They say that a lucid dream is when you’re aware that you’re dreaming and you can actually do things in the dream state. I’m not sure how true that is or even who they hell “they” are, but I do know that I had the opportunity to chat with The Real Tuesday Weld about dreams, music, and the odd mythology behind who he is.
For the uninformed, The Real Tuesday Weld is the dream-child of Stephen Coates.
I recently had the opportunity to check out the brilliant and haunting The London Book of the Dead and was blown away by the cinematic scope and grandeur of the record. Pitchfork noted “the strikingly old-fashioned arrangements” of the record, while XLR8R described the “complex voice, bitter and ardent and maybe longing, too, and, like his music, bears a certain timelessness.”
The tune “Last Words” was recently featured on the soundtrack to the film Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist and a video was released as well.
With Coates an enigmatic figure, I knew that something special was going to come out of our conversation. While attempts at the world’s first lucid dream interview didn’t quite pan out, we were able to catch up via the magic of the internet.
Your music is infused with several different layers and sounds, making it almost impossible to categorize. Your MySpace page describes the style as “Lounge/Electronica/Pop.” If you had to describe your own sound, what term would you use? I managed to come up with “Fuzzy Cabaret,” for instance.
I quite like that! But we normally call it “Antique Beat” - which of course is a rather fuzzy term in itself but perhaps captures the idea of something old filtered through something new.
The story of your life almost reads like a myth. Describe how The Real Tuesday Weld came to be.
Well, I think it’s a good idea to make a myth from your life. I grew up in a strange house. I spent a long time studying Buddhism, studied at the Royal College of Art, went to a monastery in Spain, came back, crashed, started to read Jung and pay attention to dreams, had a dream about Tuesday Weld and another about Al Bowlly, the 1930s British crooner, and took them as a sign to make music that sounded the way I remembered it from when I was a child. Out of the blue, I was given a sampler and a computer and just began.
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Article comments
1 - Sterfish
Nice interview. I only heard of this artist recently because he remixed Count Basie's "Good Morning Blues" for the new Verve Remixed Christmas collection. I'm going to have to check out more of his stuff.