It’s a blessing that Graham Dowdall was sufficiently long lived to have experienced at first hand, in real time, the first, noisy stirrings of the layered, diffuse musical culture that envelops us today – from Telstar and The Beatles as a child, to Pink Floyd, Delia Derbyshire’s White Noise project, dub, rave. He absorbed it all and eventually became a participant. In his 69 years he lived so many lives – not just as a musician, but as a master gardener, sponsor of his beloved Arbroath FC, political radical, lawyer and teacher of SEN children. Graham was the most beloved of men.
He was the drummer with Ludus – he recalls a very young Morrissey, a polite, nervously shy adolescent, making him tea. He went on to work with Nico, somehow riding the choppy waters that entailed over the years, drawing on his infinite reserves of patience as well as his musical prowess. I saw him many times with Roshi Nasehi (Roshi with Pars Radio) adding discreet electronic dimensions to her Welsh/Iranian/folk/avant pop stylings which deserved, and continue to deserve, a much wider audience. I also saw him numerous times playing electronics with Pere Ubu, a vital role in one of the world’s very greatest rock bands, carrying on a tradition of abstract intervention that began with founding Ubu member Allen Ravenstine.
Finally, he was Gagarin, whose retro-futurism was encapsulated in that moniker – mapping out a unique trail amid the busy skies of ambient electronica, achieving a deep, rich, layered, raging sense of peace, a hankering for what was once promised, what could and should be, the culmination of a lifetime’s experience and absorption. His most recent album, ‘Komorebi’, was his best.
Brilliant, exemplary, Graham has left us but I truly hope that somehow his journey isn’t done.
David Stubbs
(journalist and friend)
