Let's not go there...

With all the year stuff I mean. This is a virus free zone, and I'm happy in my little bubble (damn nearly mentioned it there)...

The last couple of weeks of the year were stupid busy for work, so I've not done a proper end of year review, again. I think I gave the same excuse last year. Anyway I've done plenty of rounding up elsewhere amongst other things I can point you at for satisfying new year reading. 

 First up my review of the Americana year over at AUK. You can read that here. I kept up the fire on the streaming services, and talked about Bandcamp, again. Also some great albums. Jack Henderson's was fab, but was beaten by a whisker to Americana album of year by Emma Swift's 'Blonde on the Tracks'. You can read the whole team's choices here. Alec Bowman wrote a piece explaining all the stuff I've been going on about from the artist's point of view for AUK as well. Read it here and turn your back on Spotify in 2021. 

Over at Duggystone Radio I talked about December, normally a time for stocking filler compilations, which has turned in some cracking music this year. You can read my views on McCartney, Swift, Kim Edgar and Magic Dance, the latter two I've championed before and have turned in the best albums of their careers so far.

The one album that didn't get a mention in all this that has been my most played since its release is Blue Note Reimagined. London Jazz News summed it up as well as I could. It also provides pointers to the original versions. The dominance of Wayne Shorter is interesting with 5 of his tunes covered. Following my February "Giving Snobbery the Byrd" piece, the 70s get a good look in as well, although I'm not sure I can take the credit there...

So, we're still here, and it has been the busiest year yet at 160gigblog. a third more posts than 2019, which probably means I had nothing else to do. If you have been thanks for reading, and those figures are up as well, and here's looking forward to whatever 2021 has to offer.

Over The Rhine - again!

Over at Americana UK, I've made my case for Over The Rhine being the best band in the world. This is not open to negotiation.

Over The Rhine - Streaming Christmas concert December 2020

Over the Rhine have made a tradition of a Christmas tour and particularly hometown concerts at various venues in Ohio, often the Taft Theatre in Cincinnati. Due to the usual reason in 2020, this isn't happening so they have recorded a show that is available to buy and stream. The good news is that those of us in the wider world get invited this time. The link is below and you really should take it up if you can. Being of a cash strapped nature I ended up watching the free stream last Sunday. 

Filmed at their home the set, caught light on the third song, 'Born', a highlight of any show they play it at. The best songs as ever were the ones with the most space, Linford at the piano and Karin just singing. 'All I Ever Get for Christmas is Blue' was a highlight of this first part of the set. 'Latter Days' is just one of the best songs of the last 25 years. but this time out there was a difference, the words to 'Silent Night' fitted perfectly into the end of 'Latter Days'. Just great. They finished this segment of the show with 'Bothered', the ideal words for the end of 2020.

They moved to the barn that they have been converting into an arts and performance space for the last few years for the second half of the show. Opening with 'If We Make It Through December' which featured on the 'Blood Oranges In the Snow' album, one of three that I prefer to see as Winter rather than Christmas albums. There was far more between song talk from Linford that is one of the features of an Over The Rhine concert in this section of the show, which was nice as early on they had gone straight from one song to the next. 

Back to the house for the last two Christmas songs. One of the aspects of the band's work that doesn't get enough praise is Linford's piano playing. It really is a highlight for me, and the three solo piano albums he has already out there should be on the shopping list for anyone who likes modern piano (although there is some guitar as well) music, or indeed Chopin. Good to hear on their Facebook recently that his solo album that formed part of a crowd funder a few years ago was likely to appear in February.

Mixing the Christmas songs with some old favourites, at least some of mine, made for a show that covered a lot of ground, and should hopefully attract the casual listener into the fan community. Over the Rhine are a band who inspire devotion from those who find them. If you haven't yet then you should and this concert could be the way. And it was good to see this picture. Nothing wrong with roping in the pets to promote your work...

The show is available for multiple streams at $50.00 at the link here. I supported them through the Paypal link given on the stream, and bought a couple of downloads in their store. If only postage was not so pricey from the US. Still a reason (if one was needed) to go to the next British shows, to buy the CDs I didn't get last time. 

