rye FAQs (please scroll up/down)

Tell me more about christopher rye...

All you need to know is at www.christopherrye.com (click Back to Jukebox, above) and in songs such as Another Place in Time, Et tu Babe?, NightWalker, Rainy Night Sunday, Heart in Your Hand, The Night Sky, and We Claim the Night... we can also tell you that 'rye' means 'island' and, in Romany dialect, 'imposter'.

Where is christopher from?
Outside. The song Et tu Babe? is his manifesto.

Why is 'christopher rye' always in lower case?
christopher doesn't shout. He is a member of the Diogenes Club.

• I've heard there is lots of FREE CONTENT hidden in christopherrye.com...
Yes: loads :-) Click on any image, on different areas within images, or on moving objects (eg above left) to enter hidden rooms. Hovering over a Book image will give you some lyrics, and clicking on it will download the song for free.

Who are Taikonauts?
Taikonauts, who feature on the christopher rye songs Oberammergau,   Reptile, From the Golden Light and Keep it Dark! are a Beijing-based, Chinese heavy metal band with whom christopher collaborates over the Internet. They contacted christopher via Stereofame. They have to keep their music and online projects hidden from the Chinese authorities, because of local censorship of the Internet and clampdowns on certains types of music, and because one of them works for the Chinese space programme. This is not a wind-up. (The anglicised word 'Taikonaut' is the Chinese equivalent of 'astronaut'). So forget Blur and their music for the Beagle probe, Taikonauts may actually be the first band in space. The band's tongue-in-cheek stage names are not their real ones. Click the red 'c-star' logo on the christopherrye.com home page for the band's mini website. Go Taikonauts! [Taikonauts have no connection with any wannabes of a similar name on MySpace or YouTube. These are the originals... and we think these Taikonauts have more right than any imitators to use the name. :-) ]

Who or what is 'Oberammergau'?  
Oberammergau is a town in Germany, famous for its 'passion plays'. But it has a darker past too. At the end of World War II, rocket scientists fleeing Nazi Germany made for Oberammergau with the intention of selling their work to the Americans or the British. They succeeded and went on to help build what became the US space programme. The song is intended as a reminder that the Apollo space missions were, in part, built on the research of Nazi scientists (including former SS officer Wernher von Braun), who had sacrificed the lives of prisoners of war in appalling, slave-like conditions to build the lethal V2 rocket weapon. The story is documented in the book 'Dark Side of the Moon' by Gerard de Groot.

What is 'kinetic' music?
Phil Spector liked a wall of sound, but christopher aims to create what he calls a 'machine of sound' – or an engine of sound, perhaps – full of spinning, moving parts that interlock with each other. Kinetic music is composed of, and designed for, bodies in motion. It is inspired by kinetic sculptures, such as mobiles, which have a defined overall structure, but which have dozens of component parts that spin around each other and move within their own orbits. Put another way, it is a like systems music, but with better tunes.

Is that AutoTune...? I hate AutoTune.
No it isn't AutoTune! A few christopher rye tracks feature vocoder harmony vocals or use a Vocal Transformer filter to change the character, texture or even gender of his voice, but he has never used Antares AutoTune. You can hear the Vocal Transformer effect most clearly in the female-sounding backing vocal on When Garbo Laughs, which is actually christopher's voice morphed, and in the strange vocal effects on The Film of My Life.

What guitars is christopher playing in the Images section?
For the musos among you, christopher's main guitar live – as seen in the live video – is currently a black Dean Deceiver, acquired Autumn 2010. The other guitar in the Images section is a custom-made Brandoni guitar built from an original Vox (Eko) 'Teardrop' body, with a rocket headstock and Kent Armstrong pickups. He also plays a Gretsch lap steel live (eg on 12.01 Speed of Darkness), and also has a black Fender Aerodyne Strat (quite rare) and a Takamine electric spanish guitar, which he plans to replace with a Yamaha Invisible Guitar for live work.

