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| Updated: 28/01/08 | © 2008 Cool Bunny Media | Da Cool Bunny sez 'Splank that Plank, Baby!' | |
#5 |
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I normally avoid nostalgia like the plague, but just hearing the theme from this classic tv serial brings back my youth with a rush, and I suddenly feel the weight of my 47 odd years. Anyone who was a child in the mid 60's will probably remember this French-sourced tv serial - especially as Auntie Beeb ran it every summer holiday. Based on the Daniel Defoe novel, the score was composed by Robert Mellin and Gian-Piero Reverberi. Considering that most 60's tv shows used little music outside the main themes, I was amazed to find over 75 minutes of music on this CD reissue (30 minutes of which had been only recently rediscovered. What we have here are the original recordings (not re-recordings) of the music, and one must congratulate Silva Screen's production team on both their detective work and the massive clean-up that the tapes needed before they could be used. The music surprisingly holds up very well away from the visual cues, some of it is cod-baroque in style, but most is original and extremely listenable (it also helped that the main theme was so damned insidiously catchy that you end up whistling it everywhere!). Highly recommended for those nostalgic for their youth. This cd came in a plain cover so I have no idea who or how many make up King Chango. That aside, I can tell you they play a vibrant, joyful mix of latin, ska, reggae, and rock, with a little sly rapping on the top. But primarily this is music from the latin side of America. The Return Of El Santo has twelve tracks, all of them great for parties - they'll get anyone up on their feet for a jig or three [even me, I suspect!]. If you can get your head around Buster Bloodvessel's Bad Manners adding latin to their ska mix then this how King Chango sound. If you don't fall under the spell of opening track Finalmente then I doubt that you'll like this album - every track is a self contained party just waiting to happen... Put another way, if we were having the summer we should have and there was a barbecue on every street corner this is the album that should be the soundtrack to that scene.
DMS succeeds on any level you care to apply to it - it's a great party album with enough variety and dance tunes to keep any old hoofer happy: A Costa De Galicia, Slan Le Van, The Pernod Waltz, The Hounds of Letterfrack. It also rocks like a demented bugger - just listen to Steve Earle roaring out The Galway Girl to see what I mean. And then there's one of the best tv themes ever - the wildly weird Irish sit-com The Fitz. Folkies will find Jackson Browne's A Man of Constant Sorrow to their tastes. To cap it all the album was recorded in the best place you can imagine, an Irish pub! Talk about the ultimate in cool... Kathryn
Tickell & Ensemble Mystical - Like the Jocelyn Pook Untold Things album reviewed elsewhere, this is another album that is cross-referential, taking its influences from various genres of music and melding them together. In this case it a mixture of traditional folk, roots and classical music. The instrumental palette includes cello, fiddle, melodeon, harp, northumbrian pipes, sackbut, trombone and of course the human voice. The musicians are: Kathryn Tickell, Mary Macmaster, Ron Shaw, Julian Sutton, and John Kenny. While many of the tunes on this cd are traditional, or written in a traditional style the results are anything but, with some very strange outcomes. Take the first track, Sevens, a lively jig type number where the trombone acts as a drone base for the pipes and melodeon to dance over. Day Dawn begins as a plaintive air until Mary Macmaster's lucent and breathy soprano takes over and begins what sounds like a lullaby, but is actually a Celtic carol. All told there are eleven tracks here and they explore this variety of instrumentation in many ways. As a folk album it is perhaps a little too controlled and static - I can't see it being played at parties much, but there is a lot of beautiful music here, ideal for those times when you need to recharge the batteries after a heavy day.
