Mixdown Monthly Beat Magazine

COCO’S LUNCH

Coco's Lunch: Invisible Rhythm

The High Priestesses of Voice – Part 1

With the release of their new album ‘Invible Rhythm’, Andrián Pertout speaks to Lisa Young and Sue Johnson about the mixed roots of Coco’s Lunch.

Coco’s Lunch has been previously described as ‘one of Australia’s most outstanding and innovative a cappella groups’, and rightly so, because as their latest offering of ‘Invisible Rhythm’ demonstrates, their vision is about unleashing a tidal wave of lush harmonic musicality onto the world.  The group was formed in 1994 to highlight the talents of vocalists, multi-instrumentalists and composers Lisa Young, Sue Johnson, Nicola Eveleigh, Jacqueline Gawler and Gabrielle MacGregor, and their debut album ‘Raise the Tender Heart’ attracted an ARIA award nomination for best contemporary album.  Coco’s Lunch has been associated with Musica Viva almost since its inception, performing throughout Victoria within their Countrywide touring program, and additionally, has been an invited guest at most major festivals around the country.

Tell me about the beginnings of ‘Coco’s Lunch’, and the basic concept behind the formation of this 5-piece group.

LY: ”We wanted to start a group that would have five female voices, to explore the compositions that we both wrote for voice.  And it really stemmed from that concept, the Wunjo concept really, a recording that we did in the early 90s, which was basically piano and voice, and a one hour improvised song cycle.  And when we started that we were really trying to explore, trying to get away from the normal forms of improvised music, and trying to make it more dialogue based, so that it would flow from piece to piece.  And so it was much more like a dialogue between us, and away from traditional constructs, but in a flowing way.  And we wanted to do the same thing with voices really, and so it became an extension of that.  And I think we both had a similar idea of how we like to use voice, because even when Sue played piano and I sang, whatever each other liked, the other liked.  And we tried to encourage in each other the use of not so much traditional scat sounds, but trying to develop our own language, aside from using English.  Like, of course in poetry we love to tell our own stories through language, and so in our writing we try to encourage the use of a bank of sounds that have really become our own in that way.”

How would you describe your own individual approach to composition?

SJ: ”For me there’s no one approach, whenever you start on a journey of writing a piece you don’t know what it’s going to be till you’ve finished, so it kind of unfolds in its own way.  But one thing that I feel is that writing for voice is a very different approach to writing for other things, like very few of the songs I write on the piano.  Whereas I might have more traditionally written at the piano, and thinking in that way, but when it comes to writing for voice I use the four track, and start from the sound base.  And you work out how that all works in an organic way, how to put that together, how think through the piece, and how is this going to unfold as a song?  And with that, the piano doesn’t help very much, because the sound itself is intricate.”

LY: ”And you’re also trying to find parts that are going to work as a vocal part, so if you directly take it off what you might play on the piano, it’s not always going to work.  And sometimes we write for mixed choir as well, and when there’s male voices, then it’s a whole other scope.  But particularly when it’s five voices in the same range, the writing is much harder, because you’re looking for close things, and then percussive things that will go with that.  But it stretches your writing skills.  And the skill to find five parts, it’s much easier to just find three, but with five it continues the line of looking for percussive sounds, stuff that will then blend, blocks of things, and weaving things.“

Vocal harmonies stand out as being an essential component of the group’s sound.  Do you have a particular method for arranging the parts?

LY: ”I mainly work by ear, and sometimes I work thinking intervalicly of course, but other times I do it more just by what I think is the next part that should come, and I stack the parts, as Sue said, on the four track.  But in terms of the approach to writing, usually you just have an idea that you think is strong, as a lead line or as a riff line, or you might get a whole song.  And in the pieces where there’s say words, and it’s more in song form, you build it around the melody, making that work, and then trying to get four parts that are going to be fun to sing with that.  Whereas sometimes you might just get a riff idea, which might work better as an ostinato, so it’s about trying to get things that will be interesting vocal sounds.”

SJ: ”The complexity of writing for voice, it is extraordinarily complex, to at the end of the day come up with something that’s beautifully balanced.  That’s what I find is the challenge, and the harmonic sound of it, you can find those chords on the piano that you think sound beautiful, but then when you do them with voice they might not ring in the same way.  So it’s sort of going for the finesse there, and there’s this whole area of soundscape that has to be fine tuned as well, and the whole conceptual thing.  And then, to make the words scan beautifully so that they still remain poetic, so that they’re not just these things just stuck in, and so that they feel like the driving force of the song.  I just find it the most challenging writing that I ever do.  It’s more challenging for me than writing for a jazz quintet, where everything is so distinct, everything has such a role of its own.  But when we’re writing for the sorts of things that we write for here, there’s no defined role, anyone could be the bass voice, anyone could be the rhythm, anyone could be the soundscape, and so every time you come to it, it’s pretty exciting because you always start from the point of view of, ‘What can I try?’”

'Invisible Rhythm' distributed by Newmarket Music.  For further information contact Sue Johnson.  Coco’s Lunch, PO Box 195 Brunswick Retail PO, Brunswick, Victoria 3056, Australia.  Tel & Fax: (03) 9380 5876.  The Coco's Lunch Home Page.

ANDRIÁN PERTOUT

'Mixdown' Monthly ~ Issue #66, October 6, 1999

BEAT MAGAZINE PTY LTD

All rights reserved. All text, graphics and sound files on this page are copyrighted.
Unauthorized reproduction and copying of this page is prohibited by law. Copyright © 1999 by Andrián Pertout.

