I wrote in the blurb above for “This Town” that the track was based on Dom Agius’ wonderful photos of London – and here is another track inspired by the photographic work of yet another genius we know.
Many, many months ago, I happened to see a photo by our friend and photographer Derek Busch of a serene lake scene…trees in fog with a sunrise behind them and instantly fell in love with it. “Please let me use that for an album,” I asked, to which Derek graciously agreed.
When we were getting close to the end of the recording sessions, I asked Derek for the high-res version of the picture, which he duly sent. At this point, we had no album title, although we’d run through and rejected quite a few. One afternoon, I sat gazing at Derek’s lake photo, drinking in the majesty of it all and suddenly got the title in my head – “Memory Lake”.
Several self-congratulatory minutes later, I decided that the least I could do was to write Derek (and the album) a title track as an act of thanks. One Saturday afternoon shortly thereafter, Beth leapt into the shower and I sat down at one of the studio keyboards to try to get a few notes together for what I thought would be a simple, two-minute ambient-piano track.
Fast forward two weeks and there I was with the framework of a track lasting over eight minutes and far and away one of the stand-out cuts on the album, all written and played with Derek’s wonderful photograph in mind. Beth keeps telling me “That track IS the picture.”
I hope so – and this one, Derek, is for you. Just like “This Town”, without your input, there’d be no such track and a differently titled album. I hope we’ve done you proud.
credits
from Memory Lake,
released April 21, 2012
Phil Lawton - Keyboards, basses, guitars, synths, drum programming
Beth Freeman - keyboards, drum programming, occasional vocals
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