It also has to be said that MCC is a superb craftswoman when it comes to songs, with many of these staying in the memory long afterwards: Whenever You're Ready, Maybe World [with its Beach Boys harmonies], Simple Life, This Is Me Leaving You. Finally, MCC surrounds herself with extremely sympathetic musicians [including Fairport Convention's ace drummer Dave Mattacks] on this album, and their velvet glove fit makes for some very pleasurable listening. While MCC isn't exactly unknown here in the UK no hits singles and little radioplay does mean she is still a cult act when she should really be much more visible. I'm not sure whether Time*Sex*Love is the album to break through that barrier, but it is a fine example of her work and if you've never listened to her before buy this. You won't regret it - highly recomended. Various
Artists - ThisCo: ThisCology
Link: www.thisco.net Steeleye Span - Bedlam Born
And so it goes on - Bedlam Born is one of Steeleye Span's definitive late period albums. A perfect mixture of folk and rock in a beautifully engineered packaged - this is an album ideal for testing out that new hi-fi system. It says a lot that a group of musicians such as these can continue to mine the roots of British traditional music and still find gold after all these years. It's even more impressive that they can then bring their highly accomplished musical skills to bear and make something that is of today. Highly recommended. This is a straight reissue of Linda Ronstadt's 1982 album which sold a million and grabbed a few grammy nominations. Where her 70's albums were ground-breaking country-rock confections Get Closer is much more AOR - Adult Orientated Rock. A dozen songs by Joe South, Jimmy Webb, Dolly Parton, Smokey Stover, Bert Russell, Kate McGarrigle and many others, spanning golden oldie hits: Tell Him and I Think It's Gonna Work Out Fine, to country classics such as My Blue Tears, Mr Radio, and classic ballads such as Easy For You To Say. Plus there are a couple of rockers in Lies and Get Closer. Get Closer is a very easy on the ear album, but compared to her pioneering early albums it is glossily produced and anodyne - designed for the radio rather than any intrinsic merit of its own. Linda Ronstadt wouldn't become interesting again until she climbed out of the AOR pit and began experimenting by working with Mexican musicians in a series of Tex-Mex albums and with Nelson Riddle on a series of songbook collections.
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Yes
- House of Yes Live From House of Blues
Well, Yes certainly were there at the beginning of prog rockery back in the cusp of the 1960s/70s, and their high octane mix of instrumental flashery, po-faced sci-fi imagery [aided by seminal Roger Dean album cover designs] and lengthy jams certainly found a ready audience. And even ready acceptance and regular air time on the BBC's arts radio station, Radio 3.
As live albums go this is a damned good one - excellent sound quality, the band are tighter than a whippet's arse, and the new material is as good as the thirty year old stuff [then again, The Ladder was the best album they've made in many years]. Yes have survived all the passing fads in music and come through sounding stronger than ever, mixing the classics with new material in such a way that it is difficult to tell what was written when - in other words Yes have passed into that twilight zone where their sound has become timeless. Rock on guys!
The Tommys consist of Jonathon 'Ike' Lickliter on bass and vocals, Rob 'Viva' Lastdrager pounds a mean set of drums and provides vocals, and finally there's Oliver Laurie, king of the Twang. From the pr sheet The Tommys have been together and playing Melbourne's seediest clubs and dives since 1996, breathing in the ambience and refining it into this music. Indeed, the inlay claims that the album was recorded in some of Melbourne's 'shit pits' - just smell that... well, whatever it was it's dead now. With only seven tracks [eight if you include the 'easter egg' hidden away at the end of track seven] I guess this would be classed as a mini album, but it's one I didn't want to end. The Tracks are: How Am I To Know, Grow Fins, Nowhere Round, Funeral Creek, Thruster, White Eye and Pharoah and the hidden Ring of Fire. Needless to say this album a hi-energy package, each track rocks mightily and this is a great CD to put on while the barbeque is burning the meat. Tommys - Chastity Melts (Fryup Records) The Tommys are an Australian rock band that have a great bar band sound that is typified by the tracks on this new single recorded at the Old Bar in Melbourne. There's nothing slick about the Tommys, just good old fashioned acid-fried surf-style rock and roll. The title track is a simple chant and thrash that could almost be Hawkwind but without the synths and spaced-out weirdness, while the final track is a country-Ozified version of Little Old Wine Drinker Me, a Jerry Lee Lewis tribute where you can literally smell the spit and sawdust packing the digital bits... These recordings were captured onto minidisc from the audience, so audio quality reflects that. I'm not exactly sure whether these tracks are commercially available, you could check out the band's web page at http://www.mp3.com.au/thetommys to see what is available for download - plus you could give their excellent album Grow Fins a check out as well [see review above]. OpenCage
- Evolve
