To come across a piece of authenticity in a world increasingly inundated with recycled ideas is rare. For many reasons – globalization, the advancement of digital media, the drive for profit – most of the content we have come to consume or ideas to which we are exposed are often regurgitations of the same things. Adorno and Max Horkheimer forewarned of this creeping culture industry, in which we are allowed ‘the freedom to choose what is always the same.’ David Gledhill, by all means, is one of those rare artists offering a moment of respite from the banality of what is always the same. In response to the cruel death of his wife Tracey in 2011, Gledhill turned to his gift for music as a source of solace – allowing the pain to ignite a creative drive deep within him. It was the beginning of a journey that would last five years, culminating in 2016 with the album SOULS.
For David, SOULS was both a response to his own increasing anxiety and also to his growing frustration at the dearth of singers to collaborate with that did not all sound the same. His dissatisfaction led him to start searching the internet for inspiration, which manifested in the Scottish record company Document. There he discoverd rare field recordings in the form of forgotten folk songs from the American south, originally produced in the 1920s, 30s, and 40s. David knew this was what he had been searching for.
He carried the voices from the depths of oblivion and began the unconventionally arduous task of taking established acapella vocals and working out what music could work underneath them. Typically, as a composer, you write a vocal melody and lyrics to an already established chord pattern or beat, but this had to be done the other way around, and Gledhill exercised patience as he brought the voices back to life.
In ‘Another Man Done Gone’, a folk song originally from 1860, and sang by Vera Hall in 1938, Gledhill pares back the instrumentation, allowing only the sound of a guitar to come through. In ‘I Wait for You’, the song he calls the most special, the voice of an unknown singer haunts the track against the backdrop of music that took him two years to figure out. Gledhill says he wanted to make sure he did justice to the beauty of her voice. In ‘I Go On’, he lays the dark voice of a man in prison for murder against an uplifting tone set by early 90s rave and rave beat anthems. The defining moment of the album, according to him, comes in the track ‘Bad Girl’, in which he taps into the history of New Orleans jazz music and his love affair for brass to create a slow backdrop to this incredible voice. He drew on his previous work with the horn section of Amy Winehouse’s backing band, and also spent hours watching funeral processions in New Orleans on YouTube for inspiration. The album also channels rock and punk-rock, displaying with ease Gledhill’s wide musical influences and range.
The results are nothing short of stunning. The music is at once both aesthetically sublime and deeply haunting, carrying a tone that is hard to temporally place. Of course, this is a direct byproduct of seamlessly mixing recordings from almost 100 years ago with modern music. Listening to the completed album is an intensely emotional experience, as the listener feels the distant melancholy of the voices coupled with the exquisite instrumentation of Gledhill; the American south of the 1920s juxtaposed with contemporary English composition. By the end it isn’t difficult to see why the album bears its name, after having seeped deep into the listener’s soul and transporting it across both continents and generations. We had the privilege of sitting down with David to ask him about the creation of the album, his bereavement process, and the role of music within our culture today.
Samine: Have you ever been to the American south? How much do you relate to these voices that are so authentic, but also divided from you by both time and place?
David: I haven’t, but am very excited to announce that we are making a documentary about the project, where I’m going to Mississippi to try and find out who the unknown singer was who features on ‘I Wait For You’. I am very excited to visit some of the locations where these extraordinary singers lived.
It’s very hard for me to put into words what the voices mean to me. They were my creative salvation, but more than that, they reignited my love of music. There is something so honest about their voices and the recordings, and I feel that kind of ‘realness’ is in very short supply in the world we live today.
S: Did you know right away when you came across these field recordings that you had to undertake a project with them and that it could be special?
D: It wasn’t that well planned, to be honest. Tracey, my partner of 15 years had just died and my brain was working on auto-pilot. I knew music could soothe me, but I didn’t really know what form that would take. It was pure luck that I stumbled across these voices, but yes, I definitely felt they possessed special qualities, I just wasn’t sure how I could collaborate with them at first. It was a real trial and error process. Almost like painting with one’s eyes closed. The subconscious part of my brain took over. Like being a passenger.
S: What genre/s would you put SOULS in?
D: I don’t think it fits into any genre. I think it’s the least commercially viable thing I’ve ever done! It’s a very selfish project, that was only ever meant to be heard by me. I genuinely didn’t think other people would get anything from listening to the songs. I made it just for me and didn’t really care about anything else. The fact that it has turned into a bit of a word-of-mouth phenomenon is a constant surprise to me. But at the same time, when I receive messages from people from all over the world telling me what the record means to them, well that is just super nice. It makes me very happy.
