Record Store Day 2018: Clear Vinyl Release of Elton John vs. Pnau’s “Good Morning To The Night” LP

The 2012 album reached #1 in the UK and will be available for the first time on vinyl in the US on Saturday.

Pnau, the Australian electronica band comprised of Nick Littlemore and Peter Mayes, released their first album in 1999 – the same year, by the way, that Elton John received his Grammy Legend Award.

Years later, while touring Australia in 2007, Elton included the duo’s third album on his Sydney record store shopping list. Within months he had offered them, off the strength of that eponymous effort (which he called, “the greatest record I’ve heard in ten years”) a unique opportunity: to go through the master tapes of his studio and live albums recorded between 1969 and1977 and rework the material as they sought fit.

For the next three years, Nick and Peter found themselves sample-deep in Elton material. Material that was, in large part, released before they were born.

 

the result is good morning to the night – an album that cannot be described as simply a “remixing” of elton’s material. it is more of a re-awakening. using hundreds of elements from dozens of songs, the eight tracks are continual mash-ups that quickly create their own identity while still honoring the source material… most of it culled from deep within the more obscure corners of elton’s catalogue.

for example, the track black icy stare begins with a backing vocal line from the 40-second mark of a 1974 b-side, cold highway, before hooking into the horn line from caribou‘s you’re so static. as the beat pushes forward, a lesley guitar line out of …static chases an organ, taken from …highway‘s chorus, as the song slides square into the rhythm section and lead vocal from the chorus to solar prestige a gammon. the fact that all of these songs happen to come from the same album sessions should not lead the listener to think that the same consideration was taken throughout the rest of the good morning to the night – it is the only song to be so constructed.

EJ.com: There must have been moments where you went, “Well, I never thought that was an option.”

NL: Well, none of it was an option. That’s the whole point. I’m a very introspective person and throughout my whole career before meeting Elton I’d think about and dream about things I’d love to have done. But they’re just not realistic, you know. Especially coming from Australia, you just don’t have the option of so many things. For a start, the tyranny of distance disallows so many options that would be an option had you lived in London or New York. In Australia, you are limited to who comes and sees you on the other side of the planet. I never could have imagined that this could happen to me. I certainly don’t deserve it. But, I’ll take it and I’ll work my butt off to try and pay it back…or pay forward, rather, the compliment.

EJ.com: Elton’s beside himself over the project; he can’t say enough about it.

NL: He’s so generous to us about all that, you know? If we look at it factually, this record was already made over a series of years in the 70s. We just re-sequenced it, but with such infinitesimal detail that we’re sequencing every single note of every bass and every guitar and every voice. But essentially it was all there. It’s just two more years cutting up and doing all the stuff. These records were made so quickly back then; we look incredibly slow in comparison. But the job we were doing is quite different than just going into a room and playing instruments.

EJ.com: Does everything we hear on your album come off the old records, or has Pnau brought external things to it?

NL: There are some sounds and things that we’ve added, but we made sure that all the instruments we added were of a similar vintage. We used a synthesizer that was from 1976, which features on quite a few of Elton’s records. We picked one up and got it restored. We tried the same thing with all the sound effects and all the processes and things we used. Obviously, computers were involved but we tried to make them as transparent as possible. We really wanted to imagine it as though we had walked into the sessions in the Chateau or wherever and said, “Okay guys, those songs are amazing and we love them. Let’s just try looping up this bar…and Davey can you just play this over and over again…and then let’s lay this in and lay that in?” We wanted to control the band, but we did it through computers and technology and traveling back in time. But, essentially, in our minds, we’re in the room with the band. Producing the production.

EJ.com: Did you come away with an appreciation of people like producer Gus Dudgeon?

NL: Oh my god. Gus Dudgeon was a genius. And I don’t throw that word around a lot. There are only two that I know of – Sir Elton and Gus. Listening to Gus’s production and the detail and the way he would glue things together. From my perspective of working on records these days – you work up a couple mics and you record a drumbeat…and it doesn’t sound like Nigel Olsson playing in 1973. I mean, there are things they did back then they still floor me every time I hear them. You know, you’re hearing history. It’s still just drums, bass, guitar, keys, and vocals but somehow it’s just so much more than that. Obviously, there’s the melody and the harmony and all the rest of it, but there’s something magical going on. I don’t know how to describe it. It’s such a trip. The record wouldn’t have sounded anywhere near as good or anything even like what it does sound like without the dedication and work of such professionals as Gus Dudgeon.

