Now, when I was still in work - I have left that behind, dear reader - my telephone extension, and conduit for much botheration, was 5446, which meant little until one night I was listening to a Toots and the Maytals compilation and (are you ahead of me, perceptive reader?) his big hit 54-46 Was My Number came on. As you Greystafarians know this was Toots Hibberts number when in prison...and I thought, Jah moves in mysterious ways, even among the infidels, to send a message. Numbers, so full of import, that at times one cannot be sure whether numerical coincidence is in play or a greater significance is abroad. And one should never ignore the significant coincidence...So what is the significance of 2016. Does it hold anything of significance?
Surveying the Quality Music Press' reviews of the year a valedictory trumpet is blowing through the pages, as the longboats of Bowie, Prince and Cohen drift out to sea, with much punditry expounded on the cruelty of their passing. Undeniable, of course. Saddened to see Plectrumelectrum's absence from the Best-ofs though, (maybe it came out last year?), as this has been a fixture in the Cultureberg Van (The Tangerine Dream) for some time. Both You Want It Darker (a strong addition to the closing trilogy) and Blackstar (which I confess I have not ventured to listen to since the day before Bowie died) are up there in the Tastemakers' tallying, but Cultureberg is going to turn its meager candle on lesser luminaries (and indeed, alive and kicking ones) in its end of year address. Please be assured that this truly reflects on the time spent on turntable or in CD tray and is not some misguided perversity or throwing of consolatory bones, or indeed lack of fondness for the titans who have passed on, all of whom Cultureberg would place on lofty seats in the Tower of Song. Also, I have not gone for a countdown or ranking as all are worthy and from time to time all have been Daddy's favourite, so (Cue fanfare), Cultureberg's Best of 2016...(excluding the piles of hoary old 70's Boogie that is retrieved from The Wall of Sound at Beer O' Clock., much as I'd like to wax on about Jess Roden....)
ARTIST OF THE YEAR - Circuit Des Yeux
Last year I chanced to sample Circuit Des Yeux's In Plain Speech record via the handiness of the digital download and on a foray into Manchester abandoned the Night and Day cafe to nip across the road to Picadilly Records to buy the vinyl, which Thrill Jockey have pressed in fetching white plastic. It has been ever present on the Cultureberg plinth all year, alongside the mini-LP released under the pseudonym Jackie Lynn (of which more later)
When an upcoming concert at the Eagle in Salford beeped on the Cultureberg Radar in October 2015 we ordered tickets fearing it would sell out. In Plain Speech's avant folk strumming, electronica and an enigma the size of the Sargasso Sea had Cultureberg Manor in its paw. It brought one to mind of Buckley pere's Starsailor and Lorca, though its vision was singular and resisted the reduction of comparison. Excitement was so high a top Travelodge was booked to make a night of it.
We can confess some astonishment that, when stumbling from bar-stool to backroom there were only about 25 other souls there for the show. Inexplicable. Haley Fohr (who is, to all intents and purposes, Circuit Des Yeux) backed by flute and violin sucked the room into a trance, reprising much of the record but heightening it with intensity and the presence of a truly great voice, which in the live setting swooped and commanded from behind a curtain of fringe. Stretching from a Joan Armatrading like baritone to the outer limits of Sumac-land, it is a voice which makes Dancing about Architecture an easy option. If you, dear reader, take one thing from this piece, it should be the simple action of Checking em out. There's a video below. The hipsters of Manchester committed an aesthetic sin of omission; I counsel you not to follow suit.
Afterward both Madame Cultureberg and I, having mixed grape and grain and only sustained by the Eagle Special - a ploughmans lunch in a crisp packet - gushed excessively to Haley Fohr and, later back at the bar, the violinist.Please be assured that this is a step that is seldom taken by such reserved interlopers into the Fourth Estate as ourselves, buyt we had been transported and were, indeed, almost indict ably squiffy. Suffice to say it was a truly great performance.
In 2016, Ms Fohr adopted a persona, that of Jackie Lynn, a member of the poor, white diaspora adrift in urban america, and released a long EP or a short Lp, an eponymous debut. I have copied this from some press to give you a flavour of this playful conceit.
"This is what we know: Born and raised in Franklin, TN, in May of 2010, Jackie took a Greyhound bus from Franklin, TN to Chicago, IL. Upon her arrival in the city of Chicago, Jackie found a cheap sublet on the south side. She soon became acquainted with Tom Strong (real name unknown) on a short CTA bus trip to the Chicago Loop. We believe that Tom & Jackie together ran a multimillion dollar business distributing the illegal substance of cocaine around Chicago & the Chicago tristate area for over four years. Authorities believe that a local automobile shop was used as the main distributions headquarter."
