After the huge success of last year’s documentation of young jazzers in London, We Out Here, Gilles Peterson’s Brownswood label up sticks to the other side of the world for a similarly themed presentation from Melbourne.
Sunny Side Up – as its name suggests – is a celebration of a scene free from musical constraints, happy to take its stimulus from soul, jazz or club culture as the label’s detailed notes proclaim.
What’s the music like?
As free as the preamble suggests it should be. The nine tracks were all recorded at The Grove, a studio housed in the northern district of Coburg, glued together by engineer Nick Herrera and musical director Silentjay.
Phil Stroud’s Banksia begins with shimmering textures bolstered by a dubby bass, before urgent swirls cut to low slung grooves in Dufresne’s Pick Up / Galaxy. Soft breathed sax and heady vocals work well in Kuzich’s There Is No Time, while Audrey Powne makes clever use of micro tones to up the tension for a trumpet solo in Bleeding Hearts.
Zeitgeist Freedom Energy Exchange use broken beats, drum fills, piano and flute for the energetic Powers 2 (The People), then Laneous’ Nice To See You brings a rush of positivity with a series of heady chord progressions and vocal couplets. Silentjay himself works a long melody over samba-infused beats to find Eternal / Internal Peace, while Horatio Luna’s The Wake-Up starts with dreamy, keyboard-led meandering but moves to smooth club grooves.
Finally Allysha Joy’s Orbit makes a powerful impact with its richly scored orchestration and soothing but heady vibes.
From all those descriptions you get an idea of the compilation’s open minded approach but also its careful planning and sequencing.
Does it all work?
Yes – a rich variety of talent that works well in sequence. The different approaches and musical styles are ideal for those looking for something a little different – and fans of the label’s Bubblers series will find plenty here to enjoy.
Is it recommended?
For sure. Brownswood have some serious talent on their hands here, and Sunny Side Up is its ideal platform. The musicians featured seem set for great things in the future if this is anything to go by.
Kit Downes has very generously granted Arcana half an hour of his holiday time. In it we will discuss his upcoming performance at Snape Maltings as part of the Festival of New weekend, and while we cover that the discussion moves across East Anglia to Norwich, where it transpires both of us were born.
Our current locations, however, could scarcely be farther apart. I am perched awkwardly in a sunlit Soho café, Kit is “marooned on the Isle of Arran. It’s so windy and rainy here but it’s a really special place too.” Is he doing anything musical? “No, that would give a sense of purpose to the holiday! It’s a really relaxing time for me with family at the moment.”
The Snape performance will give listeners a chance to hear material behind his new work Dreamlife of Debris, in the company of Lucy Railton (cello), Seb Rochford (drums) and Tom Challenger (saxophone). The album, his second for the revered ECM label, brings him into contact with much of the music of his youth, growing up as a chorister and organist in East Anglia. “When I was pretty young I sang in the choir at Norwich Cathedral, which would have been there about 25 years ago”, he recounts. “I played with the then organist Katherine Dienes, who was a great improviser. I badgered my mum to get me organ lessons with her, and played on the fantastic four-manual organ at the cathedral. She showed me how to improvise. It was more about learning the different strands of orchestration, texture and sound than working on a particular piece, and looking at how church organists are able to improvise between functions of the church service, where they often have to build on a particular hymn tune to fill time. Through that I learned jazz on the piano, because my mum saw the link between the two. I went to music school in Watford until I was 22, when I started my jazz career.”
The current project began in sessions with saxophonist Challenger. “I was looking for a new project and a new setting”, says Downes, “and I was interested in the music of some of the ‘duration’ composers, like Morton Feldman, and minimalists like Steve Reich. I wanted to get back to instruments where you hold a note for more than one second, and so I returned to the organ. Tom and I did a residency at Huddersfield University, and I enjoyed working back at the organ for three days. I wasn’t playing repertoire like Buxtehude or Reger, although I love that music, but it was about getting jazz that I love on to the organ, in a holistic way – sharing influences in what I play.”