Instrumentally, OpenCage impress with a tight, clean sound: a funky bass [supplied by multi-instrumentalist Keith Messner], Byrds-style twelve-string guitar from Bill Sullivan, all deeply rooted in the rock-tight drumming of Chris Cemini. While this may come over to these British ears as west coast rock/soul-lite, there are all sorts of intimations that these boys have been listening a lot to the very best west coast bands of the 60s/70s. All told, Evolve is a varied and very fine album with some excellent musicianship and good songs, and if you are looking for something a little different then try OpenCage. You can find out more about OpenCage by visiting their website, www.opencage.com. Charly
McLion - The Nature of the Universe
Charly McLion is a multi-instrumentalist based in Aachen, Germany - he's also a fine composer, as this superb new instrumental album shows. The problem [for me] is to try and describe what style of music it is. It isn't the usually anodyne new age, nor is it fusion - McLion has been around a long time [since the 70s] and he's absorbed all sorts of influences and refined them into something uniquely his own. While this isn't an out-and-out axe hero album the guitar is very much a lead instrument, but cushioned by many layers of synths, loops, samples into something that you'd hear in the chill out or trance rooms in a club. The music grooves gently, no deep drums 'n' bass to spoil the ambience. All told The Nature of the Universe is one of the best albums I've heard in a long time and hasn't been out of my cd deck for a long, long time. Mark Fox -
On The Path
InfoPoint
Jocelyn Pook - Untold Things
The opening track Dionysus starts with a deep bass pulse overlaid with a string section, a half faded choir and a single woman's voice singing something indecipherable. A cursory listen would make you think of Enya, but this is something different, not as lush or richly overtracked. Extremely stark and eerie. Red Song uses a slightly lusher mix of voices, including samples of arabic chants, very soulful. The sound of the Middle East is more prevalent on Upon This Rock, with the keening wail of an arab priest. The rest of the album follows the above with a rich mix of medieval chants, classical-influenced strings, treated samples of natural sounds, voices and instruments. It's a very evocative album, but not for background listening like most 'New Age' albums. This has substance and conveys a sense of genuine musical exploration that requires the listener to actually 'listen'. Well, with almost all of the packaging for this CD in Portuguese I'm pretty stumped as to what I can tell you about this album. Musically, this is deep-seated electronica that starts out with a knowing wink to the past glories of Kraftwerk and then heads out into pastures new over the course of its twelve tracks. As far as I can tell the music is composed and created by Carlos Nascimento, and there could be a number of other musicians involved, but my Portuguese is non-existent.
Not sure if I like all of this album, the middle section is hard to listen to with any sense of pleasure, yet the ambient book-end sections are quite enchanting. Explore at your own risk. Rasal.Asad
- Asuna
On the surface this is a relatively simple sounding album of synthesized ambient backdrops, simple melodies and sampled voices reading poetry or political dogma. Unfortunately, the voices are mixed slightly too low for the words to be clearly discerned, but they do add a sense of otherworldliness to the music. The overall effect of the eight tracks is sheer restfulness, there are no dance beats here - the music simply ebbs and flows in slowly shifting cycles. I rather like this album, the sheer anonymity of it doesn't saddle it with preconceptions, so when you start to hear these superficially simple tunes your guard is lowered and the hidden, complex, subtexts become apparent. A deceptive album that bears repeated hearing.
David Byrne has had an extremely varied career since leaving Talking Heads all those years ago. Most importantly, like Peter Gabriel, he's championed musicians from other cultures [what the suits call "World Music"] by setting up his own label Luaka Bop. Still, there's time for a solo career too, and Look Into The Eyeball is his latest solo album. Anyone expecting something in the vein of Talking heads will be disappointed - Look Into The Eyeball is extremely easy on the ear, bringing together slick production values, a set of beautiful songs and a strong afro/latin style weaving in and out of the tracks. Though that skewed view of the world and playful use of unusual time signatures remain. One other thing, Byrne's voice was always wayward in holding a note, he could be Jonathan Richman's cousin in that respect, but his voice is very controlled on this album, and I swear he's even crooning on a track or two! Highlight tracks are UB Jesus, Revolution, Ev'ryones In Love With You, Like Humans Do, Desconcido Soy, Neighbourhood - to be honest, there isn't a sub standard track on this album! I really like this album, Byrne has matured and is now hitting the heart with his songs and not just the brain as in the TH days. Maddy Prior - Ballads & Candles
So, on Ballads and Candles the musicians include Peter Knight and Rick Kemp of Steeleye Span, Steve Banks of the Carnival Band, June Tabor [ex-Silly Sisters], Nick Holland and Troy Donockley of her current band and finally her daughter, Rose Kemp. The album opens with a haunting version of Blacksmith, with Ms Prior singing solo. Next up is a duet with June Tabor, Blood And Gold, which proves again how magical their voices are together. As well as covering her career the shows were also a celebration of Christmas, so the next track is the festive Boar's Head. The carol A Virgin Most Pure follows, and proves that most standard carols sung in church are anodyne in the extreme. And so the albums goes on, a mix of old favourites and festive numbers. Park have crammed on 18 tracks on this cd, and it gives a fair representaion of Maddie Prior's career, and her collaborations.
