In Embrace • Passionfruit Pastels: Notes by Gary Knight

Sleeve Notes for the 2015 CD Remaster of Passionfruit Pastels

Passionfruit Pastels. 32 years later.

Some thoughts by Gary Knight.

The Moment:

Early 1982. We’d just released The Initial Caress and John Peel had been playing it a lot. We were feeling inspired. Cameron and I were itching to go back into Woodbine to record a first album proper and we were lucky enough that Dave Barker was keen to get it out on Glass Records. In fact, it was the first album recorded specifically for the label.

The Title:

Passionfruit Pastels. We felt that the album had a broader, more colourful palette than The Initial Caress. We wanted it to sound that way. Passionate and artistic. And we wanted a title that felt fresh and unpretentious. We were keen for the album to feel like a kind-of antidote to all the stuff out at the time that was dressing itself up in grandiose, bombastic imagery. The fruit pastilles pun thing appealed to us for that reason too.

The Cover:

The sleeve design had to signal all that instantly, of course. As with Caress, we rejected the idea of typesetting and photography and let Claire Johnson express it all with brushstrokes and crayons. Actually, we even rejected the term ‘sleeve design’, we thought it sounded too conventional. We credited it simply as ‘Wrapper by Claire’.

Half-Awake (Mountains):

In contrast to the moody start of Caress, we wanted the album to start with something warm, positive, optimistic. Hopefully, this just sweeps in and instantly lifts you. It does that for me. The words are all Cameron’s, so you’ll have to ask him about them. When I did, he said they were about ‘a liminal state of consciousness’. For me, they just have a wonderful enigmatic feel about them. The funky percussion is by Joby Palmer who’d been our drummer in 3-Way

Dance and used to be my next-door neighbour. He’s on a few other tracks here too. Joby always added really vibrant percussion. And really bad jokes.

Our Star Drawn Through Panes:

This may be my favourite piece on the album. I think it just works beautifully. The writing of the track started as it does here, with me holding down a simple guitar motif whilst swaying around with a set of wind-chimes fixed to the top of the guitar. Cameron then swoops in and casts his spell around it. I’ve never been a musician but I just heard something magical in the combination of the chimes and the notes I was repeating. Cameron paints something special over that. His voice really soars here. Whatever he’s singing about sounds amazing.

We Fail Each Other:

This is maybe closer in spirit to some of The Initial Caress tracks. It’s got a real hymnal quality about it. The words are mine this time. As with Clutching it’s a song about striving for something profound and, in this case, the pain of falling short of that. I don’t know if it was inspired by our experience of playing live…but it may as well have been. Cameron and I only played five times together and we struggled. Playing in a loud, rhythmic, post-punk band (3-Way Dance) was easy. Two young guys playing quiet, melodic stuff felt a lot more exposed.

The Ball Rolling:

A nice way to counter-balance that sorrowful hymn. An instant, upbeat, strumalong. More than a touch of Simon &

Garfunkel here. I remember I was playing their early stuff a lot around then, especially the Bookends album. Cameron on

guitar, of course. Both on vocals. Lyrically, it’s about trying to keep up with a rush of changes in your life. I like the way

we each sing different lists of words at the end. One list is optimistic and one is pessimistic.

Tears Turn Fresh:

The final track on Side 1 of the original album. That mattered to us. We wanted Side 1 to work as a cohesive set of songs and Side 2 to be more unpredictable. Anyway, this is driven by Cameron's wonderfully melancholic piano playing. Originally it was driven by his wonderfully melancholic electric guitar playing which was soaked in a haunting Vini Reilly style delay effect. (You can hear that version on the Glass Redux CD release of The Initial Caress.) Cameron did such a great job of transposing the original melody that we had to go with piano. My holy-hushed vocals are, as you can guess from the title, all about finding joy from despair. Claire’s voice adds a fresh texture towards the end too.

Sun Brings Smiles:

So, Side 2 kicks off with our stab at a bright ’n’ breezy, art-pop song. It sounds very Orange Juice to me now. We bothgot into the early Postcard Records stuff, so maybe that’s where this came from. Joby is in there adding a disco-beat rhythm and a hyperactive tom-tom section in the middle. Cameron is doing the jazzy guitar thing and I’m messing around on his old Farfisa organ. This was released as our first 7-inch single too.

At East:

Now, this is where the unpredictable thing really kicks in. We loved the idea of following the poppiest track on the album with the darkest and weirdest. This starts off sounding like some kind of supernatural death-rite then snaps out of slow-mo into a tribal runaway drum race. I play the inescapable Caribbean drum pattern and the insane chanter pipe wail, Cameron pulls the eerie, suspenseful chords and Joby just gallops away with those thunderous drums. With some wonderful sonic knob-twiddling by John Rivers. To me, now, it sounds like a jam between A Certain Ratio and Pink Floyd. And I love it. Definitely the closest we came to the way we’d been heading with 3-Way Dance. (The original drumless version of this is another of the demos on The Initial Caress CD.)

(Sigh!):

We were after another big contrast with the track listing here. A simple, stripped-back song to counteract the rollercoaster ride of At East. This is just me singing to a bare keyboard. At the time, I think I thought I’d captured a Nico-esque vibe. Now, I find it hard not to cringe. To me, I just sound like a very naive someone over-stretching their ability. And I wish it had been a lot shorter. I seriously considered dropping this track for the CD but some people seem to like the innocence of it and Dave Barker and Cameron persuaded me to keep it in there. The song itself got a kiss of life a few years later when Richard Formby and Joby livened it up onstage a few times.

