Lukas Creswell-Rost’s third album (after Go Dream in 2014 and Gone Dreamin’ in 2018) is Weight Away and was out on Friday 4th of July via Wayside & Woodland Records. It was mostly written in Berlin and finished in the UK. We, at TRISTE©, were given the honour and the opportunity to have More Jam Than Bread, the third song from the album, as an exclusive premiere and now that his new album is finally out we can tell you that his music is fantastic and highly original. It shows a profound sensibility and melancholy, and endless influences and sounds, crossing – as Stuart Maconie of BBC 6 Music said- all sorts of genres: a bit pastoral-psych, a bit prog, a bit folk, a bit cinematic. His songs clearly come from the heart and the fact that they are the result of a combination of delicate psychedelia, dream pop and folk gives them a particular charm and a scent of rural England that makes them right at home at Wayside & Woodland Records.

What Lukas Says: “The song is about being stranded on an island, being attacked by nature, trying to get off it, but inevitability being stuck. Believe it or not, the beginning of this song started as a dream. I woke up with the guitar phrase from the ‘middle-breakdown’ of the song, in my head. That’s not something that normally happens. Although in the dream it was sung by a choir (a bit like on the “Blue” Gene Tyranny song below in the mixtape). It’s been through various phases, at one point I had a completely different singing part over the track and it really wasn’t working, so I ditched the whole thing. Somehow a new melody part came to me and refreshed the whole thing. 
It features the drums of James Yates and the bass of Danny Laycock. We used to play in a band together (The Pattern Theory) and they were the respective rhythm section, so it’s bloody nice to have them back together again. 
As for the video, I’ve been collecting little video scenes of ‘me walking about in different places‘ I’ve been to over the years, with an idea to do something with them. I find spaces and the atmospheres of spaces very memorable and vivid when the right moment strikes, so this video came together as a sort of memory bank of spaces and a sort of journey of myself ending up back home – the final scene.“

“This song has had many forms and arrangements because there is essentially a bit too much going on, so it was hard to wrangle it all together into a something listenable. I kept working on it after nearly losing the will to carry on once my computer started to fail to be able to play the multiple tracks I had burdened the session with. In an early stage I’d named it “Sill Song” as I thought, and hoped, it vaguely sounded Judee Sill adjacent with the guitar part. It’s two songs stuck together with a droney atmospheric glue. In the end, it has worked out as one of my favourites on the album.“

His Mixtape:

Bill Faye – Maudy La Lune

He made a couple of albums in the early seventies, which are great, but this is from is a collection of demos called From the Bottom of an Old Grandfather Clock and I prefer these songs, partly because they’re in more lofi demo form. Maudy La Lune just sounds like a lost classic which should have been dusted off by someone else later on. It’s also nice and short. I was happy to see that he got a bit of a resurgence about ten years ago, when he was in his seventies. Better late than never.

Robot – Goo

I think I probably found Robot (englishman Robbie Moore) when I lived in Berlin through knowing the drummer who played on a lot of his stuff. A lot of his lyrics seem to be sort of cut up word association lyrics which centre on the functionality of body anatomy. Like the body parts are their own entity, which I guess they are.

Judee Sill – Emerald River Dance

This song seems to be recorded in a kitchen or living room, and even though she has two amazing studio albums, this is the song which I keep going back to.

“Blue” Gene Tyranny – Leading a Double Life

I’m not sure how I came across this album, probably near to when it was reissued in 2019, but it’s a sort of melding of genres in an “avant-pop” seventies way. This song does wander along a bit, and the vocals feel a bit too over performed somehow, but I love the rest of it being simple and sparse.

Brian Wilson – Melt Away

With the recent passing of Brian Wilson, it’s hard to know where to go to with all the music he left. Melt Away might not be his towering work of achievement but it always sticks in my ear. I like the “doo doo” bit he does here and I’ve ended up doing quite a few “doo doo” bits myself on the album.

The Durutti Column – Bordeaux Sequence

There’s another version of this song but I like how this one wonders along and takes its time. The booming drum machine contrasts nicely with all the synth, guitar and strings. 

iamamiwhoami – Good Worker

This is a Swedish duo consisting of Jonna Lee and Claes Björklund. I was recently shown this album by my wife and if you want a track for the car to drive up and down on A1 then this works well. I can’t really understand anything she’s singing.

Pat Metheny Group – Letter From Home

This could be a sequence from a nineties daytime drama TV show, albeit an exquisitely written one. It has something effortless and slightly sad in there which reminds me of something from Twin Peaks. In videos of him playing it live he is playing a miniature guitar and it looks ridiculous.

John Martyn – Small Hours

As a teenager I heard a radio show about guitar heroes by Stuart Maconie on what must have been BBC Radio One. I had just started playing myself so I taped the show and listened keenly. There were all the usual “rock guitar” sorts and then this song. I’ll happily slip into this ambient-delay-atmospheric mode, if left alone with a delay pedal. It’s hard to recreate these background ambient geese though.

Weight Away is out now via Wayside & Woodland Records. Look HERE for more information on Lukas Creswell-Rost.