AL SWAINGER - A Point Of Beauty
How would you sum up your approach to music-making in 3 words?
Hmm, what if…?
Your latest releases are under the name “Pointless Beauty” for which there’s also a fascinating Facebook group. Can you talk about the meaning behind this what ties this online community together?
For me Pointless Beauty is a slightly ironic title acknowledging that not everyone likes the same things and that that’s ok. It doesn’t matter. If people react positively towards something they are happy to identify something as ‘beautiful’. Equally if they have a negative reaction, or no reaction at all, they are often quick to dismiss those things as ‘pointless’. It’s such a subjective thing. Not all things that I would regard as beautiful are joyful or happy – the beauty lies in the idea of emotional stimulus for me. We celebrate these things on their own terms for their own sake as we perceive them. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Pointless Beauty is an acknowledgement of our right to openly enjoy it wherever we find it.
I started the Pointless Beauty Community group back in 2016. It turns out there’s a tendency for people to be slightly judgemental on FB (wait, no, really!!??) yeah.. so I really wanted to set up a communal safe space where people could share anything that elevates their day. It can be art, architecture, a funny shaped cloud, an unusual sound - whatever. Literally anything that makes you stop and reflect for a moment. The emotional reaction is the important thing and the chance to share that perspective with others. The group members know that they can be open without having to worry about anyone making them feel bad, shamed or judged for their choice. I approve new members personally to keep spammers out but I’ve never had to remove or admonish anyone for bullying. Sometimes we can get into debates about how we’re perceiving what has been shared but that’s part of the point too. It’s articulate discourse, not negative criticism. I’m quite proud of that given what I see happening in some groups. I don’t generally share my own work there as the purpose of it is to share in the concept of Pointless Beauty with others rather than exhibit myself. It’s a fairly small group of about 550 people but I’ve never been on a recruitment drive for it – it just gradually grows organically as people invite their friends.
I did recently start another group Pointless Beauty : Communion which is specifically about archiving my work on FB as I didn’t really have a place for people to easily find it on there.
The arrival of the pandemic and subsequent isolation seem to have had an influence on this album; what positives did you take away from that period, musically?
It definitely provided some challenges! I think what was really valuable though was being forced to rethink and having the time to really explore that. As someone who spends the bulk of their time travelling and performing live it was definitely scary to have that taken away. The flip side is that I got to spend a lot of time exploring my own compositional voice, putting experiments out into the world via the internet, and getting positive feedback about it. That really helped with getting much more comfortable about seeing myself as a composer coming from somewhere different, rather than as a performing bass player who composes.
Two big themes kept coming up for me. Ideas of isolation and community. Isolation is often seen as a negative but, particularly if you’re more introverted, It also has a lot of positive aspects. Information overload is quite a prevalent mental health issue so being freed from that to spend more time apart can be really healthy in its way too.
The pandemic also offered a really insightful window into how we interact with each other. Whose voices get heard, when, in what context and who gets to make those decisions have been thrown into thrown into pretty sharp relief for the last few years. Obviously this is not a new problem but having to come face to face with that was perhaps significantly more universal in the light of recent events. I’ve been thinking very consciously about the parallels with how ensemble arrangements work, particularly in a jazz context, for some time. It’s really important to me to to explore how I can reflect a greater sense of opportunity for equality of expression within the music I write as a result
Hmm, what if…?
Your latest releases are under the name “Pointless Beauty” for which there’s also a fascinating Facebook group. Can you talk about the meaning behind this what ties this online community together?
For me Pointless Beauty is a slightly ironic title acknowledging that not everyone likes the same things and that that’s ok. It doesn’t matter. If people react positively towards something they are happy to identify something as ‘beautiful’. Equally if they have a negative reaction, or no reaction at all, they are often quick to dismiss those things as ‘pointless’. It’s such a subjective thing. Not all things that I would regard as beautiful are joyful or happy – the beauty lies in the idea of emotional stimulus for me. We celebrate these things on their own terms for their own sake as we perceive them. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Pointless Beauty is an acknowledgement of our right to openly enjoy it wherever we find it.
