I originally wanted this track to be almost musique concrete. I wanted to use mainly — if not only — found sounds from Bury and the surrounding areas, like Ramsbottom. The actual musical parts were added later, in the key of E. The melody is a bit like the work of Angelo Badalamenti, who composed the soundtrack for Twin Peaks. Bury has a Twin Peaks vibe to it, in my view. There’s a secret here. I always liked his long melodies that go to eerie places and I caught myself playing something in a similar style when writing the music for Bury.
Some of the audio are from a one-to-one interview with a lady from Ramsbottom, whose father was German. My father was also German and it was a serendipitous coincidence that I wanted to highlight, as all of this work is very personal to me. All the other bits are field recordings from the actual Bury market, made by myself, including the two lads saying to each other “I got cheese at home — shut up”

Since moving to Bury, 3 years ago I’ve been purchasing and collecting home recorded cassettes from antique stores in Bury, Radcliffe, Ramsbottom and Whitefield. Most of these have just music, but some had conversations, spoken letters, and talk radio from the distant past. Rad Cliff-hanger was the first track in which I used samples from one of these cassettes.
The conversation between the mother and the daughter about going to the park in her bicycle is very endearing and very Northern. It could have happened today, but I reckon the tape was from the 1980s. The humming is also from the mother, originally to the tune of Lara’s Theme from Doctor Zhivago, that I sampled each note and replayed it myself.
I also used dog samples. Those were used by the Pet Shop Boys in a few great tracks, like Suburbia and I Want a Dog. This came as an inspiration when I was revisiting my own musical history to get to the point where I am today. In 1986, age 9 or 10 I went to a Sears and got a Pet Shop Boys Please cassette tape. 27 years later I was remixing a track for them.

This track started with me playing around with a generative synth that defined the tempo and the rhythm. Every start of a bar has a different noisy bleep sound coming from this patch I made.
Whitefield was the first neighbourhood in North Manchester I've ever visited intentionally. I say that because when I first moved to Manchester in the 90s, I once took the tram to Bury by mistake - I was supposed to go to Altrincham. But Whitefield was a place I went on purpose, to visit this record store specialised in Star Wars and David Bowie, that was on Bury New Road, near Slattery. I told this story so many times that I used it as lyrics to this track.
It was also the first time I paid for coffee, at this cafe called Roma. Most people don’t realise but 20+ years ago there was no coffee culture in Manchester. Roma was this tiny place that sold a cafelatte and other Italian groceries. Being one-fourth Italian I knew some of the brands, and felt really comfortable and interested in their products — which I discovered were supplied by a certain Bob Amato. At that time Amato products were a small operation done by this one guy, and now it's one of Manchester's biggest businesses.

I wanted this track to have three bases, partially because of the pun with the name of the area. But also because 15 years ago I produced four tracks for Peter Hook’s Freebass project, which had this concept of three bass players in a band — a wonderful project that I'm quite proud to have been involved in.
For Besses o’ th’ Barn I could have done something with brass, because of its history with the oldest brass band in the UK. In fact, I have a demo version of this played with brass instruments but I never go around to get the musicians to play it fully. Maybe one day. But I've used a couple of 303's and another synth bass for it instead and it's my favourite track. Very minimalistic, as is the tram stop itself. The vocal samples came from a cassette acquired in the area too.

Ever since I moved to North Manchester, Prestwich has been the number one spot for going out at night for obvious reasons. There're so many great places in Prestwich that you can't go wrong. The vocals are provided by Sam Taylor, the restaurateur at The Pearl, who became a pal. I absolutely love the restaurant and I love how Prestwich is a place that small independent businesses can thrive. So I named most of them in the track.
The inspiration behind it was It's Grim Up North by the KLF, in which all the cities and towns in the North are recited by Bill Drummond. So I asked Sam to recite all these independent shops in Prestwich. We recorded it in the actual restaurant on a Saturday morning in the summer, before the service. The melotron-like flute melody and feel was not inspired by, but it certainly reminds of the theme of a 1970s American TV show about summer camps. I used to watch it on repeat, late at night, when I had insomnia as a kid.

