British contemporary artist and musician Paul Fryer shares video for single "The Man Who Would Not Die"

Something to do with Death.

That is the title of Sir Christopher Frayling’s biographical meditation on Sergio Leone and spaghetti westerns.

Something to do with Death.

The phrase intimates our fascination with death's mystery and finality. But, as much, how the idea of death makes us hang so hard onto life. The vicinity of death illuminates art. Its power suffuses music.

Just think of Leonard Cohen or Johnny Cash, at once accepting the inevitable yet refusing to go gentle into that good night.

Paul Fryer, who records as OUIJA, knows this terrain. His new song is called The Man Who Would Not Die.

"I don't care what the angels say," he sings, baritone over passionate orchestration, "I lie there on that killing ground, as naked as a babe and bare; I asked what lay beneath the clay, and they said, Nothing's under there." The song is from the forthcoming album Show Tunes From Oblivion. It sounds that way.

Three years ago, as Fryer lay recovering from eight hours extensive surgery, excavating away his Stage 4 throat cancer, he had a dream.

"I was lying in a vast basement," he says. "There was debris scattered here and there and it was thick with dust. I was in the dark on my own, naked and cold. But then I sensed there was something else there. I said nervously What's down here? What's under thisfloor and a clear voice said Nothing.”

Then he woke up. He had to escape, to get out of the hospital, to live. He tried. The nurses physically dissuaded him. But the vision had to go somewhere. So it went into his music, into this song.

“Apparently we all die” he laughs, “I suppose I’m no different. Yet somehow we live on. In recordings. In music and art and writing. And in new generations of people.”  

For a quarter of a century Paul Fryer has expressed himself through visual art. His work is alive with electricity and light; it evokes the mystery and impossibility of the world around us. It invites us to think beyond the material plane, what it is, what it might mean. What might be outside it. His new music has a similar metaphysical urgency.

Sketched out in Paul's hospital bed, The Man Who Would Not Die was then heard by underground musician Malcolm Doherty, who's worked with the likes of Can's Damo Suzuki and Lawrence of Felt/Denim/Go-Kart Mozart. The pair joined forces and soon pulled in heavyweights such as Bacharach-affiliated arranger Rob Shirakbari and the artist Daphne Guinness. Her haunting vocals are a key element to the power of The Man Who Would Not Die.

It is a lush song, theatrical in the way of dark thoughtful burlesque though avoiding gauche and gaudy melodrama. A monochrome video sees Fryer shrouded, traversing landscapes redolent of Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal, that classic 1957 rumination on the possibility of escaping death.

“The Man Who Would Not Die” will be available via Bandcamp, YouTube, and as a strict edition of 50 individually lathe cut 7” 45rpm vinyl records. Each record is packaged in a custom sleeve with inserts and stickers designed by Paul Fryer, individually stamped and numbered, with the paperwork embossed with Paul’s studio seal. Each edition also features an individual drawing created by Paul Fryer by hand and signed by the artist. Each drawing is unique. 

"When I was diagnosed I was given survival odds of 60/40,” Paul explains, "I asked my consultant, presuming I survived, would I still be able to sing? The doctor told me I might still be able to speak. It was then that I thought, If I survive, I'm going to sing my heart out.”

He has kept that pact with himself and the result speak for itself. Something to do with death, yes; but something much more about living and creating.