Instrumental History #4: Akito Spokes (1997-1998)

In 1997 i got a call from Matt Cummins (guitarist) asking if i'd like to start playing together again (i'd previously played bass in a short-term group with Matt on guitar/vocals and drummer Ben Winn on a break from University - we'd known each other for some years), so we got together to play at a rehearsal space behind a record shop, just Matt on guitar and myself on drums. After a couple of weeks of playing together, i played Matt some of the instrumental music i'd been recording and we took that as a starting point for our new direction. In the flat upstairs from the rehearsal space, Antony Finch (who had just started to play bass, having previously played guitar) had been listening to us play for a few weeks and came down to play one night, leading to a few weeks as a three piece before adding drummer and old friend Louisa Knight, with me switching to guitar. The group rehearsed every week for a year before taking some of the 40 tunes we had to play in front of people, leading to a surprisingly welcome reception.

My main interest at this point was having the two guitars play very similar or corresponding patterns with different notes, and that appeared in much of the music i wrote for the group, a sort of stereo chord in many ways. The first track ('Value and Cost') on the 'EPs and Others' compilation is one such tune, recorded live in the summer of 1998, much of which is based on parts that would usually be found in classical music and played by strings.