Releases
Scott Walker - Bish Bosch - CD / 2 LP In Stores Dec. 4th
After much speculation, 4AD can confirm that Scott Walker will release Bish Bosch this December 4th, his first studio album since 2006’s The Drift.
Bish Bosch is the latest in Scott’s discography to pursue the line of enquiry he began back in 1978, with his four devastatingly original songs on the Walker Brothers’ swansong, Nite Flights, and continuing through Climate of Hunter (1984), Tilt (1995), The Drift (2006). He has continued to mature and develop in a style
utterly at odds with the music that made him a superstar a lifetime ago, but which is totally honest, uncompromising and transcendent.
Scott began writing new material around 2009 – whilst also scoring the ROH 2’s Duet For One Voice ballet – recording it sporadically over the following three years. The end result is a tauter but more colourful experience than The Drift, with greater emphasis on processed, abrasive guitars, digital keyboards and thick silences.
Aided again by co-producer Peter Walsh and joined by a regular core of musicians, Ian Thomas (drums), Hugh Burns (guitar), James Stevenson (guitar), Alasdair Malloy (percussion) and John Giblin (bass).
Musical director Mark Warman also played a prominent role, both as conductor and keyboardist, while guests include trumpeter Guy Barker and pedal steel guitarist BJ Cole, who worked on three of Scott’s midseventies LPs.
For tracks ‘SDSS1416+13B (Zercon, A Flagpole Sitter)’, ‘Dimple’ and ‘Corps de Blah’, Scott drafted an orchestra, recording them in The Hall at Air Studios last November.
For the cover art, Scott worked closely with painter Ben Farquharson and designer Philip Laslett.
Visit www.beggarsgroup.ca to see a trailer that showcases the first music to be heard from Bish Bosch.
If The Drift was a dark place, full of scorching orchestral textures and ominous rumblings, Bish Bosch is a tauter but more colourful experience, with greater emphasis on processed, abrasive guitars, digital keyboards and thick silences.
Available on US import CD and LP, the release is accompanied by a comprehensive 36 page booklet.
For the latest information, please visit www.bishbosch.com
Bish (n. sl.), bitch
Bosch, Hieronymous (c. 1450–1516), Dutch painter
Bish bosh (sl.), job done, sorted
“I was thinking about making the title refer to a mythological, all-encompassing, giant woman artist.” Scott Walker
A Hieronymous Bosch painting can’t be apprehended in a single blink of an eye. The Garden of Earthly Delights is made up of panels in parallel, with scores of tiny actions and allegorical representations teeming in every square inch of canvas. The painting is big enough to encompass heaven and hell.
Perhaps we should listen to Scott’s music in the same way we’d approach a Bosch canvas. You probably won’t understand it after one viewing, but you can become obsessed with one corner detail another until you eventually come to some understanding of how the different parts fit together and complement each
other.
“It’s moving on a bit each time we go. Hopefully it’s getting nearer and nearer the kind of thing that’s in our heads. Little things are improving, a bit more focused. The style is improving.”
Since the 1960s, Scott Walker has scaled the heights of pop superstardom, produced some of the most revered solo albums of the late sixties, coasted on his laurels during the seventies, then metamorphosed into something very different. The music he has been making at his own pace since the early eighties might
be utterly estranged from the songs that made him a household name, but they stem from the privacy he requires to write this complex and hugely inventive music.
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