No Way Out


Last update: 12th September 2005

Previous Titles

Man Juan
Don't Leave


Notes

The Virgin press release state that in No Way Out, "ordinary life 'swimming around in a plastic bag' is torn apart by a road accident."


Peter's Comments

"One of the luxuries about making a record very slowly is that I've been able to travel around the place getting little bits of influences from the places I'm in. In fact this one began in Senegal and I had a very differnet sort of groove on it, an African groove. In fact 2 or 3 little musical sections aren't in the song any longer, but then the song began to change shape."

"Its ended up one of the songs about death and dying, of which there seem to be a few, a nice cheerful subject, but I guess its more about people. So, this one's called, well it was called 'Man Juan' and that was a working title. And I don't know why, I think it was probably the latiny rhythm. But 'Don't Leave' is probably what I'll call it now, as that seems to be what I'm saying at the end. So, I hope you enjoy it. I've always loved surf guitar, its one of the most evocative guitar sounds for me. There's a drum loop here which Chris Hughes was programming on a thing called SuperCollider using a technique called granulation which takes solid lumps but cuts them up into little bits. But you get a very nice quality so, I think he did great work - I'm very happy about this rhythm."

"Being a failed drummer, I'm a big rhythm and drum fanatic as probably a lot of you know, and I think there are about four people working on this track. Steve Gadd did some brush work, Manu Katche did some kit work. Dominic from Reef, whom we know very well because they're always rehearsing here; he's a great drummer and he did some tom work. And then there was something I was hearing and so I ended up doing some tom work myself. But it was a lot of fun doing all that stuff."

"That is something that emerged from the early sessions and there was this sort of Latiny feeling to the groove, but that's pretty much buried now. In fact some of my favorite rhythm programming was on this track by Chris Hughes and a thing called Supercollider. It breaks everything up into lots of little pieces and then reassembles them, still very granulated. It has this strange mysterious percussive quality to it. I was thinking a little more Roy Orbison when I was doing some of the singing and I think there is that influence as well as the computer-mangled ethnic rhythm element."