Hiya Meles Lutra, thanks for joining us in the virtual RGM lounge today. Grab a brew and take a seat.
What made you decide that music is a thing for you?
Annabelle: I love performing, seeing the power music has to move people, to change their mood, take them on a journey, bring them joy. I love making music with friends – the connection you get when a song clicks, and you hear beautiful details from your bandmates. And I love the way music helps me process emotions.
Chris: It’s always seemed sort of magical to me that it’s possible to press some keys or blow into a tube and wiggle your fingers and make music happen, so as a child the idea that I could learn to do that was pretty captivating.
Introduce us to you all and your musical history.
Annabelle: I’m one half of Meles Lutra. I play flute, clarinet, bass clarinet, soprano and tenor sax, keyboard and sing, and I started playing harp last year.
Chris: And I play alto and baritone sax, keyboard, assorted percussion and occasional vocals. (I also dabble in bass guitar, and I’m a lapsed euphoniumist, but neither of those have made it onto a Meles Lutra album…yet).
Annabelle: I’ve always loved making music. When we were kids my brother complained about my constant singing, which must have been pretty annoying. From the age of 11 I played in a band at church, so got weekly experience playing in front of people. I studied music at Uni, where I found performing solo recitals terrifying, so that put me off for a while. I rediscovered the joy of making music through playing in bands for fun, without the pressure of examiners.
We’d been playing in a couple of bands together (Going South (jazz and funk) and The Prognosis (prog rock)), then with lockdown we couldn’t get together and rehearse with the others. In early 2021 we decided to see if we could write music, using the instruments we play, that would be complete in itself, not a placeholder until we could get back together with musicians who play more useful instruments. And that’s how Meles Lutra came about.
What’s the live music scene like in Cornwall right now? Anyone we should be looking out for (bar you, of course)?
Annabelle: We’re lucky that there are some good venues in Truro and Falmouth putting on live music. And the village hall down the hill from where we live is on the national folk music circuit, so we get to hear some wonderful musicians on our doorstep. My favourite discovery of last year was 3 Daft Monkeys – they have a really joyful mix of folk, punk and ska.
I’ve seen a lot of people struggling for support recently online. What’s your view on the industry?
Annabelle: I think it’s a hard time to be a musician – established musicians we really admire are struggling to get gigs, and streaming brings in pennies at best.
Chris: I think in some ways new technologies have made it much easier for independent musicians to produce and release music, but simultaneously made it harder for them to find and connect with an audience.
Where do you feel you currently sit within the music industry?
Annabelle: I’m not sure we’ve got a seat within the music industry yet – we’re certainly a long way from being able to give up the day jobs.
Tell us two truths and a lie about you.
Annabelle helped rescue a stranded dolphin last year, Chris played the saxophone solo on Baker Street and one of us is the child of a former Chelsea footballer.
Do you ever worry about people taking things the wrong way or cancel culture? Discuss….
Chris: Not really, I think music gives such an opportunity to powerfully communicate ideas and feelings that you’re compelled to use it to share what matters to you. I don’t see much value in being pointlessly offensive or in punching down, but as long as you have the knowledge and understanding to back it up, sometimes you have to say what you have to say.
Do you sign up to any conspiracy theories? If not, why not?
Annabelle: I think the continued existence of Red Delicious apples must be due to a conspiracy… There are so many better varieties out there.
What was your best experience on stage?
Chris: Hard to pick one, I think any time you play and connect with the musicians you’re playing with and/or the audience you’re playing to is pretty special.
What was your worst experience on stage?
Chris: Playing at an open mic night, where the foldback was terrible and the previous band’s keyboard player had left the keyboard transposed without telling us. It took us half the first song to work out what key we were all in.
Tell us something about each member that you think people would be surprised about.
Chris: We both have PhDs, but struggle to update the clock in the car when the clocks change.
What are the next steps you plan to take as a band to reach the next level?
Annabelle: We need to work out how we can gig our music – most of our songs are made up of 20-30 tracks of the two of us playing different instruments, which is slightly challenging in a live setting. But we love performing, so we’ll find a way!
I hear you have new music. What can you tell us about it?
Annabelle: Our second album, Meles Meles is just out. The album is inspired by the natural world around where we live, including oak trees, reefs, badgers and insects.
It’s hard to make music about nature without some kind of reflection of the climate and extinction crisis, so that’s also there, in the track Silent Earth, inspired by a book by Dave Goulson. But we also see reasons to hope – when we take action, we can make things better. Beelines and Change is Possible both capture this optimism. The music is a mix of folk, jazz and classical influences, created through layering up our instruments to create an intricate soundscape. We’re really pleased with how it’s come out.
What was the recording process like?
Annabelle: It starts with one of us writing a song (for me that usually happens in the bath). We then sketch it out on Cubase, thinking about which textures and instruments we want to use for each bit of the song. We then record each layer on real instruments, one by one.
We record at home, so can do bits and pieces whenever we have an hour or so to spare. This is great, but can mean it takes a long time to finish each track. The main challenge is persuading our cat not to add backing vocals, as he resents being shut out of the studio. Once we’ve cleaned up the individual lines we can hear the song all together on real instruments for the first time – that’s pretty satisfying. We then send the stems off to Paul Isaac, who does all our mixing and mastering, and manages to bring order to the chaos of 30 or more individual parts, making everything sound clear and balanced. Getting a track back from Paul is the most exciting thing.
What was the biggest learning curve in writing the new tunes?
Annabelle: We’re still experimenting with the different sounds and textures we can achieve with the instruments we play. It’s hard to know how things will sound until we’ve recorded them. We’re not trying to sound like anyone else, so that gives us freedom to try new things.
Would you change anything now it’s finished?
Annabelle: We’re happy with how it’s turned out. We’ll save adding harp to more of the songs for the 20th anniversary re-issue.
Is there anything else you would like to share with the world?
Annabelle: I hope our music will remind people of the wonder and joy of our precious natural world, and inspire actions to protect that beauty. The album is partly a tribute to the people and organisations already doing that, such as Buglife and British Divers Marine Life Rescue.
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