Tag: David Rickinson

Review – Tom Slatter – Happy People – by David Rickinson

Tom Slatter – ‘Happy People’.

I started off this review by writing a load of overblown drivel about Steampunk Troubadours and Stalinist Dystopias.

But then I stopped, because I realised there is not a lot that needs to be said about this album.

It is BRILLIANT.

What can I say about this album that doesn’t sound hyperbolic? It is, glorious, filled with horror, tenderness, despair, love, grime and beauty. Whilst being much darker and more serious than any of Tom’s previous albums, it is imbued with a humanity which hasn’t been as obvious before (unless songs about men transforming themselves into machines counts as humanity).

I have suspected for a while (since first hearing Rise Another Leaf from “Three Rows of Teeth”) that Tom actually has a large romantic streak running through him. On this album he has really found this voice – songs such as Satellites, Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said and Fire Flower Heart highlight this.

By the third song Satellites, with its lovely bass line, the album really gets into a stride which doesn’t then let up until the end.

Flow My tears, The Policeman Said is, I think, about a once honourable man who is now lost in some nightmare Gulag. I may be wrong. But it is superb, full of little musical flourishes and curlicues.

Even Then We’re Scared with its hint of a Black Sabbath “War Pigs” riff tells of how even with guns, fire, prayer, walls, databases and hiding under our blankets we are still scared of unnamed monsters.

“If you’ve got nothing to hide, then why should you be worried? There a price to be free…”, I don’t for a minute believe that Tom approves of the way our world is turning. I would love to hear the last 20 seconds live, as a 10 minute wig-out by a full band.

Fire Flower Heart is imbued with a delicate poignancy, lamenting the loss of a love who could possibly prevent disaster. Or maybe she would encourage him to press the button?

I get the feeling that all Tom’s previous works were a flexing of musical muscles, practicing for the real thing. This album is the real thing.

In no small part, I suspect that the excellence of this album is due to the work of two particular people – Jordan Brown and Daniel Bowles who between them played bass, keyboards and guitar and provided production expertise. They have found a way to get the best out of Tom.

Michael Cairns’ drumming contribution is tasteful, thankfully never overpowering the songs.

There is a strength and depth to the musical arrangements throughout the whole album – everything has a purpose to it.

Bad Elephant Music continue to astound me with the excellence of their releases. If there was any justice in the world, Radio 6 and Jools Holland would be full of music like this.

I cannot recommend this album highly enough.

Tom Slatter – vocals, guitars

Daniel Bowles – backing vocals, guitars, keyboards

Jordan Brown – bass, backing vocals, keyboards

Michael Cairns – drums

Suzette Stamp – backing vocals

Released 17th March 2017.

Buy ‘Happy People’ from Bad Elephant Music at bandcamp

 

 

 

 

 

 

Review – Mothertongue – Unsongs – by David Rickinson

BEM021 album cover

What on earth is this album?

You just think you’re getting the hang of Bad Elephant’s eclecticism when they spring this on you…

…A POP ALBUM.

Yes, a pop album.

A really rather wonderful progressive pop album, full of surprises and quirky little tunes.

Now, I grew up with proper pop music back in the 1960s and we all know that pop music nowadays is, to put it mildly, rubbish. But this album isn’t like that – in its inventiveness it really does hark back to the giddy heights of the 1960s: if not in style (which is more reminiscent of the 1980s) but certainly in intent.

For example, the opening track King of the Tyrant Lizards is 3 and a half minutes of clever wordplay, not one, but two, hooks, a lovely little guitar solo and horns like some mad Mariachi band. One of the hooks is such an earworm that I couldn’t shake it for a couple of days…

Track 5 Nautilus starts off like some lounge jazz bastard son of Swing Out Sister before switching after 40 seconds into yet another catchy chorus which has been cross-bred with post-punk angst. Oh and it ends up as some weird oriental singalong with optional headbanging.

And then it suddenly makes sense – this band and this album fit perfectly into the Bad Elephant stable. Eclectic Music for Eclectic People.

I know comparisons are odious and it’s a good job they are because I can’t really think of anything to compare with this wonderful, wacky, weird album. There are a couple of times when I think to myself “Oh! That’s a bit like XTC’s Drums and Wires”, but I’m also reminded of Haircut 100, The Jam, The Piranhas and Ooberman, Blur, Suede, early Pink Floyd, The Kinks, The Small Faces. I can really imagine David “Kid” Jensen introducing Mothertongue on Top of The Pops in about 1981 and a much younger me sitting up and taking notice.

