#beatwoven

V&A Website: https://www.vam.ac.uk/event/bJR1B3Ng/ldf-2018-the-art-of-music-in-the-digital-age-a-series-of-world-first-designs

Beatie Wolfe interview: Musician explains why she's selling new album Montagu Square on a shirt, but not in record shops

John Walsh meets a pioneering songwriter Beatie Wolfe

Montagu Square, the second album by the Anglo-American singer-songwriter Beatie Wolfe, is out this week, but you won’t find it on the shelves in HMV. You can download it from iTunes, Amazon and Google Play, you can buy a lyric book with a CD insert from her website, and you can get the tracks on a deck of “intelligent” cards provided you’ve got an Android phone on which to play them. Oh, and it’s also available as a shirt.

Ms Wolfe, 27, takes an unusual approach to the dissemination of music. Though her songs of love, yearning and regret are bouncily melodic in a nicely old-fashioned, verse-and-chorus way, and her inspirations are 20th-century – Beatles, Nina Simone, Otis Redding – her productions are crazily techno-futuristic. Her first album, 8ight, for example, was available as a 3D interactive album mobile app, available on iPhone. 

“People ask why I’m so technically innovative, but I don’t think I am,” the elfin Wolfe told me when we met, “I just have a fondness for bringing together things that enhance each other.”

Her new album’s titular address is a rock’n’ roll shrine. Ringo Starr leased the ground floor of No 34 Montagu Square in 1965, when The Beatles were two years into their world-conquering career, and sub-let it to Paul McCartney, who wrote “Eleanor Rigby” there. When Paul left, Ringo sub-let it to Jimi Hendrix who wrote “The Wind Cries Mary” there – but he and his manager, Chas Chandler, were kicked out for painting the walls black, while tripping. In 1968, John Lennon and Yoko Ono moved in, after Lennon had split from his family home. Remember the couple’s naked bottoms on the cover of the Two Virgins album? They were photographed at No 34. As I say: a shrine. 

Wolfe decided to record a live single at the flat after meeting its owner, David Mason, who runs Anthony Sinclair, the Mayfair tailors who supplied James Bond’s suits in the early 007 films: another Sixties connection. In a further elaboration, Wolfe linked up with a textile label called Beatwoven who use audio technology to transfer sound patterns to textiles. 

Last month, veteran music hacks and young whippersnappers from Wired and BBC6 stood in Mason’s flat, surrounded by photos of Lennon, McCartney and Hendrix, and watched Ms Wolfe record her gorgeous new single, “Take Me Home”, and have it transferred sonically on to a fabric that will become a shirt, sold by Mason to gentlemen clients, and a silk gown worn by Wolfe herself.  “Everything worked together that night,” she recalled. “The live recording, the history of the room, the collective memories of everyone there, the clapping – it’s all in the geometrical pattern that’s being woven in silk.” 

She grew up in London surrounded by counterculture luminaries. Her father, Rick Watson, an antiquarian bookseller from Portland, Oregon, moved to California and, through his contacts with Lawrence Ferlinghetti and the Beat poets, befriended the Rolling Stones. “I found out about the Stones connection only a few years ago,” says Wolfe. “I thought my father was just a dry old bookseller, but ‘Sympathy for the Devil’ came on the car radio one day and he said, ‘There’s a line about me in this song.’ It was, ‘And I laid traps for troubadours/ To get killed before they reached Bombay.’ When Dad and Chris Jagger tagged along with the Stones in India, the band played pranks on them because they were annoying whimsical poets.” Her mother, Virginia Boston, was a journalist, who co-wrote a study of punk with Danny Baker. 

It wasn’t surprising that Wolfe embraced music precociously early. She wrote her first song, the sapphically titled “You Can’t Get Away from Me, Girl,” at eight. At 15, she sang in a grunge band called Aurum. “Very dark, very angsty stuff, with titles like ‘Troubled,’ ‘Misery,’ ‘Asylum’ and ‘Let it Boil’ – I remember thinking, ‘When I’m older, will I look back and think this was my best contribution to the world?’” 

Studying English at Goldsmiths College, London, she wrote her third-year dissertation on the poetry of Leonard Cohen, in the teeth of teacherly dispproval. It was posted online, where it came to the attention of Cohen’s agent, Robert Cory. With his encouragement, Wolfe set the singer’s poem “A Thousand Kisses Deep” to music; she’s still waiting for Cohen’s reaction, but her dearest wish is to open for the Montreal Miserablist on his next tour. 

A striking woman with a confident guitar style and a voice that can carry off husky intros and belting climaxes, she doesn’t appear much on the summer festival circuit. Why not? “I like festivals provided you can have control of the sound, that you can feel a sense of intimacy with the audience, and that the lyrics can be heard. They’re fundamental to me. I don’t want the words to be lost in the white noise.” 

Beatie Wolfe’s Tap and Play Album Launch and Musically Generated Digital Textiles

Beatie Wolfe moves to the beat of her own drum. An entrepreneur, recording artist, song writer, polished public speaker and folky technophile, Beatie is making and promoting her music, her way. We met at The Hospital Club to talk about music, fashion and technology.