I started the Pointless Beauty Community group back in 2016. It turns out there’s a tendency for people to be slightly judgemental on FB (wait, no, really!!??) yeah.. so I really wanted to set up a communal safe space where people could share anything that elevates their day. It can be art, architecture, a funny shaped cloud, an unusual sound - whatever. Literally anything that makes you stop and reflect for a moment. The emotional reaction is the important thing and the chance to share that perspective with others. The group members know that they can be open without having to worry about anyone making them feel bad, shamed or judged for their choice. I approve new members personally to keep spammers out but I’ve never had to remove or admonish anyone for bullying. Sometimes we can get into debates about how we’re perceiving what has been shared but that’s part of the point too. It’s articulate discourse, not negative criticism. I’m quite proud of that given what I see happening in some groups. I don’t generally share my own work there as the purpose of it is to share in the concept of Pointless Beauty with others rather than exhibit myself. It’s a fairly small group of about 550 people but I’ve never been on a recruitment drive for it – it just gradually grows organically as people invite their friends.
I did recently start another group Pointless Beauty : Communion which is specifically about archiving my work on FB as I didn’t really have a place for people to easily find it on there.
The arrival of the pandemic and subsequent isolation seem to have had an influence on this album; what positives did you take away from that period, musically?
It definitely provided some challenges! I think what was really valuable though was being forced to rethink and having the time to really explore that. As someone who spends the bulk of their time travelling and performing live it was definitely scary to have that taken away. The flip side is that I got to spend a lot of time exploring my own compositional voice, putting experiments out into the world via the internet, and getting positive feedback about it. That really helped with getting much more comfortable about seeing myself as a composer coming from somewhere different, rather than as a performing bass player who composes.
Two big themes kept coming up for me. Ideas of isolation and community. Isolation is often seen as a negative but, particularly if you’re more introverted, It also has a lot of positive aspects. Information overload is quite a prevalent mental health issue so being freed from that to spend more time apart can be really healthy in its way too.
The pandemic also offered a really insightful window into how we interact with each other. Whose voices get heard, when, in what context and who gets to make those decisions have been thrown into thrown into pretty sharp relief for the last few years. Obviously this is not a new problem but having to come face to face with that was perhaps significantly more universal in the light of recent events. I’ve been thinking very consciously about the parallels with how ensemble arrangements work, particularly in a jazz context, for some time. It’s really important to me to to explore how I can reflect a greater sense of opportunity for equality of expression within the music I write as a result
Click on the album cover to read our review
What influences do you think first-time listeners will be able to hear in your latest release Hearts Full Of Grace?
It’s always fascinating to hear what people pick up on in music – it’s often as much a reflection of their own listening taste as what is actually there but obviously my sound is an amalgamation of my own listening habits too. Every once in a while, I put a favourite recording on and go ‘oh, I do that, that’s where that’s from’. I’ve listened to such a lot of music over the years that things just creep in unconsciously.
I’m not much of one for really sitting down and figuring things out but I listen constantly so I get a vocabulary of what I’d like to hear and then do my best to fit those things together. I hear things in emotional reactions so mixing genres comes really easily to me. Melancholy and anger tend to pull me towards rock, joy tends to move towards Latin American or African vibes, anxiety is more of a free improv thing, peace tends to be more ambient, self-confidence tends towards funk and pop etc. My compositions are like thought processes so they’ll move through a lot of moods and therefore blend styles I suppose.
Influences I’m aware tend to come through are Weather Report, Chick Corea, Steve Rothery & Pete Trewavas (from Marillion), Joe Satriani, Iron Maiden, Bill Frisell, Tangerine Dream, Radiohead, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Keith Jarrett, Bill Evans, Pink Floyd, Terje Rypdal, Kenny Wheeler, Steely Dan, Vangelis… I’m sure there are loads of others. People may or may not hear those things.
The music-making seems very organic; what did the recording process look like for this album?
It always starts with improvisation for me. Maybe it’s a drum loop, a bass riff, a synth sound, an fx pedal combination or I might be sitting at the piano or humming to myself just pottering about. I try and record those seeds of ideas as quickly as possible before I’ve had too much time to think about them. Once I have time to start working out what I’m doing they tend to fall into my regular habits so I’m keen to capture ideas before that happens, while it’s still fresh and a bit more chaotic. I know how to shape an idea once it’s there but I really want to capture things I don’t normally do and that happens best in the noodling phase before I’m trying to do anything specific.
I find the same thing tends to happen in the studio with other musicians. All the spontaneous, weird, accidental things have a character that can’t really be caught in the same way once pattern recognition sets in. You can sort of feel the intellectual take over from the primal as people do more takes.
My favourite albums are prog and pop albums for production. The studio is an additional instrument to give a specific aural experience that transports you in a different way to being in a live space. With a studio album you can really explore silence, reverb and very subtle sounds because people are always sat in the ‘sweet spot’ for appreciating those things – particularly if they are listening on headphones or good quality speakers.