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COCO’S LUNCH

The High Priestesses of Voice – Part 2

With the release of their new album ‘Invible Rhythm’, Andrián Pertout speaks to Lisa Young and Sue Johnson about the mixed roots of Coco’s Lunch.

Coco’s Lunch has been previously described as ‘one of Australia’s most outstanding and innovative a cappella groups’, and rightly so, because as their latest offering of ‘Invisible Rhythm’ demonstrates, their vision is about unleashing a tidal wave of lush harmonic musicality onto the world.  The group was formed in 1994 to highlight the talents of vocalists, multi-instrumentalists and composers Lisa Young, Sue Johnson, Nicola Eveleigh, Jacqueline Gawler and Gabrielle MacGregor, and their debut album ‘Raise the Tender Heart’ attracted an ARIA award nomination for best contemporary album.  Coco’s Lunch has been associated with Musica Viva almost since its inception, performing throughout Victoria within their Countrywide touring program, and additionally, has been an invited guest at most major festivals around the country.

Tell me about the beginnings of ‘Coco’s Lunch’, and the basic concept behind the formation of this 5-piece group.

LY: ”We wanted to start a group that would have five female voices, to explore the compositions that we both wrote for voice.  And it really stemmed from that concept, the Wunjo concept really, a recording that we did in the early 90s, which was basically piano and voice, and a one hour improvised song cycle.  And when we started that we were really trying to explore, trying to get away from the normal forms of improvised music, and trying to make it more dialogue based, so that it would flow from piece to piece.  And so it was much more like a dialogue between us, and away from traditional constructs, but in a flowing way.  And we wanted to do the same thing with voices really, and so it became an extension of that.  And I think we both had a similar idea of how we like to use voice, because even when Sue played piano and I sang, whatever each other liked, the other liked.  And we tried to encourage in each other the use of not so much traditional scat sounds, but trying to develop our own language, aside from using English.  Like, of course in poetry we love to tell our own stories through language, and so in our writing we try to encourage the use of a bank of sounds that have really become our own in that way.”

How would you describe your own individual approach to composition?

SJ: ”For me there’s no one approach, whenever you start on a journey of writing a piece you don’t know what it’s going to be till you’ve finished, so it kind of unfolds in its own way.  But one thing that I feel is that writing for voice is a very different approach to writing for other things, like very few of the songs I write on the piano.  Whereas I might have more traditionally written at the piano, and thinking in that way, but when it comes to writing for voice I use the four track, and start from the sound base.  And you work out how that all works in an organic way, how to put that together, how think through the piece, and how is this going to unfold as a song?  And with that, the piano doesn’t help very much, because the sound itself is intricate.”

LY: ”And you’re also trying to find parts that are going to work as a vocal part, so if you directly take it off what you might play on the piano, it’s not always going to work.  And sometimes we write for mixed choir as well, and when there’s male voices, then it’s a whole other scope.  But particularly when it’s five voices in the same range, the writing is much harder, because you’re looking for close things, and then percussive things that will go with that.  But it stretches your writing skills.  And the skill to find five parts, it’s much easier to just find three, but with five it continues the line of looking for percussive sounds, stuff that will then blend, blocks of things, and weaving things.“

Vocal harmonies stand out as being an essential component of the group’s sound.  Do you have a particular method for arranging the parts?

LY: ”I mainly work by ear, and sometimes I work thinking intervalicly of course, but other times I do it more just by what I think is the next part that should come, and I stack the parts, as Sue said, on the four track.  But in terms of the approach to writing, usually you just have an idea that you think is strong, as a lead line or as a riff line, or you might get a whole song.  And in the pieces where there’s say words, and it’s more in song form, you build it around the melody, making that work, and then trying to get four parts that are going to be fun to sing with that.  Whereas sometimes you might just get a riff idea, which might work better as an ostinato, so it’s about trying to get things that will be interesting vocal sounds.”

SJ: ”The complexity of writing for voice, it is extraordinarily complex, to at the end of the day come up with something that’s beautifully balanced.  That’s what I find is the challenge, and the harmonic sound of it, you can find those chords on the piano that you think sound beautiful, but then when you do them with voice they might not ring in the same way.  So it’s sort of going for the finesse there, and there’s this whole area of soundscape that has to be fine tuned as well, and the whole conceptual thing.  And then, to make the words scan beautifully so that they still remain poetic, so that they’re not just these things just stuck in, and so that they feel like the driving force of the song.  I just find it the most challenging writing that I ever do.  It’s more challenging for me than writing for a jazz quintet, where everything is so distinct, everything has such a role of its own.  But when we’re writing for the sorts of things that we write for here, there’s no defined role, anyone could be the bass voice, anyone could be the rhythm, anyone could be the soundscape, and so every time you come to it, it’s pretty exciting because you always start from the point of view of, ‘What can I try?’”

'Invisible Rhythm' distributed by Newmarket Music.  For further information contact Sue Johnson.  Coco’s Lunch, PO Box 195 Brunswick Retail PO, Brunswick, Victoria 3056, Australia.  Tel & Fax: (03) 9380 5876.  The Coco's Lunch Home Page.

ANDRIÁN PERTOUT

'Mixdown' Monthly ~ Issue #66, October 6, 1999

BEAT MAGAZINE PTY LTD

All rights reserved. All text, graphics and sound files on this page are copyrighted.
Unauthorized reproduction and copying of this page is prohibited by law. Copyright © 1999 by Andrián Pertout.

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Coco's Lunch

Andrián Pertout's Home Page