Newcastle's e4444e Goes Track-by-track Through His Debut Album, 'Coldstream Road'
Newcastle artist e4444e (aka Romy Church) has released his debut album, 'Coldstream Road'. Here, he takes us track-by-track through the album - which he wrote, performed, recorded and produced entirely over four days - with accompanying original film photos.
Country
This kinda came out as almost a hymn or a chant, ritualistic, but with drunkenness hovering over it. I guess I was drinking a lot around the time of these songs. I think of this song as a train ride. It was originally the intro to Wolves, but I decided to jam Wind Nocturne in there, I don’t really remember why. Good pace. My friend John told me putting this song first on the album is “a bit of a sidestep”. Screech.
Wind Nocturne
I can’t really say to you whether Wind Nocturne is a love song or just about the way the wind goes around the whirled world singing its song and I think its best if I don’t, all I know is that one of the people I hold dearest I met in a very windy cold time of the year. And this song will come and go like all other things.
Wolves
Wolves for me is a little song that hints describing a lot of things and their motion in the world, trying to connect streams to things. The song is short and little in its scope, like a fox or a simple sage. The truths are kind of dry and airy and the sounds float around them. Doesn’t go very far, doesn’t try to either.
Gold
A very simple song where very few things are alluded to or offered up. The feeling of things breaking and quietly accepting it or maybe what leads things to break, how they always had to break and how it all gets put back together sometimes. The cracks are golden. I think of the main organ chords as very plain blue sounding. twilightskyblue
Solar
Before Solar I hadn’t done many recordings that were mainly acoustic guitar and singing. It took me a while to decide whether I would want to add more or just leave it as it is, I think that was a turning point into how I practice playing music now. I remember I was thinking about it and listening to Michael Hurley’s first album in a park in the afternoon and realised I didn’t need anything more than any of the parts in my head. I rushed back home and recorded the demo which is pretty much what the album version sounds like except without Noah's melodicas, glocks and Lemonheads-esque vox.
lukedrivesby
A dream I had and this just came out. Landscape painting or something of that nature, a quick sketch before work on a Sunday morning. I lost the project on my computer so the recording on the album is the ‘roughmix’ whatever that means. mistakes are nice. there are no wrong recordings!................ ‘Case. Fucking. Closed.’ – Bill Hicks
Susan
Maybe I was feeling a bit bummed out when I made this, but why pass on something before you have even found something good in it? But this song also puts an arrow in that thought’s heart, that it needs no meaning and life going on could be the purpose in itself, that’s the happiness itself, but still something lingers; old grey window lives always passing time just to pass it down while in dressing gowns.
Rum Mountain
I think this is the oldest song on the record and I think of it as the centre or the womb of the album or something like that. After I wrote this, I saw what I wanted to make around it and went in that direction. I don’t know if I did exactly that, but this song is like the “golden boy” of the album. The crux.
Lakedawn
I couldn’t sleep one early morning and got up and wrote this progression (nowadays I mostly write early morning) and it's gone through a lot of weird stages to become whatever it is now. I like to think the middle section could be played forever. The song is a pretty definite scene in my head: a dawn in the middle of grassy nowhere with a big dam in front of a house, the narrator is on the front deck of the house. The narrative gets cut in two by the big middle section. Coming out of it the shadows line the mountain ridges.
Swan Reach Road
The first recording of this was on one of those magical quiet nights where very little things are enough. I lost that first recording and had to recreate it, and though I do love this version that’s on the album, the quietude of the first sketch was very circumstantial and could not be conjured again. Meditative and soothing. After all those songs, nothing from nobody then “residue” as Dave called it. The room looked exactly like this as I recorded. Beneath that wall is a table will all my gear on it. The writing is a poem written by brother Ivan. He is a living artist in the true sense and a constant inspiration, as is Dave, Noah, Heidi and Dugi. I thank them all for teaching me what it is to be creative and true.
Coldstream Road is out now, check it out here.
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