A Head Full of Wishes is a site for Galaxie 500, Luna, Damon & Naomi, Dean & Britta and Dean Wareham. With news, articles and lists of releases and past and future shows.
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Damon & Naomi's lockdown album - A Sky Record
As seems to be the way with the AHFoW Substack, this post is being thrown together too late, and too quickly so is a bit of a muddle - I apologise. At the end of the post I’ll put up a bunch of links to things I would/should have used if I’d given myself the time that this post deserved. They’re well worth reading, watching, or listening to.
Five years ago today, on the 23rd June 2021, Damon & Naomi premiered their album A Sky Record with a video of a performance of the songs that made up the album. A performance made in front of nobody because we were still in the grip of COVID. The video was made at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts and is still available to watch in full.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOOhYuaGoXI
The album had a strange gestation and release, recorded before and during the pandemic, and released first as a video, then as a booklet/download, much later as a CD (in Japan) and finally as an LP.
The album was started before COVID in Damon & Naomi’s home studio, and then was taken to Japan for Michio Kurihara to do his bit, and then the pandemic changed things. The lyrics were post pandemic and can’t help but be heard in that context, and because of that the album can’t help but reflect its time more than most.
We started [it], like, 2018, or early 2019. We intended to finish it in 2020, so it started in the normal world (laughs). And then it just happened to be finished in the middle of this insane world we’re living in now, so it definitely was influenced by it.
We’d already had a sense of wanting to do something, to us, that felt a little different before this happened, and then I think it was almost like the whole lockdown thing underscored the mood we were in already, which was to try and do something that was kind of peaceful and gentle.
A Golden Sky: In Conversation with Damon & Naomi
June 2021
The performance wasn’t streamed live, it had been recorded a few weeks earlier on the 2nd June and edited into a beautifully presented piece. It was premiered on the 23rd June at 11pm UK time on YouTube for free (although donations to the museum were encouraged).
Because it wasn’t a live set but a series of individual performances it was intercut with little interview pieces and narration. Giving the songs and the process context.
Naomi: Well we think of the album as beginning when Damon fell down the stairs in London.
Damon: It wasn't so bad it was more comical it was like the beginning of a romantic comedy. I fell down the stairs.
Naomi: And we had a show a big show that night in London.
Damon: But I was fine and it was very dramatic and we did cancel a show and they gave me morphine at the hospital which I'd never had. It was very rock and roll the whole thing was very rock and roll.
Naomi: But it meant that he had to recover in Berlin which is where we were next and that those days off gave him time to go to a flea market and he found these amazing German records there.
Damon: So for a change I went record shopping.
Naomi: That was his that was his recovery I don't know if the hospital said this is what we prescribed.
Damon: What do I find in the flea markets in Berlin? I find all these records from the 70s that i've never seen and they're all on a label called Sky Records.
I was at both the cancelled London show, and the show in Berlin - you can read about that on AHFoW here.
A few days after the video was premiered the release of the album was announced as a booklet, called “A Sky Record Companion”, and a download with the release date set for 6th August.
Every audio format has its strengths and weaknesses… but those without liner notes are really missing out. We thought we’d take advantage of the persistence of physical media for words and images and print a booklet to accompany what will be, inevitably, a digital album for many.
August 2021
Just before the album’s release a video for the track The Aftertime:
The video for “The Aftertime” was directed by Naomi and fashion designer and artist Gary Graham. “Gary Graham and I have worked together for almost 15 years,” says Naomi. “I wear his clothing every day and on stage and I have collaborated with him on many videos for his brand, GaryGraham422. ‘The Aftertime’ is a song about the kind of freedom you can give back to yourself, after emerging from a challenging situation — be it a relationship or a year and a half of lockdown…”
Gary adds, “The original idea was about a squatter who begins overlaying her own imaginary world onto an abandoned building. I love the interior landscapes and the seascape and the castle wallpaper — our castles, the interior/exterior worlds we occupy. Naomi’s voice is like an heirloom siren call, the chanteuse as trickster from a faraway place. That place is where Damon & Naomi live, a place that offers a new hypnotic understanding of time, of getting to see how long the sun lasts.”
