Mark & The Clouds - Waves

Psychedelic guitar pop! Trio's third album is a generous, melodically memorable treat.    

 

One of my recent late-lockdown listening joys has been the new album by Mark & The Clouds. It came out recently on Gare du Nord Records and is the band's third full-length outing following on from Blue Skies Opening (2014) and Cumulus (2017), both of which were put out by also fabulous Mega Dodo Records.

I'll give the chaps this – they know how to pull me in. Opening track 'You & Me In Space' has a sound that draws on savvy Revolver-esque guitar pop, complete with backwards solos. Crashing chords and drums combine in on the opening riff, but leave enough space for a catchy vocal melody. The track is followed by the altogether gentler textures of 'Back In Time', a dreamy, wistfully laid-back ode to memory and nostalgia. Like the opening track, it too pays heed to that often forgotten rule of pop music – that melodies should be memorable.

What follows is just shy of an hour's worth of gently trippy, psychedelic power pop with plenty of little touches and attention to detail to ice the cake - The softening strings on 'Winter Song', the bombastic riff and swagger of 'No One Makes a Sound', and the spaghetti western twang on 'Somebody Else'. Oh and they have a nice line in twisting middle eights too.

So who are Mark & The Clouds? The band are a London-based trio fronted by Marco Magnani (formerly in Instant Flight, The Crazy World of Arthur Brown, Smokers, and Avvoltoi), along with Shin Okajima on drums, and John O'Sullivan bass, pedal steel and backing vocals. Or I should say that is the core band for live appearances. On record their sound is fleshed out by guest musicians.

Marco, the band's sole song-writer, is equally adept with lyrics as he is with melodies, as evidenced on 'Peace Not Religion' with its admirable adult-in-the-room honesty, and 'Heavy Drops Of Rain', which displays a bittersweet acceptance of life's curveballs.

Aside from the new album the band also have a 7” vinyl single out now on the increasingly happening Hypnotic Bridge label. For a committed sun-worshipper like me it takes something quite special for me to say this but here we go – Bring on the Clouds!

 

Mark & The Clouds are -

Marco Magnani – Vocals, guitar, harmonica

Shin Okajima – Drums 

John O'Sullivan - Bass, backing vocals, pedal steel


Click here for the band's website

 

The Bamboos - Hard Up

Australia's top soul band release their tenth studio LP full of socially conscious danceable grooves

 

A most welcome discovery for me recently has been Australian band The Bamboos, though I'm somewhat shocked to discover they've been making sweet and funky soul music for the best part of 20 years! Oh well, at least there's a wealth of back catalogue to dive into. The Melbourne-based band are set to release Hard Up this week. It's their tenth studio album and is guaranteed to satisfy long-time fans and no doubt win over a few new ones too.

Hard Up saddles the line between retro and contemporary, and as you'd expect from a nine-piece revue-style band there's plenty going on to keep your interest - punchy horn lines, tasteful guitar and keys, and that all important locked-in drum and bass groove. Soul music is nothing without a great singer though, and thankfully fronting The Bamboos is the phenomenal Kylie Auldist. Equally adept at providing powerhouse vocals as she is at delivering those requiring sensitivity. Check out the contrasting styles between the version of Black Box's 'Ride On Time' and the soft and sensitive 'I Just Heard You Leaving'.

Thematically the album touches on universal daily struggles ('Hard Up'), and tips its hat at the kind of politically aware soul that Curtis Mayfield may have penned ('Power Without Greed'). It's a rallying cry for justice that moves feet as well as minds, and has a pretty neat flute solo. The album is as much about good times as it is about hard times however and there's an ultimately up-lifting good-time vibe throughout.

The record also features some great guest vocal appearances - Sydney-based singer Ev Jones on 'While You Sleep'; LA-based Joey Dosik channels Smokey Robinson on 'It's All Gonna Be OK'; and rising US star Durand Jones guests on 'If Not Now (Then When)', a track that harks back to classic sixties style soul.

Alongside the great vocals, the band, centred around founding member Lance Ferguson are on top form. Check out funky Meters-style instrumental 'Wishbone' should you need proof. The album was recording in a week of sessions just prior to last year's Melbourne lockdown. Hard Up is an irresistible affair that warrants repeat plays at an ever increasing volume. Neighbours you have been warned!

