THE FOURTH WALL
“The Fourth Wall” is my second solo album. Like the first one, I recorded everything myself, and took it to producer Will Jackson to get it polished and improved. It’s a bit different to my previous efforts, it was written on piano (or keyboard) instead of guitar, which means a different vocabulary from the outset, but also I’m using the computer more.
When you use modern music tech you realise how easy it would be just to let the computer do all the work – but I try to use the computer like a band member – it suggests things, which can be adapted or incorporated, or used as a springboard for other ideas.
If I’m going to be arty and pretentious about it – which of course I am – more than ever it feels like a human/computer collaboration, and this kind of became the album’s lyrical theme or (ahem) ‘concept.’ Gradually we are absorbed into the digital realm as humanity loses touch with nature entirely – a ‘holodeck hospice’ – and the fourth wall is the exit which closes behind us.
“Breaking the fourth wall” is also a phrase used when we break the illusion and wink at the audience. In my past work I have very rarely done that, but in this one I’m joking about the futility of making art in a vacuum with nobody listening (or at least, no ‘music industry’ or ‘media’ gatekeepers.)
Artists usually construct some narrative about them being the next big thing, well, I’m an old bloke shackled to a computer and drinking too much whisky, there is no narrative, and I don’t care. In fact, my lack of narrative is the point. Art with no context.
Enjoy!
Jim x