In Cultureberg's view the project lacks the artistic intensity of In Plain Speech and is impressionistic, like a Super 8 film taken through a moving car window, rather than imbued with the former's deep expressionism. Friends from Bitchin Bajas and other Chicago figures provide the keyboard based backing, like a updated, cut-price Suicide. Nonetheless it shares a beguiling and quicksilver nature with Circuit Des Yeux and has garnered a lot of attention, even landing her on the cover of The Wire. The persona is literally a mask, with spangly red cowboy hat and face mask in the accompanying videos and photos. My favourite track is the closing "Jackie" which reverts to a folky guitar, but the whole is an entrancing listen.
A few short weeks ago Cultureberg again ventured to Manchester, where Circuit Des Yeux were supporting Julia Holter, at Manchester Cathedral no less. 12 months ago Ms Holter swept the critical boards with her album To Have You In My Wilderness, though this had largely passed Cultureberg by, and it was no secret that Cultureberg were there for the support act. The mix of voice and venue seemed heaven sent. This time Haley Fohr performed solo with 12 string, the set being all new material bar the closer. No compromises, perhaps, though few would have known the songs. The audience seemed lost in beard stroking (they even maintained their polite deference for the headliner, who channelled Lynsey De Paul through an avant-garde filter) but one could detect a groundswell of conversion rippling though the auditorium during the support set. Her voice has become even fuller and controlled and her focus is undimmed and more poised. Cultureberg loved it, and if the performance lacked the Damascene dimension of the Salford show, well, such moments are unrepeatable by their intrinsic nature. The talent to channel emotion into art is still alive and coursing through the Circuits Des Yeux. Enjoy this other church based performance....
VIDEO OF THE YEAR - Radiohead: Burn The Witch
Earlier this year a letter arrived addressed to Cultureberg junior, so being responsible parents we opened it. It was not news of a premium bonds win, instead was a small poster entreating him to Burn the Witch and counselling that We Know Where You Live. Initially concerned that some college chums were playing a jape, a quick consultation with Mr Google reassured and revealed that the missive was in fact from gnomic art-rockers Radiohead, another example of their novel marketing campaigns.
Soon after the album oozed into the world. Burn the Witch was the first track and the most immediately grabbing, reminding Cultureberg of Moondog's Stamping Ground (familiar to many from The Big Lebowski). A quick comparison with his eponymous 1969 album revealed that it did not sample the blind viking, merely aped his string arrangements, just as Mr Greenwood pays due deference to Bernard Herrmann and others on his soundtrack to Inherent Vice, which also got frequent rotation Chez Cultureberg, and which I'd commend to you.
Impressed at the time with the video, I wrote a short piece but dallied about posting it. The makers (Director Chris Hopewell, Animator Virpi Kettu) were clear that the charming yet sinister stop-motion homage to Camberwick Green and Trumpton, wherein a bowler-hatted bureaucrat is guided to his certain doom in an echo of Edward Woodward in The Wicker Man, (with maybe even a bit of Apocalypse Now or Ben Wheatley's Kill List in there too,) was concerned with the stigmatisation of refugees, Muslims and migrants in Britain. The aforementioned poster card arriving anonymously was an allusion to the anxiety that many live with in Britain, unable to trust that they are safe where they live, the band and creators said. The lyrics, delivered in Thom Yorke's anguished choirboy vocal, talked of loose talk around tables and was peppered with paranoia and anxiety - abandon all reason, avoid all eye contact, do not react, shoot the messenger, this is a low flying panic attack. It caught the national mood. I'd even planned to call the piece Brexit Music, but then someone else used that title and it all seemed a bit glib. I didn't post anything but the videos relevance merely grew.
The video depicts a bovine, bucolic Britain of forelock tuggers and stool-duckers, and the sort of Mayor one would imagine being appointed by Scarfolk Council. (Please visit Scarfolk's website for more information.) If the video was insightful at the time, that is, pre-Brexit, pre the murder of Jo Cox, it feels almost prophetic now. At that time I thought the man who had many years ago bemoaned being a Creep and a wierdo now saw society as populated by creeps and wierdos. I think the truth is far more complicated, and the most prescient element in the video for me is the figure of the mayor, superficially plausible and welcoming, his arm in the small of the visitors back as he leads him to death with the silent acquiesence of the populous. This is the sort of town in which Thomas Mair would be someone who did odd jobs for his neighbour and was well-liked.
