KIM: ‘So, why ‘Clodhopping’? It’s an unusual title…’
Definition: “Clodhopper – someone who works on ploughed land, a country rustic or, literally, one who leaps from clod to clod.”
D.E. : ‘It was my wife, Carol, who came up with the title for this track. It was an early summer evening, I’d been developing the piece all day, our wee cottage was throbbing, and Carol came back from her evening walk in our wild northern hills just in time to listen to the finished version. She bopped around the home-studio, still in her clodhopper boots, and declared: “Perfect! Let’s call it Clodhopping!” And so the name stuck.’
KIM: ‘What inspired this piece?’
D.E. : ‘Actually, the main theme for this piece – like many of the tracks on the forthcoming Midnight Sun album –was written a very long time ago… It all started back in the USSR, in 1989 when I was rehearsing with the band FoxBox. With just a few days to go before our first 1,5 hours live gig together, things were pretty intense. You see, after recording the “Pereplanirovka” album with Panika, bass guitarist Viktor Mikheyev and I were looking for how to take things further, since we knew we wanted to go into instrumental jazz-rock fusion, but how? Panika was what you’d call now a jazz-grunge band – well, back in the Soviet Union we’d never heard of grunge, of course, but we knew all about the gritty, dirty sound as we had to use soviet made instruments which, frankly speaking, were not very good! Anyhow, Viktor brought in Roma Dubinnikov from Yabloko, an ‘official’ folk-rock band, as well as sitar player Sergei Gasanov and a couple of other guys. So the six of us had ten days to get to know each other and come up with full show! As you can imagine, improvisation was the name of the game! It was in one of our breaks that this riff came to me. In the end, we didn’t use it at the gig, and the band sadly collapsed later in 1991– along with the whole of the USSR!’
KIM: ‘Would you say the track was influenced by any particular band or musician?
D.E. : ‘It was back in the 80’s, and I remember two albums in particular which really revolutionized the music scene, introducing new sounds, and forging a new kind of jazz-funk-pop fusion. I’m talking about Miles Davis ‘Tutu’ and Peter Gabriel’s ‘So.’ Actually, these were only available on the black market in the Soviet Union, on reel-to-reel tapes, and the police could have busted you for listening to them… But anyhow, I would say they definitely inspired me.’
KIM: ‘Can you tell us a bit about the music. How would you describe this track?’
D.E.: ‘Well, I’d say it definitely combines elements of jazz and rock, and the rhythm is an upbeat funk. But there’s also some hip-hop in there, which is why for me it feels like a dance track, and why the title Clodhopping suits it. I’d initially recorded this track with programmed drums, but Koos stepped in a couple of months ago and re-recorded it with live drums, which makes a world of difference as it really gives the rhythm section more punch, more kick.’
KIM: ‘Thanks, Dmitry, we look forward to hearing the stories behind some of the other tracks on Midnight Sun!’
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