David Philips - The Rooftop Recordings (2011)





_{Time: 42:05
Released: 2011
Styles: Acoustic Blues Folk
Label: Black & Tan Records}


Tracks:

01. Help Me To Forget (3:23)
02. You Didn't Make Me (4:22)
03. Our Own Hands (3:44)
04. Raised In The North (3:42)
05. What Am I (4:25)
06. Kind Stranger (3:15)
07. South East Breeze (3:53)
08. Tied Up, Gagged And Bound (3:33)
09. Stones Throw (2:53)
10. Mountain To Climb (4:32)
11. When I'm Drunk (3:15)
12. Kind Stranger (Reprise) (1:03)

I live in a roof top apartment at the top of a block of flats in Barcelona, Spain. High up above the scooters, bar terraces, police sirens and occasional firecrackers, but close enough to hear them in the distance. Up where the summer Swifts and House Martins screech and feed, I sit out on the roof terrace and write songs.
When it came time to record these songs, I decided to record at home. I have a few mics set up in the room that leads on to the same roof terrace where I like to write. I closed the door to achieve the lowest amount of background noise possible, tradition tells us to do this. But there was something not quite right, I was missing the very elements that inspired the music in the first place. So I went against tradition and I opened the door again. The result is a kind of "fly on the wall" experience, and that's the idea of this record. The songs stripped down to the bare bones, just my voice, a guitar (be it regular 6 string Acoustic, 3 string Cigar Box Guitar, 4 string Ukulele or Lap style Dobro played with a solid steel bar), a little harmonica now and then and maybe some foot stomping. No overdubs, just live, one take, in the moment kind of recording and if you listen carefully you'll hear in the background a soundscape created by the people and creatures I share my environment with, just like any other day up here on the roof. ~
_{Quelle: David Philips}


Remi