So the name comes from this joke I used to make, that when you are at Heaton Park and you go very far into it you are already in Heat-off Park. It also has to do with my own home heating in Bury, that has been troublesome to say the least. It's the least orthodox track in TRAMBIENT. I am known for polyrhythms and different time signatures, but most of the tracks in TRAMBIENT are 4/4.
Heat-on Heat-off has many elements that made me uncomfortable and excited at the same time. The lyrics are about a particular day I had in the park when I had to dodge golf balls and climb fences. It's also partially inspired by my friend Dave's adoration for the park's animals and history. I recorded the French Horns, played by the incredibly talented Fiona Bassett, in Glasgow, at the King's Theatre. She was actually impeccable but I've used some of her outtakes as “mistakes” because the track is so all over the place that I wanted something a bit off.

What became a very melancholic track, started inspired by Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory. My 12 year old niece Agatha sings on it and their ad-libs were so good that they became part of the lyrics. I did not use any pitch correction as I wanted their voice to be very raw. Plus there’s no need as they’re an amazing singer. The instrumental demo was originally made for Queens Road so I had to transpose all the notes to fit the key of Bowker Vale. The musical key of each track from Bury to Manchester goes up a 5th. Bury Bliss is on E, then Rad Cliff-hanger is on B, then Whitefield Whispers is on F sharp, and so on…

I always say that 50% of my Britishness is due to crumpets. When I first tried it, I was so in love with it that I saved one in my pocket just to be able to get another one in the supermarket, as I didn’t know its name. Eventually I put the jacket away and forgot it was there, only to find seven months later a desiccated shrunk crumpet. I kept it and to this day I have it. The crumpet is from 1998.
This track also started with this generative synth that modulates a bassline. It's a single note bass that goes on the head of every bar, quite minimal. Yet, the chord progression reminds me of Gershwin. I haven't listened to Rhapsody in Blue from Gershwin since I wrote this because I'm afraid I subconsciously and yet blatantly copied it chord by chord. The samples are from another home recorded cassette tape, this time of a radio program from the Northwest circa early 2000s.

This track started very differently and he had a couple of radical versions. But I ended up with this one, which has a solid theme throughout it. I asked the talented Baz McGrath to play some acoustic guitars, but I don't know if I ever told them how much I would completely distort and change its whole sound and feel. This is a classic ambient track for me. The vocals saying Abraham Moss through a vocoder are done by yours truly — but you can barely hear it, it's almost abstract. Another KLF reference in the title, if you can catch it.

My references are becoming more and more obvious, as this could be a track by The Orb, one of my favourite acts. For Queens Road, I wanted it to be uplifting and to have a certain middle Eastern flavour as there's a couple of good Middle Eastern restaurants near there. And also, every time I use the tram, I see many teenage kids embarking or leaving the tram at Queens Road, and they use the slang ‘sound’ a lot between them. So I wanted to incorporate it too. It has a 303 line that sort of gives up mid riff, like it’s running out of air, that I quite like.

I wanted this to be a celebration of Manchester, by making a track that's easy to digest, uplifting and instantly recognizable. So I've used a few cliché ideas but I think it sounds great. There's a 303, there are some pads… The beat is very balearic disco, nu-disco. And the idea for the lyrics come from this 90s techno song called London Acid City. Well if London is Acid, then Manchester is Ambient. We’re laid back and chill. The ‘my love’ sample has been in my sampler for two or three years, and I genuinely don't know where it came from. It’s my underlying love for Manchester. It's kind of a basic track but I can't help but smile every time I hear it.

For the last — or the first! — and final track, I wanted it to be a bit more industrial, just like Manchester's history. And like Shudehill makes me feel. It feels a bit busy and chaotic but back in the day there used to be amazing second-hand shops there, where you could buy great music. We had two Vinyl Exchanges, Clampdown Records and Piccadilly Records, but the sorts of musical gems that one would find in small dungeons around Shudehill were incredible. These places are now tall glass buildings. And even though I didn't break apart from the 4/4 time signature, I did play some unconventional drums on this track, along with the dreamy guitars by Vinny Two-Tone, a long time collaborator and friend.