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When Yorkshireman and guitarist Michael Chapman passed away in September of 2021 at the age of 80, he did so – as he spent much of his life – as both a pioneer and a legend. When discussing his music, you often hear terms such as ‘at ease’ and ‘unpretentious’, while those that befriended him frequently refer to his lack of ego. A veteran of the British blues/folk/jazz scene, Chapman emerged in 1966 and continued working throughout his life, always pushing the boundaries of his creations while collaborating with a slew of similarly heralded musicians along the way, including Bert Jansch, Thurston Moore, and Steve Gunn, to name just a few.
In 2008, Chapman befriended another much-missed guitar legend, Jack Rose. Shortly after, through Rose, he was introduced to fellow outlier Steve Gunn; they became friends, and Gunn went on to produce his’ 50′ album in 2016 and True North in 2019. Chapman even appeared in one of Gunn’s own videos, Ancient Jules.
”The strength of the songs, the simplicity of the strong acoustic guitar core matched with sympathetic and skilful playing throughout results in an album that is lean, unpretentious, wonderfully played and so very listenable throughout.”
Glenn Kimpton, KLOF Mag
Through this friendship, Chapman’s music found Andrew Tuttle, the Brisbane-based multi-instrumentalist who has toured Australia several times alongside Gunn and whose music has featured widely on KLOF Mag, most recently for ‘Fleeting Adventure‘.
After Chapman’s passing, his partner Andru discovered Tuttle’s above-mentioned Fleeting Adventure LP, describing it as “one of the albums that kept me sane during that first brutal winter on my own.” The pair met in Australia shortly after, and before Andru had even made it back home to the north of England, Tuttle had begun working on the recordings she shared with him at that time. Those recordings were part of a project Chapman was working on at the time of his death, called Another Fish – what would have been a companion piece to his previously-released LP, simply called Fish. Chapman had spent time in his local studio playing all the guitars, layering the different sounds and effects, he’d always intended to do much more work on the songs, however fate had its way and he never got to ribbon-bow those ideas and bring the album to its conclusion.
Though there was little intention in terms of how to finalise the project, Tuttle spent valuable time with those recordings. What materialised, eventually – with time, care, and diligent attention – is a two-disc set Another Tide, Another Fish, something both unusual and completely distinctive. The first disc, Another Tide (also available on vinyl) is centred around Tuttle’s own work, which shaped all seven of Michael’s songs and ideas into new songs of their own, and the second disc which simply incorporates the recordings that Michael left behind.
Taken from the album, watch the accompanying video for ‘Wholly Unrelated To Four Seasons’:
“On all of the tracks I also ‘played along’ on banjo to the originals several times until I learned an approximation,” Tuttle continues. “This ended up resulting in a ‘hybrid’, where some works are easily identifiable to those who know Michael’s originals, and some took that inspiration to head altogether elsewhere. Each of the tracks, even where not obvious, does have at the very least a trace element sample of the original recordings so that it’s a true collaboration.”
What we’re left with is indeed a hybrid: part remix album, part cover album, both a solo work and a collaboration, of sorts. Inspired by Chapman’s original ideas and with new track titles directly referencing the numbered but otherwise untitled source material, Tuttle adds his own flashes of colours throughout, including editing, sampling, MIDI transposing and signal processing that twists these songs into beautiful new shapes. Perhaps Tuttle’s greatest achievement here then is that Another Tide sounds so effortlessly free of all this context.
Whether you know Michael’s, Andrew’s or even Andru’s story or not, these recordings will bristle with enchantment and intrigue, worlds are built, and while some thrive and grow, others fizzle out in a burst of light, such is the way. “It’s been a long, long road but we got there and I think it’s been more than worth it,” Andru says in the record’s liner notes. “I really hope you think the journey was worth it too.”
Another Tide, Another Fish releases August 30, 2024, via Basin Rock
Pre-order: https://www.basinrock.co.uk/records/another-tide-another-fish/
Bandcamp: https://basinrock.bandcamp.com/album/another-tide-another-fish
