Digging in the dirt
American Central Dust
Son Volt
Rounder

Having emerged from the wreckage of Uncle Tupelo in the mid-90s, with Jeff Tweedy and company splitting off to form Wilco, Jay Farrar's Son Volt persona has wandered a somewhat erratic and occasional wayward path through alt country's highways and byways.

Their last album, The Search (2007), had Farrar come back from a series of indifferent solo releases, adorning the material with a lustre that sometimes bordered on country-fied psychedelia.

If The Search was something of a multi-coloured journey with a widened spread of textural choices, the new album makes more of a mark with less tools, going all black and white with just a hint of sepia-tinged nostalgia creeping in around the edges.

American Central Dust swirls with dark roads, biker bars, broken dreams, heart-ache, brutal truths and other familiar archetypes. Yet despite such recourse to such well-worn touchstones this doesn't sound like a backwards step.

If anything, the stripped-back sound gets us closer to the bones of his chosen themes which alternate between the intimate micro-climates of the soul and the macro-consequences of when pride most assuredly comes before a fall.

The dark comedy of Keith Richards' alleged act of communion that saw him blend a Class A drug with his father's cremated remains becomes a poetic exploration of loss at close quarters on Cocaine And Ashes.

When The Wheels Don't Move is a concession to their occasionally rockist threads. Across ominous rolling thunder drums and lightning slashes of fuzz-charged guitar, Farrar checklists how the industrialised half of the world seems hell-bent on wrecking it all for everyone. Apocalypse now, indeed.

This review first appeared here.

All The Fun Of Mel's Circus...

In the post this morning...

Circus was the band Mel Collins was in prior to him joining King Crimson in 1970. I interviewed Mel last month about his time in the band. As ever with these things we covered far more ground than would ever get into the sleeve notes.

During the interview Mel talked about the role of fashion and trends of the mid-to-late 60s and the amount of band-wagon jumping all the working bands indulged in to be able to keep working and be "with it".

I wanted to get this weaved into the sleevenotes but in the end there just wasn't enough space So, just for a bit of fun, here's a bit of the "lost" version of the story...

It’s quite possible that Mel Collins owes the kick start to his professional career thanks in part to his choice of trousers when he auditioned for Guildford band, The Stormsville Shakers in 1966. “I saw an advert in the Melody Maker for “TV & Radio - Second tenor needed” which is a bit of joke really. It doesn’t mean anything really other than you’re not the first tenor!” laughs Mel. “I went along and got the job largely because I had checked hipster pants on. I looked better than most of the other guys who’d applied for the job. They even told me!”

The Stormsville Shakers were formed in 1960 and led by songwriter Philip Goodhand-Tait. By the time Collins joined they’d made the transition from being a rock‘n’roll band into playing a mixture of Goodhand-Tait’s original numbers and soul covers, reflecting the rapid changes in musical fashions.

“In 1966 the Mod thing came in. Peter Stringfellow (now best known as the owner of London nightclub, Stringfellow’s) had a club in Sheffield then, and we were up there as the Stormsville Shakers. The scene had all suddenly gone Mod with the short hair, etc. I remember Stringfellow coming into the dressing room and because I had long hair he had a go at me, telling me I couldn’t be going on stage with my long hair and I should be putting it under a hat or something. He actually destroyed me completely that night. Peter Green (from Fleetwood Mac) was in the band room and he consoled me, telling me not to take any notice. Of course, about a year later in 1967, we returned and there Stringfellow was - all flower power and long hair!”

This return visit coincided with the name change from The Stormsville Shakers to Circus. “Well it was the time of flower power and a name like Philip Goodhand-Tait and the Stormsville Shakers was just too old fashioned. It was the flower power days and it was all charge again. Zoot Money’s Band became Dantalion’s Chariot with them wearing flowing robes on stage. A lot of band’s did that back then, changing their image to keep up with the trends.”

The band - consisting of Goodhand-Tait, Kirk Riddle on bass, Alan Bunn on drums, David Sherrington on tenor sax, Ian Jelfs on guitar and Collins - maintained a gruelling schedule of dates around the entire UK live circuit as well as jaunts to continental Europe. In September the group released their first single "Gone are the songs of yesterday" (which would later be covered as the B-side of Love Affair’s Everlasting Love) and Sink or Swim, produced by Manfred Mann vocalist, Mike D’Abo.

