Loner by David J & Comrades featuring Mia Doi Todd and Tim Newman

I initially wrote the featured song, ‘Albino Dog’ for Mia Doi Todd having witnessed her spellbinding solo performance at the Silverlake Lounge in Los Angeles in 2000. I attended this show at the enthusiastic suggestion of my friend, the artist, Nora Keyes. Hearing Mia’s extraordinary voice ring out with such pure crystal clarity that night I fully understood Nora’s excitement. The quality of Mia’s charming, sophisticated and profound songs was also extremely impressive and her steady finger picking style, faultless.

All in all I was floored! During this same period I was immersed in Angela Carter’s brilliant retellings of classic fairy tales. In particular 'The Company of Wolves' which delved deep into the dark woods of the latent psychology behind the warewolf legend. Simultaneously I saw the movie, The Cell. I enjoyed the film and was haunted by the image of the beautiful white dog that appeared in the picture. I even started to have reoccurring dreams about this creature.

All of this fed into my song which is essentially concerned with the alienation of the outsider. As I was writing it, it occurred to me that it would suit Mia’s beautiful voice very well and I completed it with that heady notion in mind. As soon as the song was completed I phoned Mia to tell her about it. (Nora had passed on the number with Mia’s approval) I was instantly invited over to her place, a converted warehouse in Silver Lake to play her the song. Upon my arrival she welcomed me warmly and brewed up a pot of green tea. We sipped and chatted and then I played her Albino Dog on my acoustic guitar. She told me that she loved it and requested that I play it again. This time she sang along and it was quite magical. We decided then and there to record it as a duet. This was achieved a couple of weeks later at my pal, Robert Kaechele’s home studio in Rancho Bernardo, CA. Joyce Rooks adding some haunting cello. Prior to this session I recorded a solo demo (also at Rob’s place) which I had passed onto Mia so that she could familiarize herself with the song. This version formed the basis of the second track on the album which was later embellished with strings and various other instruments. These elements were added by the brilliant musician / sound alchemist, Tim Newman along with contributions from Joel Baldwin (AKA Whitehall Rec) and Nigel Gwennap. Tim then created several deconstructed abstract versions of the song.

This work took place at his studio in Bristol, England. Tim’s wife, Sarah contributing vocals. Some additional Hungarian spoken word passages by Gabor Nemeth were then added in Budapest. The music on this track, Trip To Tansdanubia was in part, generated using Ed Burton’s wonderful app called ‘Tunetrace’, which converts images into music. The lyrics were written out and a photograph taken of each verse, the piano part is a snippet of what Tunetrace created from the images. The rest of the music was created by Tim based around this piano part. Tunetrace appears thoughout the recordings. Another interesting app which was employed was ‘Paulstretch’ which is an extreme timestretch program and was used to great effect on Mia’s voice on the track, Crescendo.

Finally Tim assembled all these disparate parts so that they they made a surprisingly cohesive atmospheric soundtrack to a movie that does not yet exist. I say ‘yet’ as a celebrated film director has expressed interest in the possibility of making a full length feature film sparked off by a solo rendition of the original Albino Dog song that I performed at a club in Los Angeles when he happened to be in attendance.

Time will tell and maybe one day the loner will finally come in from the cold.

David J