Tilt

Tilt
Studio album by Scott Walker
Released	8 May 1995
Genre	Art rock Avant-garde Experimental
Length	56:58
Label	Fontana
Producer	Scott Walker and Peter Walsh
Professional reviews
Allmusic link City Pages (favourable) 15 October 1997 Rolling Stone 16 October 1997 World Socialist Web Site (favourable) 4 June 2002 The Yale Herald (favourable) 22 September 1995
Scott Walker chronology
Climate of Hunter (1983) Tilt (1995) Pola X soundtrack (1999)

Tilt is a critically acclaimed 1995 album by Scott Walker.

Details

The cover features Walker's hand, photographed and manipulated by David Scheinmann.

The songs on the album have a decidedly bleak, forlorn and funereal mood; the lyrics are replete with arcane allusions and recondite wordplay and ellipses. Like Walker's previous effort, Climate of Hunter (1984), Tilt combines elements of industrial music with European avant-garde and experimental influences. The unusual literary, musical and performance qualities of Walker's songwriting and singing are reminiscent of the lieder, chanson and "art song" traditions — forms which long predate the era of recorded popular music and electronic media.

The compositions emphasize abstract atmospherics over structure, with minimalist, slightly discordant "sound blocks" and trance-like repetition rendered through carefully nuanced instrumentation and sparsely deployed sonic effects. Walker's mournful (some might say, lugubrious) voice resonates in a cavernous echo, taking on a haunted, distant, desolate quality, which one reviewer characterized as "Samuel Beckett at La Scala".

The opening track, "Farmer in the City", is subtitled "Remembering Pasolini". Most of the lyrics are lifted directly from Norman Macafee's English translation of Pier Paolo Pasolini's poem, "Una tanti dialoghi" ("One of the Many Epilogs"), with Walker's own surreal embellishments interspersed.

The poem was one that Pasolini had written in 1969 for his friend and protégé, the scruffy young nonprofessional actor, Ninetto Davoli. Throughout the song, Walker's chant of "Do I hear 21, 21, 21...? I'll give you 21, 21, 21...", which is not in Pasolini's original poem, may be a reference to Davoli's age when he was drafted into (and subsequently deserted from) the Italian army.

The lyrics of "The Cockfighter" include "excerpts relocated from the trial of Queen Caroline and the trial of Adolf Eichmann". "Bolivia '95" is apparently a song about South American refugees.

All the songs on the album were composed between 1991 and 1992, except "Manhattan" (1987) and "Rosary" (1993).

In addition to a core lineup of musicians playing rock instruments, the recording also features classical contributions from the Strings of Sinfonia of London and the Methodist Central Hall Pipe Organ, which were arranged and conducted by Brian Gascoigne. Tilt is also notable for being a now-rare instance of a contemporary musical recording which was actually recorded live in the studio without the enhancement of any electronic sample-based synthesis or guide tracks.^{[citation needed]}

Track listing

All songs written by N. S. Engel (Scott Walker).

1. "Farmer in the City (Remembering Pasolini)" – 6:38
2. "The Cockfighter" – 6:01
3. "Bouncer See Bouncer..." – 8:50
4. "Manhattan" – 6:05
5. "Face on Breast" – 5:15
6. "Bolivia '95" – 7:44
7. "Patriot (a single)" – 8:28
8. "Tilt" – 5:13
9. "Rosary" – 2:41

Personnel

Core personnel

• Scott Walker – Vocals
• Ian Thomas – Drums
• John Giblin – Bass
• Brian Gascoigne – Keyboards
• David Rhodes – Guitars

Additional playing

• "Farmer in the City"
  • Strings of Sinfonia of London, arranged and conducted by Brian Gascoigne
  • Elizabeth Kenny – Chittaroni
  • Roy Carter – Oboe

• "The Cockfighter"
  • Hugh Burns – Guitar
  • Alasdair Malloy – Percussion
  • Louis Jardim – Percussion
  • Andrew Cronshaw – Horns and Reeds
  • Brian Gascoigne – Celeste and Organ of the Methodist Central Hall

• "Bouncer See Bouncer..."
  • Jonathan Snowden – Flutes
  • Andy Findon – Bass Flute
  • Jim Gregory – Bass Flute
  • Roy Jowitt – Clarinet
  • Roy Carter – Oboe
  • Brian Gascoigne – Woodwind Orchestration and Organ of the Methodist Central Hall
  • Peter Walsh – Prog Bass Drum

• "Manhattan"
  • Alasdair Malloy – Percussion
  • Louis Jardim – Percussion
  • Brian Gascoigne – Organ of the Methodist Central Hall
  • Andrew Cronshaw – Concertina

• "Face on Breast"
  • Ian Thomas – "Bass Drum on lap and kit all at once"
  • Colin Pulbrook – Hammond Organ
  • Scott Walker and Peter Walsh – Whistles

• "Bolivia '95"
  • Hugh Burns – Guitars
  • Alasdair Malloy – Percussion
  • Louis Jardim – Percussion
  • Andrew Cronshaw – Ba-wu flute
  • Greg Knowles – Cimbalom

• "Patriot (a single)"
  • Strings of Sinfonia of London, orchestrated and conducted by Brian Gascoigne
  • Jonathan Snowden – Piccolo
  • John Barclay – Trumpets
  • Ian Thomas – Military Bass Drum and Cymbals

External links

• Tilt at MusicBrainz
• Scott Walker interview - The Wire, May 1995

References