Alan Dearling shares some musical moments
The Near Jazz Experience featuring Mike Garson:
Character Actor mini-LP
“Wow” was my reaction on my first listen to this limited release black vinyl album for Record Store Day. “Double Wow” was my reaction on a second listen. This is very fine, indeed. Extremely immersive, quirky, darkly, gorgeously played piano enlivened by a finely-tuned recording quality. The music of ‘Character Actor’ segues together seamlessly from the Overture into the Main Title. It is something of a homage to ‘Cracked Actor’ from David Bowie’s ‘Aladdin Sane’, which I believe pianist, Mike Garson worked on with Bowie. NJE are the trio of Terry Edwards (horn player with PJ Harvey, Siouxsie), Mark Bedford (bassist with Madness, Robert Wyatt and more) and drummer, Simon Chatterton (whose musical career stretches back to work with Alex Harvey and the Higsons). Oliver Cheerer (from Aircooled and Miki Berenyi Band) plays keys and synth on the three tracks on side two of the album.
Side B features some great examples of jazz repetition, sounds reminiscent of subterranean or underwater swimming with whales. Sounds from deepest space, followed by horn-solos over swirling soundscapes, and finally vocal syncopation on ‘Lockstep’ which is a bit of a musical oddity. The NJE tell us that, “They are stand-alone tunes, which have found a home together because in some way they all have filmic qualities.”
Mike Garson ‘Remembering David Bowie’: https://www.facebook.com/mikegarson/videos/1817217215327509
Raye: My 21st Century Blues
“Give a heartfelt welcome to wonderful Raye”. And so the record opens up as though it is recorded in a late-night soul and blues club in the US of A, with a gushing introduction from the resident MC. But, as the title suggests, it is a 21st century ‘take’ on many much older musical genres. Some rap, some poetry, more rap, ‘Black Mascara’ through a Vocoder, much edginess. It’s a class act from a musical magician. Lots of deep bass lines, smoke-filled, painful stories of drugs and life in the darker recesses of world sounds.
A chameleon of an album, extremely hard to categorise, and likely to be around for many years offering a glimpse into sounds and visions of the future soul of the musical dance hall. Heavy and challenging from a new Sista of gangsta rap, ‘sniffing cocaine’ in a little skimpy dress, slipping into sweaty joints…dark music for darker times, perhaps? Raye is also perhaps, a natural successor to Amy Winehouse, but definitely has created her own unique persona. ‘Ice Cream Man’ is one of Raye’s New, yet Old Skool tracks, as she sings, “I’m a woman…I’m a very strong fuckin’ woman…’Cause I put on these faces pretending I’m fine…Then I go to the bathroom and I press rewind…In my head, always going round and round in my head…Your fingerprints stuck a stain on my skin…You made me frame myself for your sins…You pathetic, dead excuse of a man.”
Raye is already a world-wide phenomenon. If you haven’t done it already, check her out. It’s a chemical high with or without the drugs.
Raye: ‘Ice Cream Man’: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ywunlu42_ho
The Strange Encounters: All in the Mind
First album from the Berlin-based psych-folk-soft rock outfit. Starts off with a jangly Byrds-like track, ‘Don’t look back’. It drifts into vaguely Monkees’ territory with ‘Under the Sun’. Pleasant Valley Sunday. ‘Different’ takes The Strange Encounter into the John Lennon solo-land with a sad, but pretty little piano-led ballad with added psychedelic effects. ‘Twenty Sixteen’ evokes something of Western film themes, and by the last track, ‘Long , Lost Days’ it’s almost as if we have stumbled into one of the catchy, rather hammy, Paul McCartney’s old music hall sing-alongs. In fact, it is all rather nice, but also rather derivative without carving out a style of its own.
‘Recognize’ is the first single from the debut album: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPqvJLpTkvs
Dorothy Moskowitz: Rising to Eternity(2024)/Under an Endless Sky(2023)
Ethereal, vocal weirdness, floating into ambient space trip worlds. Blips, oscillating sounds, “…sheltering skies…for eternity…silent circling…what lies beyond…” You need to be in the right (or left) state of mind, or, mindfulness, to cope with the intensity of these recent releases from Mistress Moskowitz. She is now into her 80s. Dorothy was the vocalist on one of my favourite leftfield, underground electronica albums of the late 1960s, ‘The United States of America’ (1968). That embodied a much more developed sense of melody, despite its mood shifts and overall weirdness. These recent albums are much further ‘out there’, delving into the cavities that have intrigued many of the admirers of Nico’s solo works. Places of intense bleakness. ‘Metallic Rain’ is probably the most accessible track on ‘Rising to Eternity’. Both albums take listeners into places and spaces of fear and insecurity. Alien and dark. The earlier album includes the 22 minute title track and then cheery little numbers on side two with titles such as, ‘My Doomsday Serenade’ and ‘The Disappearance of Fireflies. All in all, an “…exploding view of mind…an extending galaxy…the night is ever ending…” Her music is so strange, ultimately cosmic, that it does become hypnotic, and one senses that there is a strong element of ‘Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun’ in her track, ‘Dimension’.
‘Rising to Eternity’: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_mibiTOTHs2Dk0sCzpcqUhUivm3ybafkW0
Ryley Walker: UK Tour 2024
Ryley was somewhat catapulted into the musical limelight in 2015 with his album, ‘Primrose Green’ followed by the even more impressive ‘Golden Sings that have been Sung’ in 2016. His guitar playing and style was at once familiar and yet individual, with echoes of John Martyn and many of the Laurel Canyon troubadours of the late 1960s and into the ‘70s. But he has been bedevilled by his own inner demons and addictions. However, I mention him here because he is coming over for a short tour in the UK from his American home in September. https://www.ryleywalker.com/tour
The last album I have from him is ‘Deafman Glance’ from 2018. It’s a slow-burn sort of album, a low key affair. There are still glimpses of instrumental magic such as on ‘Rocks on Rainbow’ and the classy, ‘Telluride Speed’, the jazzy, ’22 Days’ and the rather sombre opener, ‘In Castle Done’.
On-line, Ryley has recently written, “I’m Ryley and I’m a gnarly drug addict/alcoholic of the hopeless variety and I’m celebrating 5 years clean and sober.”
Ryley is very talented. A fragile, quietly slow-smouldering talent. One wishes him well, and a more optimistic future. It would be very sad if he followed the likes of Nick Drake.
’22 Days’ from ‘Deafman Glance’ live from 2018: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SoK5qCgt_dY
‘Roundabout’ live: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKXb1p7gDIs
And the beautiful ‘Halfwit in Me’ live in 2016, full of his trademark harmonics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yelj8_VoAsw
Frank Zappa: A day with Frank Zappa – Dutch Documentary, 1971
Enough said. ‘God Bless America!’ Frank-style.
‘Call any vegetable!’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5aFRBbnF-ag
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