Tickling The Ivories:

In sharp contrast to the preceding track, this is short ’n’ sweet. Just Cameron creating an effortlessly cool, reflective mood on a piano. And again, throwing a completely unexpected texture into Side 2. Cameron described it as his homage to Neil Innes. I can imagine him playing this in a late-night Jazz bar. Of course, then he’d play something really weird and have everyone quickly downing their cocktails.

To Friends (An Open Letter):

I love the sound and the feel of this. As with the rest of the album, much of that is down to John Rivers, of course. John’s a bit of a genius when it comes to creating drama from very little. For me, the sweeping keyboards and the toy xylophone work really well. Again, though, my voice doesn’t deliver what I was aiming for. This was one of those pieces that were very tough to pull off onstage. Imagine me trying to sing passionately whilst playing a toy xylophone. Kate Bush would have trouble pulling that off.

Caroline, Beginning:

The final track on the original album. Cameron creates a nicely melancholic closer here. I can definitely hear Simon & Garfunkel again. Not sure if Cameron was listening to them at the time himself though. His words are cloaked again. I did ask him about his lyrics in general and he said he was mainly interested in the ‘music’ of them. Which is a nice way of putting it. Anyway…after all the mood swings on Side 2, it’s nice to finish with something thoughtful and soothing.

Bonus Tracks on CD Edition
Play In Light:

This was actually the first track recorded at the album sessions. But we decided to save it for the b-side to the Sun Brings Smiles 7-inch single. There’s quite a lot going on here. Mad clapping drum-machine, far-out Farfisa, triple-vocals including Claire and Joby’s frantic percussion. A bit too frantic, actually, as it slips out of time with the drum-machine. Although, I’m sure Joby would insist the drum-machine went out of time with him.

Sun Brings Smiles (Sweetamix):

This also went on the b-side of the single. I think I prefer this to the a-side. It’s pretty similar, just minus the disco drums really. But with more space to feel the guitar, organ and vocals, it just feels more interesting to me.

Half-Awake (demo):

Like the demos on The Initial Caress CD, this was recorded cheaply in a rush at a little 4-track studio (Humbucker in Leicester). It’s rough and ready and, for me, it’s crying out for Cameron’s vocal harmonies that grace the album version. But it’s great to hear more of his original organ noodling. And you’ll notice, the drum-machine doesn’t go out of time, Joby.

The Studio:

Woodbine in Leamington again. This was not just our first full album, this was our first complete session with John Rivers. He’d remixed The Initial Caress but this was us recording with John from start to finish (with engineering assistance by Jonathan Dee). He worked wonders for us, as he always did. We were chuffed to be working with him in the first place. We were, and still are, huge fans of his production work with Eyeless In Gaza and Felt. One of the great things for us was that he wasn’t your typical ‘guy in a rock band’ kind of producer. That was perfect for us because we definitely were not a rock band. He wasn’t thrusting guitars, drums and bass at us. He was adding textures, harmonies and atmosphere.

The Reaction:

I think John Peel played The Ball Rolling, Tears Turn Fresh and Caroline, Beginning. Not sure. But the album is definitely in there amongst his album collection at johnpeelarchive.com. One of three In Embrace albums there, in fact. Anyway… Passionfruit Pastels did get reviewed in Sounds and Melody Maker amongst others. MM described it as ‘Aztec Camera on acid' and made a sniffy reference to ‘bedsit Keats and Shelley’. Whereas Sounds quite liked it, describing it as ‘warm, slightly eccentric yet melodic’ and wondering why we weren’t on Cherry Red. (Ironically, we did end up on Cherry Red for a couple of later singles.) We also had a good response from various fanzines, particularly from Stringent Measures. In fact, Chris Coleman dedicated an entire issue to Glass Records around that time.

The Partnership:

Sadly, Passionfruit Pastels was the first and last album I made with Cameron. This, The Initial Caress, five live performances and that was it. Not much more than a year together but a whole cluster of music that still sounds fresh to me. Amazingly, this was all done with Cameron still in his teens and me barely out of them. We both shared a love of Eyeless In Gaza, Bron Area, Durutti Column, Postcard, Factory, Kevin Hewick, Young Marble Giants, lots of early indie stuff. But Cameron also brought his classical music training and influences like Carla Bley, Joni Mitchell, John Evan and Keith Jarrett. I think my major contribution was probably my obsessive drive for the whole thing. I didn’t have Cameron’s musical talent but I had lots of ideas and this relentless passion for it all. We parted ways because I wanted to throw myself into lots more gigs, no matter how painful they were, and Cameron didn't. We were on different pages and I convinced myself I should push on without him. A shame in many ways but at least we had the chance to make these recordings.

The Gigs:

1981: October 19 - Birmingham, Old Repertory Theatre with Miocene Epoch. 
November 16 - Coventry, Belgrade Theatre Venue with Eyeless In Gaza. 
1982: February 3 - Leicester, The Abbey pub with Kevin Hewick. 
October 16 - Northampton, The Black Lion pub with Kevin Hewick. 
November 10 - London, Chelsea College of Art with Kevin Hewick.



https://glassredux.bandcamp.com/album/passionfruit-pastels