So who are this Mothertongue? According to their Bandcamp page they are “A random collection of musicians from Manchester who fell in love on a Tuesday night. They like terrible jokes and dinosaurs, and make odd progressive pop music.” I don’t think there is any more to be said.

Buy this album. It might just make you smile.

Band pic 2

Released 15th April 2016

Get a copy of ‘Unsongs’ from bandcamp

Review – Twice Bitten – Late Cut – by David Rickinson

Cover

David Rickinson’s first review for Progradar is the excellent ‘Late Cut’ by Twice Bitten……

The 1980s……

I abandoned, to a large extent, Progressive Rock in favour of bands like Eurythmics and China Crisis and then, later on, Prefab Sprout and Deacon Blue. But then it was a strange time for music – all that weird electronic synthesiser stuff, and the New Romantics. Prog was hiding in a cupboard, licking its wounds.

It was the age of MTV – video didn’t only kill the radio star, it dressed him up in a pastel suit with the sleeves pushed up, buried him and then danced on his grave.

This is important, because it goes some way to explain why Twice Bitten never achieved any real success – they were terminally untrendy in a decade where style was much more important than substance.

Laid back

Rog Patterson and Greg Smith met as philosophy students at Nottingham University. A shared love of 12-string guitars, a passion for real ale and a conspicuous absence of dress sense made it inevitable that they would form a band.

Somehow they combined their studies with playing hundreds of gigs around the country supporting bands in the Progressive Rock scene, but unsurprisingly commercial success eluded them and after nearly four years, a couple of independently-released cassette albums and a track on a compilation long player, they called it a day.

One of those cassette albums (1985’s ‘No Third Man’) makes up the bulk of this release – the 7 tracks of that album have been transferred from a cassette master tape into the binary world and cleaned up. I have to congratulate David Elliott for his efforts here – I think he has done a great job.

Band with DE

The album’s opening track, Kingdom of the Blind, sets out Twice Bitten’s “heavy wood” stall for all to hear – a combination of staccato strumming and delicate picking on 12 string guitars.

Rain stops Play is an instrumental led by some very tasteful bass playing

Two of the songs really stand out for me, Swallowsong and Blue Sky Century – A pair of lovely songs, one with the bass very prominent as a lead instrument and the other a particularly gorgeous song with long vocal phrases over a delicate backing of 12 string guitars.

West End – the closing track on the original album, at just over 10.5 minutes, is covered with phasing, flanging, fuzzing and probably all manner of other electrickery as it tells its dystopian tale of surviving in the ruins of London. I like a bit of dystopia!

Special mention must be made of the album’s final track, the epic Crocus Point. Recorded in 2015 (because it took 30 years to get the 12 string guitars to stay in tune long enough to record the whole song) and mixed superbly by Kevin Feazey of The Fierce and The Dead fame. For eight minutes we are treated to some great 12 string work, with lots of delicious suspended chords and a gentle vocal line, and then suddenly all hell breaks loose as the electricity is turned on for an extended solo of great swooping curves before gradually calming down and drifting gently off into the sunset.

One of the things which surprises me about this album is how well it fills the soundstage of my living room, even though it‘s only two blokes with guitars. There are no keyboards or drums, and it is all the better for it.

Despite being very firmly rooted in the 1970s and stylistically very reminiscent of Anthony Phillips-era Genesis and Nigel Mazlyn Jones’ classic album ‘Ship to Shore’, there is a timeless quality to these songs which I really like. I could have listened to, and enjoyed, this album at any point in my life, it’s a shame I didn’t discover Twice Bitten until 2015.

Band

Released 2nd October 2015 via Bad Elephant Music.

But ‘Late Cut’ from bandcamp

David Rickinson

084

I’ve been affected by music all my life – I still get shivers down my spine when I hear the intros to “I want to hold your hand” and “She loves you”, just as I did as a 4 year old when I first heard them.

For the last couple of years I have consciously decided to listen to full albums without skipping tracks. It is how the artists put them together. Last year I managed 687 albums (422 different ones) by 198 different artists.

My biggest musical regret is deciding to buy a textbook at university in 1977, rather than spending the money on a ticket to see Yes at Stafford Bingley Hall.

I’ve worked in IT since 1978, starting as a trainee computer operator, where I used to amuse myself by singing albums such as T’he Lamb lies down on Broadway’ from start to finish to while away the hours.