The pair continued working together. “We did one project at Snape Maltings before the recording project where the Vyamanikal album came from. That then led into the solo album for ECM that I did, Obsidian. That was recorded on smaller organs from the area as well as the much larger Henry Willis instrument at the Union Chapel in Islington.”
His new album broadens the spectrum a little. “More recently I have been making a new album for ECM, using some organ and piano but with some guests too. Seven or eight years ago, I made a reconnection with the area, which I had wanted to do since I left for boarding school at 15 years of age. It was great to see the flat landscape and big sky where I grew up, and nice to revisit that part of the world. If you are brought up with the East Anglian landscape that means you are brought up with trees growing sideways! I love Scotland for that reason too, and where we are at the moment. Snape also offers that beautiful connection with Benjamin Britten, and what he did there is very inspiring.”
The move to East Anglia was not initially deliberate. “Without the commission we wouldn’t have run so far. Snape Maltings have been instrumental in developing the sound and approach to the album.”
Having given an overview of his more recent work, Downes considers the impact Aldeburgh’s most famous resident had on his musical development. “We used to sing loads of Britten at Norwich Cathedral. We sang the Missa Brevis, and I remember productions of works like Noye’s Fludde, and loads of the choral works at the Norfolk & Norwich Festival. We would also work with contemporary composers on commissions for the choir. It was a huge learning curve for me with the pretty modern stuff we used to sing, like Arvo Pärt and John Tavener. It was especially noticeable in a service as right after their music you would sing some Palestrina, and jump back hundreds of years in the process. That would be a big deal in a concert, but not in a church service, where they often sit together. The musical aesthetics can connect but the text connects as well.”
Downes agrees that, perhaps like Britten, the textures and sounds of his music offer a link with nature and the outdoors. “I love it myself, so I guess it will come out somehow! I love walking, and being outdoors generally. Our work for the new album involved travelling around rural parts of East Anglia and being outdoors, so I captured lots of field recordings outside the churches where we were recording the organs. We would take things like farming mechanisms and sounds that were important to the location, and put them into the music. If a bell went off we wouldn’t work around it, we’d keep it in. We would be mastering in full so it was never exactly what happened but similar to what Werner Herzog does. You can exaggerate things that feel more truthful, if that makes sense!”
The press release for Dreamlife Of Debris describes the field recordings as ‘deteriorated’. “I think that was already done by our sample rate conversion!”, he jokes. “I was very influenced by William Basinski, who on his Disintegration Loops would leave orchestral loops on a tape machine that would warp and turn into nothing. Some of the recordings were made on cassette recorders. What the ‘deteriorated’ description really talks about is the feeling of everything we were capturing being in a state of slow decline, in an emotional way too. In that part of the world there are those things that have been left to fall apart slightly. With the organs they are historical instruments, and in some examples the community instrument. The whole way the organ is paid for is congregational, through raising money in the community, and it’s very symbolic when that starts fading away”.
One particular instrument drew Downes’ eye. “We played the old Thomas Thamar organ in Framlingham (above). In Germany and Italy you get old and very impressive instruments, and the one in Framlingham is a real rarity as it still has the original pipework. It originates from London, and they moved it up there about 100 years later. It is a really important and special instrument. The whole process was in sharp relief to that of a one-manual harmonium that we also used, which was falling to bits. It made what we were doing as much of an album as a social study. The way these instruments are built is so important to how they sound, the circumstances under which they came to be.”
Downes has strong connections in the organ restoration community. “I’ve got a friend in America who is an organ builder, and he has the depth of knowledge for the tuning, the reconditioning, removing old things and bringing them back to life. Some builders put modern aspects on to old instruments, which would not preserve the older features. Norman & Beard were the company make that we tended to end up playing, and they were based in Norwich which is very appropriate! The construction and restoration involves so many people over so many years.”
