Judge Smith (ex Van der Graaf Generator) releases a new album

TOWERS OPEN FIRE is a collaboration between JUDGE SMITH, veteran song-writer and co-founder of prog legends Van der Graaf Generator, and guitarist / composer BRAKEMAN. Since the late 1960s Judge has created a wide variety of innovative and entertaining music including 13 studio albums and DVDs, while Brakeman was a Bass player with such bands as Discobolus and Jeffery Lee Pierce, before turning his attention to the guitar and developing the unique open-tuned technique that gives TOWERS OPEN FIRE its distinctive sound.

Other musicians featured on this, their first album, are GERRY BARNETT, Electric Cellist, and TIM GALLAGHER, Percussion.

Judge and Brakeman are Songwriters first and foremost, although the collaboration with Brakeman has been Judge’s first long-term, two person, Lyricist & Composer, song-writing partnership since the mid-1970s. However both men also have very distinctive performance styles and the Duo perform live under the name ‘Towers Open Fire’. They make Acoustic music which has little connection with either European or American Folk traditions, sometimes being a variety of Acoustic Rock music, at others, pursuing their own version of the Art Song. The Lyrics tend to be witty and literate, while the tunes are invariably catchy and memorable.

All the musicians involved live in Glastonbury or nearby, and the album was recorded relatively rapidly in Judge’s home studio, before being mixed at Pat Collier’s Perry Vale Studios in London. Brakeman, who was once the proprietor of a London Guitar shop, uses many different instruments, but these songs were almost all entirely recorded using the same classical guitar.

In common with many Glastonbury musicians, Judge and Brakeman endorse ‘432 tuning’, in which the note ‘A’ is tuned to 432 Hz as opposed to standard ‘Concert Pitch’ of 440 Hz. This system has its origin in mystical mathematics, and Judge was initially inclined to dismiss it as hippie nonsense, but he quickly realised that, when singing in this tuning, his vocal technique, range and stamina were greatly enhanced. Who’d have thought it?

This album was completed before the Corona Virus struck, but the song-writing partnership continues and the majority of what will become their second album has already been written, if not yet recorded.

Judge and Brakeman would like to thank Gerry Barnett, Tim Gallagher, Fiona Lindsay, Samia Dance, Rik James, Sam Hargreaves, and the photographers Seán Kelly, Noel Dacey, Tommy Clark and Steven Hargraves. 

credits

releases June 12, 2020

JUDGE SMITH – LYRICS (Tracks 1 – 10) & MUSIC (Track 4)
BRAKEMAN – MUSIC (Tracks 1 – 3 & 5 – 11) LYRICS (Track 11).

JUDGE – LEAD VOX
BRAKEMAN – GUITARS, BACKING VOX.
GERRY BARNETT – CELLO (Tracks 3, 5, 8 & 10)
TIM GALLAGHER – PERCUSSION (Tracks 2 & 3)

MIXED by PAT COLLIER (Perry Vale Studios)
GRAPHIC DESIGN by FIONA COX
PHOTOGRAPHY by SEÁN KELLY, NOEL DACEY, TOMMY CLARK & STEVEN HARGRAVES