Starring
Aili, The Balloonist, Cassandra Jenkins, Crumb, Dibidin, Mieko Shimizo, Robert Vincent
The Show Horse
My Light, My Destroyer : Cassandra Jenkins
Cassandra Jenkins’ new album is a rich mix of sounds and styles befitting her journey to self understanding.
First, a confession. I’d eagerly awaited this album since listening to ‘Crosshairs’ from her 2021 album ‘An Overview On Phenomenal Nature’. It’s a song that immediately made it onto my list of all time favourites and it set an impossibly high benchmark to underpin future expectations.
It’s no disgrace to fall short in those circumstances. Think of this album as being on target but not in the dead centre of the bullseye.
This is a clever mix of rock, classic songwriting, ambient conversations, jazz and art. It’s still a giddy mix as it continues her quest to find her place in the cosmos and greater understanding of herself. The essence of the album can be found in this couplet from ‘Omakase’.
“Pull me apart, I want you to see who I am
Pull me apart. Put me back together again.”
It’s almost as if she’s singing this to her songs, the mix of styles representing different aspects of her character and personality. It’s songs like ‘Omakase’ that have you floating with her.
‘Devotion’ opens the album and it’s probably closest to ‘Crosshairs’ in style. Her intimate, confiding vocals are embedded in a song that’s beautifully paced and built. ‘Clams Casino’ hits a brasher note with a more muscular backing that adds force to her vocals. Moving on, ‘Delphinium Blue’ is more brooding, almost psychedelic. It’s almost as if she’s not sure what tone to strike. It makes for a confused feel to the album which only makes sense towards the end of what in days gone by we would have referred to as Side 2.
With 13 tracks in just under 37 minutes there are a few tracks that are snippets. Surprisingly they work well. The French of ‘Attente Telephonique” works, adds style and elan - there’s a word I never thought I’d use in these reviews - to the album in just a minute and a half. The jazz ambience to the conversation in ‘Betelgeuse’ is full of wonder at our place in the cosmos.
The album ends on a positive note with ‘Only One’, a moment of realisation where everything suddenly seems to click into place, leading into the gentle and lovely instrumental return that is ‘Hayley’.
Note to self : put prior expectations to one side and take this for what it is. You’ll find much to enjoy and savour.
Taster Track : Omakase
The Front Runners
Nandakke? : Aili
Three things characterise the Belgian / Japanese electropop collaboration. Rhythm. Sound. Fun.
This is a breath of fresh air, excitingly and surprisingly so. The cover shows a technicolour, cartoon-like, inflatable glitterball / gyroscope with small balloon characters clinging to the side. It’s nuts, and it shouldn’t work, but it captures what’s to come perfectly.
Let’s start with the rhythms. They’re the engine of the album and its bounce. This is an album full of dance floor synth bases (and basses!). It’s a foundation that allows the western listener to connect with the songs easily.
Now, move on to the sounds. The clean production is a key part of that but the sounds are most important in the lyrics. Maybe you speak and understand Japanese. I don’t, and I don’t want to know that ‘Takoyaki’ means a grilled octopus chop, or that ‘Nandakke’ means ‘what is it?’ or ‘whatchamacallit?’. I take more pleasure from the clicks of pronunciation and beats of the words, drawn to its sense of something foreign but fascinating. Each song has a heavily repeated word or phrase that’s your ticket to join in. This is a record to overcome differences and bring people together.
We’ll finish with fun. It takes nerve to commit wholeheartedly to fun and ensure that it doesn’t topple into silliness. This is fun to be taken seriously. It’s neither flippant nor throwaway. They don’t hold back from giving their ideas room to grow. Take ‘Babychan’. They play with the word ‘Baby’, trying it out, savouring it on the lips and exploring it from every angle. ‘Up and Down’ shows their interplay and identifies a new dance craze in the making.
This is an album that can be the sound of your Summer. Take it to your picnic in the park, enjoy it with your open air cider and rose wine, and allow yourself to feel lighter in spirit.
