Bed Wetter: “A Life in The Day”

Geoff Kirkwood talks us through every track from his just-released new album “A Life in The Day” as Bed Wetter.

Creatively speaking, pinning down Geoff Kirkwood is a challenge. While best known as the man behind “intergalactic house” alias Man Power, Kirkwood is as comfortable writing and presenting experimental symphonies, ambient hauntology and Audio Visual orchestral performances as Bed Wetter or delivering raucous kinetic Techno as MPX.

Now, the ever-prolific Newcastle UK based experimental artist and Me Me Me label owner Geoff Kirkwood returns as Bed Wetter with his second 12-track new album entitled “A Life in the Day”, which is out today. Written during Kirkwood’s time spent as Artist in Residence for the Sage Opera House and Concert Venue, the album was created as a direct response to a forced hiatus created by the UK’s second COVID lockdown in December 2020. “The Bed Wetter project exists as a way for me to look at making art that explicitly reflects my identity and my history. A big part of that identity is simply how I feel”, he says.

Prevented from continuing work in completing for his debut AV Symphony with the Royal Northern Sinfonia, separated from his wife and daughter in Mexico and completely isolated from the rest of the world, Kirkwood turned to music as a way of processing his feelings. Entirely conceived, written and created from his temporary spare-room-studio over the course of two weeks, the album viscerally charts the world as experienced from inside Kirkwood’s head and seeks to come to terms with the range of warring emotions the writer experienced over the course of any single given day during his confinement. “Recorded in the depths of lockdown during near total isolation and with the feeling that my life had collapsed around me. I used music as a way of observing and rationalising my situation and my mental state. I’m about to take some time away from being Man Power so that I can concentrate on starting the new year exploring fresh ideas for making things, as Bed Wetter, that don’t already exist in ways that are special for me”.

1. Denial (Promise and Promises)

I’m usually reluctant to be explicit about my music, but this album is explicit by design and charts a very specific narrative across a day in lockdown, which makes it easier to talk about. Denial (Promise and Promises) was written to evoke the winters daybreak during Lockdown, where I would wake with the strength to momentarily keep the full weight of isolation at bay and the day still held the prospect of change and difference.

2. Calm (The Routine Safety of Patterns)

“Calm” details the immersion in routine that I would cling to maintain my sanity. The return to familiar and repetitive daily motifs that are echoed in the music.

3. Gratitude (Again For The First Time)

Whether naturally, or as some sort of defence mechanism, at some point in almost every day i would find myself in a state of “jamais vu” whereby the familiar would suddenly seem new to me and develop a beauteous countenance that I’d never noticed before. I would feel almost overwhelmed by happiness and gratitude for the majesty of the world around me.

4. Patience (A Life in the Day)

The joy of simply being alive would be followed by the certain knowledge that I needed to maintain this kind of spirit, and the awareness that I may be in this position for a long time. I would find myself consciously trying to cultivate a siege mentality and build up walls of patient positivity.

5. Nostalgia (VHS Ghosts)

As the day wore on I would find myself lapsing into nostalgia and rumination about my past and other times. Previous lives lived. Friends who were no longer around.
It was a special kind of sadness. Dressed up as a celebration of my live, but in truth its requiem.

6. Confusion (Pulling at a Thread)

The feelings dredged up from living in my inner world would soon start to break down the walls I’d built to maintain emotional sanctity. A confused internal war would begin. A pendulous Schizoid conflict.

7. Paranoia (Different)

Ultimately the pendulum would favour paranoia, and my questions would give way to beliefs. The certain knowledge that I had no worth, that all was ultimately fated to end in doom.

8. Depression (The Loop)

This would be followed by the despair and dejection of depression when I begin to realise that everything was my fault and there was nothing I could do to change that.

9. Anger (Hate it Back)

Eventually the listlessness of depression would give way to the fire of anger. Sobs of woe would become tears of rage at the injustice of simply being alive. An impotent but boiling frustration at my own disgusting inability to effect change in my own life.

10. Resolve (It’s A Process)

In due course the anger cooled from white blue to red and then orange. Rage gave way to resolve. An understanding that things may be impossible right now, but the only person who could change that would be me. I began to accept that while things were terrible in that moment i needed to create a dedication to survive long enough to see things become different again.

11. Optimism (Again For The First Time For The Second Time)

As my thoughts moved from defeat to commitment my perspective would change and again I would be assailed by the blessings and gifts that surrounded me just by virtue of surviving another day, but now beauty and wonder had a new level of commitment and drive. Not only was I surrounded by reasons to live, I would realise it was my job to make sure I stayed around long enough to keep experiencing everything life could still yet bring.

12. Acceptance (Is The New Denial)

Having simply survived yet another day I would find myself once more renewed in my belief that i would come through everything and the world would continue.
(At least long enough to question everything again the next day)

Stream the whole thing below.

Bed Wetter’s new album “A Life in The Day” is out now via Me Me Me.

Pick up your copy here.