Of course Trumpton the TV series and arcadian idyll has nothing to do with Donald J Trump either, the name is a fluky coincidence, but watching Burn The Witch now I get a greater sense of foreboding than 9 months or so ago , its air of tense inevitability and resignation even more in tune with the zeitgeist. Here's the video
JAZZ ALBUM OF THE YEAR - Neil Cowley Trio - Spacebound Apes
Cultureberg was once advised to avoid an interest in jazz lest ten years passed whilst being drawn down ever more arcane detours and into the outer environs of sound, before awakening none the wiser. This advice has been periodically ignored and certain albums have snagged in potently - Monks' Brilliant Corners, Keith Jarrett's Arbour Zena and many of the usual suspects - Miles, Coltrane, Coleman, Zorn, Mingus. Nonetheless in that 3am of the soul the anxiety still arises that I will awake and the only jazz on the shelf will be Kind of Blue, Headhunters and The Koln Concert. Such are those siren albums that make the budget section of HMV to entice onto the rocks the ordinary consumer. Maybe I'm one of them...naah, couldn't be....naah, surely not Cultureberg..
Anyway, add to that list of acceptable jazz Neil Cowley's Spacebound Apes.
It seems millions of others came to hear this via the modern tipster Spotify. Cultureberg came late to this lark, resisting the notion that an algorithm could supplement or supplant my eclectic (in reality, undisciplined) listening habits. Buy haphazardly, listen without prejudice, or indeed discretion and the cream will rise to the top. One of Mr Spotify's first recommendations was said album, so en repose in a Top Travelodge (Portishead Marina, as it happens; a quaint piece of sonic synergy) I listened and then, dear reader, I bought the cd.
According to David Hepworth's informative blog Neil Cowley Trio are a frequent recommendation on Spotify and the track Grace has now been streamed over 4 million times. So either I have been herded along a corridor like the public of whose aesthetic patterns I profess ignorance or the music is so good people haven't switched it off 4 million times, I'm one of them, but one of the declining breed who still by albums. (Whether this streaming in garantuan numbers translates to cd and vinyl sales or seats sold, I don't know.)
What I like about Spacebound Apes is that it's a proper album, an immersive listen. It grows and moves from track to track, there's fast ones and slow ones,, some of it's catchy, some more ambient and atmospheric. It'll appeal to fans of In a Silent Way, Dark Side of the Moon and The KLF's Chill Out. Significantly you get no sense of strategy or calculation (though there may well have been some hopeful planning) and it seems a product of the numbers the band had at the time and a recording of how they wanted them to sound, coupled with some spacey titles which reflect how the music sounds.
The first three tracks ease the listener in with simple piano phrases and some echoey drumming, like an athlete warming up, before The City and The Stars bursts out in an eruption of rhythm and piano, recalling more the instrumental tracks of Yer Classic Rock Albums - Elton John's Funeral For A Friend, some Supertramp (Oh yes!) - than jazz as it is commonly understood. These lead into Grace, where Erik Satie meets Electronica. There's The Sharks of Competition, a headless chicken cartoon soundtrack which melts into the repose of the last third of the album, where notes suspend in thin air and the electronic shadings sound like the glitching of distant stars. Back in the day (whenever that was) this would have been a 'Head' album.
The fact that this album is both a good listen, a crossover hit and a bit of a phenomena gave it the edge over my other recent discovery (which is perhaps a sign of how marginal to this enclosed world of jazz Cultureberg probably is), the North-West based Saxophonist Nat Birchall. In a blind tasting of the albums I've heard- 2015's Invocations and 2016's Creation- I would have put money on opening my eyes and finding a gatefold Impulse sleeve with impenetrable sleeve notes and evocative artwork on the coffee table. His sound is, to these ears, reminiscent of Coltrane (both Alice and John) but any worry about crossing the line between homage and larceny is dispelled by the undeniable urgency of the music. This is roiling, rolling, rambunctious music, lively and spritely. The drummer splatters all corners of the kit, other percussion rattles, the piano skitters and teeters whilst Birchall's sax is melodic and pure.
Nat's music often has attached to it the description 'Spiritual'. His website though says that it is "Not 'Spiritual Jazz' but Jazz/Music that is spiritual in its intent and that attempts to connect to, or invoke, the Universal Spirit or Sat-cit-ananda." So that clears that up. Other albums have been called Guiding Spirit, World Without Form, Akhenaten, and the tracks often have similarly wraithe-like titles. Cultureberg may have been diverted from the path to enlightenment when I ditched all my Lobsang Rampa paperbacks many years ago, but that never stopped an enjoyment of A Love Supreme, The Creator Has a Master Plan or John McLaughlin's Shakti, who gave one of the greatest shows Young Cultureberg ever attended. This music is about communication, direct and unencumbered, and I hope Mr Birchall would not demur if I said that I feel that the music moves beyond it's spirituality into a realm of pure sound. It's chosen language is jazz, it's intent is connection, and whilst I would be surprised if four million people stream these albums, or that they are even recommended to by Mr Spotify, there is nothing here that the ordinary consumer could not, and let's say it in the appropriate argot, dig. This is Fire music straight from the fridge.Try this for size.......and apologies to Mr Cowley, but maybe this video link will start a trickle similar at least analogous to the streaming tsunami he has already experienced.
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