Henry Olsen - Dock Street

OLSEN001

08/10/2021

Limited to 500 copies, signed and numbered.

Henry Olsen was the bass player for Primal Scream between 1988 and 1995. Their most famous, and successful album was Screamadelica.

After many years of composing for film and making music outside of Primal Scream he has created his first album.

"Dock Street is in Sunderland. It was the site of Dock Street Methodist Church. It is where my mother and father first met and where they were married, a few years later. A few years after that, in 1963, it is where I was baptized into the Methodist Church and the Christian faith. The cover of the album booklet shows this church and a high-rise tower block under construction. The photograph was taken in 1963.

In my process, a finished piece of music begins with the recording of a completely free-form improvisation, either on a keyboard or on a guitar. When improvising, I make sure that I am distracted from the improvisation by looking out of the window, watching the TV or even listening to another piece of music in headphones. Sometimes I will chat to someone or read a news email from a relative. The important part of this is that my conscious mind has little or no idea of the music that I am producing.

On playback, I will begin to identify parts of the performance that I like and if there are enough of these ‘preferred’ fragments, I will begin to arrange them into some sort of order. Eventually, this editing process will produce something of form, and I will begin to add and subtract as I follow the form of the emerging piece. I imagine that, if I were a sculptor, then this is the way that I would work with the clay.

As the musical piece begins to appear, my synesthesia suggests a tableau.

I am synesthetic, which means, in my case, that I see pictures when I hear music.

In the case of ‘Dock Street’, if the suggested tableau was of the sea, the North-East of England or my family of origin or current family, then I would press on with the composition and orchestration. "