EJ.com: There must have been a good many things you unearthed when you drilled down deeper into the track layers.

NL: That’s what I found astounding. You’d mute a few parts and you’d listen to just the rhythm section… Like on Madman Across The Water, you’ve got a punk record and on some other song you’ve got a hip-hop record – and these things are years before these genres existed. It’s kind of astounding. Elton would so easily and so freely move across genres. Within a given verse or even a couple of bars he would be moving from Africa to classical music to jazz back to folk and bluegrass and country – and he does it so effortlessly, just with the touch of a hand and a slight inflection in the voice. No one can do that. I’ve never witnessed that before. It feels more natural than so many bits of music that become “styles.” That become within the confines of something and I think the whole idea of music is that you can’t confine it. And Elton is the perfect example of that because he moves so effortlessly in and out of everything…every historical movement as well as every future thing.

EJ.com: Telegraph To The Afterlife seems to have revealed Elton’s inner Pink Floyd.

NL: Yeah, that’s pretty wild. I know the “hello” evokes it with the Comfortably Numb and everything, but that wasn’t a conscious thing for us at the time. We weren’t Pink Floyd fans growing up. I mean, obviously, I listen to it now and in hindsight, it’s like, “Wow, that really has got that right down the middle.” But Elton touched on everything. We’re just curating his work, in a way. And we took out all of the piano because we wanted to make an obvious difference straight away and make it so you could hear more of the man’s voice.

EJ.com: And in Black Icy Stare you’ve brought out the funky Elton.

NL: I love that one because he sounds Jamaican, to me. We just found that little bit and it was like, “Wow…that’s so wild. The range of this man.” We did another one with The Ballad of Danny Bailey. We didn’t put it on the record, but it sounds like DJ Shadow; like something 30 or 40 years in the future.

EJ.com: It’s interesting what bubbles to the top when you pull things apart. On Karmatron, there’s a part right before Elton sings “once a fool” where he draws in a breath and it fits so nicely into the space you’ve left in the beat. It’s like he’s standing there singing in the studio with you.

NL: We worked crazy hours on this project and you definitely felt this ghost of Elton’s past in there. And there were so many magical moments where we’d grab a vocal from a song and you would just have a feeling in your head that it might work in this space from another song that was four years after or something like that. Things just collided, you know? But overall things just worked. They glued together. It’s not easy with Elton’s material because, while the material is incredible and you can just strip a few things back and go, “there you go, that’s done…”, when you try and put multiple and multiple songs together it becomes very difficult because he changes keys. All the time. He’s the only artist I’ve ever heard of who writes in every single key. So, this cutting up Elton’s stuff? It’s really hard. And it’s really hard to make it dumb enough for Peter and me to get it. We didn’t go to the Royal College when we were nine years of age and get a scholarship, you know? We’re a couple of techno geeks who started off making Acid House and bleepy electronic music. And somehow we managed to make this record out of his material.

EJ.com: How did you know when each song was finished?

NL: You know, the thing with work like this is you can easily never finish. We could go back and make more and more and more layers of all this stuff. Thank God for management to come in at some point and say, “It’s finished – you have one week left.” I think any artist, or producer, they need some kind of deadline. It’s so indulgent making these records because it’s so enjoyable to work on. You could go forever on it.

EJ.com: Or you could do what some musicians or film directors do and go back 10 or 20 years later and sort of re-do it. Not always to the delight of the fans.

NL: That was very important to us, that we didn’t offend Elton’s fans. Which was a very fine line because obviously, you’re messing with their memories, and their childhood and all the rest of it. The first time they make love and so many things that are wrapped up in it. To different people, it means so many different things. We stayed away from Elton’s hits just for that very reason. We didn’t want to mess directly with the ones that have been such a huge part of people’s consciousness. We used elements of Rocket Man and Yellow Brick Road and Bennie and other things, but we hid them well. We’re good at that. We can be quite sneaky. It was really cool to hang out with the band and for various players to come up to us and say, “I don’t even remember what that part is… I’m tripping out!”