I vaguely remember Gareth at school....continuedc

by Mary Currie

Flaming Tunes was a collaboration that came out of a friendship.  Gareth and I would meet at ‘Danger de Mort’ Gareth’s house in Balham usually during the daytime when my son was at nursery. Sometimes we’d be joined by others.  A room full of instruments and things that could make noise.  We made some of our own too and used available objects for percussion.  Later on we had more sophisticated equipment – full size keyboard and 12 track recording facility.  Sometimes things happened and sometimes we just indulged ourselves in making a bit of a racket.  Gareth was very influenced by the Talam structures he had learnt through studying Kathakali and these are reflected in the music.

I can’t begin to describe how Gareth put things together and this was often done well into the early hours of the morning.  I’d go away and come back  and what had started out as a fragment had become another flaming tune.  Perhaps I’ll leave it to others to fill in the more technical details.  We decided to release a cassette of what we’d done because we thought people might be interested in it and it’s funny that over time it was assumed that FT was previously unreleased This Heat tracks.  FT came from a different energy.

Gareth’s enthusiasm for making music was endless and infectious.  It continued to the end of his life.  His legacy is enormous and should be further explored.  I was glad to have shared this experience with him so intensely in the mid 1980’s and sporadically in the following two decades up to his death.  I miss him as a friend and collaborator and one of the most interesting people I have ever met.

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