The Paradise Stain. Nick Glade-Wright

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СКАЧАТЬ the genuinely penniless still had to cough up), had set up the studio with the banks of second hand keyboards in two rows facing each other, giving easy access to all the wires, cables and connections in the middle. To one side the drum kit and associated percussion instruments had been set up on a higher plinth, giving Paul elevation to see Sammy and Mungo at their respective keyboards.

      Paul Leonard, solid build, head insulated with black curly hair had been brought up in Cairo in his early years. He was often mistaken for being Greek but his parents, archeologists, were actually English. Much of their research was based on hieroglyphics, deciphering the secrets of the past. Paul had met Lena, a Tasmanian who had been visiting the pyramids. Not long after their meeting under the Sphinx she had tempted him with her beauty and the lifestyle of Hobart. To his parents’ disappointment, Paul flew back to Australia with Lena, but they went their own ways a year later. Paul’s brief emotional vacuum became occupied again after teaming up with Mungo and Sammy, drinking buddies only at first until they all realised they shared the same passion for eccentric music.

      Whenever another musician ventured into the space a jam session would ensue, injecting a different sound into their music, twisting it even further. Electronic sampling was an important aspect to the finished product, as Mungo explained to Melinda when they first started. ‘You start with something that is basic, unadulterated like a baby at the beginning of life. You take its pure nature and manipulate it through recording it and redesigning it electronically, the denaturing of innocence. In our case we end up with a multi facetted soundscape. An amalgam, representative of all the urban sounds we take for granted and have stopped hearing, but are at the very core of our lives,’ Mungo continued earnestly.

      ‘I love it when you talk dirty,’ she’d replied.

      Littered around the remaining spaces were extraneous objects, junk retrieved from a disused machine factory that tantalised their uninhibited musical impulses, to strike, shake or rotate. PVC plumbing pipes of various dimensions hung from the rafters; the longer they were the lower the note that emanated from them when hit with a rubber thong. Two dismembered piano frames were suspended too, to be plucked, hammered or ruffled. As well, there were sheets of steel, hub caps, even an old vacuum cleaner with the pipe connected to the outflow opening and the other end inserted into a large plastic drum filled with table tennis balls. It was within the process of unconstrained play where the magic was found, recorded then merged with conventional percussion beats and scale structures.

      Sammy arrived eating a cold slab of what looked like two layers of last night’s pizza. Paul, the same age as Sammy, breezed in seconds behind, coke in hand, grin on face. The smug expression, cultivated to a fine degree, needed no explanation. Apart from being a reliably accurate barometer for some recent carnal interaction with the opposite sex, he was hopeful it conveyed an alpha male image, suiting his reputation for being unattached and therefore, in his mind, irresistible to all women.

      Mungo, who was several years older than the others, had taken on the role of Godfather in the band, ostensibly because he had a kid and lived with a regular partner. This seemed to allow him the unique status of responsible adult which the others were not yet ready to accept for themselves. Sammy and Paul liked to play the single, we have lustful sex every night you poor married bastard game with Mungo, who played along with it because he knew it patently wasn’t true. The lads spent most days and evenings playing music until their bodies were so tired they couldn’t raise the flag even if they’d wanted to.

      Mungo looked up. ‘Morning.’

      The others replied in unison, ‘Morning.’

      Mungo, who had already activated his Korg effects system, microphone hanging in the middle of the room, record button red, played the greeting back to them: Morning … morning …

      Then on a loop: Morning … morning … morning … morning … morning …

      He sped it up to about twice the speed, inserted a chorus effect, then added an octave below. Paul picked up his drum sticks and began to play along. Kick bass in time with the words, high hat on the offbeat, sticks playing counter beats with the snare and toms and cowbell. Sammy shoved the last two mouthfuls of pizza into his mouth and began hitting two large metal pipes with a lump of wood, the doleful ecclesiastical tones befitting an elegy in some country churchyard.

      Mungo adjusted the key to suit the pipes and began improvising a melody with his other keyboard, on top of what was happening. They seemed to play as if their lives depended on it, for a while not even looking at each other, simply imbibing the sounds, the rhythm, feeling and reacting to each other. After about ten minutes they began to give each other know ing glances, their actions getting more radical and the melodies more complex. It was the point where the synthesis of the sounds found a groove, fusing as one. They were all append ages of the same musical body, their minds tuned into hearing and predicting the others’ moves.

      Mungo suddenly flicked his keys off, Paul ceased drumming and Sammy burst into laughter.

      ‘John Cage, eat your heart out!’

      And so the young musical revolutionaries’ day had begun.

      Chapter Eight

      At the same time that John Sturges had entered the Nerve Two reception area, hesitantly making his way to the young girl at the desk to check in for his interview with Kant, Melinda was leaving home to the sound of Yetta singing in the kitchen as she went about preparing the ingredients for her famous spiced biscuits.

      ‘Kosi kosi łapci … pojedziem do babci … Babcia da nam mleczka … a dziadzius pierniczka.’

      Melinda had heard Yetta sing the Polish nursery rhyme many times to Rosie, who loved to clap, clap little hands like the young girl in the song, when heading off to grandma’s house to be fed on milk and gingerbread cookies.

      Half an hour later, when Melinda opened the kiln room door, she was instantly wrapped in its womb like heat. The kiln had reached temperature overnight, an 1100 degree glaze firing turning silica into glass. It still wasn’t quite ready to open up. If she opened the door too early because of impatient student demands most of the pots would crack with the inrush of cold air onto hot clay bodies. She switched the buzzing extractor fan off and came back into the studio to prepare for the students’ arrival.

      From the damp cupboards, lined with tin sheeting to extend the drying time of clay, she lifted out several works and began placing them around the room for the students when they arrived. Melinda felt it was important to have the works in place, particularly for the special needs students who were creatures of habit, always sitting in the same spot at the same table.

      Mason’s piece was essentially a lump of clay on a craft wood board into which he would prod with his withered fingers, grunting and forcing subterranean sounds from his mouth. His head, neck and shoulders, twisting and contorting as his tongue moved in and out of a mouth that had minimal muscle control, writhed like an ancient creature from the depths of a sea cave. His cerebral palsy movements were involuntary and his noisy expulsions spasmodic and alarming, but his interaction with clay, in this room, with these other human beings, made his eyes shine with joy.

      As it turned out Mason was away sick today. The merest cough would require regular massage and gentle thumping on his chest and back to break up the congestion. A lack of this constant attention could result in something far more serious or even death.

      Pammy trundled in. Big lady, thirtyish; records of her birth had gone astray. She was intellectually impaired, and irrepressibly cheerful due to a complete lack of comprehension about negativity, an attribute Melinda wished would rub off onto some of the sixteen year old hoodied rabbits СКАЧАТЬ