Woolfy, Projections Neeve (2008)
Naming one’s child can be a daunting task. It’s something they’ll carry—with rare exceptions—for life, so most parents put a lot of thought into finding the perfect name. Simon James, a British-born, California-based musician known as Woolfy, and his partner were no exception. In the late noughties, they were looking for a name for their daughter-to-be.
“We had some names on the table—Isabella and Simone—but our daughter hadn't yet revealed her name. Then one day it came to be,” James explained via email. “In Gaelic, the proper spelling is Niamh, which means ‘bright and radiant’ and refers to the daughter of the sea god Manannán mac Lir. In Latin, the spelling Nieves means ‘new snow.’ And in the music world, there was a man named Rupert Neve, who created the best mixing console that ever existed.” They had found her name, and so Neeve came to be.
Around the same time, James spent time in the studio with his collaborator Dan Hastie, aka Projections, working on the epic Balearic-infused LP The Astral Projections of Starlight. On this cosmic album, released in 2008 via Munich-based nu-disco powerhouse Permanent Vacation, there is a wonderful track called “Neeve” with James singing in falsetto: “It’s a perfect world / It’s a perfect life for me. She’s a perfect girl and we don’t even know her name.”
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