C R E A V O L U T I O N   2 2 :  

T H E   B O N U S   A L B U M

With the release of "Zoen Nostalgia" (MMATT 30) in July 1989, the original Magic Moments At Twilight Time four-piece line up had come to an abrupt end. Jay had quit in the April of '88, unhappy with the direction things were taking, Kate stayed on a couple of months longer, but it made for an awkward situation for her and she'd gone by the summer too. Come 1989, Shona performed her last gig with us at The Crypt in Deptford in the February, our marriage having effectively come to an end the previous July. When her vocal duties on the album were duly completed and the wreck of the Ford Escortron was sitting dead in a garage in Pilling, I became all that was left from the beginning. It would be another seven years before a new studio album bearing the MMATT name would appear, and that was something of an adventure in itself, but that's a story for another time, this is just the tale of the way it all came together. So, if you're sitting comfortably, I shall begin...

INTERNAL AUTONOMY

► 01. L.S.D.

► 02. POOR LITTLE RICH GIRLS

► 03. AWAYDAY TO AUSCHWITZ

► 04. HERE IN OUR HEARTS

L-R: Internal Autonomy's Anna Haigh, Nikki and Alex Cable

After several months spent mostly promoting our own release and Christ!'s "Please Don't Touch My Yoghurt" (MMATT 32), it was nice to actually get the opportunity to do some music again. In the December, Alex Cable invited me to his Raven Studio to do some synth FX on Internal Autonomy's upcoming album, "Inquiry" (Recordrom, VOL 004, 1990). It was particularly good doing the tracks "L.S.D." and "Awayday To Auschwitz", as the vocals on those were provided by Anna Haigh, who I had recruited as our first singer a couple of years earlier, coincidentally on the strength of overhearing an earlier demo of the first of those songs. She quit after 12 days without ever having recorded a note, so at least I finally got to work with her, even if we were never in the studio at the same time! The other track of the session, "Poor Little Rich Girls", featured Nikki on vocals. She wasn't there either. Anyway, this lead to Al inviting me back the following February. I don't mean Nikki's absence, why would her not being there lead to Al asking me back, that wouldn't make any sense at all. You see, it was because he'd heard me playing Spanish style guitar and wanted me to put something together to go with some Andy Martin lyrics about the Spanish Civil War. The result was "Here In Our Hearts", originally scheduled for release on an album of the same name on the WoW Records label. Sadly, that never happened, but "L.S.D." and "Here In Our Hearts" do appear on the 'best of' double CD set, "Discography" (Front Cover, FDC002, 2010), which comes in a stylish digipack with a 12 page booklet and is very worth checking out. Details can be found at Internal Autonomy's BANDCAMP.

MAGIC MOMENTS AT TWILIGHT TIME

► 05. SPIRIT

► 06. BLITZKRIEG!

► 07. STATE OF THE ART

► 08. FREEDOM OVERFLOW

L-R: Leonie and myself by Virginia Water, Leonie and Pete up a tree

Alex wasn't the only one who was quite pleased with my Spanish stylings, so was I, and this is where you get to see how those sessions with Internal Autonomy got the ball rolling for "Creavolution". In 1990, I recruited classically trained singer, Leonie Jackson (she never did like being called Lulu The Space Bimbo, trust me), to the band. With no new material ready to record, the first thing she did was to put a vocal on "Shazdanz", a technically difficult piece we'd had to leave off of "Zoen Nostalgia" because it had proved a serious struggle for Shona. For a girl with a classically enhanced range, however, no problem. Then I played her the instrumental of "Here In Our Hearts", which Al had run off for me and suggested I write a set of lyrics for it, which I did and we demoed not long after, that original of which you'll find on "Zoen Nostalgia II: Earthbound" (MMATT 33, April 1991). Later in 1990, Leonie and I arranged a visit to Raven Studio to add her vocals to my original recording, the result of which was the version of "Spirit", you hear on this collection, which first saw the light of day on "The Radio Cracker Tape" compilation cassette (MMATT 37, December 1992), but was later reworked as "Spirit Electric" for the "Creavolution" CD, et voila, connected! Our first actual appearance on a CD came about in 1992. Following a recommendation from Didier 'Doc' Pilot of X Ray Pop, we'd been invited by Jean Emmanuel Dubois' Come Together Productions to put a couple of tracks on their upcoming compilation album, "Too Much Is Always Better Than Not Enough With..." (CTP 004, 1992). By this time, we finally had a new MMATT album out, albeit only a live one. While in the process of writing material for a