Seeds Mix #1: A walk in the woods with Woo

One of a series of five unreleased albums from their archives, it’s a thoughtfully curated collection of ambient, minimalist, and new-age soundscapes designed to be the perfect soundtrack for moments of sowing these seeds, which accompany every release in quiet reflection.

“To our surprise and delight, Sweet Peas can be planted in the autumn and they’ll blossom in the coming spring” notes Clive.

To accompany this creation, they’ve created “A Walk in the Woods with Woo” mixtape, where Stevie Wonder’s forest-infused melodies dance with Marlene Dietrich’s vocals and Schubert’s transcendent strings paint aural woodland landscapes. Each track is a seed, carefully planted, slowly unfurling its own unique narrative. It’s a meditation on growth, on patience, on the delicate art of nurturing something beautiful from the smallest of beginnings.

Woo have never chased fame. On their 1982 album, “Whichever Way You Are Going, You Are Going Wrong,” the title wasn’t just a title; it was a manifesto. And now, decades later, they’re still wandering those beautifully wrong paths, with these fragments whispering stories of creativity, spontaneity, and pure musical joy.

Mark’s golden rule is, “RECORD EVERYTHING!” because in an unpredictable world, magic can emerge from the most unexpected moments. Put on your headphones and let the forest envelop you as you walk in the woods.

Listen and read the interview below:

Who are you?

I am Clive and my brother’s name is Mark. We have been recording music since we were teenagers back in the 70s. We have mainly been a home studio band and over all these years we have recorded a huge amount of music.

We had our fifteen minutes of fame back in 1982 with the release of our first album ‘Whichever way you are going, you are going wrong’, which received some brilliant reviews from the English music press.

About a decade ago we recorded a children’s opera for the English Touring Opera, which started a renewed interest in our music. On the back of that we have released thirty five albums on our Bandcamp site, and enjoy many listeners online and on radio. Over the years we have released ten LP’s with various record companies. Next year we have a rerelease of our first album from 1982.

Why are you here?

Tia from Ransom Note reached out and told me about Ransom Note’s new label: Music to Watch Seeds Grow By and asked if we had anything that might fit with their concept.

I explained that over the past year, Mark and I have been going through our archives and have created five albums from the remaining tracks. One of these albums has an organic, ambient flowing atmosphere which I immediately thought would work well. Tia and Wil both loved the music, and this cassette is the result.

When are you happiest?

Many things make me happy, but maybe I’m happiest in company when the conversation is flowing and fun. Recently I was having a meal with a group of friends and some really funny things were coming out of my mouth. It was very spontaneous and created a wonderful feeling of connection with us all. I like the feeling of risk, not knowing how my words will be received, but I really love the thrill and the bond that comes with shared laughter.

Do you consider the emotional connection humans have with nature when creating music or mixtapes?

It’s not something I actively consider when recording, but when you asked me to create a mixtape of music to listen to in nature, I found the idea of our emotional connection to nature very inspiring!

In all styles of music, the laws of nature are present.

The ancient Greeks identified three fundamental musical intervals: an octave, a fifth, and a fourth. Pythagoras discovered that the beautiful musical relationship between the notes was also a mathematical relationship. By augmenting these musical intervals, an artist can create this emotional connection. Pythagorus discovered that harmonious sounds are produced by vibrating strings with particular ratios of string length. This discovery of the connection between vibration, mathematics, and harmonics is one way of understanding this connection.

But we only have to listen to great music to feel this connection.

When an artist is being authentic with their writing and not forcing their performance, when they are present and relaxed, this emotional connection is also present in their music. When we see a great star perform, it is this authentic quality we all admire so much, because it also lets us feel the emotional connection.

With my choices for the Mixtape, all the Stevie Wonder tracks have this natural quality and emotional connection.

I have titled the mixtape ‘A walk in the woods with Woo’.

I am not a gardener, but I do love to be in nature and particularly in woodlands. Simply to get away from the buzz of the city is good, but to be within a forest is really life enhancing. So get your headphones on and let’s go:

Stevie Wonder open’s the mix with three tracks from his 1979 album ‘Secret Life Of Plants’.