Despite having no impact on the charts, D’Abo reconvened Circus in October 1967 to record another Goodhand-Tait tune, Do You Dream and its B-side House of Wood.
Released in March 1968, it sank without trace just ahead of an appearance on BBC Radio 1’s Night Ride programme. The group failed to impress the audition panel who described Circus as “Outdated, square, rubbish, badly played, out of tune.”

Goodhand-Tait’s success as writer for Love Affair probably spared the group from making any further attempts to get past the BBC’s radio audition panel as he began contemplating a solo career. Collins suggests that musical differences might also have had a hand in a parting of the ways.

“I think the band was changing and to some extent it was leaving Philip behind. Guitarist Ian Jelfs and I were stretching out as players and he saw that happening. Of course, Philip suddenly had a lot of success with the Love Affair covering his songs and he didn’t need a band anymore.” When Goodhand-Tait launched his solo career in January 1969 did Circus have any doubts about their ability to carry on without their front man and main song writer?

“No, not at all. We were pretty confident then and we knew what we wanted to do, and it was as far away from the pop singles and stuff as we could get. I’d started writing, Ian was taking over the vocals, we were into jazz and experimenting. It was an exciting, liberating time.”

Places To Go...

for Doreen

We fold our loss
deep into the pit
of our pocket
until it is time

to keep a meeting

with a stranger
who makes
himself known

a reminder then
that this stranger
is someone
we each own

and who alone has
come to whisper
our nights and
mornings away

Nominations For God LXXXVIII

Edgar Allan Poe

Troyka Troyka

Three's company
Troyka
Edition Records

Taking inspiration from a diverse range of sources, Troyka are not your usual jazz trio combo. With a distinct lack of extended soloing or self-aggrandising displays of virtuosity, the eleven tunes on their debut album positively delight in a series of short, sharp, shocks.

Formed in 2007 they’ve evolved a style whereby their compositions have a habit of not so much starting as almost tumbling into being. This looseness is both disarming and deceptive given their unnerving habit of abruptly snapping together and heading straight for the jugular.

A fussy tangle of bright colours and abrasive textures, their brevity and puckishness jolts and pounces in unexpected places to ensures attention is maintained throughout.

Kit Downes’ Hammond organ maintains an understated burr through most of the album with occasional high-tension flourishes, with Joshua Blackmore's keen drumming pushing and prodding the music with a surgical precision.

At the forefront of Troyka though is guitarist and principal writer, Chris Montague. His jagged mix of chords, bone-rattling slide and ingenious guitar loops invokes the kind of freewheeling scatter-gun approach of Pete Cosey or David Torn. On the track Twelve, allusions to Robert Fripp’s ProjeKct series of the late-90s also materialise.

For once the advice offered on the PR sheet happens to be right on the money: “Play Troyka loud, they won’t let you down.”

No Longer Reading Between The Lines

On the desk today was a proof copy of Andrew Keeling's forthcoming musical analysis of King Crimson's debut. A cursory look-through is enough to confirm it's as comprehensive and authoratative as Andrew's other guides to King Crimson's music - In The Wake of Poseidon and Larks' Tongues In Aspic.


You'll notice also above the book my very first pair of reading spectacles. After having my eyes tested months ago (see here for the full "hilarious" tale), I finally got around to buying an off-the-shelf pair as opposed to an off-the-richter-scale-in-terms-of-price pair on a recent sortie to a garden centre of all places.

Yes, they’re the correct prescription (+1.50) but, as Alys helpfully noted the other day, “they don’t fit your fat head.” She’s right of course.

But what do you want for £4.99?

I splay the legs open, shove them onto the bridge of my nose and bingo - the print comes magnificently into sharp focus and the printed page no longer resembles a set of precariously magnetised iron fillings.

From The Ridiculous To The Sublime

A chance of pace and scene today.

Having completed the sleevenotes for the Hatfield and the North reissues, and prepared for some other archive-related notes, I went into Newcastle to meet up with me old mucker, John Sargent. We were due to meet up at the newly opened library now renamed the Charles Avison Building.

One way to get to the library is via Northumberland Place...

and here is (almost the same scene taken in the mid-60s)....

You can't help but notice the "beauty and beast" contrast between the Amos Atkinson building on the left (with plaster work applied by way of celebrating the Queen's coronation in 1953) and the thrusting modernity of the Pearl Assurance building which was, ahem, erected in the late 60s...


