The sun rises and the sun sets, the tide flows in and out again, but it’s been a long wait between albums from Todmorden instrumental trio Plank. Nearly nine years after the insect-themed Hivemind, guitarist and keys player David Rowe, drummer Liam Stewart and bassist Ed Troup reunite with Future Of The Sea. Plank have displayed an affinity for naturethemed concept albums, from 2012’s Animalism, about the exploitation of animals, to Hivemind two years later.
“All my favourite albums are concept albums so it’s a nod to that,” says Rowe. “The third one was going to be about bacteria but I thought there was nothing we could really hang the names of the songs onto.”
Instead of exploring the microscopic world, Rowe’s creative path led him into the waves. He’d been reading Rachel Carson’s book The Sea Around Us and that, combined with the influence of TV series Blue Planet, sparked his imagination. A record inspired by the briny depths might seem an unexpected choice for a band from Greater Manchester’s borders, far removed from the coastline, but, “I like to think we all have a connection with the ocean on a human level,” says Rowe. “I’m thinking of a more evolutionary sense, that as beings on this earth we’ve all come from the oceans.”
During that near-decade long hiatus for Plank, the three members have all been playing with different people, experiences that helped shape the new album’s sound, which moves away from their early krautrock leanings. Stewart toured with electronic post-punk artist LoneLady, Troup played black metal with Wode, and Rowe worked with Jane Weaver and Kiran Leonard, the latter of whom had a particular influence on his writing for Future Of The Sea.
"From the first EP [2010's eponymous Plank!], that's when I first started experimenting with odd time signatures," says Rowe. "When I started playing with Kiran, that whole concept of playing in odd time signatures was on a completely different level. It'd move from bar to bar, the time signatures would change in a very flowing manner, a bar of 5, a bar of 6, couple of bars of 8, back to 6. Because I was playing bass with him at that point, that inspired a lot of the new songs."
Longshore Drift, on the new album, puts this philosophy into practice.
"When I went to make the click track for Longshore Drift, I realised that unbeknownst to me, there are 37 time signature changes in a four-and-a-half minute song," says Rowe. "I'd like to think it just flows and it's cohesive; it's got a beat, an actual pulse to it and it's not changing every two seconds."
Noting that a lot of math rock can feel deliberately disjointed to draw attention to the players' technical virtuosity, Rowe says that's not what he's trying to accomplish in Plank: "If you're playing in front of an audience, you still want them bobbing their heads and tapping their feet."
Inspired by minimalist composer Steve Reich, King Crimson and krautrock pioneers Neu!, Rowe started building songs for Future Of The Sea around synth loops in unconventional metres. “Even though some of them are in 13/16 or complicated time signatures I tried to go back to a more basic format – verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, double chorus, end,” he says. “I wanted to experiment with a pop structure and then try doing [it] in 13/16 and seeing how that sounded.”
In the case of the song Red Tide, Rowe says, half-joking perhaps, that it was informed by Barry Manilow’s 1974 hit, Mandy.
“That’s actually kind of true,” he says. “You’ve got verse, chorus, verse, chorus, then there’s a musical break, then it’s the key change, the step-up, then double chorus at the end. If you listen to Mandy, it’s an absolute classic. It’s tongue in cheek to do a Disney-style key change at the end, but I think it works. It’s not as cheesy as you’d think.”
The album’s magnificent closing track, the six-part Breaking Waves, came about thanks to a little unanticipated canine intervention in the form of Rowe’s Jackapoo, Evie.
“My dog knocked my guitar over and when I picked it up, it was in an interesting tuning I’d never heard of,” he explains. “That gave me more inspiration, I wasn’t playing the same things I’d normally play when I pick up the guitar, because one of the strings was a quarter note out.”
Not surprisingly given its ambitious scope, Breaking Waves proved the most challenging song to bring to fruition on the album. The crux of the matter was: “Getting Breaking Waves to just feel like a continuous piece,” says Rowe. “When I’d written it, it was just a series of little ideas on the guitar. It was only...
“All my favourite albums are concept albums so it’s a nod to that,” says Rowe. “The third one was going to be about bacteria but I thought there was nothing we could really hang the names of the songs onto.”
Instead of exploring the microscopic world, Rowe’s creative path led him into the waves. He’d been reading Rachel Carson’s book The Sea Around Us and that, combined with the influence of TV series Blue Planet, sparked his imagination. A record inspired by the briny depths might seem an unexpected choice for a band from Greater Manchester’s borders, far removed from the coastline, but, “I like to think we all have a connection with the ocean on a human level,” says Rowe. “I’m thinking of a more evolutionary sense, that as beings on this earth we’ve all come from the oceans.”
During that near-decade long hiatus for Plank, the three members have all been playing with different people, experiences that helped shape the new album’s sound, which moves away from their early krautrock leanings. Stewart toured with electronic post-punk artist LoneLady, Troup played black metal with Wode, and Rowe worked with Jane Weaver and Kiran Leonard, the latter of whom had a particular influence on his writing for Future Of The Sea.
"From the first EP [2010's eponymous Plank!], that's when I first started experimenting with odd time signatures," says Rowe. "When I started playing with Kiran, that whole concept of playing in odd time signatures was on a completely different level. It'd move from bar to bar, the time signatures would change in a very flowing manner, a bar of 5, a bar of 6, couple of bars of 8, back to 6. Because I was playing bass with him at that point, that inspired a lot of the new songs."
Longshore Drift, on the new album, puts this philosophy into practice.
"When I went to make the click track for Longshore Drift, I realised that unbeknownst to me, there are 37 time signature changes in a four-and-a-half minute song," says Rowe. "I'd like to think it just flows and it's cohesive; it's got a beat, an actual pulse to it and it's not changing every two seconds."
Noting that a lot of math rock can feel deliberately disjointed to draw attention to the players' technical virtuosity, Rowe says that's not what he's trying to accomplish in Plank: "If you're playing in front of an audience, you still want them bobbing their heads and tapping their feet."
Inspired by minimalist composer Steve Reich, King Crimson and krautrock pioneers Neu!, Rowe started building songs for Future Of The Sea around synth loops in unconventional metres. “Even though some of them are in 13/16 or complicated time signatures I tried to go back to a more basic format – verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, double chorus, end,” he says. “I wanted to experiment with a pop structure and then try doing [it] in 13/16 and seeing how that sounded.”
In the case of the song Red Tide, Rowe says, half-joking perhaps, that it was informed by Barry Manilow’s 1974 hit, Mandy.
“That’s actually kind of true,” he says. “You’ve got verse, chorus, verse, chorus, then there’s a musical break, then it’s the key change, the step-up, then double chorus at the end. If you listen to Mandy, it’s an absolute classic. It’s tongue in cheek to do a Disney-style key change at the end, but I think it works. It’s not as cheesy as you’d think.”
The album’s magnificent closing track, the six-part Breaking Waves, came about thanks to a little unanticipated canine intervention in the form of Rowe’s Jackapoo, Evie.
“My dog knocked my guitar over and when I picked it up, it was in an interesting tuning I’d never heard of,” he explains. “That gave me more inspiration, I wasn’t playing the same things I’d normally play when I pick up the guitar, because one of the strings was a quarter note out.”
Not surprisingly given its ambitious scope, Breaking Waves proved the most challenging song to bring to fruition on the album. The crux of the matter was: “Getting Breaking Waves to just feel like a continuous piece,” says Rowe. “When I’d written it, it was just a series of little ideas on the guitar. It was only...
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Prog (Digital) - 1 Issue, Issue 139