By Keith Walsh
Julian Shah-Tayler yearns for the time when he can once more play his songs live in clubs and theaters. In the meantime, he’s livestreaming on a weekly basis, and releasing a single a month, starting today with the electro-psychedelia of “Living In A Dream.”
The song was chosen by Shah-Tayler and his management team because they felt it was appropriate to the COVID-19 crisis. In a Zoom exchange, Shah-Tayler explained: “Certainly when I wrote the song, about four years ago, I was in my phase of, there’s a certain Buddhist thought in some of that phase when I was writing that and another song. ‘Emptiness’ came out of that same phase. It was this intention to sort of try to try to understand the nature of reality and how we create our own reality. It proceeded that way, and right now seems to be an opportunity to change our perception of what’s going on. Because, you know, for me, right now, my reality has changed so significantly, and dramatically. ”
In addition to living the rock star life, which today means living very responsibly while exploring the creative edge, Shah-Tayler is a family man. “I mean, I’m a teacher, for my 5 year old, right now. Before, I was living the dream, of recording and being a rock star, and all of that sort of stuff. And now, I’m in reality, but I can choose to do what I want with that. I mean, I can either say, ‘I’m not a rock star anymore, I’m a dad,’ but being a dad is the most important job of all, and I love it, you know. So this is the dream.”
The current closure of businesses and schools has changed the way the world lives. Fortunately for Shah-Tayler, he’s got some studio work to fill in the gaps. “Luckily,” he says, “I’m blessed to have the opportunity to work with people in a recording context. I’ve just picked up a gig, doing some backing tracks, I’ve picked up a gig doing some recording. Which I can’t social distance doing. They’ll have to come and record with me.”
“It’s not replacing—I mean I used tour every weekend. It was either, it was Strangelove, The Depeche Mode experience, or the Bowie thing. Played every weekend, for something like four or five years. That’s it. And that was just keeping a head above water as it is. (laughs).”
In addition to playing the role of Alan Wilder in Strangelove, prior to the COVID-19 crisis Shah-Tayler had been playing regularly with his Bowie Tribute, The Band That Fell To Earth. And he says he’s more than ready for things to get back to normal so he can play live again. I asked him what form his band for the solo project would take once things get opened up again. “I have been doing it,” he says, “prior to this whole social distancing era, I was doing it as a sort of duo, or a trio. I’ve done it in the past, as a four, five six piece band, I’ve gotta be pragmatic about that, in the sense that it’s very expensive to tour, with a six piece band with full equipment. So we’ve been having some success doing three pieces: drums, guitars, tracks. And I could probably do extra guitars, and if I was to do a song like ‘Aubade,’ which is a full piano thing, then I would probably bring a piano, or rent a piano at the venues.”
“And I would absolutely love to say that this is gonna be a context soon, but we’re not looking at soon, at the moment. It’s all about playing from my studio. As you know I’ve been putting original performances after the Bowie cover shows. But I have actually done, and I’ve started to do more Singularity original shows.”
Seeing that Shah-Tayler plays so many roles, I asked him if playing Julian Shah-Tayler isn’t also a role? He was adamant that this wasn’t the case. “No, this is me,” he says. “There’s no character. I mean, Singularity could be seen as a character, but there’s no character in what I’m doing now. I’ve just sort of like, drawn the line, this is visceral, this is my heart, this is my soul, this is the new what I want to say and how it wants to be said. There’s a gentleman to your left on my screen called Darwin Meiners and we’ve got a launch of his song on Sunday, and we’re planning on a new project that we’re going to be working on together. And that will be a character. If it’s under my name, it’s me. If it’s not under me name, it’s going to be something else.”
Synthbeat.com will be featuring the Darwin project soon. As Shah-Tayler explains, it’s a work that includes a video by directory Linda Strawberry, called “Dance Alone,” which was produced and mixed by Shah-Tayler, who also plays on the tune and does background vocals. Shah-Tayler continues: “I’ve seen the first draft of the video, and what Darwin did was a really great idea, and I’m definitely going to rip him off for this –is, he asked people to record themselves dancing alone. And then Linda took the footage and she melded the footage of all these people dancing alone alongside footage of Darwin and I mugging the camera. And it’s the most fantastic video, she’s done a lot of work on it and it’s beautiful.”
Shah-Tayler suggested that the Darwin project, which he called “definitely Synthbeat-y” is somewhat darker than his material, and that he’s gotten ideas for his contributions to the project from his ruminations. Shah-Tayler said: “I spend my days mostly not being angry about things. I spend my time mostly in a big bubble of love for the universe. But there is a point where you have to express that disdain and anger for things that are happening.”
Darwin agreed, adding: “And I think a collective fear and unknowing as well. That is something that I think is very shared, something that we can all relate to.”
Shah-Tayler is geared up and ready to tour, once things open up. “When we go out, as a group, I do have a guitar player who is absolutely fantastic, he actually plays guitar in my Bowie band, So there is officially going to be a live band, I have a live band, I actually have too many people who want to do it. So once this is over, and once Facebook live is not the only context where I can do shows, I do have a band. And they’re fantastic, really excellent players, who I trust and know will be wonderful. It’s just a matter of, there’s no context for them at the moment, and I can’t ask them to learn the songs to play distance shows, , it doesn’t make any sense.”
Stay tuned for more news about Julian Shah-Tayler, and about Darwin’s new project.
Julian Shah-Tayler on Facebook
Julian Shah-Tayler on Bandcamp
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