S: What role did music, these distant voices, and the creative process in general play in your bereavement process? And I guess I can also ask, did bereavement have an equally important role on your music? Why do you think music has this almost miraculous relationship with our emotions?
D: I think bereavement is probably different for everyone. Tracey was an incredibly emotionally intelligent human being, who had taught me over the years to bare my emotions rather than subdue them. So I ran headlong into my grief, rather than running away from it. And music has always been my therapy from an early age. My mum left us when I was 12, and I found solace in bands like the Smiths. Morrissey and Marr always managed to make me laugh and cry in equal measure with their beautiful and very original compositions.
Tracey was a naturally gifted singer and musician whose talent had been thwarted by Cystic Fibrosis, so I do think there is a connection between feeling so frustrated and angry for her and feeling the same emotions for these mostly unknown singers. I feel like in some small way, I am championing the talents of the singers on my record, and I am sure that is tied into my frustrations for Tracey.
I think music, like all great art, has the power to uplift us. To take us to places where we can leave, momentarily, the ills and stresses of our lives. For example, in my bereavement I found great joy in immersing myself in the music of Debussy. His melancholic compositions really touched me and helped me cry often, when the tears were all bottled up and wouldn’t come. For me, art has to move me emotionally, and music can be magic.
S: You mentioned that therapy also played a massive role for you? Would you like to elaborate on that?
D: I’ve had a lot of therapy over the years. Firstly, to help me deal with the stresses of being in the music industry and trying to look after somebody who is chronically ill. But then after Tracey died, I had promised her I would go back to my therapist Steve Williams, to help me through the months after she passed.
Therapy for me at that point was like dumping all the shit I was feeling in my weekly session, and then walking out feeling better. You can’t put those things on family and friends, it’s too heavy. But when you are paying a professional, then it’s perfectly ok to say anything you are feeling and not feel guilty about it.
I think the world we live in would be far better place if people spent as much time and energy on their mental health as they do on their physical well-being. To try and understand the reasons we do things. How your upbringing affects your adult behaviour. To believe more in nurture than nature I think is a very empowering thing. It means you can try and change or challenge things about yourself, whereas when people say ‘oh, well I’m just like that’, that seems incredibly debilitating to me. You are saying it’s impossible to change. But I don't resemble the person I was when I was 20 emotionally, and that is down to therapy and its power to help me break free of my damage.
S: Were you ever deterred or dejected over the 5-year process, and thought of giving up the project? If so, what compelled you to see it through?
D: Absolutely. Once I started to feel better, probably a year after Tracey’s death, the project became less intense for me, and I spent less time on it. I would dip in and out, depending on how I was feeling on a daily basis.
And when I met my new wife Steph, I started to work on songs for the record which were more uplifting, which I think in hindsight helped give the album more colour.
And after I had moved to London, I met up with my now manager Chris Slade, who was a long-time friend of mine in the industry. He asked me what I had been doing musically, and I told him I had this strange little project I had been working on for a few years. He wanted to hear it, so I sent him over a few songs. His enthusiasm then really drove the whole thing into the wider world. He asked if he could play it to a few people. And from that point, things just kept happening, culminating in the limited release of ‘I Wait For You’ which went viral and suddenly lots of record companies wanted to meet me.
To be honest, I have never felt in control of the SOULS project, it’s just always run ahead of me, and the more people who hear the songs, the more stuff seems to happen. It’s all very bizarre, but also very lovey at the same time.
S: What role, if any, do you think music can and should play in our lives and within our broader modern culture? Should it be music for music’s sake? Does it have an obligation to be something more, something different that can challenge and connect, or maybe even to be political?
D: Very interesting question. Honestly, I don’t know. Up until SOULS, I have spent most of my career trying to write music to get on the radio. Or get a deal. Or impress a journalist or some A&R man.
SOULS is the only thing I have ever done where I really didn’t give a fuck about any of that. I made it for me. It was a way to express my pain. But also a way to express all of the emotions I was feeling. Those voices helped me connect with music in a way that I hadn’t done since I was a kid and was sat in the back of my parent’s car listening to Bowie, or the The Beatles, or The Stones.
Music is a truly joyous thing, but I have no desire to use it to get my message across. I think music can play all kinds of roles in modern culture and society, but for me, it just makes me very happy to do the job I do. I am incredibly lucky to earn a living from something I adore. I will never, ever take it for granted. I leave the politics to others more qualified.
S: Why did you call it SOULS?
You know, I can’t remember. My manager came up with the album title and I came up with SOULS. I think I was probably just thinking about all the unknown singers on the record and what their lives would have been like. There was nothing religious about the name. I think rather I just wanted to come up with something that would put the emphasis on them, rather than me. A collective umbrella that we could all sit under.
