AND ALSO THE TREES interview (part 2)

“… as if the words simply came out of the music.”

In the first part, which you can read here, we started by talking to Simon Huw Jones about the new album “Mother-of-pearl Moon”, deep things and a song that really wanted to be a love song but wasn’t meant to be. We are now building on this.

Head cinema
Orkus: In general, the songs on the album feel particularly cinematic. How can we imagine working on it? Did you also have a kind of movie in mind when you were composing?
Simon Huw Jones: Justin and I are both very visual and creative. I often see the music exactly as I hear it. It could be a bit like a movie soundtrack that comes to me and I create the images.

Words from music
O: Speaking of “cinematic”: Let’s talk about the video clip for “This Path Through the Meadow”. What were your thoughts on the piece?
SHJ: It helped me to approach each track with the idea that it’s not an AATT album. – No heritage to respect and no pressure. So we didn’t hesitate and simply said: “Ok, let’s do whatever comes along if we like it”. “This Path Through the Meadow” was like that. Justin sent me a guitar piece that he had written as an improvisation and I responded to it. It was as if the words simply came out of the music.

O: And the video?
SHJ: Priority number one is: try to make something that doesn’t look crappy or lazy. Once you’ve reached that point, you can relax a bit and try to do more … for example, make it look interesting or even good. With our combined skills and the budget and time available, that really is the best you can hope for. If you look around, especially in the golden age of video production, it’s pretty obvious that even with huge amounts of money, skill and technology, you can easily produce something that looks embarrassingly bad. I think we did a pretty good job with our two videos.

Imaginary urban development
O: Exactly, the second one is the atmospheric clip for “Valdrada”. What fascinates you about this “invisible city”?
SHJ: I’m really glad you like the clips. Valdrada is the name of one of the “Invisible Cities” in the novel by Italo Calvino. I discovered the book in a Red Cross store in London and bought it because I liked the title without knowing the author. Marco Polo describes cities to the great emperor Kublai Kahn – in short, he invents them and gives them beautiful names – but they are all just different interpretations of Venice. With this in mind, I let the music take me there and describe what I saw. I like the idea of building an imaginary city. We could all go there.

Fall in love again
O: Which song gave you a particular headache during the creation process and why?SHJ: I’ve already said that “The Whaler” was difficult to find, and in a way “Valdrada” was also quite tricky because Justin’s guitar melody was starting to get on his nerves and he wanted to drop the song completely. I loved this song though … it’s very upbeat for AATT and I couldn’t get enough of it, so I didn’t want to let it go. Then Colin and Paul came into the picture and my vocal line started to form and he fell in love with the song again… to put it another way.

The familiar in the new
O: Was there a song that, in contrast to this, came about by itself?
SHJ: It was the easiest album we ever wrote, for the reasons I described above … We had it written ourselves. “Field After Field” was easy for me because it was based on a sleeping couple that had already appeared in “Boden” and “The Sleepers” on our “Born into the Waves” album, but it was difficult for Justin because he had to recreate the improvised piece that I had molded my vocals around. Any musician will tell you how difficult that can be. But he mastered it in the end.

In the next part, we talk about a supposed anniversary, take a look back at the band’s history and, of course, look ahead.

Claudia Zinn-Zinnenburg

Line-up:
Simon Huw Jones – vocals and words
Justin Jones – guitars, zither, autoharp
Grant Gordon – Bass
Colin Ozanne – clarinet, bass clarinet, piano
Paul Hill – drums, percussion

And Also the Trees live:
March 24, 2024 UK-Birmingham, The Castle and Falcon
April 02, 2024 BE-Namur, La Nef de l’Eglise Notre Dame d’Harscamp
April 03, 2024 FR-Strasbourg, La Laiterie
April 04, 2024 FR-Amiens, La Lune des Pirates
April 05, 2024 FR-Limoges, Centre Culturel John Lennon
April 06, 2024 FR-Paris, Le Trabendo
April 07, 2024 FR-Brest, Cabaret Vauban

Do you already have your tickets?

Watch the video for “Valdrada” here:

*The link recommendations marked with an asterisk are affiliate links/partner program links on which you can click freely. When a click and purchase is made, we receive a commission from the provider (we earn from qualified sales as an affiliate). Of course, the price does not change for you. In this way you can help to cover some of the costs of this website.