 

Click here for the band's website

 

Voice & Strings & Timpani

Emotionally charged experimentalism.

 

When it comes to art, culture, and especially music, it's said we live in bland and unadventurous times, most often by people who hanker after after a supposed golden age. Anyone with a willingness to listen outside of their own comfort zone will know this is not the case however. Thankfully there are scores of musicians and labels releasing music that's non-conformist, passionate, at times challenging, but that has the all-important ability to move hearts and minds.

One such record label with a consistently high standard is Hubro Records, a record label based in Norway whose back catalogue contains often unclassifiable music that skirts the edges of classical, modern jazz, electronica, folk, and even Sousa, yet belongs to no singular camp. The records Hubro release belong to their own category. Experimental in nature yet highly engaging and always with a deep emotional core.

A recent example is this eponymous long-player by Voices & Strings & Timpani. It's the latest project by guitarist Stephan Meidell and drummer Øyvind Hegg-Lunde, two musicians who have a long-standing relationship with Hubro and the wider Scandinavian experimental music scene. This album is a perfectly recorded suite of tracks, made all the more remarkable when one considers that a large part of it was recorded live at Bergen's Nattjazz Festival in 2016.

Opening track 'Cashmere' washes in with evocative swoops of harp over an insistent electronic pulse before wordless vocals and bluesy guitar add to the drama. I'm loathe to use the word journey but there's a sense that you're about to be taken somewhere. 'Escargot' follows, driven by a repeated bass line, it features French language vocals from the Mari Kvien Brunvoll and Eva Pfitzenmaier. My rudimentary, rusty French won't allow for a full translation but I guarantee you're unlike to hear a more engaging song about a snail anytime soon. It eventually drifts out with bursts of slide guitar. It's as if the soundtrack to Paris, Texas has been reimagined in some far off parallel universe.

'Swarming strings Made Out Of Light' sees the vocals switch to English, but are half-buried beneath a barrage of percussion. Three songs in and it's becoming clear that Voice & Strings & Timpani is a genre-free zone, though it's disparate tracks are held together by a uniformed sense of purpose between the musicians involved. And so it continues throughout the rest of the record. 'Laxevaag' containing percussion that sound like ticking clocks, added noise that could be dogs barking, and a textural layering of keyboards. It's a simultaneously disorientating and meditative.

'Community' is a short folksy interlude featuring effects laden vocals and flutes. It gives way to the epic emotional electronic beats of 'Talk Tick Talk'. Much like the album's cover, an abstract photo of oil on water, the music is fluid, ever shifting, and though it's primary colours don't change much, the way they're put together does. It's a strange yet and enchanting record, one that deserves the undivided attention of a one-sitting headphone listen, and one that will have you finding more with each listen.

Vinny Peculiar - Return Of The Native

 (This review first appeared in issue #89 of Shindig! magazine.)

Few writers mix humour and poignancy as well as Mr Peculiar. While Bowie, Reed and Iggy took inspiration from '70 Berlin, here we have songs rooted in '70s Worcestershire. Take 'The Singing Schoolteacher', a moving tribute to Clifford T. Ward who taught at Peculiar's Bromsgrove school for a year before pursuing his musical career. Such nostalgic reminiscences inform much of the lyrics – picture a teenage Peculiar devouring Melody Maker and NME, soaking up influences from an era that straddles the tail-end of prog, through to glam, punk and disco.

The locations may be specific but the experiences will chime universally. Be it local school rivalries played out on bus rides home, laments for lost music venues or the love life of an English civil war battle re-enactor, Peculiar has the ability to make you laugh out loud one minute then have you wiping a tear away the next. A delight.

 

Lee Fields and The Expressions - It Rains Love

(This review first appeared in issue #89 of Shindig! magazine.)

Fields has been making records since 1969 so it comes as no surprise that he can put together a class soul album. His latest is more of a Sunday morning record rather than a Saturday night party platter, with themes of thanks, love and both romantic and religious devotion. Then of course there's that voice. It ranks with the best – James Brown, Otis Redding and Levi Stubbs. But comparisons are meaningless given the conviction with which he sings. 

