Getting a bunch of musicians to hand in tracks for a compilation on time already seems like a bit of a nightmare. Asking them to
write brand new songs for a compilation seems far, far worse. Then again, perhaps if the recording and the mixing is free and being done by the same person putting together the compilation, the chances for musician procrastination are limited. Perhaps that's what made the daunting premise of
A Very Little Christmas possible.
Dave Parker runs a pretty stunningly good recording studio out of his bedroom in Oratia. It's called
Little Monster, and he's recorded artists like Ruby Frost, Artisan Guns, Great North, Watercolours and a whole lot more.
As he will explain,
A Very Little Christmas covers the quieter side of that spectrum without specifically making a theme of it. Probably every one of the artists has played a set at Auckland's low key bar the Wine Cellar, but it's more just a loosely affiliated group of bands befriended by Parker and former Border Music rep, now
Bones and Woods/all around good guy Marty Jones. And with one guy recording 18 bands in his bedroom using largely the same microphones, preamps, room and producer's instincts, it's only natural that the album would have a pretty cohesive sound.
It's also interesting to note that some of the artists would go on to recycle their Christmas tracks for later releases. The Gladeyes re-recorded their stunning Carols and Parties for
Shadows Explode.
Dear Times Waste did likewise with her track The Drink, re-recording it and putting it on her sublime record
Some Kind of Eden.
Rather than the re-recordings being a slight on the original recordings, I tend to think of it as a desire to reframe a song in the same sonic context as a new album, and it's a reflection on the quality of the writing generated by the project that artists would come to see their Christmas songs as more than mere novelties. The constraint of writing a song to a specific topic and to a deadline can be a powerful tool for focusing a piece. There's any number of quotes about art and limitations, and these words from G. K. Chesterton serve as good as any. "Art is
limitation. The essence of every picture is the frame." Here's David Parker talking about the compilation after the jump.
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