Over The Rhine store

Set List

Broken Angels

Let It Fall

Born

All I Ever Get For Christmas Is Blue

Anything At All

Latter Days/Silent Night

It Came Upon A Midnight Clear

Amelia’s Last

Bothered

If We Make It Through December

We’re Gonna Pull Through Sacred Ground

First Snowfall

All I Need Is Everything

The Christmas Song

May God Love You

Caulbearers - 'Over Comes a Cloud' single review

 
Opening on Dan Mitchell’s sinister bass line, Caulbearer’s new single ‘Over Comes A Cloud’ is their best yet. They have kept the fractured funk style of previous release ‘Hollow Bones’ and added a dissonant guitar that reflects the unsettling themes of the words. Formed from reflections on a trip to Pompeii, Mahoney draws comparisons from the fate of that city and Rome with the fall of our unworthy icons, and statues and the challenges of making peace with our past.

Still present are Caulbearer’s signature Cellos but the aspect of ‘Over Comes A Cloud’ that steps it ahead of the previous work are Will Lenton’s Saxophone lines. Part Roland Kirk, and part Sons of Kemet it aligns the song with the new UK Jazz scene and makes it as at home on Jazz FM as Radio X. The uplifting closing section matches Lenton’s horns with the affirmation that “We'll make order from the chaos, that surrounds us”. Backing Mahoney’s vocals is Ruth Blake, a Joni Mitchell influenced singer songwriter, whose own music you should be making a home for as well.

With so much new music clamouring for attention now Caulbearers deserve a place in your heart because like iWitness reviewed here earlier this year they are thinking about the world and offering optimism where others are just ranting. As Mahoney says in the press release that comes with the single “Can we heed the warning signs, the clouds gathering, and come together to face these challenges, which requires honesty to look at the realities and histories of our cultures?”

If a cloud has come over the world of late one of the rays of sunshine peeking through is Caulbearers new work. Buy it at Bandcamp, where there is also a ridiculously cheap offer on their whole discography. While you’re there check out Ruth Blake’s solo albums as well.

The bright side of Lockdown music

One of the plus points of the terrible toll taken on the music industry by Covid has been that by taking to Social Media you can find artists who you would never have heard, simply because they are physically so far away. It means you get the chance to sample, often for free, or for very little cost some brilliant music. 

My discovery of the day is Rachel Collis who popped up as a Facebook Ad this morning offering 3 free songs. A quick play of the video was enough, just my sort of sounds (how DOES Facebook know?) So I signed up to receive a song each from her last two albums and a bonus in the form of an acoustic version of  her song 'The Art Of Letting Go'. She compares herself to Carol King and Joni Mitchell, for me she is far more contemporary than that implies with Sarah Mclachlan and Tori Amos as other touch points for her voice. She embraces the big ballad style on her most recent album, but for me I think the first purchase may well be her previous album 'Remains of the Day'. And that is, as you may have heard me say before, the important point. Don't just take the freebie, BUY SOMETHING.  

An artist I don't need to be pushed to take that advice for is Kim Edgar. I've spoken about her before, and her new album 'Held' is up for preorder at her website and on Bandcamp. Judging by the one song available so far this could be her best yet (a high bar) and I'm looking forward to a review of the whole thing when it's released. 

Marketing of music at the moment is a tricky business, trust me, I'm on the inside with several acts trying to get them noticed above the general background noise. Rachel Collis, like another band I've been listening to, a Scottish country duo Ashton Lane, has a VIP page where for a monthly subscription you get exclusive songs, cheap deals on their back catalogue and access to the band. I've ended up supporting about a dozen of these pages over lockdown but sadly with work at a premium have had to back away from most of them, even at $5 per month it all adds up. 

One of the problems with this is that lack of experience with marketing is that you can end up, as a couple of the people I've been supporting have, with some scary expensive tools, CRM (Customer relationship managers), email marketing portals and the like. That's where my new venture Marketing4Music comes in. I'm hoping to bring the marketing tools and expertise used in other industries to music, so that rather than Infusionsoft at $75 or more per month, meaning that 15 of your subscribers are paying just for that you can use much cheaper or free alternatives.  Rachel Collis is using the very reasonably priced Aweber email tool so hopefully she is making some money on it...

Get in touch if I can help you market your music, and please support independent music.

Stuff about Jazz

 

BBC 4 did one of its intermittent Jazz evenings last Friday. A repeat of the excellent Miles Davis documentary 'Birth of the Cool' and a revival of the Jazz 625 concert series featuring Sons of Kemet, Nubya Garcia and the rest of what I'm sure will be called the New Wave of British Jazz at some point (NWOBJ?). There was also a history of Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club, and the man himself. You can find the programmes here and they are all worth a watch.

