Steeleye Span are another band, new to me, that cropped up through reading the excellent Electric Eden anthology of English music. A shout out on Twitter suggested Below The Salt was a good place to start. At first it sounded a bit too folky for me but it gradually started to resonate as I tuned in to the Sandy Denny era Fairport Convention vibes.
Steeleye Span - Below The Salt
David Sylvian - Manafon
Bonnie Prince Billy - The Letting Go
Talk Talk - Laughing Stock
Talk Talk - Spirit Of Eden
Bonnie Prince Billy - Pond Scum
Manafon (a place in Wales) is a very unusual album. Top marks for David Sylvian doing something so left field it defines categorisation. But is it even music? It sounds like improvisations. In fact it sounds like avant garde ambient minimalism (with a jazz flavour) but with singing. Make of that what you will!
For the first few listens I didn't really like it. But after a while I started to enjoy it, not in the sense of listening to music, but as an... experience.
But I wonder if it would be better just as instrumental music, like previously reviewed avant garde ambient albums by sound artists like Keith Berry and James Joys? Sylvian's very low key singing is sort of superfluous and distracting.
An interview with Sylvian reveals my impressions were well founded: "There was nothing written when we went into the studio – this was very much free improvisation. So, the selection of the group of musicians for each improvisation was paramount. I recognized on the day which pieces could work for me. The process was that I took the material away and then wrote and recorded the vocal line over in a couple of hours. So I couldn't analyze my contribution and that in a way was my form of improvisation – and I enjoyed the rapidity of response."
It sounds like the approach Van Morrison took with Astral Weeks.
Genius or pretentious? I can't decide - it's certainly no Astral Weeks but nevertheless an intriguing listen which I will return to, along with some of Sylvian's other recent albums (Manafon dates from 2009).
Not a huge leap from David Sylvian to Talk Talk, especially when we are talk talking the band's final two albums; the "post-rock" masterpieces Spirit of Eden and Laughing Stock - two albums of beautiful shimmering magnificent music topped by the late Mark Hollis's sensitive vocals.
More Bonnie Prince Billy listening in the player here with Pond Scum the 2016 offering of BBC John Peel sessions, reworkings and covers, from this prolific artist aka Will Oldham. The renderings are stripped right back and thus even more relaxed and morose than usual.
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| The parish of Manafon, Wales |
For the first few listens I didn't really like it. But after a while I started to enjoy it, not in the sense of listening to music, but as an... experience.
But I wonder if it would be better just as instrumental music, like previously reviewed avant garde ambient albums by sound artists like Keith Berry and James Joys? Sylvian's very low key singing is sort of superfluous and distracting.
An interview with Sylvian reveals my impressions were well founded: "There was nothing written when we went into the studio – this was very much free improvisation. So, the selection of the group of musicians for each improvisation was paramount. I recognized on the day which pieces could work for me. The process was that I took the material away and then wrote and recorded the vocal line over in a couple of hours. So I couldn't analyze my contribution and that in a way was my form of improvisation – and I enjoyed the rapidity of response."
It sounds like the approach Van Morrison took with Astral Weeks.
Genius or pretentious? I can't decide - it's certainly no Astral Weeks but nevertheless an intriguing listen which I will return to, along with some of Sylvian's other recent albums (Manafon dates from 2009).
Not a huge leap from David Sylvian to Talk Talk, especially when we are talk talking the band's final two albums; the "post-rock" masterpieces Spirit of Eden and Laughing Stock - two albums of beautiful shimmering magnificent music topped by the late Mark Hollis's sensitive vocals.
More Bonnie Prince Billy listening in the player here with Pond Scum the 2016 offering of BBC John Peel sessions, reworkings and covers, from this prolific artist aka Will Oldham. The renderings are stripped right back and thus even more relaxed and morose than usual.