Pete Lawrie-Winfield's project and band Until The Ribbon Breaks is aptly named. The "ribbon" in this case is tape, in all its forms: audio, video, on a reel or in a cassette, and it's at the heart of the music. As Pete describes it in a letter I recently received, "As a child, I would tape the radio onto cassette, fanatically watch VHS tapes the adults left out, and play both 'until the ribbon broke,' cementing a life-long obsession with the marriage of sound and image."
But more recently, that image of the ribbon breaking has taken on new meaning, fueled by alcohol and benzodiazepine. Pete is an alcoholic and his own life unraveled from his addiction. He went to Thailand to detox, found a spiritual healer he knew as Bob, and his life profoundly changed. His planned month in Thailand turned into three.
The song writing began in Los Angeles with producer and bandmate Elliot Wall, until Pete Lawrie-Winfield took it to the Far East and turned it into a music project that was transformative and life-altering. He worked on music in a small hut with a tiny desk, no contact with the outside world and few of the musical tools he was used to composing with.
"Here Comes The Feeling" is one of those transformative songs he came up with and the video for it is filled with images and sounds of tape/ribbon winding and rewinding, looping again and again. There's footage from old film, sounds of old answering machine tape and more. Tears flow and return from where they came and flow again. It's profound imagery.
Pete's recovery continues. "The record went through all of this with me," he says. "I'm grateful for where I am now and I'm amazed there's a record to speak of."
That album, the follow up to 2015's A Lesson Unlearntwill be out in 2018, and based on this song and my love of that debut I'm eager to hear it.
Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org. 9(MDEwMTk5OTQ0MDEzNDkxMDYyMDQ2MjdiMw004))