Entering Northumberland Place, the site now occupied by the amusement arcade/coffee shop on the left here, used to house the palatial Queen's Theatre where I first saw 2001: A Space Odyssey in Cinemascope circa 1969.

In October 1972 I saw ELP at the Queens cinema.

Or rather I didn't. The augeries for this gig were not good.

After queuing out overnight to buy tickets the moment they went on sale, I promptly lost mine on the bus coming home. After pleading to the cinema manager I was issued with a pass for the gig but should someone come to claim the seat I would have to leave.

I needn't have worried.

The gig was cancelled after two hours of a packed house waiting for the band to come on. They couldn't get the rig to work. A sheepish Keith Emerson made the announcement to a hugely disappointed crowd, who had to wait for a couple of weeks for a rescheduled appearance at the Odeon cinema just around the corner on Pilgrim Street.

The brutality of the Pearl building was astonishing when it went up. The intervening 40 years has done little to diminsh that impact.

And so to the new library...

It would be heard to imagine a public square more depressing than this one...


Inside however, it's all rather light and airy...

with some fine views of the city available...




"Heeerrrreees Johneeeee!"

We tried out the cafe in the library. John was on the ginger beer and I opted for dandelion and burdock.

Hey, that's the way we guys roll.

And so to the bottom of Westgate Road and Newcastle's Literary and Philosophical Society...



I was here a while ago with Debra to listen to a talk by Ian Rankin and Val McDermid. Tonight John had tempted me to hear a talk given by Gail-Nina Anderson talk about depictions of music and musical instruments, including their symbolic and iconographical significance, in 18th century art and painting.

But before that, I joined up and became a member of the Lit & Phil - something I wanted to do when I first entered this fabulous building back in the early 1980s.

Lack of cash had always prevented me from doing this. However, after chatting with John last week and discovering he'd recently joined himself at a special rate to be deducted quarterly it seemed like a good idea to join in the fun at last!

Up the stairs...


and into the main library itself...


After completing the form-filling it was back downstairs...

and into a rather functional room to listen to Gail-Nina Anderson

During her engaging talk she showed a slide of this painting by Vermeer called A Young Woman standing at a Virginal
I'd not seen this before but my breath was taken away by it. Whatever the symbolism in it may be, you can almost hear the bright acoustics of that room.

The evening was organised by the Avison Ensemble as part of their Tercentenary Events programme celebrating the 300th anniversary of Avison's birth.

Up until today I had absolutely no idea who Charles Avison was. So at the end of the talk I picked up this book about Avison and music-making in 18th Century Newcastle.

As John put it..."a splendid evening!"

Homeward bound!

Orwell's Children II

Calyx And Co.

Given that most of yesterday was taken up with prepping and researching for the impending Hatfield and the North sleevenotes, it was no surprise that I woke up this morning with the tune Calyx on the brain.

Up at 5.30 a.m. with plenty of work ahead, I took a quick look out to sea.


Impressive grey skies for the third day in a row.


Walking back to the house there's a cool breeze and carried upon it, the sweet scent of flowers. It is momentarily overwhelming, almost sickly in its intensity.

At our gate an iris is making a bid for freedom...


Others are content to lurk in the background...




Back indoors, I feed the cats, make a pot of tea and proceed to rouse Debra and Alys from their respective slumbers.

After revving up the iMac and checking email, I post this via Twitter. "It's 5.59 a.m. and after half an hour's preparation the day shift begins."

Nominations For God LXXXVII

Iain Sinclair

The Pre-Birthday Feed

With Friday morning spent hovering between preparing for a couple of new commissions and attempting to sort of payments of previous forays into the world of the freelance writer, it was something of a relief to have the entire afternoon off.

I went down to the kitchen to prepare the evening meal. No ordinary nosh either - it was Tom's pre-birthday meal. Because of a variety of work/family schedules, the bulk of the clan will not be able to be around on the day of his actual birthday which is Sunday - hence the pre-birthday celebration.

I asked Tom if he'd like to go out to one the many restaurants which Whitley Bay has to offer. His response was interesting: he'd rather stay home where it's more comfortable and the food is better. Given the choice of food he wanted home-made pizza.

So, I spent Friday afternoon preparing veggie, fishy, meaty pizza to cover all tastes and eventualities, plus salad, homemade ciabatta and a tasty olive oil/balsamic vinegar dip. It took this lot of locusts about twenty minutes to demolish the lot!

Hurrah For The Insurance Company!