The first track utilises sounds of a forest to set the scene, combined with Stevie’s brilliant harmonica and heart opening melodies. Most of the following tracks are slow, spacious and unpredictable, which I hope will woo the listener and give them the opportunity to take in the sight’s and atmosphere of the forest. With the trees enveloping you, protecting you and nurturing you. Midway on the journey India Arie sings ‘Beautiful Flower’, an inspiring affirmation of all our innate potential and passions.

As the journey unfolds and one gets deeper into the woods, the music becomes more poignant and introspective.

Marlene Dietrich sings the heart wrenching ‘Where Have All The Flowers Gone’, followed by the mysterious and magical ‘Her’ from the 1961 album ‘Focus’ by Stan Getz, which has a classical orchestrated composition written by Eddie Sauter, created specifically for improvisation by Stan Getz. This is a brilliant combination of the structure and shape of the composition, holding the space for his free flowing sax playing.

The final track is by Franz Schubert: the sublime and transcendent String Quintet Adagio – minimal, yearning, emotional and so heartfelt.

Ideally with these final tracks you are deep into the forest and can really allow the music to touch you.

We’re very excited to be part of the final 5 albums you’re releasing from your archives! Did revisiting the archives bring back any particular memories or emotions from the time of the original recordings?

This spring Mark came over to my place, where we spent a few weeks listening to all the music we have recorded from the early seventies to now.

To our amazement we found about 200 unreleased tracks we both liked! From this shortlist we have created five albums of which ‘Music To Watch Seeds grow By’ is one.

Beyond these five albums, there are still tracks we will incorporate with new recordings, to create further releases.

A recording is like a fragrance with its ability to conjure memories. When we listen to our older music, we often remember the time, the place and the context. Sometimes we simply analyse the technical aspects of a recording, which equipment we used, who played what etc, other times we remember the story behind the music.

Mark is usually better than me at recalling the details, for example the birds song at the beginning and end of the Seeds cassette were recorded at dawn in our Wimbledon studio, after a long night of recording. Mark simply rested the microphone on the window ledge and in the stillness of dawn, the birds were all that was audible.

There were many ups and downs for both of us in those years, and the music has a very intimate way of focusing us back to the situation and the emotions. Some of the most vivid memories are of times when friends were involved and brought something new and unexpected to the sessions.

Working in a home studio, gives the luxury of playing just what you want. It has allowed us to play many styles of music, to experiment and to simply have fun. So for us this archive is like a diary. Being able to listen back to the music from the past 40 years has become an interesting process in understanding what worked, and what is relegated to the junk folder.

We do have a potential ‘Rejects’ project, which has tracks we both like, but for many varied reasons, have never fitted on previous albums.

Were there any unexpected discoveries or forgotten gems you came across while going through the archives?

When I talk about our archives, I am referring to all the files we have on memory sticks, which we have been exploring for the past decade to create the Bandcamp albums. With this recent investigation there was nothing so unexpected here, but Mark recently came across a box of old Woo cassettes, which have turned up many unheard gems for the past. Several of these are on our recent “Woo A Go-Go” album.

How do you feel the passage of time has influenced your perception of these albums compared to when you first created them?

In the excitement of our early years of making music, we did very little listening back to what we did, we were propelled forward with the thrill of new recording. In the passage of time, we have come to really enjoy these old recordings. At the time, Mark had a great working principle:

RECORD EVERYTHING!

He was right, because of the unpredictability of the electronics, let alone our moods, you never knew when something would be any good.

So many of our recordings are short sketches, often one, two or three minutes long. Even these days we rarely record anything over five minutes. Because of this, the creation of a track order becomes super important. Our intention is to take the listener on a journey, one that hopefully they will want to take many times.

Did the process of curating these final releases change your relationship with the music in any way?

If there is a change, it’s simply that these random bits of recording now have an identity and a reason to exist.

