BARNEY GOODALL
I discovered the music of Barney Goodall online during my researches for artists/bands to produce, not long after I moved to Liverpool.
When I heard his music I was so impressed I could not believe what I was hearing and the band that was playing with Barney at that time, The Nighthawks, sounded great too.
I thought that the music he composed was brilliant and just wanted to produce it so I did my best to make it happen. Not long after meeting Barney we decided to go to the studio and record an EP of 4 songs. I choose the iconic Parr Street Studios in Liverpool for the recordings and Barney and the NightHawks seemed very happy about that.
I liked all the tunes he brought to the studio but two songs in particular were outstanding for me. ‘A Lad Insane’ and ‘Chinese Whispers’ sounded to my ears as a completely crazy mix of jazzy, cabaret, Ragtime influenced piano playing but still in a pop shape and with definitely a David Bowie influence which is always great and not so common to hear around. I loved it, that was really different from what I was hearing around and definitely untamed and played with a strong attitude.
His piano playing brought me to a cantina, a saloon, a place far away in time, that kind of atmosphere, or better, a cabaret stage with red curtains, soft lights where eccentricity, madness and genius reign supreme. The melodies, the vocal line were spot on, I would not have changed a single note and if this EP would have turned out into a LP it would have been even better.
Barney’s piano playing and his low-tone voice stand out during the whole EP but this also can be applied for all his music in general.
After the EP me and Barney continued working together but the music style changed into something just as interesting.
His music after The Nighthawks EP became more electronic, less stinging and definitely deeper. From this moment Barney started to record his music by himself, recording at home all the fundamentals of his songs. We started releasing ‘You Are The Night’, ‘Golden Age’ (the video was filmed 50 meters far from my house) and then ‘Mass’, ‘Fallen Love’. When he was bringing his tunes to the ‘Ocean Waves lab’ it was more a matter of optimising the mixes, the overall sound or adding some ideas or elements.
His sound become more and more sophisticated as you can hear in the tune called ‘Aporia’. Then I insisted to release ‘Before I Disappear’ as the next single. I always looked at that song as a catchy single, a sort of crazy British version of Beck.
We decided to film the video at an amazing location called Woolton Hall in South Liverpool. It was perfect, a real haunted house built 300 hundreds years ago which caught fire not long after we scored the video.
During all the time I worked with Barney there was one thing that was clear to me since the beginning. Barney it is not a one-genre artists and this simply because he can play various styles, from the crazy twisted cantina cabaret with a ragtime piano style, to hard rock, electronic, author pop, pop rock and more.
Barney is an eclectic talented artist and the music he plays it depends on the inspiration he has during the different times of his life. I really like those kind of artists you can’t predict which kind of music they will play in one, two or three years.
Now he continues to produce his music, released a beautiful double album where are included few tunes produced at Ocean Waves. I am very very curious to see how his music will evolve.
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