And so it is with this album where characters from British medieval history come to life in this new collection of original and 'traditional' songs: Thomas a Becket, Salah Ed-Din, John Barleycorn. As with her recent albums Prior's masterful vocals are supported by the multi-instrumentalists Troy Donockley, Nick Holland, Teri Bryant and Katie Holland to create a series of vivid sound pictures that flesh out the lyrics admirably. I'm not sure that Lionheart will attract many new listeners to the Maddy Prior camp, but it stands with the best of her recent work since she left Steeleye Span.
I'm not sure that I'm up to selecting a few tracks from this compilation as highlights as the entire album is one to start with! So here's a name check of some of the musicians involved: Sipho Gumede, Moses Taiwa Molelekwa, Barungwa, Pops Mohamed, Vusi Khumalo, Zim Ngqawana, Madala Kunene, Gathering Forces, Simpiwe Matole, Spector M. Ngazi & N. Shezi. I was fortunate to pick up a couple of earlier M.E.L.T. 2000 compilations in a sale at MVC and I was blown away by the excellent music on them - South Africa: Jazzin' & Jivin' is no different, there's some great music here that should please anyone with an open pair of ears. Buy with confidence. |
Prog
rock has been undergoing some reassessment recently - a lengthy overview
in Mojo and a programme in the Top Ten series on Channel 4 - so this new
live double cd from prog rock pioneers Yes seems a rather opportune time
to see if they still live up to their reputation.
So
here we are, thirty years later on, after several line-up changes, but
the essential core of the original band are still together: Jon Anderson,
Steve Howe Chris Squire, Alan White, and latest additions Billy Sherwood
and Igor Khoroshev - sadly no Rick Wakeman this time. House of Blues
is a record of Yes's 1999/2000 tour to showcase the last studio album
[to date], 
Australia
may well be half a world away [from Great Britain] but its influence is
felt in many ways: XXXX lager, Germaine Greer, Rolf Harris, tv soap opera
Neighbours and Home & Away, and of course the mighty AC/DC - and now
a surfabilly trio called The Tommys. Yes, the land of Oz has finally succumbed
to two of Rock's most visceral strands of music: surf and rockabilly.
Add a little punk and psycho attitude and some ultra twangy guitar and
you have Grow Fins, The Tommys latest album and a masterpiece of
twangsome attitude.
It's
always intriguing to approach an album by an unknown [to me] band - it's
uncharted waters and an all new exploration. No preconceptions. And so
it is with OpenCage and their latest album Evolve. The albums starts
with a gentle and evocative acoustic instrumental, Evolution, before
the songs start with The Last Thing, a mid-tempo electric rocker.
Give continues the acoustic feel and I'm beginning to see [or rather
hear] reference markers: I guess the immediate one is REM - vocalist Ray
Burtoff certainly reminds me of Michael Stipe in his phrasing - but I
can also hear the Cars in the pop sensibilities of the songs and their
short, concise timings. And while most of the songs have a mid-tempo feel
to them, it's the full out rockers that appeal the most to me: Little
Things sounds like a #1 single to me [if people still bought singles
on the basis of quality over hype, that is]. Day Man excels with
some sneakily entwining bass and guitar lines that add a definite funky
feel to the track. I Just Don't Get It is the other rocker that
impressed mightily. The album concludes with another fine acoustic instrumental,
Escape.
This
is one of those albums you fall in love with immediately - it's classy,
inventive, has soul and for an instrumental album veers away from sheer
technical bravado to let the music breath. The opening track The Gate
of Time starts slowly with a ghostly melody that echoes the X Files
theme but then wanders into a totally different territory - it then gradually
mutates into a lovely piece of jazzy ambience: restrained guitar licks
over ambient synth loops. Midnight Summer Rain continues in a similar
vibe, all chill out rhythms, voice samples and that wonderful guitar just
coolly riding over the top of it all. And so the album continues, one
superb track after another - all exuding a musicianship and craftsmanship
that you rarely find nowadays. The final track, Sunshine, is particularly
fine, a summery piece with a whispery female vocal - very romantic and
highly atmospheric.
