Rob Ellis is a musician, composer & record producer who, over a thirty year period, has worked on various recording projects with such artists as PJ Harvey, Marianne Faithfull, Anna Calvi, Bat for Lashes, Cold Specks, Scott Walker, Placebo, Torres & The Blinders. He has also released six solo albums, three under the name “Spleen”, & three in his own name: “Music for the Home” (Vols. 1&2) on the Leaf Label & “The Nostalgia Machine” for KPM. For a full list of Rob’s work see the discography page.
The day my beautiful friend Marianne Faithfull passed, in the year in which she was to celebrate having had an incredible 60 full years in the music business, I was on my usual afternoon walk, a very sunny and bright, still January day in the countryside, during which, I had been listening to a podcast about The Enlightenment. And this had led my train of thought to think about “Negative Capability” and the album we made of that title with Marianne…and what that term from Keats “Negative Capability” meant for her. And, as always, I thought about how very amazing and special and emotional that album recording was for me and everyone involved…And it was while musing on all this that I received a message from another friend relaying the news that Marianne had passed away…
I think “Negative Capability” meant for her the idea of the mysterious and the spiritual, and the expressive, and that album, more than I think any I’ve ever worked on, lives up to that description so perfectly… ( it was a hugely significant album for me, indeed for my own very personal and even spiritual reasons).
Truth is though, I thought about Marianne very often generally, and especially that remarkable album (now sadly to be the last song LP she will ever make), so I’m not declaring “premonition”, but, maybe, in the words of the song “The Gypsy Faerie Queen” that she wrote with Nick Cave for this particular album, something resonant was vibrating in the universe at that moment and “in the twilight in-between”
Rest in Peace dear darling Marianne, thank you for everything you taught me
All my love
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