From an emotional point of view, Jura is the right place to be to record my music

Transcription

1 CULTURE From an emotional point of view, Jura is the right place to be to record my music Image: Hugh Carswell and his dog, Pirlo, outside the cottage he rebuilt. 90

2 HUGH CARSWELL The music man Hugh Carswell sold his Aston Martin and left London behind so he could rebuild his family s cottage on the island of Jura and turn it into his music studio WORDS PETER RANSCOMBE IMAGES ANGUS BLACKBURN 91

3 CULTURE I love the sounds that you can record by the fire in the sitting room the acoustics are beautiful Above: Jane and Hugh with their daughter Grace. Right: Hugh plays the piano in the hallway. There comes a time in every songwriter s life when they have to jack in the day job and dedicate their life to their music. But Hugh Carswell took a more extreme route, not only giving up his high-flying role in London but also moving to Jura to turn his family s old blackhouse into a recording studio. From an emotional point of view, Jura is the right place to be to record my music, he explains. When I was growing up, I always wrote music while I was on holiday. I always knew it was the place I wanted to come back to. Having been born in Gateshead and grown up in Rugby, Hugh undertook an apprenticeship as an engineer before becoming a management consultant and finally an advertising executive, working his way through the ranks to become managing director of a brand agency with clients such as British Airways, BMW and Land Rover. Big projects hidden away on his CV include the launch of BA s tail fins. Selling his prized Aston Martin V8 Vantage to the Prime Minister of Kuwait, who was missing the model from his collection gave Hugh the cash to buy the materials he needed to rebuild his family s old holiday home on Jura and construct a modern extension. I arrived in April 2007 and thought I would have the new-build section wind and watertight by September or October, Hugh remembers. But I had massively underestimated the time it would take. When you hit Argyll time, the faster you try to finish something, the longer it takes to do. Hugh spent two and a half years virtually single-handedly building the new wing and refurbishing the old blackhouse. His family had rented the house for about 90 years but it wasn t until he moved to the island that Hugh bought the site from Lord Astor. As a child, Hugh had helped his father, a teacher and former missionary, to maintain the holiday cottage during the long school summer holidays. His father died before Hugh completed the refurbishment of the croft, but Hugh s mother is delighted with the result. The blackhouse is home to Hugh s recording studio, complete with mixing desk, electric piano and a rescued Singer sewing machine seat, one of many reclaimed and recycled items that adorn his home. The old blackhouse is rigged up with multicore cabling, so we can record musicians in the sitting room by the open fire, explains Hugh. Although the cottage has a very traditional feel and atmosphere to it, the equipment is all top notch, so you can sit with an app on your iphone in the living room and control the recording studio. I love the sounds that you can record by the fire in the sitting room the acoustics are beautiful. One of the first sights that catches your eye as you approach the white-washed blackhouse 92

4 HUGH CARSWELL 93

5 CULTURE You hit Argyll time the faster you try to finish something, the longer it takes to do 94

6 HUGH CARSWELL is the red paintwork on the door and around the windowsills. It s the only red door on the island, laughs Hugh. My grandfather worked in a shipyard in Port Glasgow and so I always remember the exterior and interior of the cottage shared the colour palette of an ocean-going ship. I m sure the paint left the shipyard legitimately, but it s nice to have some good ferry paint on the doors and windows. His father s family connection with the island stretches back for generations. Hugh s great-great-grandfather, Alexander McDougall, was a stalker on Ardfin Estate, while his grandfather, Bobby, wrote a tune called Moira of Jura s Isle, which is still occasionally sung on the island at ceilidhs. While Hugh recognises he inherited some of his musical influences from his grandfather Bobby, he also acknowledges his mother s side of the family has influenced his work too. His maternal grandfather was Hugh I Anson Fausset, a poet, literary critic and musician who sang at King s College, Cambridge. My two grandfathers represent the two sides to my music, muses Hugh. I m perhaps closer in style to Bobby, writing music that has a spontaneous element to it. But recording my album meant that I also had to follow some of the techniques that would have been more familiar to Hugh in his academic studying of music. My two grandfathers represent the two sides to my music Clockwise from above: Hugh and Pirlo on the trusty Land Rover; Hugh restored most of the cottage by himself; Pirlo snoozes beside Grace s cot; The house is full of family photographs; The living room has lovely acoustics; Hugh strums his guitar in his studio; Jane s and Hugh s collection of sheet music. 95

