Third World

Songs On Six Strings

Dominic Miller / Third World **** 

You can hear the noise of a cassette being switched on, a faint clattering sound - and then a guitar with a softness, flexibility and suppleness rarely heard in recent times: soothing intricacies, sometimes framed by other ambient sounds, and every note a celebration in itself. Dominic Miller, well known for his job at the strings with Sting, gently declares his love for the classical guitar.

"This album is not so much a tribute to the guitar as such" says the man who has chosen London as his home. "The artwork is meant to show that it's about my family. The guitar is only my vehicle as a composer, the voice I use to interpret my emotions."

At first it would appear that Miller is presenting a new approach to the classical guitar. But that's only a question of the sound. If you listen more closely you'll find processes and linear structures in his pieces, reminiscent of those found in electronic music or even dance pop. "I belong to a world of well produced modern pop songs," the guitarist confirms, "but personally I much prefer the classical guitar. Baden Powell is my Jimi Hendrix. When I record instrumental music I'm still doing songs. I tell stories in a short form instead of losing my direction in 20 minutes. These pieces work like postcards: as soon as the main things have been said, the piece ends. I indicate emotions, but as soon as you say too much, you're giving the game away. Nothing is more dangerous than underestimating the listener. He's got a strong emotional sense. He's not interested in my chord connections at all. Even Picasso took half a lifetime to find the emotional power to paint like a child. I'd love to use that ethos for my music, too."

Miller is very close to that. His tunes sound almost naive, but he has very high standards as a composer. A balance between complexity and simplicity is what he is aiming for. "I can write a piece in 5/4, but the listener perceives it as 4/4. So I'm slipping into the part of an illusionist. Mark Hollis from Talk Talk is a master of this method. He is always leading the listener up the garden path, without losing respect for him. The ultimate modern composer of our time is J.S. Bach. His chromatic structures are highly complex, but his melodies are often painfully simple, although they come from higher ground, mathematically speaking. I do music for the listener, give him a problem or an emotion to think about."

Permanently on tour with Sting or other pop giants Miller is left with little time for writing. But as soon as he returns from a tour he sometimes spends months in his room trying out new material. Like a crossword puzzle they are gradually put together - the more elements he's already got the easier it is for him to fill in the empty spaces. With him, personal setbacks evoke happiness and satisfaction in his music. "When people are sad they often write a very sad song. I don't want to have it as easy as that. It's not difficult to repeat an idea for eight minutes and to conceal it behind a lavish production. I can't do that when I 'm playing the guitar on my own. So I have to find different ways of venting and changing my feelings."

You have to get involved with Millers music if you want to find points to cling to in the loose fabric of his imagination. Of course he could enrich his pieces with baselines or keyboard sounds. But he restricts himself to the most important information. "The music is naked. I started with too much production but had to step back more and more. Sometimes I was strongly tempted to add grove to some pieces. I could get the best musicians in the world and it cost me a lot of discipline to do without that. But in the end it meant that more was left to my imagination."

The groove is there, but remains hidden in the background. It's up to the listener to filter it in his own head. Miller learned a lot about playing with the imagination of the listener through his employer Sting. But how could he free himself from the experience of such a dominant personality as Sting and find his own voice? Or did he make this strategy his own?

"On an album like this I take the position of a songwriter. I design motives which might be interesting for professional songwriters, too. When I'm doing this I always ask myself how I can tell an interesting story without boring the listener with solos. Most instrumental albums are totally boring. The first thing I had to do was to get rid of the rhythm section, because many jazz albums are dominated by the rhythm section. People used to tell the joke: Who hangs around most with musicians? - The drummer. Vinnie Colaiuta and Manu Katche didn't find that very funny, but that's the way it is.

Instead of communicating with a rhythm section Miller talks to himself. The album consists of monologues and dialogues by the same person. "It really is a conversation with myself. I'm a schizophrenic guitarist. I don't even try to accompany myself. Jimi Hendrix first recorded the lead guitar and then the rhythm tracks. Building upon that I first record the tune and then the rhythm. The melody tells the story and therefore has to stay in the foreground."

Third World is a quiet, restrained album, totally void of pretentiousness and at the same time a musical lesson in self-discovery.

© Jazzthetik | March 2004

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