Taster Track : Babychan
Amama : Crumb
This is an album of music that drifts from track to track in a haze of lightly dubby chill. It’s highly pleasant while unlikely to prove substantial.
This is the kind of music to help you commute to work, an opportunity to reboot after a month taken up with unrealistic footballing hopes that were finally dashed.
The opening track, ‘From Outside A Window Sill’ is also its tagline. These are songs that are simply passing by, pleasant enough to observe, demanding little of you and leaving little lasting impact. It sounds effortless, the perfect music to detach yourself from your surroundings - eyes closed, headphones on. You’ll feel better for it afterwards.
It's more substantial than ambient music, but not by much. ‘Genie’ captures the magic ingredients of the whole album well. It has a five note backing that shape shifts throughout the song while remaining essentially the same. It’s an earworm that will drive you mad in a couple of months' as you strive to recall where you first heard it. When you hear the keyboard riff in ‘The Bug’ you’ll play with it in your head and let it play with you.
The songs carry echoes of Khruangbin’s bass, Laetitia Sadier’s vocals and a Beach House vibe. Sometimes they sound as if they’ve been turned inside out, the bass stepping to the forefront of the song while the vocals recede into the mid - distance.
I enjoyed this album. I happened across it on the very day that I needed something of its kind. Lucky me and, hopefully, lucky you too.
Taster Track : Genie
The Chasing Pack
A Quiet Day : The Balloonist
This undeniably pretty collection of gentle electronica, with more than a few touches of ambient and even new age library music, isn’t going to motivate you to get the chores done anytime soon.
I had my first taste of Covid when you still had to self isolate for ten days. I felt fine after a couple of days, and looked forward to finally having a lot of me time. The books I’d read, the music I’d discover, the improvements I’d make to my blogging. None of that materialised because I was bored, trapped in a lethargy I couldn’t break away from. This album would have made the perfect soundtrack to that time.
It’s relentless in its refusal to motivate, stimulate or perk up. It’s so committed to its sound that I feel The Balloonist may be playing a joke on us. Two of the tracks are ‘Pebble Mill At One’, the epitome of a cosy daytime chat show in the days before breakfast TV, and ‘Afternoon Ceefax’. I remember wasting whole Saturday afternoons watching Ceefax 304 scroll through the football scores, just waiting for something to change. This is music that promotes that lethargy, music to promote idling, procrastination and time wasting. It’s the polar opposite of a double espresso.
The music is undeniably pretty. ‘The Quiet Room’ washes over you like a warm bath. You could wallow in it forever. ‘Waiting’ is another perfect title, capturing those times that you wait for someone to arrive when they’ve not specified a time. It’s not particularly melodic but every note follows another without jarring or giving offence. And, taken as a whole, it’s strangely hypnotic. ‘Above The Town’ has a kind of subdued call signal running through it.
Although it feels at times like an exercise in musical brainwashing, I can appreciate the skill involved and enjoy the permission it gives to sit back and do nothing much. Enough is enough though, and by the end I needed anything more energetic or hummable
Sometime in the next day or so I really must get around to writing a proper review of this album.
Taster Track : Above The Town
Superheaven : Dibidim
Chill to a selection of mellow tunes searching for their time to shine.
Old music never dies. It just lies dormant, waiting for its revival to spark. Periodically it needs someone to test if the time is right. It falls to Dibidim to assume that role for late 20th century chill..
There are echoes of Groove Armada’s ‘At The River’ running through this album. It’s not in anything they’ve borrowed, but it’s in the comfortable club lounge feel to the music. Dibidim are the band you didn’t know on those chilled club compilations of yesteryear. They’re part of the scene without standing out. That’s not a reflection on their music, just the luck of the draw. Playlist selectors and advert commissioners simply overlooked them.
This is music from a hall of mirrors, slightly twisted and out of shape. The opening snippet ‘59:95th’ combines nu classical piano with smirking electronic bursts. It irritates and promises much in the same beat.