An Independent artist with an impressive roster of mentors and collaborators some of whom were met through family contacts, others by chance at events and gigs - She met Wynton Marsalis, who now mentors her, while gigging at Ronnie Scott’s. She’s not shy and grabs unexpected and obtuse opportunities with both hands. She is pushing the limits of her musical vision and staying true to her love of storytelling, eschewing potentially lucrative big label offers. It’s a bold move that she says is instrumental in maintaining her integrity as a recording artist and allowing her to work with other artists, maintaining the freedom to say yes to exciting collaborations without a big label calling the shots.

"Beatie’s music is refreshingly low-fi and honest. It’s storytelling - no bells and whistles"  -- Huffington Post, Brooke Roberts-Islam

It’s fascinating to hear Beatie’s journey. She began playing piano aged 8 and confesses she used her piano tutor to transcribe her songs for her, rather than learning to play herself. The piano was restrictive in a way the guitar was not and a chance conversation with a Spanish handyman (who happened to be a guitar virtuoso) fixing her parents kitchen led to lessons and a passion for getting her songs down on paper via acoustic guitar. From then her storytelling and songwriting passion grew.

The decision not to study music was an early one - Beatie says she prefers to learn on her own terms rather than in a pre-prescribed way. A degree in English Literature followed secondary school, culminating in a dissertation on the poetry of Leonard Cohen (an act of defiance against her tutors who contested the choice citing Cohen’s work as absent from the English literary canon). Beatie got a first and the dissertation has been published and shared with Cohen since. Beatie is articulate and eloquent and admits she’s honed her email-writing skills over the years which has helped her make initial connections with people and grab opportunities. She is clearly a highly motivated, goal-oriented entrepreneur who is neither phased by the fame or expertise of her peers and mentors nor prone to listening to those who say there’s a ‘right way’ of doing things. There’s the path most trodden, then there’s the Beatie path.

Beatie’s recent Power of Music and Dementia project is the first of its kind to attempt to engage and reconnect dementia sufferers with emotions and memories through new music. The Independent reported it as ‘A musical miracle for dementia’ and it’s one example of an array of interesting projects she is involved with.

Beatie’s upcoming album is to be launched via cards embedded with NFC technology, enabling smart phone users to scan the cards (created in collaboration with Moo) to initiate instant song playback whilst viewing the song artwork and lyrics. It’s a tactile, immediate and intimate introduction to her music - via technology - which is what makes it so interesting. No wonder it captured the imagination of David Rowan, Editor of Wired Magazine and iTunes pioneer and founder of record label AWAL (Artists Without A Label) which counts Nick Cave amongst its artists, Denzyl Fiegelson. Beatie’s deck of NFC playback cards harks back to an era when music was sold on vinyl. It also reminds me of giving and receiving CDs as gifts, compete with the lyric booklet and album artwork. Nick Cave’s textured and embossed CD cover for the Abattoir Blues/Lyre of Orpheus album still sits proudly on my bookshelf as an object of beautiful design and Beaties cards are giving back that tactility in an age of downloads and streaming.

Beatie’s NFC launch is powered by Microsoft’s Nokia Lumia, whose fashion tech collaborations with Fyodor Golan were covered in my previous blog post.

I first met Beatie at Wired Next Generation and was compelled to speak to her on hearing about her upcoming collaboration with the David Mason, head of soon-to-be-revived fashion label Mr Fish and Nadia-Anne Ricketts of BeatWoven.

BeatWoven is a textile brand creating digitally generated woven fabric from sound. The live recording of Beatie singing Take Me Home with the ambient sound of her audience at David’s flat at 34 Montagu Square is currently being woven into a fabric to be crafted into a gown by David Mason and launched at DLD (Digital-Life-Design) conference in January.

This isn’t the first time Beatie has explored promoting her music via technology and her first album 8ight launched with 3D interactive Palm Top Theatre app which projected Beatie atop a smart phone screen, effectively putting the listener/viewer in the front row of a virtual Beatie Wolfe concert. Pretty ingenious.

We chatted about the new album Montagu Square, which I had been listening to on my way to the interview. Firstly, I’m surprised at the simplicity and ease of the songs. It doesn’t sound overly-produced (which is refreshing after being forced to listen to commercial radio far too much recently) and a strong percussive sound with a bluesy overtone, especially on Green to Red. It sounds low-fi and honest. It’s storytelling - no bells and whistles. Maybe that’s why the innovative tech-led presentation works so well in contrast. In her music, Beatie is concerned chiefly with lyrics and expression. Her literature degree is an important and powerful tool in this amazing all-round creative tool-kit she has built. It makes me think about the BA fashion students I teach and how important a creative and entrepreneurial approach to life, study and work is, rather than simply relying on being a creative individual. Beatie’s story is both a lesson and an inspiration.

Beatie will be promoting her album via iTunes appearances stateside and public speaking engagements in the coming months and I can’t wait to hear next collaborative instalment. I’m finishing up this article listening to 8ight. Bowie’s Man Who Stole the World is next on my playlist (for musical and sartorial reasons).

Graphics and Music: Past, Present and Future

I'm delighted to be joining Jonathan Barnbrook (Bowie's design guru), XL's Art Director (Phil Lee) and Victoria Broackes (the V&A's Curator) and representing the "Future of Music" for this Design Festival highlight discussion on graphics and music. Full event details below...

London Design Festival at the V&A