Genevieve Von Black Music

The 2rd Delays Have Dangerous Ends track came out on 26 July 2024. It is one of my favourite Delays improvisations so far (I know only 2 released, but we’ve recorded a lot that will also be released over time).

It is special to me because it starts off sounding like a classical written composition – but is in fact a moment in time that will never happen again. Sometimes, when you swirl an idea around in your mind for a while, you can find it pouring out of your fingers when you improvise. I had been listening to classical Andalusian music, and thinking about the fiery love between poets Ibn Zaydun and Wallada bint Al-mustakfi. I’d been imagining if this music continued into Shakespeare’s Elizabethan times what that blend would be like, what that blend would be like these days. Zaydun and Wallada’s poems survive to this day – would our music be understood a 1000 years from now? I feel you can actually hear all this as Al-Zubair (Sheik) starts off. Then you hear the guitar and effects picking up on the ideas, responding in kind, then pulling the improvisation into the future. ‘Racing from the past into the future’ concepts underpinned the vid we made for the track too.

But as well as that, the title is a play on the fact that there is an alternative interpretation (one of many!) about who Shakespeare was and where he came from. Google Sheik Zubair and Shakespeare sometime …