Chris Gill and Band of Rain: Home
Welsh Mountains - UK
February 2010
"Carving Space and Time into manageable pieces"
I am a multi instrumentalist,as well as a Librarian... But my first love is the guitar…In particular lead guitar.
Over the years I have been involved in many bands and projects….And I have lived and played in the USA - Germany (Where I got in to synthesisers), Norway and of course The UK where the mountains of Wales are now my home.
I think that being exposed to different cultures and places has influenced my music enormously, and it is the memory of all these things that come out of my head and on to a CD.
My main works so far have been the 3 BAND OF RAIN albums:
DEEP SPACE 2004
GARLANDS 2005 and
ARTS & ALLUREMENTS 2007.
ARTS & ALLUREMENTS features BILLY FLEMING on drums and the lyrics/vocal melodies and performance thereof was by SHARON LESLIE.Two great people whom I shall always be grateful to…. It had been my intention to bring out an album every year if I could, and, in a way that is what I have done, but not as Band of Rain! I have been very fortunate to have worked with some extremely talented individuals on their musical sojourns.
There is quite a long list, but the highlights for the past 2 years or so have been:
DR SILBURYS LIQUID BRAINSTEM
This is a double space album spectacular written by Steve Palmer of MOOCH. He invited me to perform some of the vocals along with folk like Cyndee Lee Rule and Bridget Wishart.
MOOCH 1967 and a half...
(can't find the symbol on keyboard!)
MOOCH 1968
Both these albums make up a trilogy (the first being 1966) re visiting the sounds of the psychedelic 60’s. I performed the vocals on these 2 albums, and they were enormous fun to do….
THE NONEXISTENT (band name) (CD as yet untitled)
This is another double space rock instrumental album. It has Andy “Bonham “Hole on drums
Steve Palmer on bass and keyboards, and myself on lead guitar and keyboards.
We have just finished recording the parts for this album, and we hope to have it released in the spring of 2010.
We also have about an hours worth of a live gig we performed at AMBIENT LIVE in Burton On Trent in Nov 2008. Soon as we can get the time we will put some selected film up on YOU Tube and our various other sites.
THE PAGAN YEAR
Another spectacular album from MOOCH.This album will be released on 15th Feb 2010. It features such people again as Bridget Wishart - Cyndee Lee Rule and Alex Pym.
I did mainly backing vocals on this CD, but got to play a bit of guitar as well!
LUMINOUS WINGS and UNSEEN THINGS by BECK SIAN.
Difficult to describe how utterly pleased I was to get to work on this album.Beck has the most incredible voice, and her own songs as well as some of the old traditional songs she has “Beckified” are quite wonderful.I was the engineer and co producer on this album, and I got to write a piece of music for her, that Beck put her spin on, and it is really great, you really must check her out.
Beck and all the other people I am talking about here can be found in my top friends.
Beck and I are currently working on the 4th BAND of RAIN album, which we had a title for, but found that a close friend was about to release an album of the same name so we have to come up with something else!!
I am so looking forward to getting that CD finished !
Beck and I will also be working on a full album as well as a Pagan Christmas album .But they will be as BECK SIAN.
There are 2 other CDs in the pipeline, but we are still in the discussion stage so I won’t mention them here just yet… 2010 looks like being my busiest year…Other band members on board are
DIANE FOX – Bass
TIM WALKER - Drums