Aby
Vulliamy is getting political. The now Yorkshire-based viola player and musical
collaborator with the likes of Bill Wells, RM Hubbert, Hanna Tuulikki and other
artists in Glasgow’s low-key musical underground is talking about her first solo
album, Spin Cycle, which she launches with a show at the city’s Glad Café tonight.
A deeply personal collection of songs, Spin Cycle sees Vulliamy accompanied by school
assembly piano, viola, trombone and percussion. Yet for all the record’s
intimacy, she sounds like its follow-up might be a lot more out-there.
“I
feel like I want to make quite a radge second album,” Vulliamy says. “This is
the world I’ve brought my kids into, and I’ve got loads of ideas about that.”
Released
on the German Karaoke Kalk label, Spin Cycle mines the joyful highs and draining
lows of Vulliamy’s experience as a mother of two daughters. The result is a
thing of organic beauty, pulsed throughout by a quiet strength that comes from
Vulliamy’s experience working as a music therapist as much as being a mother
and artist. While she reckons she has played on almost forty albums, Vulliamy
only recently considered releasing an album of her own.
“The
idea of generating my own stuff didn’t occur to me for a long time,” she says.
“Without being self-deprecatory, I’ve always thought of myself as a social
musician. I’m not precious, and can go into a studio with someone and respond
to what they’re doing, and I feel I have the strength to add little sparks,
maybe, to someone else’s stuff, but releasing my own work was different. I
started to write music before I had words, and I couldn’t do lyrics without
wanting to notate it straight away, but then once I had my kids they all seemed
to come out very natural, and I could let it evolve into its own thing.”
Spin
Cycle was recorded over a four-year period, during which time Vulliamy was
bringing up her two daughters Elsa and Poppy with her personal and musical
partner George Murray, who plays trombone on Spin Cycle. There was upheaval too
as the family moved away from Glasgow.
“That
was the nature of my life at the time,” she says. “I’d jot things down when I
was awake breast-feeding in the middle of the night, and it would come out like
it wasn’t me.”
When
she performed in Bradford last Friday night, which is the nearest to where
Vulliamy and Murray now live, Elsa and Poppy were in attendance, with Elsa
making the between-song announcements from the stage. Both took part in a video
made to accompany one of the songs from Spin Cycle, This Precious Time, which
captures them effectively action painting in their back garden.
“I don’t know how much they fully understand
that they’re the inspiration for a lot of the record,” Vulliamy says, “but I
think they can see there’s something they can feel proud of. They’re really
proud of the video.”
Key
to the creation of Spin Cycle was producer Stevie Jones. He too has been a
back-seat musical engine for the likes of Aidan Moffat and Alasdair Roberts.
Jones has also provided scores for theatre, including the Traverse’s recent
production of Clare Duffy’s play, Arctic Oil. Aside from this, he has released
records of his own work as Sound of Yell, a loose-knit and ever-fluctuating
troupe which more often than not has included Vulliamy’s viola as a vital
component.
“It
was Stevie who said I should record these songs, just to document them,”
Vulliamy says, “but once we got the basics down, it was irresistible not to
finish them. There are two people this album couldn’t exist without. Stevie for
coaxing me out of my insecurities, and George, who is the father of the
children I’m writing about.”
Growing
up in Hull, Vulliamy began her own musical life from a young age.
“Music
was everywhere when I was a child,” says Vulliamy, who initially played violin,
but quickly discovered that “it didn’t suit me. The viola was much more
mellow.”
Vulliamy
received lessons free of charge, while a student of her father’s gave her piano
lessons for 50p a week. If Vulliamy were growing up today, it’s unlikely that
either option would be available to her. Again, this is where politics comes
in.
“It
kills me that it’s only rich kids and people who can afford to pay a
substantial amount of money for one lesson a week who can get that experience
now,” she says. “I used to go into schools to do stuff, and you’d ask what
instruments they had and what I had to bring, and too often schools had
nothing.”
Vulliamy
initially studied fine art.
“I
didn’t think I was a performer,” she says, “but I soon realised that how you
present your work is all part of a performance, and the people who could suck
up to the teachers were the ones who got top marks.”
Vulliamy
went to Guildhall School of Music, where she trained as a therapist. It was
while working as an occupational therapy assistant that she realised music
therapy could be an actual job. With Vulliamy and Murray moving to Glasgow, the
couple fell in with a fertile music scene that saw Vulliamy play in drummer
Alex Neilson’s large-scale troupe, Scatter, and with Hanna Tuulikki and Chris
Hladowski in spectral trio, Nalle.
Vulliamy
also played alongside Daniel Padden in The One Ensemble, and with Bill Wells in
his National Jazz Trio of Scotland. More recently, she has joined Orchestre
Tout Puissant Marcel Duchamp, the Swiss-based fourteen-piece World jazz ensemble
with roots in Edinburgh’s DIY scene. At tonight’s Glad Café show in Glasgow,
Vulliamy will play with a trio completed by Jones and Murray, as well as one or
two special guests from the album in what looks set to be a musical homecoming
of sorts.
“In
London it was all very genre-specific,” Vulliamy says, “but in Glasgow I got
involved in so many things like performance and theatre, and there was so much
cross-fertilisation. I remember coming from a classical background feeling
initially quite disabled, whereas in Glasgow everything was super-intuitive and
it didn’t really fit into any genre. That’s a bit like the music I do now. I
don’t fit in anywhere, really, and I quite like that.”
Aby Vulliamy
appears at the Glad Café, Glasgow, tonight. Spin Cycle is available now on
Karaoke Kalk Records.
The Herald, October 25th 2018
ends
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