Is 'Heart in Your Hand' a true story?
Yes. Next question. ;-)

What about Angel on the Undeground?
Tragically, the story told in verse one of the song is also true. christopher found himself in a completely deserted tube station one night in 2000. Shortly before the train came in, a shy-looking young man in his early 20s walked onto the platform, brushed past christopher, and then made his way calmly down to the far end of the station. christopher turned and watched the train come in. It stopped suddenly halfway into the platform. christopher turned back and looked towards where the boy had been. He was gone. The song is written as a celebration of the unknown person whose last moments christopher unwittingly shared, and who had quietly slipped under the train when christopher's back was turned. The 'angel' invoked in the title is someone who could have known the boy's troubles and intervened when it mattered to stop him jumping. Because christopher was ushered out of the station and left in the street on his own immediately after the incident, he never found out anything more about the boy, but he hopes that, whoever he was, he is at peace. (christopher realised after writing the song that the incident also took place at Angel station.)

Who is 'Rainy Night Sunday' about?
The track is dedicated to a long-lost friend who christopher was very close to and grew up with, but is not necessarily about him. If your name is Owen Stevens, get in touch. christopher would like to say hello.

New York and other cities feature in several songs...
New York, Paris and London are christopher's favourite places, with Barcelona, Cape Town, Prague and San Francisco following close behind. All feature in christopher's songs to some degree. September Loves You, Rain Came Down on Broadway and Hey Tinker Bell, to name just three, are all set in Manhattan. ('Tinker Belle' is a plane christopher has flown on several times to the US). LA features in the nightmarish Killer on the Backlot, and also in Good Luck Glitterbug. The songs Angel on the Underground and Heart in Your Hand are London songs, with the latter namechecking the Village and Retro bars, Balans restaurant in Soho, and legendary 90s gay club Popstarz). And then there's christopher's home town of Brighton, of course, which, along with the sea generally, features in Stranger, Robot Man, Stay with Me (written on Brighton beach at 3am), and countless others. christopher's music is rooted in a sense of place and atmosphere.

What is 'Good Luck, Glitterbug' about?
The song was originally inspired by a talented and original singer christopher heard at the East West Bar in West Hollywood, when christopher was in LA on holiday in 2007. The music this singer made live that night was stunning and his voice was so beautiful christopher says it made him cry. But he was surrounded by 'players' who wanted to turn him into LA chart fodder. The songs this singer subsequently posted on MySpace, says christopher, "sound just like a random, production-line urban artist" and bear no relation to the stunning vocal performance christopher heard that night. christopher does not want to give the singer's name, because he says he was a lovely person and does not want to criticise the decisions he made about his career, which has since stalled. "He should have been a huge star," says christopher, "but his producer threw away everything that was original about him and made him sound like everyone else." 'Glitterbug' is also a tongue-in-cheek tribute to a dear, gay friend of christopher's who, in christopher's words "lives for the parties". So the final song is about someone who is out there 'living the dream'... no matter what the cost.

• 'Glitterbug' subsequently became the name of the dancing robot in the video for christopher's song 'NuRomancer'.

What is the Tom Robinson connection?
Simply that BBC6music presenter Tom Robinson, whose career as a singer and songwriter from the late 70s to the 90s produced classic songs such as Glad to be Gay, 2-4-6-8 Motorway and War Baby, played christopher's Rainy Night Sunday several times on his show. christopher was subsequently invited to meet him and talked to him at length about online music. christopher was then asked by Gorillaz double bassist and string arranger Al Mobbs, who runs Ambiguous Records, to help promote Tom's 60th birthday concert on 1st June 2010. Al was at the meeting with christopher and Tom, along with a couple of other musicians. Tom has since supported christopher's song Big Sky! Keep Turning, so it is a connection born out of music. Tom is responsible for helping the careers of hundreds of artists by giving them airplay on his shows. Long may that — and BBC6music — continue.

Who or what is the 'shadow man' figure...?
The character who has become christopher's avatar and features in several songs — notably The Shadow Man, of course — is whoever or whatever you think he is. One theory is that the shadow man (aka 'Walker', 'NightWalker' or 'GhostWriter') represents 'the shadow aspect' of the psyche, another that it is simply an Expressionist idea, in tune with much of christopher's work. "Everyone carries a shadow," wrote psychologist and thinker Carl Gustav Jung, "and the less it is embodied in the individual's conscious life, the blacker and denser it is." According to Jung, the shadow, by being hidden, instinctive and irrational, is prone to 'project' itself without the person realising it. These projections can form a fog of illusion between the ego and the real world. Jung also believed that "in spite of its function as a reservoir for human darkness — or perhaps because of this — the shadow is the seat of creativity." But who knows? christopher's not saying. Maybe 'christopher rye' is someone else's shadow...

Or maybe you're the Shadow Man?