One of the real challenges of making a studio album engaging is to make it sound spontaneous. There’s so many tools to make everything shiny and perfect that you can end up with something quite sterile if you aren’t careful. Considering which accidental noises, bumps, ‘wrong’ notes, ‘iffy’ tunings etc to keep in, accentuate, moderate or eradicate is a really important part of keeping that energy and freshness I think.
I don’t regard anything as sacred. There’s always occasions where I really like particular things but they just don’t fit. There’s a kind of ‘suspension of belief’ to maintain and if an idea breaks that for whatever reason it has to go. I’m constantly weighing up how long to spend on a particular mood. How much tension to build, where release needs to happen. Everything needs to be in service to the music and how that’s going to feel to a listener. I see it like a novel where each track should be a chapter that takes you somewhere new before delivering a satisfying conclusion. I’m writing music to be an activity that encourages engagement and reflection.
What’s been your best live gig experience with this project and why?
I think I might go with Calstock Arts. Each venue has its own character and offers something different. There’s two sides to a great gig experience. The obvious one is audience response. One of the lovely things about this project is that people always come up to say that it wasn’t what they expected and it really took them somewhere different. The word ‘cinematic’ gets brought up a lot. Engagement is a huge part of making a gig memorable. The other side is how the venue is organised. Do people help get the gear in? Is there a PA? A sound engineer that is sympathetic to the sonic needs of the band? A proper lighting rig? Refreshments for the band? A clear place to display and sell CDs etc? Someone to run that merch table for you? Calstock provided all of that and has a beautiful view to boot. A big thank you to Kate Gamm and her team for making that one such a lovely memory. It might all sound a bit practical but when you’ve been
away from home for days and travelling for hours each day to get to the next venue that’s the stuff that really makes a difference to whether you want to go back and play again.
Can you tell us about a British jazz album that had an early impact on you?
I think I’d have to go with Loose Tubes – Open Letter. I was in my mid teens when this came out and it was another album that blew me away for the sheer variety going on. Free jazz, African township grooves, big ensemble writing, unusual textures and epic guitar solos. Just incredible stuff that didn’t sound like anything else I knew about overall but had resonances with lots of things that I’d come across individually. I recognised lots of the pieces but had no idea they could result in something like that as a whole experience. I really loved the melting pot effect of it – and still do. I listened to that one and Delightful Precipice almost like one long album over and again in my teens. I don’t think that sound world comes out in my music really but conceptually and structurally I feel like it had a big impact.
What album or track have you been listening to on repeat this week?
If you’d asked me last week it was all about Ilaria Capalbo’s Karthago. Really rich acoustic writing with nods towards Kenny Wheeler and Bill Frisell. I’d have probably directed you to check out the title track as a beautiful ballad that starts with a beautiful mournfulness. It just builds and builds into this incredible, wild, heart-rending dissonance before concluding peacefully again. Total trip. This week, however, I’m really into Maria Chiara Argirò’s Forest City and again I’d direct you to the title track as a starting point. Very electronic but rich in a warm Vangelis kind of way. Definite echoes of Thom Yorke’s production on Anima vibe wise. Beautiful combination of groove and distressed synth sounds for something quite melancholy. It provides a great bed for Maria’s fragile vocal style but the tracks always feel like they are about the complete soundscape rather than being vehicles for songs per se. I’m a sucker for music that makes me want to cry and both these albums hit that button at times.
It’s always fascinating to hear what people pick up on in music – it’s often as much a reflection of their own listening taste as what is actually there but obviously my sound is an amalgamation of my own listening habits too. Every once in a while, I put a favourite recording on and go ‘oh, I do that, that’s where that’s from’. I’ve listened to such a lot of music over the years that things just creep in unconsciously.
I’m not much of one for really sitting down and figuring things out but I listen constantly so I get a vocabulary of what I’d like to hear and then do my best to fit those things together. I hear things in emotional reactions so mixing genres comes really easily to me. Melancholy and anger tend to pull me towards rock, joy tends to move towards Latin American or African vibes, anxiety is more of a free improv thing, peace tends to be more ambient, self-confidence tends towards funk and pop etc. My compositions are like thought processes so they’ll move through a lot of moods and therefore blend styles I suppose.
Influences I’m aware tend to come through are Weather Report, Chick Corea, Steve Rothery & Pete Trewavas (from Marillion), Joe Satriani, Iron Maiden, Bill Frisell, Tangerine Dream, Radiohead, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Keith Jarrett, Bill Evans, Pink Floyd, Terje Rypdal, Kenny Wheeler, Steely Dan, Vangelis… I’m sure there are loads of others. People may or may not hear those things.