At the end of last month I was on my way back from Birmingham after having spent the week on the Travis & Fripp World Tour. My trusty Lumix FZ-18 was safely ensconced in the back of the car.

Sadly so was a bottle of water with a loose cap.

After four hours of driving up the highways and byways of England most of the water had migrated from the bottle into the camera.

Needless to say upon arrival in Whitley Bay the camera was dead.

Happily I managed to retrieve the data off the memory card but no amount of drying would revive my fabbo camera.

In the meantime, Alys very kindly loaned me her camera and thus I was able to capture a little of the trip down to Croxley Green and London with Debra.


And so the insurance claim.

Fearing that it would be an uphill struggle, instead the company were brilliant.

I was able to make the claim over the blower, and asked to supply a quote for a replacement. After seeking some advice from Jessops, a couple of days later I faxed a quote for the Panasonic Lumix FZ-28.

Earlier today, I got a phone call from the insurance company saying the replacement costs were now in our account.

Quicker than a greyhound out of a trap I was off to John Lewis and nabbed this little beauty!

Desk Duties VI

There's lots of things to be listening to this week...

This one by Emily Scott was particularly eye-catching. She does it all herself.




The packaging is lovely and the music isn't at all bad either!

Tortoise Beacons of Ancestorship

Intellect and Intuition...
Beacons of Ancestorship
Tortoise
Thrill Jokey

Since the mid-90s Chicago band Tortoise have been producing albums which resolutely avoid easy classification. You might pin a label on a track or two but any attempt to apply one across an entire album is never going to work.

Their collective approach to music-making (as befits a band of multi-instrumentalists) is their secret weapon. Freed from specific roles the band have been able to roam pretty much wherever their fancy takes them for over 20 years.

Six albums in and this fluidity of approach continues. Their snappy combination of intellect and intuition sweeps up lo-fi grooves, fat, barbed-wire coated bass lines and fuzz-laden beats, into an engagingly accessible record.

Though the cut and paste collages of their early career path remains, increasingly it's been spliced with a more demonstrative, visceral dimension.

Prepare Your Coffin goes straight for the jazz-rock jugular evoking a version of Return To Forever crossed with The Stooges. Using weedy analogue synths they've avoided any pitch-bend excesses whilst aping the high-octane nature of the genre.

Tortoise have always opted to sprinkle their music with a sassy exotica. Chilled cymbalom rattles various rhythmic cages that vibrate, buzz and jitter during the stop-start thrum of Gigantes, and Minors has an intriguing lop-sided John Barry-style melody that would make a perfect fit for a spy movie soundtrack.

Ambient? Post-rock? Indie? Experimental? All of the above? You can’t really pigeon-hole Tortoise but when the music is this good why would you want to bother?

This review first appeared here.

Dream Theater Black Clouds and Silver Linings

Technical Knock Out
Black Clouds And Silver Linings
Dream Theater
Roadrunner

One doesn't so much listen to Dream Theater as get overrun by them, and ten studio albums in, the band are still pursuing their uber-muscular progressive metal agenda with ruthless dedication.

Their undoubted collective instrumental firepower is deployed like a bunch of marauding marines with anger management issues, slipping the leash and swarming over everything in their path.

The relative subtleties of their symphonic aspirations laid out in 2005 on Octavarium are pushed aside in favour of six tracks that are mostly of the 'pumped-up, psyched out, hyper-inflated, super-fast, flat-out in yer face' variety.

Harsher in tone and texture than 2007's Systematic Chaos, with constantly exploding fusillades of cavernous drumming and snarling guitars that'll slice through steel at 30 yards, there's not much room here for anything too delicate or understated.

To get anywhere near that you have to go through four tracks of bombast-heavy bashing before you arrive at The Best Of Times. Even then it's only a matter of minutes (2' 55'' to be precise) before the listener is blasted back into the high-octane cut and thrust of it all.

True, John Petrucci's souped-up althletic guitar runs are amongst the quickest things you're ever likely to hear.

However one person's thrash is another's idea of brash and whilst it's easy to understand the exhilarating sense of momentum such advanced technique affords the group, it's unrelenting nature quickly palls to all but the faithful.

Sometimes it's not what you’ve got that counts but how you use it.

This review first appeared here.

Download Festival

Last night I sat with Joe watching Slipknot play at the Download Festival.

Unlike Sam, our next door neighbour who had tickets and was present whilst the masked ones burned and churned, Joe and I sat in the yellow room watching and listening to it all via the festival's webcast.

