{"id":31372,"date":"2026-08-12T05:30:53","date_gmt":"2026-08-12T09:30:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=31372"},"modified":"2026-08-13T10:11:06","modified_gmt":"2026-08-13T14:11:06","slug":"billy-fullers-kosmische-fragments-part-2-of-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2026\/08\/12\/billy-fullers-kosmische-fragments-part-2-of-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Billy Fuller’s Kosmische ‘Fragments’ (Part 2 of 3)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Continued from Part One<\/a>…<\/i><\/p>\n

\"\"Something you just said made me think about this. When I talk to artists, it often comes up that they consider sequencing to be nearly as important as songwriting. <\/b><\/p>\n

It\u2019s the final bit of composing, really, after you\u2019ve made a set of songs. Sequencing is everything.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve got two younger kids, and now it\u2019s just like the \u201850s again, isn\u2019t it? It\u2019s just about tunes, singles, songs. And I get that; I understand that they just want the bangers. But it\u2019s very quick, isn\u2019t it? It\u2019s like, \u201cI don\u2019t want to go through somebody\u2019s sad song on an album.\u201d<\/p>\n

I do come from an era where albums were still really important. I\u2019ve always been into albums. And so I thought, \u201cWell, if I\u2019m going to make an album, I want it to have that feel of it having a narrative and something like a feeling.\u201d<\/p>\n

Because the tracks on <\/b>Fragments<\/b><\/i> are the product of you overdubbing \u2013 doing something and then coming back and adding to it \u2013 do you ever find that you\u2019re unsure of when a piece is done?<\/b><\/p>\n

[I know] just by feeling. Knowing when to stop is one thing, and it\u2019s also knowing when to remove. A prime example on Fragments<\/i> is the fourth tune, which is one of those incidental songs called \u201cBudfrey Robbed Alexander.\u201d Basically, that is just an acoustic guitar track on a tune that I was making. It had about 15 channels of audio: drums and bass and keyboards. But I was like, \u201cThis isn\u2019t landing.\u201d<\/p>\n

And then, accidentally when I was overdubbing the acoustic [guitar], I had the speakers going in the room as well. So all the sound was going into the soundhole of the acoustic. And then with this compression that I added, I realized that the single acoustic guitar channel was the song<\/i>. So I just deleted the other 14 channels of chuff. And it was like, wow<\/i>. It was a really nice moment. It felt like what it must be like to live inside an acoustic guitar, on stage with a band going inside of it; it felt really organic.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m into things that sound organic. For me, the first Beak> album [2009\u2019s Beak><\/i>] sounds like we\u2019re crawling out the mud. We\u2019re coming out the ground, and you can smell the soil and the wet grass. I like that kind of feeling. Not being folk music or anything; just a real dirty, organic, coming-out-the-ground.<\/p>\n

I love that imagery. Do you mean to communicate thoughts, ideas or feelings with these instrumental tracks? <\/b><\/p>\n

Like anything with music, they\u2019re going to mean something different to everybody. All of the pieces of music on that album mean something; each one means something different to me: how I was feeling at the time, the state of mind I was in, whether I was happy or sad or whatever. So I\u2019m very aware of it, but when it becomes somebody else\u2019s listening experience, it\u2019s very much [up to] that person and their personal take on it. And I think that\u2019s really precious and important; that\u2019s how it should remain.<\/p>\n

Especially [with] instrumental music \u2013 because there\u2019s not much lyric on my record \u2013 it\u2019s gonna invoke a different [reaction for each listener]. You\u2019re not being spoon-fed what this music\u2019s about, so it is down to the listener to go, \u201cThis makes me feel like I want to go for a bike ride\u2026\u201d or whatever. There\u2019s 16 pieces of music on Fragments<\/i>, and it\u2019s all done in 36 minutes. It\u2019s quick, but there\u2019s a lot of information in that short time.<\/p>\n

\"\"If there\u2019s such thing as a typical method of composition in rock and pop, it\u2019s typically based on sitting down with a guitar or a keyboard. But you built many of these songs with bass guitar as the foundation. Since you\u2019re skilled on multiple instruments, what led you to make that choice? <\/b><\/p>\n

Because I am most definitely primarily a bass player; I always have been. The first time I got into music, it was the bass I would listen to.<\/p>\n

I was the youngest of three boys. We used to live in a council house, a two-bedroom house in Bristol, and we used to share a bedroom. I was nine years younger than my eldest brother, so I must have been annoying to be around! But my eldest brother would come home with loads of Motown, soul records and the Jam; we loved<\/i> the Jam. Getting into bass players around that time in the late \u201870s, early \u201880s, Bruce Foxton was a brilliant bass player.<\/p>\n

I could hear it, but I didn\u2019t know it was called a bass guitar. I didn\u2019t know what it looked like, but I knew what it sounded<\/i> like. And [my brother] would play soul [records], so I was hearing [James] Jamerson without knowing who Jamerson was. And then when I finally did \u2013 I was about 14 \u2013 I was like, \u201cI want a bass guitar for my birthday!\u201d And then I just sat on the edge of the bed playing along to cassettes and records, and I taught myself how to play; I never had a lesson.<\/p>\n

For me, everything is rooted [in that]. The way I hear things is all rooted around those four strings on a bass, on that piece of wood. And I find it really grounding. It\u2019s a good place to start, because it\u2019s the link-up between the rhythm, the melody and the harmony of a song. So I find that it seems very natural to start on a bass guitar.<\/p>\n

Some artists create their music for a specific target audience, and others turn very much inward and make music completely for themselves. Where do you fall on that continuum? <\/b><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t have an age demographic that I\u2019m thinking of when I\u2019m making music. Can you imagine that feeling? \u201cOkay, 35 to 55. Here we go.\u201d Which [laughs] is probably where I do live, to be honest.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not writing to any demographic, that\u2019s for sure. My eldest son is now 15, but he was about 7 when I did the song \u201cPirate Ship\u201d on the album. It\u2019s just an instrumental, with bowed upright [bass], an electric bass and a little bit of noise. He came in when I was listening back to it, and he said, \u201cDad, Dad, this sounds like a pirate ship creaking across the ocean.\u201d And I was like, \u201cPirate Ship!\u201d That was the working title that went in, and it stuck. And even if I listen to it now, I\u2019m like, \u201cWell, kids know a lot, don\u2019t they?\u201d They\u2019re completely open. He called it \u201cPirate Ship,\u201d and he\u2019s right: It is<\/i> a pirate ship.<\/p>\n

Speaking of upright bowed bass, that instrument is <\/b>very<\/b><\/i> prominent on the final track, \u201cLast Train to Yatton.\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n

That\u2019s four<\/i> double basses. With one Korg synthesizer. It was all complete, and then I was like, \u201cIt\u2019s just missing something.\u201d One of the last things I did for the album was to get that synthesizer out and put that phase swell in it, to get some movement going.<\/p>\n

Click here to continue\u2026<\/i><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Continued from Part One… Something you just said made me think about this. When I talk to artists, it often comes up that they consider sequencing to be nearly as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":31369,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,41,43,49],"tags":[5939,5938],"class_list":["post-31372","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ambient","category-interview","category-krautrock","category-new-release","tag-beak","tag-billy-fuller","cat-5-id","cat-41-id","cat-43-id","cat-49-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31372","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31372"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31372\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32209,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31372\/revisions\/32209"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31369"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}