Sandra Bell

Featuring: Peter Jefferies

2015 release ** This is the repress of ‘Dreams of Falling’, the first album by musician and poet Sandra Bell, from New Zealand. "The record was born after a discussion with Peter Jefferies in Dunedin, about rerecording the song ‘Industrial Night ‘.I had known Peter vaguely from Auckland but never worked with him. ‘Industrial Night’ was on my first vinyl release the EP “Blackbirds” which I had recorded in Auckland, and I wanted to reinterpret it. For the next year, from the end of 1990 until the end of 1991, we also recorded a back log of my other songs on and off at our home in Maitland St, and also Fish St and Studio 13. Peter was a master of the Teac 4 track, and of musical arrangement. I was able to experiment and realise the potential of each song with his advanced skills. It seems miraculous looking back now that it was all done on 4 tracks, bouncing down at times and using two 4 tracks at one time for other tracks. I remember a cut in a song meant an actual cut of the tape, which Peter did with precision and skill. The wonderful musicians who played on the album took the songs from mundane to sublime- David Mitchells lead break on Industrial Night was exhilarating and exciting, Kathy Bull added clever bass lines, Peter’s industrial drumming was a constant force, Alastair Galbraith’s violin, Bruce Bluchers guitar, and the unmistakable distorted keyboards of Peter Gutteridge all added intrinsically to the final sound . Actually Peter Gutteridge recently said to me about Subway Nihilism” I should have got a co- writing credit for that song” as it was created in a session at Maitland St, when I put a poem to his riff, so he was right about that. A couple of the songs where influenced by a spell living alone in the Queensland rain forest- Manai is influenced by aboriginal music and legend, as was Waitawhile, which is the name of a spikey rainforest plant. The Country girls is a song for my sister Jean, about the loss of our mother when we were young. Floating aground was written about Aramoana- Peter and I had been inside for a few days totally absorbed in recording-I was speaking to my elderly neighbour who told me 13 people had been killed at Aramoana, I thought she was completely mad, but so sadly it was true. We were at Aramoana for a memorial service, and walking along the beach there were flowers in the water, which reminded me of St Marie De La Mere in the Sth of France, where the gypsys take an effigy of St Marie into the sea each year. Dreams of Falling was picked up by Xpressway who had released Peter’s album, then by Turbulence in Belgium, and opened up a new world for me which led on to another 3 albums, tours of America and Europe