It's that time again. Things were going a bit folky this month till the Olympics and the electronic weirdoes kicked in...
‘Espers II’, Espers
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| Espers Strike A Classic Folk Musicians In Knitwear With Big Tree Pose |
The last decade has seen a
critical re-evaluation of the late 60s and early 70s Folk Rock period and a new
generation of musicians on both sides of the Atlantic tapping the same
vein. Of all the American Acid/Psych./Free
Folk acts, Espers impress me most and this seems to be their masterpiece.
Eschewing verse-chorus
structures these solemn, stately songs are built from repeating cycles of
melody and elegant female vocals.
Although largely acoustic, they often build towards passages of
distorted electric/electronic psychedelia in an authentic but bizarrely
dignified freak-out. Heard in its
entirety, the album becomes monumental, immersive and rather timeless.
‘No Roses’, Shirley Collins & The Albion Country Band
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| More Folk Musicians, - More Trees |
Thoughts of that earlier
folk revival led me to this masterpiece.
Ashley Hutchings made it in 1971 with new wife Shirley Collins and an
all-star cast of dozens. It places
Hutchings’ knowledge of the tradition into an electric band context beautifully
without ever overwhelming Collins’ fragile but earthy voice. It also includes the wonderful
fragment, ‘Just As The Tide Was A-Flowing’, which led, in turn, to repeat plays of…
‘Just As The Tide Was
A-Flowing’, 10,000 Maniacs
Although Natalie Merchant’s own song writing can be over-precious, this band still achieved some real elegiac
moments. Here, they rip into the
traditional ditty with energy and verve without losing an ounce of
respect. It’s an 80s stepping
stone to the current re-re-re-revival.
‘The Hissing of Summer
Lawns’, Joni Mitchell
As a singer-songwriter, Joni
Mitchell always carried a triple threat.
Her back catalogue bristles with examples of intelligent lyrics,
fantastic tunes and emotive vocal performances. People rave about ‘Blue’ but, great as that is, I prefer this one.
Beneath it’s jazz-inflected
sophistication and Hollywood sheen lie songs with a real cutting edge and
occasional darkness. The recurring
themes focus on dysfunction at the heart of the West Coast Nirvana and New York
seen as an exotic jungle. The
album title captures the contradictions of an artificial paradise perfectly.
‘Street Legal’, Bob Dylan
This one’s often overlooked
and suffered from a bafflingly bad production job, but I love these mid 70s
Dylan albums made prior to the lamentable Born Again years. Religious allusions were always present
in his songs but work much better when, as here, mediated by worldliness and
existential doubt.
‘Street Legal’ contains three real epics in ‘Changing of The
Guard’, ‘Señor, (Tales of Yankee Power)’, and ‘Where Are You Tonight? (Journey
Through Dark Heat).’ Their complex lyrics, oblique
references and multiple possible interpretations evoke a real ‘dark night of
the soul’ that might actually explain the subsequent retreat into evangelical
certainty. To me, the much-derided
Las Vegas big band arrangements create real drama and make perfect sense.
‘Full Sunken Breaks’, Kid Spatula
More beat-driven electronic
oddness from Mike Paradinas, under yet another pseudonym. This recalls the ‘Royal Astronomy’
album he made as µ-Ziq and includes some serious attempts to out-Aphex the Twin
himself.
‘Tour De France
Soundtracks’, Kraftwerk
Given this summer’s focus on
competition cycling, it seemed only appropriate to spin this. Music and technology had finally caught
up with the former electronic pioneers from Dusseldorf when they released it in
2003. Nonetheless, it’s an
enjoyable slice of sleek European Techno, evoking the cadence of pedals, the
sweep of the peloton through a mountain stage and even the demands placed on a
cyclist’s body.
We know that Paul Weller
actually provides the current Tour soundtrack so maybe these clean, futuristic
sounds could apply to the super-efficient, high performance world of track
cycling instead. Indeed, Kraftwerk
actually performed in the Manchester Velodrome in 2008. I’d like to think that, when Sir Chris,
La Pendlena and Trotty were preparing to race in London, this was looped and
synched on every iPod.
‘Supersilent 6’, Supersilent
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| Ah, - Those Difficult Norwegians |
Although nominally from a
jazz background, these Norwegians are much closer to the world of Avant-Garde
improvisation than New Orleans or The Village Vanguard. They reputedly convene
periodically, solely to record or perform without any rehearsal and in a purely
improvised manner. They generally
combine conventional instrumentation with abstract electronics and edit
recordings from each unique performance.
These are packaged with austere uniformity and minimal information. Also, the one member who's not originally a
jazzer calls himself Deathprod and they've recently incorporated the bassist from Led Zeppelin into their ranks.
The slowly evolving pieces
on ‘6’ are quite varied but share
a sombre, Nordic aesthetic ranging from solemn dignity to the threatening and
just plain spooky. Passages of
unstructured exploration and careful decision making periodically arrive at
points of general accord between the individual players, often around a
particular phrase, but rarely settle into anything comfortable or stable for
very long. Quiet passages barely
emerge from silence whilst the loud bits can be intimidating in their
volume. It’s not something to play
every day but always leaves me feeling I’ve had an extensive aural and mental
workout.
‘Tom Lehrer In
Concert’, Tom Lehrer
Lehrer was an outwardly
tweedy, Jewish, Harvard Maths professor who also wrote and performed cleverly
barbed satirical songs in the 1950s and 60s. This was recorded in London in 1960 and features all the
favourites including ‘Poisoning Pigeons In The Park’ and ‘The Masochism Tango’. Lehrer’s songs were played regularly on the radio when I was a child and often made
me laugh. I appreciate their dark
humour and brilliant wordplay more knowingly now and they still make me
laugh.
‘Telstar’, The Tornadoes
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| An Historical Artefact From The Future |
BBC Radio 4 recently
repeated their smashing little survey of pioneering British electronic music,
including this little gem recorded in 1962. Joe
Meek’s private life and mental health were messy and tragic but he was a truly
innovative producer in the early 1960s.
The Tornadoes probably saw themselves as cowboys more than spacemen but
this has a wonderful distorted keyboard sound and that lovely blend of
modernism and nostalgia essential to any effective futuristic vision.
