album, it sort of seems it must be dependent on where you are, but a lot of it is just being left alone, to get on with it. It's a good reason for being in the country because you don't get any distractions. Countryside, a lot of it is just about getting your head cleared out of all the background noise of daily life. So I think we tend to be quite monkish and isolated. And that helps you get right into it."


Goldfrapp considers: "When I listen to music, what’s important is that it takes you on a journey. As much as I'm into the structure of music, or how I love the way film music works with images and emotions, I'm more interested in being 'taken' somewhere. Any music that really takes you, expels you, fires you off into some kind of other universe is really special. It's kind of the point of it for me. So, yes, when writing lyrics and melodies, when composing a structure of a song, there's a real aim there: to make it feel like you’re going on a journey. That there’s a beginning, a middle, and an end. And an atmosphere. All our albums, all our songs, they all have their own little world, as it were. Or, at least, that's the aim."

'Seventh Tree' bloomed at seventy-two in Spain, fifty-seven in Italy, forty-eight in the US, thirty-nine in New Zealand, thirty-seven in Austria and France, twenty-eight in Canada, twenty-one in Germany, twenty-four in the Netherlands, eighteen in Norway and Portugal, fourteen on the US top rock albums, twelve on the US top alternative albums chart, eleven in Australia and Switzerland, ten in Belgium, nine in Ireland, five on the European top 100 albums chart, and number two in the UK. 








http://goldfrapp.com/








1. "Clowns" 4:08
made an appearance at number one hundred and fifteen in the UK.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tl9iiCnArpQ






2. "Little Bird" 4:25
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVRxTHs6Jj0






3. "Happiness" 4:17
made it to number twenty-five in the UK. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9bO7WmmBf0






4. "Road to Somewhere" 3:52http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3zcN3ikS30

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x4mtb4_goldfrapp-road-to-somewhere-seventh_music

Goldfrapp- Road To Somewhere-Seventh Tree by chicethautaine



5. "Eat Yourself" 4:06http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFPMPLELTZU




6. "Some People" 4:40
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THCxH40maw0




7. "A&E" 3:18
went to ninety-eight in Germany, eighty-five in Australia, thirty-eight in Belgium, thirty-three in Ireland, twenty-two on the US hot dance club song chart, ten in the UK, and number one on the US hot dance singles sales chart. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7Ptai9I6eo




8. "Cologne Cerrone Houdini" 4:26http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPcsD-3wx54




9. "Caravan Girl" 4:05
travelled to fifty-four in the UK and number nine on the US hot dance singles sales chart. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fX5a3TxPGN8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjuPtkno5t0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1AF8Wl3Mh0










'Seventh Tree' 
full album: