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Collectress
PENGUIN CAFÉ The Red Book Editions Penguin Café DPC104
COLLECTRESS Mondegreen Peeler 0700461096009
CHRIS MORPHITIS Where To Go Village Green VGCD011
FIONA RUTHERFORD Sleep Sound SLEEP001
There’s definitely something happening here, even if we’re not entirely sure what it is. A growth of mostly acoustic, mostly instrumen- tal music that’s as much about texture, atmo- sphere and visual images as it is about melody. It has elements of traditional music from out there – and uses instruments often associated with that – but also influences (and sometimes training) from classical music, the fringes of jazz, minimalism, ambient music and film composition. Into the same hole of feral pigeons we could also place Bris- tol’s Spiro and Three Cane Whale, and Kent’s Arlet. In spite of some incoming flavours, it’s also very definitely from here, having a quirky local character (eccentricity?) that sub- tly differentiates it from American equiva- lents that may spring to mind after reading such descriptions on paper. And so far, thank heavens, it doesn’t have a name and although I’m a strong believer in inventing a genre a day to keep boredom away, I’m not about to dream one up.
One of the earliest swallows of this musi-
cal summer, many years ago now, was Simon Jeffes’ Penguin Café Orchestra – creators of at least one now irrefutably traditional folk tune about a harmonium. Their direct progeny are the current day eleven-piece Penguin Café, led by son Arthur Jeffes on piano and half a dozen other things, most of the composition, and production along with “general studio genius” Jamie Orchard-Lisle (the man who
Harp And A Monkey
achieved the previously-thought- impossible by imposing decent PA sound on Kennedy Hall at Cecil Sharp House). Whilst the influ- ences on this, their second album, come from Europe to Central America to Madagascar, the end product is undeniably from here. Typically circular tunes, repeating and overlapping phrases, snappy rhythmic pulses and neat time changes all serve to make it quite mes- merising. No track is typical, but Blue Jay pret- ty much encapsulates everything that’s won- derful in Penguin Café society.
www.penguincafe.com
String (and other stuff – keyboards notably) quartet Collectress are very definitely coming from the Penguin Café’s doors – the staff entrance in the case of cellist Rebecca Waterworth – and the most overtly ‘classical’, in terms of the noise they make, of the bunch reviewed here. Oh, and they have a harmoni- um. It’s a less dense sound, unsurprisingly con- sidering the numbers involved, and they make the spaces work. Although the compositional style with repeated phrases is Penguinesque, it’s altogether darker – especially on Owl with its bowed saw and that man Jeffes on pre- pared piano. I wasn’t surprised when studying the small print of their PR to find the names of Mary Hampton (who contributes some voice) and The Paper Cinema mentioned: we’re sometimes talking shadowy and slightly unsettling atmosphere here, enhanced by some found sounds. It’s a gripper.
peelerrecords.bandcamp.com Chris Morphitis is a very
clever man. You’ll have spot- ted his name referenced in these pages as an accompa- nist (and producer) for Zim- babwean mbira master Chartwell Dutiro, as a mem- ber of those Anglo-Kenyan crossoverists Owiny Sigoma
Band, and a driving force in Greek Cypriot psych rockers Mavrika. So just as you think you have an angle on him from that lot, up
pops this unexpected ‘solo’ gem that heads his guitars out into another impressionistic, part improvised instrumental world of tex- tures, repeated phrases and hypnotic themes. You’re well out of ‘classical’ territory here, even though in common with all the others in this set it has violins (Hassan Erraji), cello, double bass and piano. It’s the most experimental, varied, occasionally electric and ‘free’ of all here – at the musical end of the stuff that Wire writers like to baffle us with. The title track is briefly Penguinesque, and every now and then the thought of Bill Frisell enters my head, though that’s clutch- ing at straws. By way of recommendation you can hear Coat Tails from it on this issue’s fRoots 48 compilation.
www.villagegreen.tv
Fiona Rutherford is the odd one out by being Scot- tish and including a few more actual songs with words, though they fit so well into the musical land- scape that they don’t – one alarming scream aside – rip- ple the pond too much.
She’s an accomplished harpist composer, sur- rounded by top flight Scottish-based women musicians Mairi Campbell (viola), Amy Dun- can (double bass), Su-a Lee (cello), Lauren Mackie (piano), Shona Mooney (violin), Rachel Newton (harp) and Anna-Wendy Stevenson (violin). It’s [cough] a ‘concept album’ but don’t be put off by that thought. Commissioned by Celtic Connections, it explores the patterns of a full night’s sleep, from lullaby through dreams and a night- mare (that scream) to a gentle wakening. It’s in turns beautiful, invigorating, meditative and best of all, a suite that at the end of its perfect 38 minutes feels like only half of that has passed and you want to play it all over again. Superbly recorded too.
www.fionarutherford.com Ian Anderson
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