"I'm not a producer," says 4AD founder Ivo Watts-Russell, describing his role in the creation of his new project, THE HOPE BLISTER. "I'm certainly not a musician. I'm just the person that makes this happen."

The "this" of which he speaks is ...smile's ok, THE HOPE BLISTER's inaugural release--an album of sharply beautiful cover versions which Ivo describes as "sort of a sequel to This Mortal Coil."

The results, however, are far more intimate than anything This Mortal Coil ever released. The deliberate sparseness of the music--the manner in which every sound counts--creates a palpably three-dimensional feeling of space. Louise Rutkowski's voice, often transformed by Ivo's distinctive use of studio wizardry ("I don't see any difference between a voice and an instrument") is the music's focal point, with hazy washes of strings, liquid bass notes and raga-like drones helping to create a mood of sustained mystery and melancholy.

This Mortal Coil emerged in the 80's while Ivo was establishing 4AD as one of the world's most vital independent record labels with seminal releases from The Birthday Party, Bauhaus, Cocteau Twins, Dead Can Dance, Throwing Muses and The Pixies. A shifting collective of no fixed personnel, This Mortal Coil produced a trio of exquisitely lush and intricate records--1984's It'll End in Tears, 1986's Filigree and Shadow. and 1991's Blood--which paired visionary cover versions of songs by Ivo's cult heroes with equally startling instrumental pieces. The influence of the albums continues to reverberate, perhaps most crucially in the way that they restore to prominence the work of such maverick musical figures as Tim Buckley, Chris Bell, Gene Clark and Tom Rapp, all of whom were either overlooked, underrated or simply forgotten at the time Ivo decided to record their songs.

For Ivo, THE HOPE BLISTER is a new expression thematically linked to This Mortal Coil, but separate. "I got to the point of missing having one specific project on my mind, and I wanted to do it somewhat differently to This Mortal Coil. The gap between the two projects is visible inasmuch as this record is solely cover versions."

"In the studio," Ivo recalls, "the music took its own course. All I knew was, I wanted things to pretty much revolve around the bass guitar and some strings. There were very few people involved." Among them were vocalist Louise Rutkowski (responsible for several spine-tingling moments on the second and third This Mortal Coil albums), bassist Laurence O'Keefe (Dark Star, Heidi Berry, Levitation) and a string quartet presided over by cellist/arranger Audrey Riley. Ritchie Thomas contributed saxophone and percussion on two tracks.

Ivo narrowed the album's final selections down to eight: Dagger (by Neil Halstead, formerly of Slowdive and now of 4AD's Mojave 3), Only Human (Heidi Berry), The Outer Skin (Chris Knox, of New Zealand's Tall Dwarfs), Sweet Unknown (Alison and Jim Shaw of Cranes), Let the Happiness In (David Sylvian), Is Jesus Your Pal (by the Icelandic band Slow Blow, previously covered by 4AD's GusGus), Spider and I (Brian Eno), and Hanky Panky Nohow (John Cale). "The intention is not to better the originals," Ivo says, "It's just a question of affection for them. Hopefully it's just a new reading when new expression or intonation becomes part of the song."

After recording the basic tracks in just twelve days, Ivo reunited with producer/engineer John Fryer (Wire, Love & Rockets, Robert Wyatt)--a crucial collaborator on all three This Mortal Coil albums--to sculpt the songs into their final form. "The way that John mixed it, I though was magic. He effectively put the final touches to the arrangements, really, with what he left out and where he introduced things."

Much of the impetus behind Ivo's musical endeavors is rooted in his awareness of the kind of epiphanies that the act of listening can provide. His keenly-honed curatorial sensibilities stem from a lifetime's worth of personal connections with music: the Spirit of Jimi Hendrix albums he loved as a teenager ("those records trained me to listen to individual sounds"), the otherworldly scree of Tim Buckley's Starsailor, the claustrophobic soundscapes of Joy Division and Berlin-era Bowie...and on and on and on...

"When you're listening to music," he says, "whether it's something that's new or old, when you do connect--time stops and somehow you're in this stream of a song or idea--I've described it as feeling like going home. Those are the only moments that remind me of why music is so important: you're being taken somewhere you want to go with this person or that group just for the idea that they're projecting at that moment, within that record."

"That just doesn't seem to exist very much within other people's way of thinking about making music," Ivo laments. "It's certainly not encouraged within the individual to be looking for that." In the context of THE HOPE BLISTER, "I'm putting my money where my mouth is, trying to create a journey that I would want to go on."

It's a journey that's only beginning with ...smile's ok. Underarms, a forthcoming mail order only instrumental album recorded during the ...smile's ok sessions, is a pared-down, ultra-minimal excursion through vast glacial caverns echoing sound. The next THE HOPE BLISTER album may go even further: "I still have the hope of much, much sparser recording somewhere in the future."

Finally, what's the origin of the name THE HOPE BLISTER? "I wanted two words that worked together that normally don't. THE HOPE BLISTER popped into my head sitting in a traffic jam one day....It means different things to me, but the meaning is pretty much contained within the name, simultaneously positive and negative. Virtually everything in life is like that."

extract from iMusic