To their credit, these songs are full of little touches and different ideas that are unexpected. They arrive without prior notice and prevent the songs from sounding tired. ‘Dub Maritime’ is full of them. But the sad truth is that nothing leaves a lasting impression. Too often the question I was asking of the music was “Are you still here?”
The pool they’re dipping into is one part easy listening club music, (Frozen Blue’) one part blissed out chill (‘Frozen Dragon’) and, despite the emphasis on frozen in their titles, one part sun warmed lounger.
There’s nothing wrong with this album. Play it when you want something for hot, humid days when you lack the energy for doing very much at all.
Taster Track : Frozen Blue
My Tentacles : Mieko Shimizu
I’ll admit to strong reservations to this at the start but, like the tentacles in the album title, it gradually entangles and entwines you in its particular beauty.
Trying to describe it is like trying to describe the flavours of sushi to someone who has never eaten fish. There’s an intriguing mish-mash of expectations for the Ryuichi Sakomoto tones of Japanese music, work that's firmly placed on the avant garde / experimental music spectrum, her soft, feminine vocals with shimmers of pop breaking through.
My initial impressions were of squelchy club beats underpinning songs better suited to a concert hall. Glitchy beats were there with occasional melodies that almost unfurled across the course of a song. It seemed challenging and difficult, performance art in song or an installation piece communicating across the ether.
And that’s where the tentacles of each song weave in to rescue us. Holding in place the impressions we’ve already received, they allow us to build on them. ‘Time Is Over’ is appealingly slinky. At first, I misheard the lyric as ‘Time Is Lava’, but that first understanding helped me to appreciate the inexorable motion of the song. The guitar of ‘Bullet Train’ is something I could listen to for much longer and there’s a melody wrapped up in it that is truly lovely. There are gorgeous parts to ‘Cobra Mist’ and others that are just out of reach, like exotic lilies just below the surface of a rippled lake. By ‘Speak 2 Me’ you’re as close to western pop as this album comes with the mix of words and figures in the title and the surprising similarity in the vocals to Morcheeba.
It’s one of those albums that wrong foots and bewilders you at first but finally enchants you with its unexpected turns and hidden depths.
Taster Track : Bullet Train
Barriers : Robert Vincent
A leading light in the UK Americana scene, Robert Vincent crafts emotional and sincere songs. It’s a bit downbeat.
He’s beloved by Radio 2’s Bob Harris and it’s not hard to see why. He has a guitar and a voice that ticks many boxes including those marked ‘yearning’ and ‘broken’. In this male world view, nothing much has changed since the 1970s. Life as a man is still hard. Emotions don’t come easy, so when they’re sung they have more power.
There’s nothing experimental here, just good, solid songwriting. Hushed and predominantly acoustic songs rule the roost.. He has a nice line in lyrics. Take this from ‘The Insider’.
“I’’m the suspicion you’ve had for a while.”
Everything is in the power of the melody. Where it’s strong, as in ‘The Insider’ and ‘Burden’ the songs are better
The issue for me is that it can be, if not dull, then marooned firmly in ‘worthy’. Like David Gray, his life is in his songs and his songs are pretty much his life. You have to identify with the lyrics and the emotions expressed in his songs. If you can’t, well, then it may grind you down
Americana is well known as as an amalgam of many different genres : country, western, folk, soul, rock and jazz among them. In my experience though the uplifting elements of those are often missing. Even the celebrationally titled ‘Follow What You Love and What You Love Will Follow’ is a downbeat affair.
This is another of those difficult records that don’t put a foot wrong but, nevertheless, are difficult to love. But if it works for you, it’s possible that you’ll view Robert Vincent as a major light in the Americana sphere.
Taster Track : The Insider
Playlists
As ever this week's Taster Track playlists can be accessed at https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7cSveL7NpVp1xgrKxPe4av?si=SkFlSnvySeuYFpgG0WJFmA or via the Spotify link on the Home Page.
The link to the Youtube playlist is https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwV-OogHy7Eh_sy55y6i18Qj7w_Z3CQft
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