(Compiled by Alan Dearling)
Sean Khan presents The Modern Jazz and Folk Ensemble
Pentangle were arguably one of the first supergroups providing a fusion of folk and jazz. They were fronted by Jacqui McShee. Sean Khan has offered Jacqui and The Modern Jazz and Folk Ensemble an opportunity to revisit, or, re-imagine ‘Light Flight’, one of Pentangle’s best known tunes. I think it was the theme of TV’s ‘Take Three Girls’. It’s classy and cheerful, but sounds rather Old Skool, despite Jacqui’s youthful vocals. More the sound of 2024 is ‘Parasite’, an exquisite gem from the late, great, Nick Drake, with Kandelan as featured vocalist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQy0ggO5xIA
‘Who knows where the time goes’ is hardly recognisable as the song perhaps most connected with the legacy of Sandy Denny. Overall this album is reverential. An album that will probably provide the backdrop to many middle-class dinner parties. A collision or collusion between the sounds of John Martyn and the MJQ. London-based saxophonist Sean Khan has curated The Modern Jazz & Folk Ensemble, which is essentially a project devised to explore the sounds of Britain’s late Sixties-early Seventies folk revival in the context of modern jazz. It’s labelled as ‘Volume 1’, so expect more to come!
Satellite Inn – Satellite Inn
The opening track, ‘Bury the Ashes’ sets the tone: “No-one is innocent now!” They are described as “…an Italian alternative country band in the US.” It seems like mellow, melancholic music. ‘Wayfaring Angel’ is full of Stiv Canterell’s guttural, gruff singing which becomes engulfed in a towering inferno of guitar feedback. Stiv has plenty of musical pals including R.E.M., Bob Mould and Richmond Fontaine. Satellite Inn are described in their PR as being, “…outcasts in their own country…sounding like they were delivering their own brand of folk, rock, punk and country, distilled by age and bottled in their native Romagna hills.”
‘Happy to Survive’ offers, perhaps, shades of Springsteen. Much else is doom-laden, especially the finale: ‘One last look and I’m gone’. Earlier, ‘Going to Wilmington’is possibly the most up-beat track, almost a rollicking little ditty complete with some fine banjo-picking. I rather liked the name of one of Stiv’s previous outfits, the probably aptly named, ‘James Dean Hangover’. I imagine them to be Wayfaring Angels pursuing Stiv along the road to perdition! If you like your musical fare, dark, murky, almost muddy, and then darker still, this may be for you!
Satellite Inn on Bandcamp: https://satelliteinn99.bandcamp.com/album/satellite-inn
Mdou Moctar – Funeral for Justice
At first listen, opener, ‘Funeral for Justice’ sounds like desert blues from Tinirawen played at the wrong, much too fast speed! Add heavy-metal, prog rock and the first track leaves a searing raucous rumble across the consciousness. The next track ‘Imouhar’ then appears to have been recorded at half the volume, or, maybe in a field half a mile distant! Then after 1 minute 24 seconds, the volume returns to the blistering…
Mahamadou ‘Mdou Moctar’ Souleymane is a Toureg, based in Agadez, Niger. Adept at blistering guitar breaks and splintering shards of bluesy guitar rock, Mdou Moctar is reminiscent of speed guitar freaks, particularly Eddie Van Halen’s pyrotechnics. Elsewhere,’Takoba’ provides a more measured call and response style and is much gentler and soulful, with djembe talking drums, traditional chants. ’Sousoume Tamacheq’ returns to the musical offensive. There’s also political content, with ‘Oh France’ and ‘Modern Slaves’. It’s a strange mix of the frenetic and the subtleties of Desert blues. Vast amounts of light and shade. Definitely a weird melange, but one that is gathering many plaudits and rave reviews!
‘Funeral for Justice’ live: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwRgJ66ylpU
Kilbey Kennedy – Premonition K
Very, very Floyd-like. And, in this case that’s really rather good. Pomp and Prog. A vast smorgasbord of sound. Spoken word over-lapping with an enveloping blanket of sound right from the off-get on ‘Breaking the Fourth World’. ‘Premonition K’ is apparently the final chapter in a trilogy of albums from Steven Kilbey and Martin Kennedy. (Parts One and Two are ‘Jupiter 13’ (2021) and ‘The Strange Life of Persephone Nimbus (2022). It is quite correctly described as, “…a sumptuous and organic sonic landscape.” Kennedy is fabulous at creating total musical immersion. A sonic bath-tub to jump into!