What this approach lacked in atmosphere it made up for in comfort. Whilst Joe would've undoubtedly have preferred to have been in the thick of the crowd, this way of watching the band was some consolation.

This afternoon, Joe is in the office on the sofa listening to the webcast on headphones via the laptop. I'm dipping in and out of the coverage as far as I'm able. At varying points, Joe gives out an excited yelp or even throws the horns a couple of times as some act he likes hits the spot.

Every now and then he asks me to take a look at a particular band and fills me in on some obscure detail about the song or the group. Somewhat worryingly, when he does this he reminds me of me!

Since I've been playing a lot of Dream Theater lately, I ask if he's going to watch the band. He shakes his head citing them as being "too old fashioned."

I know I sound incredibly old fashioned myself when I say this but the wonders of technology never fail to amaze me.

The Kinks Choral Collection Ray Davies

Choral Wallpaper...
The Kinks Choral Collection
Ray Davies & The Crouch End Festival Chorus
Decca

Following up on their first collaboration at 2007‘s Electric Proms, Davies and the 65-strong Crouch End Festival Chorus have gotten together once again to record a cross section of some of The Kinks most celebrated and enduringly popular songs.

Revisiting one’s back catalogue to give it a different gloss is fine in theory. In practice however, whilst Davies and his backing band are on top form, the addition of the chorus brings very little to the table.

Whilst many a choral score is capable of bringing widescreen vistas into the pokiest of material, the arrangements by David Temple, Steve Marwick and Davies himself, seem myopic and lacking ambition.

Never have so many been given so little to do. Cast very much in SingalongaRay mode, they are largely reduced to oohing and ahhing in a way that is as obvious as it is dull.

The Kinks’ 1968 album, The Village Green Preservation Society, has six tracks welded into the "Village Green Medley" and whilst the tunes themselves remain some of Davies’ best work, the choral additions drag rather than lift.

This is especially true of the rockier numbers. The famously graphic intensity of "All Day And All Of The Night" is neutered by the chorus who reduce demotic urgency of the original into a polite request.

Occasionally it works out nicely: "Days" is re-cast in an agreeably ethereal light and an a cappella "See My Friends" has a chilled spectral edge. But as Davies observed in "Celluloid Heroes," “Success walks with hand in hand with failure.”

This review first appeared here.

Keith Tippett Septet A Loose Kite

Flying high...
A Loose Kite in a Gentle Wind Floating With Only My Will for an Anchor
Kieth Tippett Septet
Ogun

Keith Tippett's brilliance as both composer and pianist has long been established through a dazzling back catalogue of long-form epics such as Septober Energy and Frames as well as more intimate and impressionistic outfits such as Ovary Lodge and Mujician.

Over the last forty years his dogged determination to continue creating exciting and ingenious musical settings have been captured in an occasional series of records whose availability has always been subject to the often indifferent whims of the marketplace.

Originally issued in 1986 as a double album, A Loose Kite... finally makes its CD debut and allows us to relive a truly superb septet getting their collective teeth into Tippett's intricate charts and sweeping arrangements.

Drawing conceptual inspiration from writer Maya Angelou, his effusive settings provide his players with both the space and the springboard from which to launch a series of invigorating broadsides.

Mark Charig's fiery brand of piquant lyricism on the cornet blasts and bellows with a tireless invention, whilst trombonist Nick Evans' constantly pushes the music like some belligerent bouncer intent picking a fight.

Larry Stabbins and Elton Dean sax playing is propelled into a series of splenetic duels across the length and breadth of this four-part suite, with Tippett and rhythm section of Paul Rogers (bass) and Tony Levin (drums) providing the contextual glue that holds it all together.

The album portrays the yin and yang of Tippett's sure-handed discipline and his artistic restlessness. His love of a good tune allied to his capacity to mix it up with edgy, free-form expressiveness makes this one of the best jazz reissues of the year.

This review first appeared here.

Nominations For God LXXXVI

e e cummings

Podcast From The Yellow Room IX Dedicated To Hugh

Recorded on Tuesday 9th June with my old pal, Chris Taberham. In this rambling tribute to Hugh Hopper, we talk about how Soft Machine's Third album inadvertently cemented our friendship back in the early '70s, the obscure charm of the click of the fuzz-box, letters to and from Hugh, the appeal of a track like Facelift and our favourite Hugh Hopper tunes.