Kit’s rediscovery of this part of his musical heritage is a relatively recent thing. “I listened to the American and European jazz improvisers for a long time. One thing about returning to the organ that I noticed most though was that it feels separate from contemporary classical music. It feels like an open canvas to have a go with.”
The title, Dreamlife of Debris, has a clear precedent. “It comes from the W.G. Sebald book The Rings Of Saturn”, he explains, “which is all about a walking tour he took around Suffolk. He came over to work at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, and The Rings of Saturn is about a walking tour of the area, parts of which we went to for field recordings. Everything reminds him of a tangent that takes him back in time, linking tangential parts of history or philosophy with the location. He takes in things like the silk trade, weaving silk through his narrative. I found it inspiring to create a work in that way, capturing where your mind is wandering and making a composite, putting the things together. That’s how I made the record, with lots of improvisation in different times and places but trusting that the record itself would be coherent.”
The title revealed itself to Downes relatively quickly. “Dreamlife of Debris is a quote from the film Patience After Sebald, which is a discussion piece on that book. It’s the idea that projecting thoughts and feelings onto inanimate objects gives them a kind of extended life. It felt appropriate. The people that I chose to play with me on the album were Lucy Railton, a cellist based in Berlin, Seb Rochford playing drums, and of course Tom Challenger. On the album we also have Ingebjørg Loe Bjørnstad, an electric guitarist from Norway, though he won’t be playing at Snape.”
What can the audience at Snape expect in the Festival of New concert? “I’m going to play piano rather than organ”, he says. “Some of the live stuff is using the ensemble as if it’s an organ. An organ is essentially music of reed, woodwind and strings, so I felt I had enough colours to emulate the sound.
Downes has also been exploring folk music in a major project with Aidan O’Rourke, fiddle player with the Scottish band Lau. Between them they have released two instalments of the 365 project. “That’s been the other big thing”, says Downes modestly. “I ended up recording 200 tunes with Aidan in all! It was a lovely exercise in just the sheer volume of arranging. Aidan would write a melody and I would arrange it, and we basically did that 200 times. I drew on the treatment of folk tunes from people like Britten, Vaughan Williams and Delius, and on techniques used by Ravel and Debussy too. With that music every decision should come from inside the melody rather than on top of it, and it was a really nice exercise.
Festival of New, described as ‘a whirlwind two days of freshly devised music and sound, exploring some of the most exciting work being made in the UK’, takes place on Friday 6 and Saturday 7 September at the Snape Maltings. Performers include urban poet Reload, cellist Maja Bugge and pianist Sarah Nicolls highlighting environmental issues in an inventive set, and Shama Rahman, who will perform with pianist Anya Yermakova ‘the seeds of a sitar concerto informed by neuroscience’.
Kit Downes and friends will perform on Saturday 7 September at 5pm in the Snape Maltings Concert Hall. For more details on the weekend click here. For more information on Kit Downes you can visit his website or his ECM page.
Check back with Arcana soon, as we are intending to host a podcast from Kit with some of his favourite music for organ. In the meantime some of his work can be heard on Spotify below:
House And Land are from North Carolina, and Across The Field is their second album. The duo – guitarist and instrumentalist Sarah LouiseHenson and fiddle / banjo player Sally Anne Morgan – present traditional folk music recast into today’s world.
What’s the music like?
Deceptive. If you listen to the first minute or two of Across The Field it is easy to underestimate the emotions House And Land are capable of conveying, but by the time you get to the rippling guitar of Rainbow Mid Life’s Willows you will have fallen hook, line and sinker for the duo’s fresh faced vocals and imaginative instrumental responses.
That song in particular hits the sweetest spot of emotion, with Morgan’s double-stopped fiddle the perfect foil to Henson’s vocal and 12-string acoustic guitar. It is a rich tapestry of colours, but these orchestrations never get in the way of the song’s message.
