Calmwaters

We've written several songs about water over the years. In 2001, we had Cloudburst, then on our last album there was Turn the Tide, and now Calmwaters. I suspect it's because I'm a geographer at heart, and like colouring in maps of oxbow lakes, and that sort of thing. And the National Geographic is a particularly good magazine.

So this brings us to Calmwaters: a song about taking life gently, and drifting on the ocean waves... No hidden messages - even if you play it backwards (you may also find that this makes it sound better, too). No profound psychobabble - even if you play it backwards. Nothing like that. Just a gentle and drifting tribute to being lazy. Obviously X-Press 2 did something similar and rather better a few years ago, but I'm not sure that's a problem.

In a way, this song is the exact opposite of Turn the Tide, but with all the same watery references, just to hammer the message home. Well, recycling is good, you see?

Simon did most of the production on this one, using drum samples from an old drum machine. We then went back later on, and added loads of reverb and flanging to the drum sounds, to beef them up a bit. And then we went back again, and took all the sound effects off again.

Proof, if it were needed, that the path to the truth is a long and windy one.

That's windy as in bendy, not as in gusty. Or as in flatulent. Although it might have been that too...

Red Shadows

One of the essential tourist trips in Berlin is East Side Gallery. Located alongside the river, just a couple of minutes walk from Ostbahnhof, it is the largest part of what is left of the Berlin Wall.

To walk alongside it is an incredible experience. Today, it is both daubed and scrawled with graffiti, some official, some added later by tourists; some beautiful and inspiration, some utterly pointless. I think the one that struck me the most was about two-thirds of the way along, where someone had written two words on some painting recording Germany's transition through the twentieth century. Those two words? "Llanelli rule". Indeed. And why not? The Berlin Wall: the seemingly untraversable schism, running through the centre of a previously great city. Oh, and by the way, here's my favourite rwgbi team.

Even though it's just a short section - about a kilometre in all - it's still surrounded by oppressive concrete blocks, and somehow the West becomes completely invisible behind the wall, even painted in vivid colours, with BMWs driving past, and aeroplanes flying overhead to some unknown country far away.

I lived in Berlin for just over three months, but at the risk of over-egging the already eggy pudding, this was the one experience that really inspired me more than any other. And the song is a pretty accurate account of how I felt the first time I went there. Nothing has disappeared, perhaps physically, but mentally there is still a very clear wall. But everything has changed - I've lost count of the times that Germans, both Ossis and Wessis have told me that there is no difference between them. I don't think even they believe it.

We would like to apologise for this entry; we appear to have been invaded by the travel supplement. Normal service will resume next time.