Dedicated To Hugh
tracklist

"Slightly All The Time" by Soft Machine from Third (excerpt)
"Virtually Part 3" by Soft Machine from Fourth (excerpt)
"Golden Section" by Isotope from Illusion
"Illusion" by Isotope from Golden Section
"Darker Brighter" by Gilgamesh from Another Fine Tune You've Got Me Into
"Two Rainbows Daily" by Hugh Hopper & Alan Gowen from Two Rainbows Daily
"Gesolreut" by Soft Machine from Six (excerpt)
"Facelift" by Delta Sax Quartet (featuring Hugh Hopper) from Dedicated to You... (excerpt)
"Epilogue" by Delta Sax Quartet from Dedicated to You...

Thanks to Chris Taberham, Cuneiform Records, Esoteric Recordings, Moonjune Records, Sony BMG and Barry Stock

Arborea House of Sticks

Houses of the slowly...
House of Sticks
Arborea
Borne Recordings

Arborea, who hail from the state of Maine, aren't strictly speaking folk, country, or ambient but during the 32 minutes of their third album, the record drifts smokily somewhere between them all.

Husband and wife team, Buck and Shanti Curran, construct a fragile, resonant world with a lingering Americana after-taste, shimmering with the same wide-open spaces Ry Cooder's captured so well on Paris, Texas.

Sounding like frayed, half-remembered, hand-me-down tunes, shaped and altered with each retelling, the fluidity and the sparse application of instruments wherein Eastern and Western modes gently mingle is the secret of this album's startling beauty.

Like other artists operating from the USA's east-coast indie folk scene (Espers, Fern Knight, ex reverie, etc), the music also involves an affectionate backward glance to late 60s/early 70s UK folk rock, itself cross-pollinated by the USA's psychedelic scene.

Whilst it's true that what goes around so often comes around, Arborea's take on all of the above is imbued with its very own distinctive brand of delicate, beguiling minimalism.

Plucked banjo notes on "Look Down Fair Moon" possesses a koto-like solemnity whilst a hymnal harmonium spreads out radiant lines of melody, slowly unfurling like the sun at the start of a summer's day on "In The Tall Grass."

Sometimes Shanti's voice is little more than a frightened murmur, prompting comparisons to Vashti Bunyon, though not everything here is translucent or ephemeral.

A wry sensuality insinuates itself throughout "Alligators," and for all her delicacy, Shanti's stylised articulation also carries an unexpected insistence instilled with an underlying menace on "Beirut" and the hypnotic "Dance, Sing, Fight."

Here, her near-whispered reportage takes on an unsettling air, seeping through an intricate web of dulcimer and luminous slide guitar.

This review first appeared here.

What's Going On?

Yesterday Chris T came over and we recorded a chat about Hugh Hopper. The hard part came today - editing the 40 minutes down to something that might be transmittable.

Most of it was highly self-indulgent but necessarily so given that the idea was to talk about how much impact Hopper’s music had upon our lives.

The fact that his music became part of our life’s soundtrack when we were both teenagers is of course incredibly significant.

These years are the time when things have their biggest impact.

I’ve observed before that a lot of my adult life seems to have been about making sense or coming to terms with events and occurrences that happened to me when I was a young kid.

Perhaps I need to spend more time figuring out what’s happening to me right now?

Giving It All Away

The debate about free news content mirrors the same debate about how great it is that music was liberated from "the man" and the shackles of old-style corporate culture by the internet.

Youtube, last FM, rhapsody, spotify, Pirate Bay: all proclaimed as the future at one time or another, are routinely praised for their forward thinking approaches and new business models.

Everything will be paid for by advertising. Whoopee, everything is free!

Then some find they can't make a buck especially if they have to do old-fashioned things like pay out royalties to those old-fashioned content providers at old-fashioned rates.

Thus the old, out-moded, out-dated content providers are told they must revise their business models in order to support the new players on the block - aka "we totally screwed up in our projections for profitability but if you don't cut your rates to something we can afford then you're obviously a dinosaur."

As with the future of music, so with the future of news.

We won't need old fashioned things like journalists because we'll have hordes of citizen reporters roaming the streets with their Flip cameras. Thus the news becomes something akin to a somewhat anodyne "this event happened here today" rather than any nuanced or in-depth reporting.

The problem with the "everything for free" culture is that we've forgotten the truth that lies behind of some of those distinctly old-fashioned sayings.

