Standing beneath the vaulted ceiling in the cold stone kitchen, set deep in the bowels of the ancient Beefheart Hall, Wayne Hussey discards his huge wolf and weasel fur cape. Leaping onto a three-legged milking stool, he hangs his brand new, recently blooded crossbow on the wrought-iron weapons rack fixed high up on the thick granite wall.
The Hall. occupying its own vast space on one of England's more spooky moors, has seen many generations come and go; now it is home to Wayne, his wife of almost a year, Kelly, and the pack of slavering mongrels known collectively as the Beefheart Hounds. Far out in the grounds, down by the ice-cold, bottomless lake, stands the time-worn gazebo where Wayne and Kelly plighted their troth in an ecstasy-crazed festival the previous summer. Of Icelandic, Peruvian. Apache and East LA extraction, Kelly has always been a keen trapper. It wasn't long before she'd introduced her husband to the lore of the wild. And, having completed work on the latest Mission U.K. album, Wayne set about honing his hunting skills.
Hurling a brace of geese and a trio of freshly-slaughtered hares onto the great scarred oak table (the hares brought down running at 500 yards, no less) Wayne sits, absent-mindedly turning thc pigs roasting on the spit as he collects his thoughts. "It's entitled MASQUE," he begins, "the dictionary definition of which is 'an amateur dramatic musical production.' And it is far from being a hippy album..."
A YEAR AWAY FROM IT ALL
The life of MASOUE began in January 1991, when Wayne said goodbye (forever as it turned out) to city life and repaired to a converted barn two miles from the Welsh border. "When I first went there, there was no real plan to make an album this year. There wasn't any plan at all. Just go, recuperate, lick our wounds. I started recording on my own after about six weeks, and a fair amount of that work is on the finished album. Some of the lyrics weren't finished until the day the LP was finished, there was writing going on all the time. And because of the way we worked, the first songs written were really explored. There was no pressure of time, no financial consideration} and no record company involvement." vThe other two thirds of The Mission U.K., bassist Craig Adams and drummer Mick Brown, made regular visits to the barn to add flesh to the bare bones of the songs Wayne constructed. The pace was leisurely, and the ideas had time to bloom.
SIGNIFICANT OTHERS
MASQUE was produced by Mark Saunders, and engineered by Joe Gibb.
Wayne: "It was good working with Mark, because I think he really pushed me. We didn't get on well all the time, but it was a healthy, creative friction. He comes from a very different field of music than I do. He's used to sequencers and stuff, and wasn't that well versed in working with guitars. The album has ended up being a good balance between mechanical and real music."
One song, "Who Will Love Me Tomorrow?," was co-written with Miles Hunt of The Wonderstuff. Anthony Thistlewaite, formerly of The Waterboys, co-composed - with The Mission U.K. - two songs, "She Conjures Me Wings" and "Even You May Shine." He also plays on various tracks on the album. Ric Sanders of Fairport Convention contributes zeta cello to Never Again and zeta violin to "Like A Child Again. Jaz Coleman, Killing Joke supreme, introduced to the band a special guest; Abdel Abound All, personal violin player to King Hussein Of Jordan, he plays on "Sticks And Stones," and the string arrangements were by Jaz.
THE SONGS
"Never Again," "Trail Of Scarlet," "Spider And The Fly," " Shades Of Green," "Who Will Love Me Tomorrow?," "She Conjures Me Wings," "Even You May Shine," "Sticks And Stones," "Like A Child Again," "You Make Me Breathe," "From One Jesus To Another," "Until There's Another Sunrise."
"I think it's quite an eclectic album," says Wayne, "but it's got to have helped, not being around 'the biz/ Your own sense of quality control comes into play, your own sense of what's commercial and what's not. A friend said, 'It's a really up album, it sounds like you're happy again, even though some of the lyrics are down.' But it's that old thing of exorcism again; the immediate past, Simon (Hinkler) leaving for instance, people writing us off. A lot of people thought this album was going to be the same. It's not. We all knew we had to change, not because of any dictates of fashion, but to satisfy our existence to ourselves. I mean we didn't know if there was going to be another Mission U.K. LP. But people will need to open their ears to this record, to get past that Mission U.K. tag."
"And that's that," smiles Wayne, picking at his teeth with a vicious looking Bowie knife. A huge clattering roar from the front of the Hall heralds the arrival of Craig and Mick, as the latter lands his ex-Soviet military surplus tank-busting helicopter. As the pair, clad in bear skins and clutching AK47s, burst into the kitchen, a muffled explosion sounds down in the direction of the lake.
"That'll be old Kerr, the gamekeeper," frowns Wayne. "He will keep on dynamiting the pike. Anyway. the three of us, we've gotta go now. There's stuff out there that needs killing!"