Van Quixote by John Bisset

"John Bisset's kids left home. He threw his guitar in a campervan and recorded himself playing wherever his wanderlust led, an often combative improviser indulging his sometimes suppressed facility for fluid folk melodies. The Spanish and French backdrops of these fecund field recordings inspire flamenco flourishes and café society chords, as Bisset battles bird and bee noise with pizzicato flurries. Rain hisses. He offers long sonorous notes to the rising sun. Coming Home’s cautiously euphoric refrain suggests a problem solved." - Stewart Lee, Sunday Times

The Soundtracks to 21 short films - made in a campervan on a journey from England through Spain and France and back to England.

The films can be seen here:
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7EF02AF7305ABDB4

Sleeve notes:
'…thus wrapped up in agreeable delusions, and hurried on by the strange pleasure he took in them, he hastened to put in execution what he so much desired.' (Don Quixote, part 1 chapter 1)

When I was sixteen I ran away from home, with a copy of Arthur Rimbaud's 'Illuminations' in my pocket. I camped in some woods in Shropshire and spent a sleepless night besieged by bears, wolves and other monsters of my imagination. The next day I moved to a campsite, was bitten by a real dog, and took the train home to Manchester. On the way to the station I bought a small second hand copy of Don Quixote. Even in my dejected state, I laughed as I recognised that I had more in common with the Knight of the Sorrowful Figure, than with the 'live fast die young' poet.

In the spring of 2012 - some thirty-five years later - I sallied forth once more, in a Talbot Express campervan, in which I lived for two months, travelling by ferry to Spain then overland through France and back home.

This was an uncharacteristic venture. I became a father at the age of twenty-two and, although I had toured as a musician, I had never gone travelling for the sake of it. I am a domestic creature and enjoy the company of friends and family. Away from these and from the hurly burly of London, and with very limited Spanish and French, I formed new relationships: with the weather, animals, the landscape, the van - and with sound. I sat in the sun, with the birds making merry, and played my guitar; I took refuge from the rain, wind and even snow, and played my guitar; I repaired the van, and when it was coffee time, I played. In motion, whether on foot or behind the wheel, I sang.

As in any other improvising situation I had various options: to follow, to mimic, to oppose, to play on in spite of the racket going on around, to rest on the ambience like a ground bass, or even not to improvise at all but to play a tune...

This second sally forth was much happier (and longer!) than the first. Whatever adventures I had hoped to encounter, in the end it was living alone with my imagination which proved the challenge, and as Sancho Panza says,

'Quien canta sus males espanta.'
He who sings frightens away his ills

John Bisset Spring 2013

With many thanks to Richard Sanderson for all the enriching musical activities he has brought to the London scene for decades - and for the original release on Linear Obsessional LOR038 9/3/2013

Guitarist, improviser, composer, and film maker since 1977.
johnbisset.net