For the last three years, it appears to me, that I’ve forgotten who I am exactly. But the past few days I’ve had a few musical moments that have pulled me back to my essential Darren Lock-ness, if there is such a thing. Who am I? That’s a good question. Who are you? I can’t answer that.
I am the perennial seventeen-year-old, like all men, the boy who doesn’t want to grow up, who is fascinated by technology and gadgetry and the future arriving every day. The boy who wanted to write a for living, but got jaded with it all when he realised that nowadays it is more about keeping the advertisers happy than actually serving your readership. The guy who wants to just have the time to create. To produce, because there’s nothing else to do really. If things had been different, I’d have had a million children by now, but I am grateful for my place in time and grateful that my various creative pursuits fill in the gaps.
But music is more important to me that I can possibly realise. Of course, I’d cut my ears off and break my fingers and throw my guitars out of the window, just for the chance to read another bedtime story to my kids. But music – the purity of music – the way it can transport or lift your emotions and make you fly is something I’ve kept surpressed, or forgotten, or maybe I’ve just been a little distracted by all the other bullshit in my life.
It began earlier in the week when I discovered a piece of music that really turned me on and I managed to find a copy of the album it came from on eBay. “Regular Music” – for that is the name of the album and the band – arrived a couple of days ago and it has been a delight to spin vinyl on the deck for the first time in an age. I’ve not bought an actual record for at least five years, possibly more. But to be transported back to those youthful days and to hear some new/old music that makes the hair on the back of the neck stand up is a joy.
While I was aware that there was a new Neu! boxset being released at the beginning of May, it was over £100 and The Missus would have raised an eyebrow (probably not – she’s too forgiving of my foibles), but I resisted the purchase. Maybe another time, I thought. However, today I discovered that the release is on eMusic and at a fraction of the price. So, OK, I don’t own the lovely vinyl set, but at least I can listen to some of the rarities for the cost of about £15. Result!
Then just about half-an-hour ago I was doing a trawl on said eMusic site when I discovered that an album called “Kinna Sohna” had been released on 30 May 2010. This means nothing to you and that’s fine, so I will explain what it means to me – the perennial enthusiastic seventeen-year-old trapped in the ruined body of a near-forty-year-old.
Let’s go back in time to 1995. I’ve been reading the music production magazine “Sound on Sound” since as long as I can remember and I remember reading an interview with Canadian guitarist Michael Brook talking about the trials and tribulations of recording a new album he’d made with Pakistani Qawwalli singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. The interesting thing about this album was that it hadn’t been released on Peter Gabriel’s Real World label yet and Brook had basically been given a load of performance tapes by Khan with the instruction to weave his magic with it.
Now their previous collaboration “Mustt Mustt” was a more traditional affair with them recording together and ended up a unique fusion of Western and Eastern musical culture. It is a good record. But the article detailed how Brook had created what seemed the first patchwork quilt of a recording, by loading performances into a sampler and then adding his own bits to create a completely new work. Nowadays such techniques are commonplace but when I read the article I was completely mesmerised by the idea. When the resultant album was finally released, I rushed out and bought my copy of “Night Song”.
“Night Song” is probably one of my all-time favouriate records. It’s hard to describe – again it is a fusion of Eastern and Western ideas but it feels old and new at the same time and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan’s voice is more like a separate instrument and because I have no understanding of the language in involved it is more like a guitarist soloing that a person singing to me. And his voice is invigorating, dizzying, logic-defying and takes you to heaven – which is the whole point of a Qawwali singer I believe. It is a fine album – an album I truly love and probably defies other’s description of me – they’d probably think I’d have a Pink Floyd or Yes album held in higher regard. But I don’t.
Whenever I am feeling a little down or need a little pep or want to get the creative juices flowing, this is the album I go to. It is a tonic and I have fond memories of listening to it the album on the way to work and its power getting me through my claustrophobia on the Tube and the murky Monday mornings in Winter in London.
So tonight I discover this album “Kinna Sohna” tonight and it is a live performance of tracks from that album with Michael Brook and Rahat Fateh Ali Khan doing a tribute to the departed Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. I downloaded it immediately and I am listening to it now as I type. And it is very good. It is also a reminder that this was another gig that I missed due to sacrficing my life to this place, for the recording was made at the Royal Festival Hall on 14 October 2007, about a fortnight after we’d moved to the site of my own personal Waterloo and month before the tribute gig to Simon Jeffes of the Penguin Cafe Orchestra, which I also missed. Joy and sadness, two faces of the same coin.
But the important thing is that this music reminds me exactly who I am…

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