Damon & Naomi discuss the influences behind new album & "The Aftertime" video (BrooklynVegan)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKd6XeIQDK0
In a different age A Sky Record Companion would have been an insert in the LP although it was so much more than most LP inserts were:
The companion is a lovely 48 page booklet, sewn together and contains a number of essays, lots of pictures, and the album’s lyrics.
- Richard Youngs writes about touring with Damon & Naomi, and specifically the tour where Damon fell down the stairs and ended up in hospital.
- Damon writes about Sky Records and A Sky Record.
- Michio Kurihara writes about his contribution.
- Soichiro Nakamura of Peace Music writes aboout his studio and recording.
- A collection of lovely photos of Tsuruga, Japan by Susanne Sasic.
- Naomi writes about pandemic lyrics.
- Lindsay Zoladz writes about time… and “quarantime”.
- Jarvis Cocker writes about The Shipping Forecast.
It’s a good read but also a beautiful artefact and well worth grabbing a copy!
But when the mood of everything is overwhelming, what does it make sense to write about? There were large and small losses for everyone; I had my share of both. On zoom meetings with musician friends we asked, are you writing lyrics? And everyone we spoke to, at least in the first half of the year, said they were too bewildered to proceed.
Naomi Yang - Writing lyrics in a pandemic (A Sky Record, 2021)
The Shipping Forecast is something you absorb unconcsiously if you live in the UK. It's been on the airwaves since 1911. Technically speaking, it's a weather guide designed to help sailors on the high seas but it helps people navigate in other ways than that.
Jarvis Cocker - The Shipping Forecast (A Sky Record, 2021)
The front cover of the book was a photo by Susanne Sasic, a friend of Damon and Naomi who joined them on a tour of Japan and took a series of photos in Tsuraga while the band were soundchecking. The booklet has lots more photos in the series:
These photographs are souvenirs of the briefest visit, images of handful of melancholy city blocks ad some eccentric arhitectural forms.
Susanne Sasic - Photographs of Tsuraga, Japan (A Sky Record, 2021)
On 12th August Damon & Naomi played a live show, this time with an audience, at Baby’s All Right in Brooklyn - I haven’t found any pics or clips or reviews of this show but would love to if anyone was there. My first post-lockdown shows were very strange experiences and I imagine this was too.
The album finally got its first physical AND listenable incarnation when a CD was released by Japanese label KiliKiliVilla towards the end of 2021.
The CD booklet had the song lyrics in English, but tucked inside was also a folded sheet with the lyrics in Japanese.
Damon & Naomi popped some copies of the CD on their web site in May 2022 and I bought my copy then for $20 … and just to make the shipping seem less outrageous I also bought a “A Sky Record” T-shirt at the same time. The T-shirt was white, I (almost) never wear anything white because … well, it’s not black! Also, owning almost nothing that is white means I don’t have the skills required to wash white things without them going grey. So, I now have a grey Damon & Naomi T-shirt.
In July 2022 A Sky Record was released as an LP and I finally had somewhere to put the “Companion”.
Further reading, watching, and listening
- Damon & Naomi’s page on the record has some reading, but more importantly has links to where you can buy the album and the companion - you should buy both.
- There’s a wonderfully in-depth two part interview with Damon and Naomi on Sun 13 - A Golden Sky: In Conversation with Damon & Naomi – Part 1 and Part 2.
- Damon & Naomi discuss the influences behind new album & “The Aftertime” video with BrooklynVegan
- The Free Association podcast had an interview which was quite heavy on Sky Records
- The Aquarium Drunkard podcast also featured Damon & Naomi mp3 link
- Ben Chasny and Damon & Naomi Dive Deep on The Recording Process (Talkhouse)
- From Books To Music, Renaissance Couple Damon & Naomi Reflect On Their Decades-Long Partnership
- A Fevers of the Mind Interview with Damon Krukowski (Damon & Naomi, Galaxie 500, Magic Hour)
- RIYL podcast Episode 506: Naomi Yang (of Damon & Naomi and Galaxie 500)