7 HUGH CARSWELL The response we ve had has been massively encouraging Above: The Paps of Jura rise above the cottage. Right: Jane walking on the beach. Those techniques included disciplining himself to write out the string parts for the Scottish Ensemble, which played on his debut album, In Chances of Light, which Hugh recorded under the name I Anson, after his maternal grandfather s name. He worked with the Scottish Ensemble, who he met at Crear arts centre near Kilberry in Argyll, while other collaborators on the album included Steve Jansen, the drummer from 1980s New Wave group Japan. While Hugh worked away on the album from his state-of-the-art studio on Jura, Steve collaborated from all over the world, recording his contributions in New Hampshire, while the Scottish Ensemble taped the string parts in the Caird Hall in Dundee. As he grew up in a religious household, his mother s love of Bach and Handel became regular fixtures in Hugh s Sunday afternoons and were his early musical influences. As a teenager, bands like Echo and the Bunnymen, early Simple Minds and Mike Scott and the Waterboys began to help shape his listening habits. Later, he progressed onto an eclectic mix of favourites like Bob Dylan, Nick Cave and Joni Mitchell, as well as further discovering the classical world of Bach and more contemporary classical composers. While In Chances of Light may have been his 97

8 CULTURE first album, it wasn t the first time that he had sat down to record music. I must have recorded about ten different tapes or CDs over the years, giving them to family and friends, explains Hugh. About two-thirds of the tunes for In Chances of Light were in my head before I left London. On my last night before I moved to Jura, I sat and recorded myself playing them on the piano, so that I had a starting point. Some of the tracks have very specific stories behind them Summer of My Soul is a song to his younger self, while Fruit Tree recalls his father delivering telegrams on Jura as a boy. The songs aren t necessarily about music for me, explains Hugh. They re about representing how I feel at a particular moment in time. It s hard to describe, but they re very much of Jura and about Jura. One track in particular has a very special meaning. Evermore was written in the space of a single morning for his wife, Jane, whom he met on the island. Jane herself an accomplished flautist was visiting the island and staying at Barnhill, the house where novelist George Orwell wrote I thought Hugh was the most interesting man in the world the first time I met him, smiles Jane. Then I wondered what the most interesting man in the world was doing on Jura. The pair married in 2009 and their daughter, Grace, was born last April. Around the same time, they also got a dog Pirlo, a lurcher puppy who is named in honour of Jane s love of Italian football. Switching on the TV on Saturday night for Gary Lineker and Match of the Day can be the highlight of the week in winter, Jane jokes. Hugh a Newcastle United fan by birth wasn t sure how long he would stay on Jura. He planned to record the album, but held out no hope of finding romance on an island of only around 200 inhabitants. Meeting Jane changed his outlook and, after she too fell in love with the island, the couple decided to make Jura their home. Jane teaches music to pupils on Jura and neighbouring Islay and has been involved in an oral history project, recording the islanders stories. She is also working on her own series of children s tales, which tell the stories of different instruments in the orchestra and their personalities. The family is putting down further roots, with Hugh building a larger studio next to their house, enabling him to consider producing albums for other artists. And that difficult second album? The new music is in two strands one being more rooted in songwriting and more literal subject matter, while the other is instrumental perhaps pushing to be more abstract and evocative, explains Hugh. I think those two strands came together in In Chances of Light, which was quite unusual and is what makes it a really unique recording the response we ve had to it has been massively encouraging. I thought Hugh was the most interesting man in the world the first time I met him Above: Hugh and Grace prepare the coffee. For more information, visit: iansonmusic.com 98