A great singer still needs a band of course, and the Expressions are on excellent form throughout. Standout moments? There are many - the attention grabbing middle eight in 'Bless With The Best', the infectious bass-driven groove of the title track, or 'Wake Up' with its dub feel and lyrics that fight back against fake news. For all the vintage soul classicism there's enough new moves to keep any neophiles satisfied too. Masterful.

 

Monks Road Social - Lost In Rasa / So Long Soho (Ltd. 7")

(This review first appeared in issue #89 of Shindig! magazine.)

 

Two standout tracks from the collective's recent debut album Down The Willows. 'Lost In Rasa' features lead vocals by Dr. Robert of the Blow Monkeys. It's string-laden stoner soul at its finest. Think Marvin Gaye on the cover of What's Going On – face turned to the rain but always in search of beauty. A song full of sad yet dreamy reflections and longings.

The flipside features Pat Dam Smyth on lead vocals. A name new to many though he has history having left his native Northern Ireland over 20 years ago to follow a nomadic musical existence. Spells in Dublin, Liverpool, Los Angeles, Berlin and London have led to the worldly wisdom that informs 'So Long Soho', a lament to a quickly fading bohemian enclave. Imagine Ray Davies in a sentimental mood at the pub piano, then join in on the singalong chorus. Monks Road is where it's at!

 

Erland Dahlen - Bones

An immersive listening experience. Norwegian percussionist releases fourth solo LP. 

 

On a recent episode of Radio 4's Desert Island Discs, the author David Mitchell spoke about one of his record choices as making him feel emotions he didn't know existed and making him feel nostalgic for times and places he doesn't even know. I may have got the wording slightly wrong there but hopefully you get a sense of the sentiment. I'm reminded of this quote while listening to the new album by Erland Dahlen, a much respected percussionist within free-jazz circles in his native Norway. Bones is Dahlen's fourth album, having previously released Rolling Bomber (2012), Blossom Bells (2015), and Clocks (2018).

You would think that the tendency for drummers as bandleaders would be to make virtuosity and showiness the central feature when it comes to recording. (I'm reminded here of a Gene Krupa/Buddy Rich LP I picked up at a charity shop, where the two pitch up against each other. It's a fine record but its emotional resonance is hampered by the desire to show off chops.) Thankfully that's not the case here – Bones is all about the emotional journey. Meditative, hypnotic, at times soothing, always immersive.

Dahlen plays pretty much all the music himself, which features a broad range of drums and percussion instruments along with Mellotron, modular synths, dulcimer and zither. The album has a rich instrumental palette, and one that embraces experimentation – along with the vintage drum skins used there are musical saws and the sound of marbles rattling on a plate. Also notable is the use of heavy reverb, which along with the virtuosic drumming and focus on emotion makes for a compelling one-sitting listening experience, full of progression and forward movement.

The last year has been one of increased solitude for many, a time when if you've been lucky enough to stay healthy and solvent there's been an opportunity to take yourself on an inner journey. A record such as Bones is a perfect soundtrack for such moments of reflection. It's an album that requires you to turn off the phone, TV, and tablets, to put on some headphones and let the music take you somewhere.

Click here for Hubro Records

 

Anton Barbeau - Manbird

 

Barbeau is back. A wealth of delights on this double disc concept album.

While 2020 may have seen a distinct lack of gigs and tours, it's been a back-handed gift to musicians who like to bunker down at home and get creative with writing and recording. Anton Barbeau is no stranger to either, having recorded in excess of 30 albums. His latest, released in September, does not disappoint. It's a double album featuring 25 psych-pop nuggets which form a loosely meandering concept album, one that has an obsession with travel and birds.

For those unfamiliar with Brabeau's work, his songs mix autobiographical experience with subconscious psychedelic wordplay. Musically they draw on New Wave pop and left-field mavericks such as Devo, David Bowie, Syd Barrett. But they're in no way derivative, a Barbeau song is simply that, distinctively his own. The wonderful thing about double albums is the space it allows for the artist to stretch out. Having that bigger canvas means they can make stylistic shifts, develop themes and really take the listener deep into their world.

