After many years using my voice as my principal instrument, as Wounded Knee and Hoch Ma Toch, as well as plain old Drew Wright, I’d hit a creative dead end. I put together an inexpensive assembly of hardware devices and found a working process that suited my intuitive approach to music making. It was a new thrill for me to work with samplers and synths. I like to think of my devices as the four elements: mixing earth, fire, wind and water to create these musical weather systems that shift and change as the elements are combined, added and subtracted.
The album title is taken from the poem “So Many Summers” by Norman MacCaig. The line has stuck with me for years and I thought it was particularly apt for a cassette release; its two sides like two neat geometries, if the programming is right! I hope that I steer a few listeners to his work.
When asked how long it takes to write his poems MacCaig used to say “about two fags, unless it’s a wee one, then it’s one fag”. He was joking, but to me it contains a hidden truth which has informed the making of this album. Get it down. One take. Don’t overthink it. Each piece is a poem, a conjuring.
