Helmholtz Resonators, The TVD First Date

“One of my earliest memories of vinyl and the wonders featured within those grooves was probably like most other people’s—through my parents.”

“My Dad is and always has been a massive music fan and used to collect hundreds of records that were stored in a series of record boxes behind the settee in our front room. There were also the many LPs lined up on the bottom shelf of the bookshelf. My Mum had some classic Beatles and Beach Boys Best of LPs, but my Dad’s collection was huge. I used to love going through the many records looking at the artwork, and the large gatefold sleeves were magical— just reading the liner notes and looking at the pictures.

Listening to records at home with my family wasn’t just about listening to the songs, though. My Dad would also make up and act out stories to accompany the music for me and my brother. Using the lyrics, he would depict a whole other aspect and meaning to the songs. Two songs he did this for that really stand out were “Tumbling Down” by Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel and “Waltz in Black” by the Stranglers. My Brother and I had some rather fetching pajamas—mine were red and his were blue, or it may have been the other way around, but you get the idea. So “Tumbling Down” became a story about a war between the Reds and the Blues—the end of the song has the refrain “Oh dear, look what they’ve done to the blues, the blues, the blues….. ” and it was a battlefield where we would be moving around in slow motion pretending to shoot and be shot.

The Stranglers track is a whole other story, as it was an instrumental track and it has a sort of sinister, nightmarish sound to it. The story he made up was about a Wooden Man that lived on the green near to where we lived. He was a nice wooden man who came alive at night-time and used to look after and feed the birds, but one terrible evening he was attacked by a load of rats and chewed to death….. Nice huh?

Perhaps that’s where a lot of the ideas, stories and sounds have come from for our new Mystery of Woolley Mountain album. There is a song called “Wooden Man” and a story in the book about a man made of rope who is torn to shreds by a pack of wolves… We also have an instrumental song on our first album called “Waltz.” These wonderful subconscious influences becoming manifest in our records. What a lovely realisation.

I also used to love looking at the different coloured records and the labels and artwork etc. I think it’s such an important part of a music listening experience to have that physical relationship with the record and record sleeve. Putting the needle on the record and the pop and crackle of the music coming to life. Nowadays you don’t get to experience that as much and record label artwork etc is probably not even seen. I think it’s great that people are still listening to and buying vinyl as it is such a massive part of music. This is why we really wanted to release the new single as a double A side limited edition orange vinyl. Two A sides of vinyl.”
—Garland Vanderbilt