"If it looks to good to be true that's because it is too good to be true."

Oh, and let's not forget our old-fashioned and hopelessly outdated pal - "there is no such thing as a free lunch."

Somebody, somewhere, always ends up paying the bill.

Hugh Hopper 1945 - 2009

Some artists have that very special capacity to touch us deeply and personally. For me, Hugh Hopper was one of those.

As a young man with curious ears so much of what Hopper did impacted on my life, sending me off on some fascinating journeys.

The hair-raising angularity of "Facelift" - his barn-storming, almost brutal, composition from Soft Machine’s Third man-handled me into a strange but exhilarating world. 1984, his first solo album from 1973 provided me with a wry guide to minimalist experimentation that was as perplexing as it was beguiling.

When listening to albums where Hopper appeared, I used to zone-out other musicians in order to concentrate on those surprisingly lyrical places on the fretboard, revelling in the sense of enquiry, exploration and good taste found in his playing.

Whatever the setting, those sleek purring tones of his bass work filled with their dark brooding beauty resonated with me.

Sometime during 1978 I’d sent off a long, gushing letter to Hopper. It’d been sparked by a curiosity about what he was up to at the time. In it, I reminded him about the last time we’d met in Newcastle when he was a member of Isotope, and no doubt offered my opinion that I thought he was the best bassist on the planet.

I blush now when I think about the contents of that note but probably not as much as Hugh did when he read it.

I know he read it because a few weeks later a package arrived. Inside was a copy of Another Fine Tune You’ve Got Me Into by Gilgamesh.

It was accompanied by a brief note explain that he was concentrating on publishing and would soon be issuing a series of engravings featuring churches in Kent.

I loved the music on the album and of course the fact that it was a gift from the man himself made it all the more special.

Fast forward thirty years later: last month I was asked by Esoteric Recordings to write the sleeve notes for the Gilgamesh album and Soft Heap’s self-titled studio recording.

Knowing Hugh was gravely ill when I was writing the notes to these records made for some poignant listening - especially when it came to Soft Heap. With Alan Gowen, Elton Dean and Pip Pyle all gone, Hugh was the last surviving member of this remarkable quartet.

And now he’s gone too.

Meet On The Ledge Island Folk Rock Anthology

Folk rock is this year's black (again)...
Meet On The Ledge Island Records Folk Rock Anthology
Various Artists
Universal

Fairport Convention, Richard & Linda Thompson, Sandy Denny, John Martyn, Nick Drake, et al, have been part of the fittings and fixtures for so long now we barely give a second glance when their music pops up in adverts, documentaries, film soundtracks and soap operas.

It's also a given that any act in just about any part of the folk music / singer-songwriter continuum operating today will cite some or all of the above as being hugely influential and providing a significant signpost in their own artistic journey.

So, unlike other retrospective box sets leafing through Island's back catalogue, the path through much of this three CD selection seems a tad well-trodden at first glance, despite the not so obvious inclusions such as Ronnie Lane, Bryn Haworth and The Sutherland Brothers.

However, familiarity shouldn't dull our appreciation of what many of these artists achieved.

United by a common desire to push the envelope as far as it might go, the folk-inclined artists opened up fertile territories with just as much gusto and accomplishment as their rock band stablemates.

The Island sampler albums of the day (You Can All Join In, Nice Enough To Eat, Bumpers etc) demonstrated how easily the underground rock scene stood next to an equally impressive team of folk acts.

Such an eclectic mix seems at odds with today's fragmented, long-tail, specialist retail landscape. But back then, whatever boundaries existed were there to be crossed and blurred - something the Island label arguably did better than any of its corporate rivals at the time.

Label boss Chris Blackwell wisely created a haven where the talent was nurtured and given the time to mature and develop. A key part of Island's critical and artistic success depended not only on a few shrewd cash-cow signings but just as importantly, in taking a broad church approach to its roster.

In such circumstances, that ebb and flow of influence and exploration cut both ways.

Jethro Tull and Traffic, like many of their contemporaries, were happy to be able to contrast and augment their blues-based/ progressive rock yearnings with something that could be just as persuasive and potent.

The Fairport family tree discovered the rich bed of the UK's traditional tunes could be infused with a rollicking, earthy dynamic that cut through the stuffy protocols of what was considered proper and authentic in a way that was as shocking as it was innovative.