Back in the summer I bought a collection of Jazz CDs, about 400 of them. I bought this on the strength of a pile of Blue Note and similar discs. I'm writing up a longer price about this collection and collecting in general, but for now one of the areas that I knew relatively little about was British Jazz of the 50s and 60s. I had always had this down as very much a copy of American music of the period, and hadn't explored names like Tubby Hayes, Peter King, Tony Kinsey, and Ronnie Scott himself. Wrong. One of the interesting things about British Jazz of the time is that it didn't reject earlier forms of the music quite as completely as the Americans did. Ronnie Scott kept the lyrical tone of Ben Webster and Coleman Hawkins adding it to Be Bop rather than subtracting it in favour of a full-on Parker style note storm. So, I’ve been listening to it, and a lot more of the British Jazz has ended up on the iPod than I thought might.

To connect back to the BBC4 evening, the original creator of this collection had some clear preferences, piano trios, Stan Getz, the West Coast “cool” Jazz of the mid 50s, and trumpeters. Lee Morgan was clearly a favourite and you can’t fault him for that, Donald Byrd, Humphrey Lyttleton, and many others. One name is strikingly absent from the list, apart from one ropey compilation. Miles. Given the breadth of the dark magus’ work surely there must be something that appealed. Anything recorded after about 1970, or sounding like it had at any rate, is missing from the collection. But that leaves the Prestige albums and the early Columbia records all of which he would surely have enjoyed?

Anyway, all this will prompt a few more posts about Jazz, simply because I’m listening to a fair bit of it at present, and this is after all a blog about what I’m playing on the iPod…

  

Ambient - instrumental in my wellbeing...

I spoke briefly about ambient music and Soundscapes a few weeks back. Sat here on a Sunday morning with a bit of a headache (from being in front of a screen too long) I’m listening to one of the pieces that helps me relax and achieve a stiller mind. Robert Fripp’s ‘At the End of Time’.

The best version of this, in my view, was from a performance, better a recital, at Wulfren Hall Wolverhampton in December 2005. One of the things that I find with Fripp’s Soundscapes is that they are “immersive”. You can lose yourself in them and come out refreshed, and for me at least, approaching the world in a calmer, more reflective state.

“Robert Fripp's "Music for Quiet Moment" series… will be releasing an ambient instrumental soundscape online every week for 50 weeks. Something to nourish us and help us through these Uncertain Times.” I was surprised to find this is up to week 28. If you’ve bought all of these (as I have) then you have something like 3 hours of music that does exactly what it says on the tin. I have had M.E. in varying degrees of severity for the last 25 years, and one of my strategies for helping with pacing my life is music like Soundscapes. I remember playing the ‘At the End of Time’ mentioned above when my Dad passed away and finding a measure of consolation from allowing this music to wash over me.

It’s not just Fripp though. Bill Nelson has produced some fine ambient albums, but his music tends to be more “active” than Fripp’s. ‘Altar Pieces’ is a fine ambient album, although the found sound voices disrupt the mood a bit for me. ‘Model Village’ and ‘All That I Remember’ are probably the places to start with instrumental Nelson, and then just get all the rest.

The found sound aspect of Bill’s work is also there in Virginia’ Astley’s ‘From Gardens Where we Feel Secure’ where the sounds of the English countryside mix with piano and clarinet to produce something surprisingly rich and textured. I mentioned Cloudland Blue Quartet’s recent ‘4^th May 2020’ previously, and it remains a favourite on the iPod at present. I haven’t explored as far into David Reilly’s work as I would like yet, but having auditioned several of his albums on Bandcamp, ‘Through The Day’,  and the “guitarscapes” of ‘Disquietmusik’ feel like the places to start. They seem to combine the immersive quality of Fripp and the slightly harder edge of Nelson, which works for me. There is another more song-based aspect to his music that I have yet to touch at all.

Cloudland Blue Quartet’s music drifts into the world of Modern Classical music at times, something I’m fairly new to but finding things like Philip Glass’s ‘Low Symphony’ interesting. I have an album of Steve Reich’s Six Pianos & Terry Riley’s Keyboard Study #1 which , this area feels like a subject for further exploration. As does Brian Eno. I saw a concert by Brian Eno and Joanna MacGregor, possibly 10 years or more ago at Bath Abbey where he did part of Music for Airports. I’ve tried Fripp and Eno’s albums, but not Eno’s ambient albums on his own. Where to start?