In our first five years of making music in the 70’s, we were only busy with recording music. It wasn’t until we released ‘Whichever Way…’ in 1982, that we began to compile albums.

In the last 10 years, we have been more busy with curating these releases from these old recordings. We select tracks that we feel have some relationship with each other, then create a track order.

Usually at this stage, a title and a cover artwork is created. It’s a slow process of accepting and rejecting, until a track order feels finalised. Mark is particularly motivated to get these albums completed and uploaded.

What instruments or sounds to you evoke the feeling of nature and growth most effectively?

Throughout the history of music, different instruments and sounds have been used to evoke the feeling of nature. Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony, in my mind being the most iconic.

Vivaldi’s Four Seasons with instruments in the “Spring” movement mimicking the rustle of leaves in the wind.

In A Summer Garden by Delius transports the listener to a summer’s day.

New age music and ambient music use recorded sounds of nature as backgrounds for various musical soundscapes.

There are also great recordings of the water flowing in the trees after a drought, that have been slowed down to create the most amazing rhythms.

(4.30’’ video with George Martin interviewing Bernie Krause about these recordings).

So I think artists can use many different sounds, natural and electronic to evoke the feeling of nature.

Do you have a favourite type of plant, and what draws you to it?

I am drawn to fragrant flowers, like roses and lilies.

I particularly love the shape of the lily and also the shape of waterlilies. There are some magnificent water lilies in Kew Gardens. Their big circular leaves, which become ovals when viewed from the edge of the pond, with these exotic brightly coloured flowers. There is something very peaceful and transcendent with the combination of these flowers and the reflections in the water.

Have you ever been inspired by the presence of plants in your home or environment in unexpected ways?

It’s beautiful to have flowers at home, but I also like to have dried flowers around the house. I particularly love ‘Honesty’. There is something about this simple shape, the subtle curve in the oval, and the transparency and fragility, that I find very aesthetic.

Do you have any plants that hold special meaning or remind you of a certain time or place?

I have happy memories of playing hide and seek in fields of long grass and wildflowers as a child. Hot summer days where the air was thick with dragonflies, butterflies and buzzing things.

Looking back, these memories in these wild meadow’s hold so much magic. I still yearn for this type of space, and occasionally find it.

Here is a photo I took this summer, of a wild flower meadow in Dorset…

Can you tell us anything else about the other final pieces of work you are coming out with?

To be clear, these are not our final releases. Last year we made a final search through our archives of forty years of recording and shortlisted everything that we still both liked.

There are still plenty of early tracks we will incorporate with new recordings to create further releases.

We have spent several months arriving at these track lists. It is only when this process is finalised that we create the artwork and overall title.

Along with this cassette release with Ransom Note, we have made four other albums:

Woo A Go-Go

Already released on our Bandcamp page, this collection is a more retro, synth-heavy, lo-fi, playful, dubby mix of early Woo.

M=C 

In the same way as ‘Into the Heart Of Love’ had a mixture of Mark’s guitar based compositions combined with several of my synth-based tracks, this album has a very gentle and melodic mix of old and new Woo instrumental tracks. Mark has played overdubs on my tracks and I have added keyboards to his compositions – Hence the title.

In the same way that ‘Into the Heart of Love’ combined Mark’s guitar-based compositions with several of my synth-based tracks, this album has a very gentle and melodic mix of old and new Woo instrumental tracks. Mark has played overdubs on my tracks, and I have added keyboards to his compositions—hence the title.

Cassette

Mark found an old Woo cassette, pictured on the cover.

Comprising gentle guitar tracks and early melodic Woo tracks intermingled with two songs.

4.

This album is still without an overall title or cover artwork because it is still not completed. We still intend to record one or two new tracks to complement this mix of more old and new electronic experimental music.

We are going to use the synthesiser we used back in the 70s, the Roland System 100, to work on new compositions (the way we used to) with Mark playing his guitar through the sequencer to create the rhythm for the backing track. We will combine this classic old Woo sound with contemporary sounds and all the technology of Native Instruments

Woo’s Music To Watch Seeds Grow By: Sweet Peas is out now 

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