Play ink1 hifi More music from ink1 Visit the ink1 site Music - Peter Dahl-Collins. Guitars - Michael Parker. Words and vocals - Laurie Fraser

Peter Dahl-Collins talks about Pop Idol:  

What are they trying to find? The next short term investment. They're not looking for anything musical because anyone who has any kind of musical integrity wouldn't go near it. Can you imagine Oasis or Radiohead doing that? My brother, the guitarist in crashtv, painted a picture many years ago of a bowler hat and cane. It's a rip-off of Matisse but he writes in nice, curly writing, "crap for the masses," because it's Charlie Chaplin...you know what I mean? That is what Pop Idol is. It's quick, it's easy, it makes someone vaguely salable for a year at most. If you win it, you're dead. You want to come about fourth or fifth, I think, because then you stand a chance.

I'd just be at the back looking embarrassed if I was on Pop Idol...and he'd say (Simon), "Peter, that's the worst fucking rubbish I've heard in my entire life", and I'd say, "Fair enough! Can I go home now? Do I get my train fair? I'll just take these sandwiches you've put out and stuff them in my pocket because I'm poor."

(Simon) "And frankly, Peter, you're too old for the industry."

Quote from Peter Dahl-Collins, November, 2004

Attempting to interview Peter Dahl-Collins, ink1's co-founder, is a bit like participating in a greased pig contest. Just about the time that you think you have a firm hold on him and he will stay focused on the topic at hand, he wriggles out of your grasp and escapes to such topics as Pop Idol, Frank Sinatra, ad agencies, French radio, web design, or herb tea. Yet, within the context of ink1's music, the rapid changes of topic are all relevant, interesting, and charming. When I finally told Peter that it might be a more interesting article to have him just relate his observations on life, he reminded me, "well, that's what ink1 is about...getting into other people's brains and twisting it a bit."

Part One of this article will focus on the core members of ink1, why and how ink1 was created, and the process behind the music. However, ink1 extends well beyond the three core members. The contributions of satellite members of the collaboration will be discussed in Part Two.

The specific details of how the global musical collaboration known as ink1 came about are fuzzy to Peter, "because I was off my head on drugs at the time." The drugs that interfere with his recollections were prescribed because he had just been released from a three month stay in the hospital. He suffered a massive pulmonary embolism in both lungs with clots in his heart due to a rare blood disease. His recovery was later complicated by contracting MRSA (an often fatal and difficult to treat illness) while hospitalized. This experience precipitated changes within ink1, as Peter looked for a way to express a different emotional experience in his music than he could express with his long-term band, crashtv. The first true ink1 track was produced some time earlier than that, when he realized his on-line friend, Laurie Fraser, would be a good person to add vocal and lyrics to the music. Peter (UK) recalls that he thought of Laurie (Canada) because he had heard a sample of her spoken lyrics through e-mail from guitarist Michael Parker (Holland). The first ink1 track, "To The Bar", was Peter and Laurie's collaborative effort. Michael Parker later joined to complete the core membership of ink1.

Both Peter and Laurie had been listening to the music of Recoil, a project of ex-Depeche Mode member, Alan Wilder. Peter describes it as "musically gorgeous...it's all very low key..big, slow, big beats and lots of attention to bass, and lots of guitar feedback." What Peter did not like about the project was that the music he loved was set below the spoken vocals of NY-based performance poets. Peter hates poetry. "I don't even like lyrics written out." He found the spoken vocals supplied by the poets pretentious and "too mad for the human ear, which is the only thing I'm equipped with, thank you."

He and Laurie agreed there had to be a way to do the same kind of music but talk about things that happen to people without the poetic pretensions. ink1's way of creating vocals grew out of this thought. ink1 is "like looking inside people's heads when you see someone on a bus or a train and they've got their head down, and they're thinking of something...it's like looking at what that thing is. There's something going on in there and we thought that might be a better angle to take, rather than all this pompous sort of great ideas...no, just think ordinary people and ordinary things and those unusual thoughts that everyone has, like dreams...everybody is totally bloody freaked out in their dreams. They might go to the office during the day and do a really boring bit of typing but when they're asleep, they're meditating they're flying, they're building a huge flying contraption that can't possibly work in real life...everybody's interesting if you look closely."

Peter notes that the song "Sweet Dreams" is closest to the original ink1 idea. At the time Laurie recorded the audio, she didn't know it would be incorporated in an ink1 track. Laurie had sent Peter an audio CD "get well card" while he was in hospital recuperating from the embolism and MRSA. Peter later wrote music that summed up his feelings about that experience. "'Sweet Dreams' was exactly how I felt when in hospital...kind of lonely, helpless, but really quite contented about the fact that I didn't have to do anything. My only job in hospital was to be alive...that's all I had to do. When you're outside here in the real world, you've got to pay bills, you gotta do all this and everything else, but in hospital, you only have to do one thing...not be dead. And it's really quite comforting at night...there's all these little blinking lights and funny bleeps going on...and it's quite beautiful, and it's quiet, and it's warm, and I'm safe...and that's the music." After Peter listened to Laurie's get well CD again he thought, "...there might be an opportunity there to make her sound like a mad stalker. She's perfectly okay with this, but it was kind of funny-like, because it was turning something very heartfelt and caring into...well, I felt kind of guilty about doing that." Despite Peter's guilt, "Sweet Dreams" comes across with an intimacy that the other ink1 tracks do not.

Michael Parker's guitar work adds another dimension to Peter's electronically produced music. Michael works with his own music as Noise Seduction. Peter loved Michael's music when he was introduced to it by Laurie, and it seemed natural that when Peter wished to extend the project, he asked Michael to join them. Michael is less visible as a member of ink1, but his contribution to the atmosphere and film-like soundscapes of ink1 tunes is powerful and recognizable.

After the pre-hospital ink1 tracks, which were oriented toward flights of fancy, the themes began to be more oriented toward the dark side of what is in people's heads. Laurie's work in particular took a dark turn. "Switch" relates the thoughts of a woman who is losing her identity in a particularly frightening way. "Car" tells the tale of a female serial killer on the hunt. The tracks are different from Laurie's initial tracks because the stories she tells are less connected to her own experience and depend more on her unerring ability to authentically project herself into the heads of others. Of Laurie and the dark turn in her work, which was quite intentional, Peter says, "...when Laurie speaks, she's already telling you to be scared. She has great authority."

Laurie is often compared to the performance artist, Laurie Anderson. They have similar sounding speaking voices. However, Peter is quick to point out that the resemblance is superficial, because ink1 does not create performance art, nor wish to. Vocals are not "performed". All ink1 contributors are instructed not to read or to act their lyrics, and scripts are not allowed. Allowing scripts and acting would take the vocal tracks too close to the performance poetry that Peter abhors. When any of the members of ink1 voices a vocal, he or she can use written notes to help them structure the piece, but that is the most assistance that is allowed.

Satellite members of ink1 are contributors who voice one or two tracks each. Often, these contributions are much like the first-person glances into personal experiences that Laurie's early lyrics explored. The continuity in the project provided by the participation of Peter, Laurie, and Michael allows the work of ink1 to be built around a core sense of identity, but the contributions of the satellite members also allows the music to stretch beyond that identity to incorporate thoughts and experiences its core members might never have anticipated.

The contributions of the satellite artists involved with ink1 will be discussed in a few weeks in the article "ink1, part 2". Peter Dahl-Collins reveals his thoughts on the unique talents and voices who have contributed to ink1's two CDs. (For further information about ink1 or CD releases, be sure to visit the ink1 and ink1interactive web sites.)