‘My Better Half’ features the vocals of Leona Gray. And throughout, a sense of foreboding and longing: “I lie in the darkness…half-way in an afterlife.” This ethereal and corporeal umbilical cord takes the listener to the ominous, ‘Ouija Board’, “Try to contact the dead…it was doing in my head.” Then there’s the elegiac ‘Menace in the Past’. It all feels like entering into a separate reality, a personal illusion, yet it also feels strangely familiar. At its considerable best, ‘tis a clever example of musical magical trickery!
Definitely one to check out, if you are looking for a missing chapter of Floyd-scapes. And it is a sonic treat too… Here’s the video for Track 6, ‘That’s Got to Hurt’: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZfBoJCCXEQ
David Bowie – BBC Radio theatre June 27 2000
This is a comparatively rare item. I’d been looking forward to hearing it and owning a physical copy for some while. The single CD version contains logos for Virgin, EMI and the BBC, but in fact this copy is probably a pirate (in the small print it says that this compilation is from Risky Folio Inc), but it was definitely created from the wonderfully curated master-tape mixes. It was recorded just two days before David Bowie’s triumphant Glasto appearance in front of a small invited audience – just 250 – many celebrity musos in their own right, from Boy George to Bob Geldorf and Lulu. The band with Bowie are absolutely top-drawer and on absolute top form too: Earl Slick, guitar; Mark Plati, guitar and bass; Gail Ann Dorsey, bass, guitar and vocals; Sterling Campbell on drums; Holly Palmer, percussion and vocals; Emm Gryner, keyboard and vocals and best of all, Mike Garson on piano and keys.
The set-list is to die for, many tracks rarely performed live, including ‘This is not America’, ‘Cracked Actor’, and ‘Wild is the Wind’ which morphs into ‘Ashes to Ashes’ (though not at as high quality as on the CD): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b__ddMepFmY
A seminal gemstone of a live recording. The album was originally released as part of the ‘Brilliant Adventures (1992 – 2001)’ boxset
The Church – Eros Zeta and the Perfumed Guitars
This is described as the companion album to ‘The Hypnogogue’ album from last year. The Church were originally formed in Sydney, Australia in 1980. Even then they felt like a throw-back from a previous musical age. This new, elaborately produced album combines chants such as ‘Amanita’, constructed from many layers upon layers of sound and overlaid vocals. Dense and melodic. It is the sort of album that prog fans are likely to be in thrall to. Jangling pop, visions of musical grandeur. It’s essentially Part 2 of a spectacular, if somewhat over-egged, space pop opera. There are plenty of beatific, sensual, symphonic moments.
‘Song from the Machine’ is tribal, full of catchy fun. ‘The Weather’ is an example of their rockier edge, whilst the ‘Last Melody’ is crammed with phasing, sounding like an aged Wurlitzer. It’s engulfing, a monster-mix of the beguiling glam rock of early-ish Bowie. ‘Manifesto’ proclaims, “This is the World – Material World!” You can easily imagine a stadium of arm-waving, chanting fans loudly singing along. Infectious, if a bit tiring, it feels a bit endless by the conclusion of the final track, ‘Music from the Ghost Hotel’, which offers a musical HAUNTING!
From Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUrf1hoKdi4
Slapp Happy and Henry Cow – Casablanca Moon/Desperate Straights
I often search out missing musical oddities. This one is like a personal domino which I had lost from my time at the University of Kent at the end of the 1960s into the early ‘70s. These bands and their members were not part of the celebrated, much lauded, Canterbury Scene. But they included musicians who overlapped with the members of Soft Machine and Steve Hillage. In particular, on this CD compilation of two of their albums, the musicians often performed alongside many of creative musos of Canterbury. It’s surreal enough even without the Germanic Cabaret warblings of female singer, Dagmar Krause.
Definitely an acquired taste. The sort of collaboration that you might expect from Lol Coxhill or Frank Zappa. An ‘out there’ sort of album from the edges of the leftfield artist/music territory. I cannot better the description for Virgin on the remastered edition in 2006: “Recorded in Faust’s studio in Hamburg, Germany, Casablanca Moon is the 2nd Slapp Happy record. It’s an eccentric yet melodic record with addictive songs… Blegvad, Dagmar Krause and Anthony Moore work in a short song format, and understandably quirky and great things happen. Desperate Straights is something else, the first fusing of Henry Cow and Slapp Happy (who went on to make in Praise of Learning as well.) This is a powerful album, musically sophisticated and quirky as all get-out. Songs like ‘A Worm Is at Work’ or ‘Some Questions about Hats’ have to be heard to be believed.”
I love it!
Bad Alchemy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oj8dXL6Xz20
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