It's all here on Manbird, Barbeau's latest  collection of cottage industry psychedelia. Homemade with the assistance of a few close friends including Sharon Krauss and Matt Sewell. So what's it all about? The album has a skewed autobiogrphical slant, focussing on Barbeau's growing up in Sacramento. It's an album about roots, reflections and flying the nest. For the most part catchy hook-laden psych-pop rules the roost but there are hand-brake turns into thrashy punk ('Featherweight'), and odd little interludes such as 'Cowboy John', which is the first ever song Barbeau created at the age of eight. It's neatly juxtaposed with a version of 'Greensleeves' that has newly penned lyrics about childhood dogs, broken toys and those peculiar early memories that resonate through later decades.If Barbeau ever decides to write an autobiography there's no doubt it would be a compelling read. For now though, this double disc of delights more than suffices.

Click here for Gare Du Nord Records.

Fuchsia - See Emily Play / Bike (Ltd. 7")

Barrett re-visited on a very limited 7" single. SOLD OUT!

It feels odd to be posting about a single that's not released until next month but has already sold out fo mail-order on pre-orders alone, but it's such a great single I felt I ought to mention it. The chances of getting hold of a copy may be slim (unless you want to pay over the odds on Ebay or Discogs), but hey, that's market forces for you! Check out the excerpt on the video below and read the FdM statement regarding the single. There's also a link to sign up to the label's mailing list so you won't miss out on any future intstant collectables.

Here's the official word from Fruits de Mer...

"Fuchsia's version of 'See Emily Play' was recorded specifically for the Fruits de Mer 'A Band For All Seasons' set; we got lots of great feedback and it was picked up on BBC 6Music.

Tony and the band were due to fly over from Australia to play the 18th Dream of Dr. Sardonicus festival in Wales and Tony went back into the studio to record 'Bike' for a festival-exclusive 5" lathe-cut; the lockdown blew that idea out the window so we offered the very limited run of lathe-cuts we'd had produced (about 50 copies) by mail order to FdM club members.

They were massively oversubscribed and a couple of copies have already found their way onto eBay, selling for £150-£250 a time. We decided the recordings deserved to be more than eBay fodder so we're putting them out in November on 7" vinyl with a total run of 400 copes worldwide.

We're sold out at FdM Towers on members club pre-orders alone, but you're welcome to email fruitsdemer7@hotmail.com to join a waiting-list as we might get a few extra from the pressing plant - or please go to Shiny Beast, who are our European distributors and handle non-uk orders as they will get their own supply, direct from the plant."
 

If you're not already on the FdM mailing-list, click HERE

'See Emily Play' b/w 'Bike' is released on November 9th.

Click here for Fruits de Mer Records.

 

 

The Superstars - Metamorphosis + Finale (Ltd. 7")

Prog's not dead! Keyboard-led heavy sounds at 33rpm.

Whatever your favoured format, recorded sound is a beautiful thing. Thanks to that technological advancement we have access to, for all eternity, great political speeches, hisorical news bulletins, along with the recorded works of The Beatles, Emerson Lake and Palmer, The Sex Pistols, and Pinky & Perky. It's a vast library and like the universe itself continues to expand.

One small but very welcome addition to the sonic archives is this forthcoming 7" single on the Fruits de Mer label. The Superstars are an Italian band, currently working on their debut LP which is set for release next year. Judging by this taster 7" single it will be one to look out for. 'Metamorphosis' is included here in studio form and (on the B-side) as a live version. Fans of '70 prog-rock will find this very much up their street - keyboard-led and with an emphasis that leans more on rock than it does on prog. Heavy Hammond, virtuoso guitars, and a propulsive rhythym section combine to take you on an almost six minute journey complete topped with an intriguing spoken words addressing destruction and creation.

'Finale' has more of a synthy space rock feel to it, somewhat more experimental with textures and sounds and showcases a different side to the band that will no doubt be further explored on next year's debut LP. Recorded sound - ever-expanding and endlessly evolving. Keep listening folks!

'Metamorphosis' is on sale from the Fruits de Mer website from November 9th.

Click here for Fruits de Mer Records.