Scottish crime writer and Mogwai addict Ian Rankin is the latest artist to join the ever-intriguing roster of Tim Burgess’ O Genesis label. Rankin has written a short story called ‘A Little Bit of Powder’, which on the single is read by Craig Parkinson, the actor perhaps best known for playing Tony Wilson in Control. The launch of the single (featuring a reading by Parkinson) will be at The Quietus and O Genesis gig at the Lexington on November 26th, which also features a headline set by Minny Pops and support from Pavlov’s Children – tickets here.
Speaking to the Quietus, Rankin explained the story behind the story: "Tim contacted me a while back with the idea of a spoken word project – me writing a story – to give out to his fans as a little Xmas gift. We met in Edinburgh in August and bounced around a few ideas. I then gathered my thoughts. A friend in Glasgow had told me an anecdote some months previously about a local musician who was told to meet another musician in a bar, and take his acoustic guitar with him. When he arrived, a bag of powder was produced – the ashes from a mutual friend and fellow musician – and sprinkled into the sound hole. This was apparently a last request from the dying musician – that his ashes be shared out among musician friends. So that was the genesis of the short story.
"I am a sucker for rock biographies and rock movies and decided to tell the story from the point of view of a hardened roadie. Thinking about the ashes, I then realised powder of a different kind might have been behind the breaking up of a band, and also that, by setting the story in winter, I could also add snow (hah!) to the mix. Three different types of powder… And after that all I had to do was write the bastard. It was fine actually – only took three or four days, then I timed myself reading it and found that it ran to around 15 minutes. Tim had wanted 5-6 minutes so it would fit on one side of a single. I reckoned this was a problem and told Tim as much, but he wanted to read the ‘director’s cut’ before I got busy with the editing scissors. Having seen it and like it, he then insisted we couldn’t leave out any of it."
Here is Tim Burgess’ message about the record:
