When singer/songwriter/guitarist Michael Chapman died at 80 in 2021, he was working on an album entitled Another Fish, a sequel to his 2015 guitars ‘n’ effects album Fish. The Northern Englishman’s widow Andru met up with musician and new Chapman fan (via Chapman ally Steve Gunn) Andrew Tuttle and passed copies of the unfinished recordings on. Tuttle then took the songs and ran with them, using them as the basis for his own interpretation, interpolations, and/or new songs. Once he finished his own recordings, Tuttle combined them with the originals on the double CD set Another Tide/Another Fish.
Like Chapman, the Brisbane musician and composer works in hybrid spaces, combining folk-based forms with improvisation and electronic effects. Tuttle’s banjo features heavily, as that’s the instrument he used to play along with Chapman’s music, but this isn’t acoustic music. Chapman’s layered, spacy guitar work combines with Tuttle’s electronic washes and samples to create waves of processed sound. Sometimes Tuttle plays his banjo over it, as on the shimmering “Amidst a Half Dozen Saplings,” but just as often he simply manipulates the recordings to produce overtone-laden soundscapes filled with ghostly textures and phantom notes. Even the solo banjo piece “Of Two High and Two Low Waters” has enough echo on it to send it to another dimension. Somewhere between ambient music and psych folk, Another Tide will tweak your lobes with a velvety caress.
For those wondering what Chapman’s original work sounded like, Tuttle has your back – disk two Another Fish presents those unfinished recordings. Overdubbing himself into a small six-string orchestra, Chapman alternates between acoustic and electric guitars to add layers of fingerpicked riffs – though often fairly simple and straightforward, all those licks add up to complex folds of sound. Sometimes he goes straight for beauty, as on the opening cut “Untitled #1;” other times, he adds a bluesy element for moodier, more aggressive tones, as with “Untitled #7” and the epic “Untitled #4.” Despite the nature of the recording, the music sounds finished – unless Chapman planned on adding yet more layers, only the raw recording quality hints that this album-in-progress wasn’t ready to go – certainly there’s nothing here in which Chapman wouldn’t have had confidence. As mesmerizing as Tuttle’s recalibration, Another Fish is also an invaluable look into a brilliant creative mind working right up to the end.