Just as it is now, so it was then: folk-rock was an bold, eloquent hybrid designed to encourage maximum expression, and most of what's contained here represents the cream of the crop.

This review first appeared here

On This Day...

Taken during the first wave of landings Omaha Beach by Robert Capa. This historic photograph is taken from a great feature here.

Nominations For God LXXXV

Anthony Burgess

Podcast From The Yellow Room VIII

This episode was recorded on 4th June and features Koko Taylor, Great Lake Swimmers, Arborea, David Crosby, Ilona Harhonen Ensemble, Gilgamesh, Joker’s Daughter, Michael Peters, Sha’s Banryu, Jackie McAuley, Roger Eno, Travis & Fripp.

Which lying, thieving bastard shall I vote for today?

Be Careful What You Wish For

Last night we had a little celebration for Debra's birthday. Lots of cards, lots of laughs, a couple of bottles of wine and this splendid pink bed coat called a Slenderella...

Debra decided to do her world famous impersonation of Robert Plant entering to Rock and Roll from Zep 4.

Lesley joined in utilising out kitchen brush possibly aping Jimmy Page...

This morning there was the fall-out of Jacqui Smith's resignation announcement being discussed on the radio.

I took a walk out assuming that that there'd be no further resignations from the government today. Tom came with me en route to have his hair cut. As I waited for him on the corner of Norham Road and Park View I was enjoying the morning sun watching the world and the 355 bus go by.

I was joined by John Oliver - local bookseller - who stopped off on his way to the local auction rooms.

We were musing upon the local scene when we were joined by none other than Chris "lock up yer woks" Wilson. Chris tells me he was on the 355 bus when he saw me snapping the picture and got off to have a natter.



Back home I settled down to PMQs.

Brown was actually quite good during his exchanges with Cameron today - or perhaps that should be Cameron was quite bad in his exchanges with Brown.

Still, the game's up - a fact emphasised by the announcement today of Hazel Blears' resignation from Government, which seems designed to do maximum damage ahead of tomorrow's European and local elections.

Brown looks so behind the curve on the MP's expenses and now it seems he can't even keep his cabinet together. These days even half a week is a long time in politics. Brown spent so long wanting to be Prime Minister. His premiership is a cautionary tale: be careful what you wish for.

Happy Birthday Debra

It's Debra's birthday today...


It always seems a shame that you have to go off to work on your birthday, so Debra is trying her best to put on a cheerful face whilst she waits for tonight's present opening.

This morning I worked on a couple of reviews but came to a standstill. Sometimes one can have too much of a good thing.

Then it was out into the blue yonder with Tim. We headed up to Silverlink and following the closure in Whitley Bay, now my local branch of M&S. He was buying underpants and I was buying sparkling wine (or champagne as we used to call it) to go with Debra's evening meal.


I ended up buying a bottle of something from New Zealand and paying two quid more when I realised the first bottle I picked up came recommended by the Daily Express.

Anything recommended by the Daily Express is to be avoided no matter how cheap or bubbly it is.

After this sortie, Tim kindly drove me to the Fish Quay in North Shields where I was hunting for something suitable for tonight's birthday meal. It had been a glorious, sunny day but then the sea fret came rolling in...

Ilona Korhonen Ensemble Tarkka Pää, Tania Mieli

Brilliant Finish
Tarkka Pää, Tania Mieli
Ilona Korhonen Ensemble
Aania

Finland takes its native folk music very seriously. But rather than this being a dry and dusty practice, it’s study is a vibrant activity where students entering into the portals of academia are encouraged to grab the old tunes and run with them.

The work of respected accordion players such as Maria Kalaniemi or Kimmo Pohjonen of breathing new life into something ancient provide perfect examples of respecting tradition whilst breaking new ground whilst operating at very different ends of the musical spectrum.

Ilona Korhonen, a graduate of the folk music department of Finland’s Sibelius Academy, has created a startling mesh for 17 female voices guaranteed to send shivers down your spine.

Based upon the oral poems of Finland’s Larin Paraske, Korhonen has scored a complex polyphonic delivery whose occasionally jarring harmonies frequently slice and spice the music in the most dramatic fashion.

Strong rhythmic undercurrents, whispered words, skittering theatrical patches, as well as the glorious purity of 17 voices locked together and raised heavenwards make the album a varied, potent listening experience.

Not unlike the other-worldly sounds of Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares at times, the capacity of these voices to lift us up and transport us from the everyday should never be underestimated.