Although you may not know Craig Armstrong by name his work will be very familiar to you. As a film composer Craig has worked on Moulin Rouge, Romeo and Juliet and most recently Ray.Away from film composing Craig is a keen musicial and with the help of fellow Scotsman Scott Fraser have formed the duo Winona.Working together over a string of Fidays using a range of vintage synthesisers the duo have produced their debut record Rosebud.I caught up with Craig to discuss his new project and his career.
You are best known as an award winning composer where did the idea for Winona come from?
It was just over the last, while Scott and I worked together, and while I was doing music for movies I collected a lot of vintage synthesisers and we just decided, we always said we would love to do an album together, and it just came about.We tried a few ideas, we actually did about seven Friday days, a lot of it was quite improvised. At the end of the day we recorded a lot of tracks and chose we the best but it was quite kind of improvised as we do it we just record it.
I did read that the recording process was just one day a week which is a little unorthodox why did you decide to do it like that?
It is just the way it happened really we just did ten or so Fridays and put down a lot of ideas and just picked the best after that. It was just a spur of the moment capture the moment.
How long have you and Scott known each other and how did you meet?
We met, it must have been about fifteen years ago, we worked together on a few different projects and we were always friends from that point. We were working with different people I got into film music, doing all the Baz Lurhman stuff, and Scott became a programmer and a writer in Glasgow. And the time we got together was the first time we managed to get time to get something together.
The album is very electric sounding, which is not something that would be associated with you, why did you go for that kind of sound?
We are just both interested in electronic music, even in films there is quite a lot of electronics, it seemed a good thing to do to limit ourselves to a certain way of working, in a way it’s not a limitation it’s a strength, it just had to be electronic.
And what can we expect from the record is all electric, I have only hears a couple of tracks myself?
The main thing about the record is we used a lot of old vintage synthesisers and drum machines that we had, and that was the idea for the first record.
French actress Laurence Ashley features on the album how did that collaboration come about?
I was working on a film that Luc Besson was involved in I was recording out in France in his studio, it was on the film Kiss of A Dragon, and she was an actress in the film and a friend of Luc.
We became friends and she is a singer so when we said we were getting the project together she asked if we needed any vocalists, at that point we thought the album was just going to be instrumental, we got Laurence over here, In Glasgow, and we put down the tracks.
You were a founding member of Texas how do you go from pop music to being a film composer?
I had learnt how to orchestrate before I got into doing arrangements for the bands and stuff. When I came back to Glasgow, that is what was happening in Glasgow there were lots of bands and they needed arrangements, with Texas I was keyboard player and a writer so in a way it seems quite a big leap but it’s not really that big a leap.
How do you go about scoring a film what is the process?
Well there is lots of ways of doing it: sometimes you get the film completed and you write to it, other times you get wee tiny bits of it while the guys are still working on it so there is no definite way it’s lots of different ways. It can be quite a long process for something like Moulin Rouge it took years to do it really.
And how are you going to market Winona as a one off project can we expect more albums?
We are going to Berlin in May to record a second album and we are going to work in some of the real kind of electronic music studios and maybe with some of the artists out there. We have worked out there before with some other German artist and electronic programmers so we are looking forward to that. We have kind of started it there is a lot of work to do on it; we have got a studio out there so we are going to work on it for maybe April, May June.
What kind of response have you had so far?
Very positive so far I would say we have got an Audio advert in France with one of our tracks Alpine Tunnel and it’s going down well.
We have had very good reviews so far all things are good.
With this project comes a certain amount of fame, for want of a better word, which is quite different to your previous work, which came with a certain amount of anonymity, how are you dealing with being thrust into he spotlight?
I think we are quite safe about be thrust into the limelight I think we are known as quite a personal project really and the second album is a bit more abstract. I think we can relax about being recognised in the street (laughs).
FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw
Winona's debut album is released 10th March