This
new album from Kingfisher is by Mark Fox, an American living in Germany.
He is operatically trained and that shows in his tightly controlled voice.
Accompanying himself on guitar and piano, Fox has written a collection
of spiritual songs, performing them in English, German, Latin and Italian
- all designed to be listened to in a meditative state. I have to admit
that I'm not inclined that way temperamentally, so I can't verify whether
this album will sooth your spirit or bring you new insights. The songs
are all pretty slow-paced, some almost ambient in the way guitar and voice
are used. Audio quality is excellent, especially as it was recorded in
concert, though there are no indications of an audience, so it's hard
to tell. The inlay booklet provides the lyrics in English and German.
This album is designed for a specific type of audience, it's not an off-the-rack
album you would buy spontaneously. If you are the more thoughtful, spiritual
type of soul then I recommend you try this - if you are looking for pop
tunes and hooks stay away.
This composer/musician is a new one to
me, but according to the pr sheet she's worked with The Communards, Meat
Loaf, Massive Attack and PJ Harvey - plus she provided the soundtrack
for Stanley Kubrick's final movie, Eyes Wide Shut. As you would expect
from an album on Real World there is a strong vein of ethnic musical influences
running through out, and this is allied with an orchestral/choral sound
more often heard in classical music than rock.
As
always with albums that arrive from ThisCo there is little or no information
on the musicians involved on the CD, only some anti-corporate rhetoric.
That aside ThisCo-sourced albums are always interesting and this new album
by Rasal.Asad is no different.
Numbers are funny things, they can represent
so many different things: age, wealth, popularity, sales etc. In the case
of this latest album from Maddy Prior it represents her 35th album and
the 35th anniversary of becoming a professional musician. This tied in
with her 1999 Christmas tour, so instead of a studio album we have a document
of that tour - an incredibly special one for Ms Prior because it brought
together musicians from all aspects of her career to celebrate that anniverary.
One
can't fault Maddy Prior's workload since she left Steeleye Span a few
years ago. There's been at least one new album a year, and here's the
latest, as with Ravenchild it has a loose concept - this time a
ten song cycle based on the legend of King Arthur. Stripping away the
myths and legends [no Merlin, no Holy Grail, and no Guinevere], Arthur
is a warlord trying to deal with a country defenceless after the Roman
legions left. The songs are mostly low-key, intimate and as romantic as
only Maddy can make them - highlights include: Queen & Sovereignty,
The Name of Arthur, Veturae Remembering, Tribal Warriors, Once & Future
King. There are also some exciting short ambient linking passages
[Hallows I-IV] that the electronica fans would love. In fact, while
Maddy Prior sings in the traditional folk style the orchestrations underlaying
her voice are anything but traditional, mixing synths with the electric
guitars, Celtic beats and folk instruments. Along with the Arthur song
cycle, there are another five tracks on this cd, some of them having themetic
links to the song cycle. This is another fine album from Maddy Prior and
her regular band - certainly deserving a wider audience than just the
Steeleye Span fans, and it would be nice if it got a bit of airplay as
well.
Once
again Maddy Prior has produced an album based around a theme [or concept,
if you don't mind this most dreaded of hype words] - this time it is based
on the family of Henry II and his sons Richard the Lionheart and John,
as seen from the perspective of their mother, Eleanor of Aquitaine. Perhaps,
not the most well-known period of our history but rich in character and
event, not least because the tales of the legendary Robin Hood began at
this time.
M.E.L.T.
2000 is one of those specialist world music labels focusing primarily
on the music of Africa, and this album specifically highlights some of
the great new upcoming musicians coming out of the townships. Though titled
South Africa: Jazzin' & Jivin' the music on this cd covers
a wide spectrum of styles that you can hear on the streets of SA: jazz
is certainly there, but mixed into street jive, dance and perhaps the
odd reggae rhythm too. To anyone who hasn't heard South African music
before much of this cd will be an ear opener for you - the level of musicianship
and professionalism of SA musicians is extremely high and ranks alongside
any American musician you care to name.