Jamie Hutchings - Making Water (2023)

Making Water is my fifth solo album. However it has little in common with my previous releases. You could describe these as ten ‘happenings’ as opposed to ten songs. I’ve written so many songs now, that I’ve long wanted to create an album of compositions that take an alternate path, one that is far away from the construction of traditional song writing. So I began recording improvised moments. For the first lot I mostly used my acoustic guitar; detuning and extracting what I could from it, often brutally, occasionally melodically, and mostly with little interest in pitch or timing, though it still felt intuitively musical in some way. From there I worked on starting some of the compositions from percussive instruments or non musical instruments. I wanted to lower myself down the well with a tiny match to see what I could see. Then from whatever I created, I would hear other things and add them. A bit like a blind folded painter. When I told another musician that I had no idea what I was doing and that sometimes I couldn’t work out if it was working or not, they replied ‘then you’re onto something special’. So I kept going.

In a first, it was recorded and mixed by myself, it was also predominantly performed by myself. My wife Cholena made her recording debut on vocals on three songs. Sometimes I guided her, sometimes she did what she heard. Reuben Wills and Jochen Gutsch were kind enough to contribute double bass and trumpet respectively on the track The Magic Wound. It was a very immersive challenge working on all of this stuff. It reminds me of when you might first get your head around abstract painting, shutting your eyes to recreating what you see, and instead going in hard and blind. A totally new way, and Making Water documents that.

All compositions by Jamie Hutchings
Produced and performed by Jamie Hutchings.
Mastered at Hanszek Audio by Chris Hanszek.
Photographs by Jared Harrison.
Layout by Brett Curzon.

Vocals on In The Middle Of A Field; A Bathtub, Secret Girl’s World and Night Soil by Cholena Hutchings.
Double bass on The Magic Wound by Reuben Wills.
Trumpets on The Magic Wound by Jochen Gutsch.