The heart of their music is Appalachia, the duo creating their landscape with delicate shades and colours, but some of their music draws from across the Atlantic. Blacksmith shows the duo’s homage to the great Shirley Collins, a close harmony duet over a drone which is then dressed with glockenspiel. There follows a powerful instrumental track Carolina Lady, from past Madison resident Dillard Chandler, which features earthy guitar and Morgan’s fiddle rising through the textures as it takes on an improvised air.
Collins is again the source for the final Ca The Yowes, and here Henson’s alto recorder sets the evocative scene, while Morgan’s banjo shadows the vocals. It is a haunting yet curiously uplifting coda to the album.
Does it all work?
Across The Field is a powerful and deeply personal piece of work. It may be that the voices are on occasion too shrill for headphone listeners, but that’s more a question of the listener acquainting themselves with the tones than the singers needing to compromise. The songs themselves retain their traditional heart but updated for today are very emotive and winningly sung. The inventive and constantly rewarding instrumentation is a treat, always responsive to the substance of each song.
Is it recommended?
Yes, and I speak as very much an occasional listener to folk music. Across The Field inhabits a rarefied space few albums are able to reach.
VWETO II is the sequel to Georgia Anne Muldrow’s 2011 album. Like that release it is an instrumental piece of work, an intriguing melting pot of hip hop, jazz, R&B and soul. Its colourful artwork offers clues to the author’s inspiration and the mood of the album, for although it is largely down tempo VWETO II is positive in mood.
What’s the music like?
Subtly inventive. Nothing here is routine, but nor is it too challenging as Muldrow finds a really fertile ground between experimenting and producing really good, solid grooves. Often her rhythms are syncopated and this means they can stumble slightly, a practice used on first track Almost Trendy which actually ends up depicting a natural walk along the street.
This establishes the mood and tempo of the record, which is a lot of fun and always has something of interest. The enjoyable inventions with beats and colours include the wonky bass and general weirdness of Something Fun, the undulating piano and oblique chord progressions of Brokenfolks and the cool vibraphone and piano of Bass Attack Bap.
After the pleasingly brassy CV Jam Number 2, Emo Blues opens up darker hues, nicely led by its acoustic bass, and later on Mary Lou’s Motherboard explores the macabre side of Muldrow’s thinking.
Does it all work?
Yes – VWETO II is consistently rewarding. While it is a shame not to hear Muldrow’s memorable voice in full flow her rate of output means it will surely not be long before that happens again. In the meantime we have this set of irresistible instrumentals, which work as well on the morning after as they do on the night before.
Is it recommended?
Yes, wholeheartedly. The range of beats and colours on VWETO II is very strong and original, turning over stones aplenty in its quest for original voices and memorable grooves. In the course of the album Muldrow hits both of those goals repeatedly and with ease.
Each year Cocoon release an additional ‘letter’ in their compilation series, which has incredibly reached its 20th instalment. Once again it is house music with a sound blend of experience and promise, presented in unmixed form. A dozen tracks with both eyes on the dancefloor.
What’s the music like?
As always with this series, consistency is the key, with quality intersections between house and techno – and a few big names delivering the goods.
Talaboman (John Talabot and Axel Boman) present one of the big draws in Big Room Anthemic Groovy Pounding Trance Dub Bomb. Music that delivers exactly what it promises! There is a superb track from Emmanuel Satie, Planet XXX offering a strong breakdown, while Mark Broom offers a lively, retrospective track with Jaded, its bell effects standing out. Edward’s End Days has a metallic edge, as does the more acidic Tering from Egbert, which brings a heady rush, but the one that burns brightest is Keep Changing Basslines from Dino Lenny. This is a brilliant collision of mood swings with the tag line ‘stay on the dancefloor’ the most memorable hook of the twelve.
Does it all work?
Yes, and in their 20th year it offers further proof of why Cocoon are at the top of their particular game. Sven Väth’s label has strength in depth, and a high quality threshold. Business as usual, in effect!
Is it recommended?
Yes – fans will know exactly what is in store here, a dozen tracks that push all the right dancefloor buttons. No need to hesitate for the converted or the new arrival.
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