The music-making seems very organic; what did the recording process look like for this album?
It always starts with improvisation for me. Maybe it’s a drum loop, a bass riff, a synth sound, an fx pedal combination or I might be sitting at the piano or humming to myself just pottering about. I try and record those seeds of ideas as quickly as possible before I’ve had too much time to think about them. Once I have time to start working out what I’m doing they tend to fall into my regular habits so I’m keen to capture ideas before that happens, while it’s still fresh and a bit more chaotic. I know how to shape an idea once it’s there but I really want to capture things I don’t normally do and that happens best in the noodling phase before I’m trying to do anything specific.
I find the same thing tends to happen in the studio with other musicians. All the spontaneous, weird, accidental things have a character that can’t really be caught in the same way once pattern recognition sets in. You can sort of feel the intellectual take over from the primal as people do more takes.
My favourite albums are prog and pop albums for production. The studio is an additional instrument to give a specific aural experience that transports you in a different way to being in a live space. With a studio album you can really explore silence, reverb and very subtle sounds because people are always sat in the ‘sweet spot’ for appreciating those things – particularly if they are listening on headphones or good quality speakers.
One of the real challenges of making a studio album engaging is to make it sound spontaneous. There’s so many tools to make everything shiny and perfect that you can end up with something quite sterile if you aren’t careful. Considering which accidental noises, bumps, ‘wrong’ notes, ‘iffy’ tunings etc to keep in, accentuate, moderate or eradicate is a really important part of keeping that energy and freshness I think.
I don’t regard anything as sacred. There’s always occasions where I really like particular things but they just don’t fit. There’s a kind of ‘suspension of belief’ to maintain and if an idea breaks that for whatever reason it has to go. I’m constantly weighing up how long to spend on a particular mood. How much tension to build, where release needs to happen. Everything needs to be in service to the music and how that’s going to feel to a listener. I see it like a novel where each track should be a chapter that takes you somewhere new before delivering a satisfying conclusion. I’m writing music to be an activity that encourages engagement and reflection.
What’s been your best live gig experience with this project and why?
I think I might go with Calstock Arts. Each venue has its own character and offers something different. There’s two sides to a great gig experience. The obvious one is audience response. One of the lovely things about this project is that people always come up to say that it wasn’t what they expected and it really took them somewhere different. The word ‘cinematic’ gets brought up a lot. Engagement is a huge part of making a gig memorable. The other side is how the venue is organised. Do people help get the gear in? Is there a PA? A sound engineer that is sympathetic to the sonic needs of the band? A proper lighting rig? Refreshments for the band? A clear place to display and sell CDs etc? Someone to run that merch table for you? Calstock provided all of that and has a beautiful view to boot. A big thank you to Kate Gamm and her team for making that one such a lovely memory. It might all sound a bit practical but when you’ve been
away from home for days and travelling for hours each day to get to the next venue that’s the stuff that really makes a difference to whether you want to go back and play again.
Can you tell us about a British jazz album that had an early impact on you?
I think I’d have to go with Loose Tubes – Open Letter. I was in my mid teens when this came out and it was another album that blew me away for the sheer variety going on. Free jazz, African township grooves, big ensemble writing, unusual textures and epic guitar solos. Just incredible stuff that didn’t sound like anything else I knew about overall but had resonances with lots of things that I’d come across individually. I recognised lots of the pieces but had no idea they could result in something like that as a whole experience. I really loved the melting pot effect of it – and still do. I listened to that one and Delightful Precipice almost like one long album over and again in my teens. I don’t think that sound world comes out in my music really but conceptually and structurally I feel like it had a big impact.
What album or track have you been listening to on repeat this week?
If you’d asked me last week it was all about Ilaria Capalbo’s Karthago. Really rich acoustic writing with nods towards Kenny Wheeler and Bill Frisell. I’d have probably directed you to check out the title track as a beautiful ballad that starts with a beautiful mournfulness. It just builds and builds into this incredible, wild, heart-rending dissonance before concluding peacefully again. Total trip. This week, however, I’m really into Maria Chiara Argirò’s Forest City and again I’d direct you to the title track as a starting point. Very electronic but rich in a warm Vangelis kind of way. Definite echoes of Thom Yorke’s production on Anima vibe wise. Beautiful combination of groove and distressed synth sounds for something quite melancholy. It provides a great bed for Maria’s fragile vocal style but the tracks always feel like they are about the complete soundscape rather than being vehicles for songs per se. I’m a sucker for music that makes me want to cry and both these albums hit that button at times.
