Toy Piano Mantra / Ghosts of the Karelia Forest

Next up on Feral Child sees a reissue of a 45 that initially came and went in a day, last July. A beautiful pair of instrumental gems from two of label head Dom’s musical heroes; Will Sergeant and Paul Simpson. Released as a limited 7” clear vinyl repressing. 

Wills' “Toy Piano Mantra” is a beautifully meandering, slow building, multi layered piece- more melodic than some of his previous more experimental solo work; of its back story and creation, Will says: “I’m not really one for acoustic guitars, I have played them on EATB records, but the electric guitar is my weapon of choice. So I set myself a little task -for no other reason than it being a bit of fun- and thought “Why don’t I make a collection of acoustic tunes, purely to see if I could?”. All my acoustic guitars are very cheap, which never stopped me using them. I had bought a Chinese pedal harmonium in London in the ’80s, and scrounged the use of a good ukelele, my Auto Harp was an obvious component, then I remembered the toy piano I had bought in a pop-up flea market in a vacant New York lot, back when New York still had vacant lots. 

Deliberately deciding against having any tunes ready, everything was set up and with the help of Andrea my engineer and pro tools wizard, we kept the good bits and expanded with these instruments until I felt it was finished. It was all off the top of my head and my fingers created music like some automatic drawing that Austin Osman Spare might have conjured up on one dark and ritualistic night. I added the toy piano and christened it “The Toy Piano Mantra”.

Paul’s side features the previously unreleased “Ghosts of the Karelia Forest” recorded in 2006, a beautifully simple piano piece which again slowly builds, and distorts with added moog and so on. Paul says of the piece: “The higher harmonics of the tuned wine glasses used on this piece, sent the VU meters on the mixing desk at The Gossamer Dome studio into the red, but Producer Henry Priestman and I both liked what that distortion added to the atmosphere of the piece, so chose not to correct it. ….I await its use in a disturbing art house movie”.

When the single was first released, both Will and Paul were embarking on next / first instalments of their books; Will’s “Echoes” and Paul’s “Revolutionary Spirit: a post punk exorcism”- both are now long since out, selling well and receiving rapturous reviews both here and overseas. Releasing this one is firmly in honour-to-do territory for the label, and initial copies are available from Feral Child HQ but mostly via shops courtesy of Forte Distribution.