December 2020
Favourites|December2020
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Hark!
by Andrew Bird
Released 13 November 2020
Loma Vista Recordings
****-
Andrew Bird returns with another quality album, timed and themed for the holiday season. He opens with a version of John Cale's "Andalucia" from his seminal 1973 album "Paris 1919" (an album that coincidentally contains Cale's interpretation of Dylan Thomas' "Child's Christmas In Wales") and covers of John Prine's "Souvenirs", a Schubert devotional piece ("Mille Cherubini in Coro" - A Thousand Cherubs In Choir) and seasonal perennials "Auld Land Syne" (Robbie Burns) and "White Christmas" (Irving Berlin), all alongside new songs of his own.
"Hark!" is an expanded version of an EP of the same name released in 2019, to include a new song "Christmas in April" written at the start of the pandemic: "Oh, my love when will you know if we can meet under the mistletoe?" and speaks of "...upset applecarts conspiring to keep us apart".
It's a record that is alternately sentimantal, whimsical, happy and sad and already features in my Christmas Favourites playlist.
An Extra Celestial Christmas
by Barney McCall
Released 13 December 2019
Extra Celestial Arts
****-
Born in Melbourne in 1966, jazz pianist and composer. Barney McAll moved to New York City in 1997 to join saxophonist Gary Bartz‘s band. As well as remaining to be a member of the Gary Bartz quartet, he also plays with the Josh Roseman Unit, Fred Wesley and the JB’s, Groove Collective, and Kurt Rosenwinkel‘s “Heartcore”. He completed a Bachelor of Music at the Victorian College of the Arts in Melbourne, studying with pianists Paul Grabowsky, Tony Gould and Mike Nock and with guitarist Doug Devries.
His ensembles include “M.O.D.A.S”, “Sylent Running”, “GRAFT” and his most recent ensemble ASIO (Australian Symbiotic Improvisers Orbit).
"An Extra Celestial Christmas" is an exceptional musical work that extends the vocabulary and possibilities for christian christmas music by sampling, reassembling and transposing its cadences into the language of progressive jazz.
The album opens with the delicate Psalm 103 "Praise My Soul the King of Heaven", the saxophone-rich, percussion-driven "Dactylus Chime" (though it's thematic link to this set is unclear) and "Deep River" a moving vocal interprtation by Australian singer/songwriter Rita Satch of an anonymously-credited African-American spiritual from a hundred years ago.
The album picks up momentum with "Precious Energy - homage to Leon Thomas and Pharoah Sanders". Grace Robinson's vocal seems to have been electronically slowed for "Breathing Slow" - (an effect that might have been better to have avoided in favour of a naturally slow delivery), however this slip is soon overcome as the cheerfully atonal sounds of kalimba and marimba drive the McCall composition "Jamie Fielding".
Many instrumental, vocal and studio effects are used throughout the album, sometimes angelic, often celebratory and genuinely "celestial" as the project's title describes.
The final pair of songs "Unanswered Question" (featuring the University of Houston Chorale Choir) and "Not to Worry", a Grace Robnison vocal backed by the melow tones of a Fender Rhodes, close out an experimental but unexpectedly enjoyable christmas record.
I Was Not Sleeping
by Danalogue x Alabaster De Plume
Released 20 November 2020
Total Refreshment Centre
****-
Danalogue is a synthesiser player and record producer, based in London, England, who plays in Mercury Prize nominees "The Comet Is Coming" and "Soccer96".
Spoken-word artist, writer and saxophonist Alabaster dePlume (aka Angus Fairbairn) is more familiar, thanks to his recent album "To Cy & Lee: Instrumentals, Vol. 1", released in February 2020 and one of my favourites for the by year (review below).
According to their Bandcamp, the duo met at London's Total Refreshment Centre, a place that's become something of an incubator for the vibrant new London jazz scene, and also the record label with which this project has found a suitable home.
In their music, Danalogue and Alabaster dePlume seek to find utopia amidst a real-world reality of austerity, divisional politics and a UK lurching towards the right wing. The title of the record addresses this explicitly. "It's about accountability" explains Fairbairn. "If one day in the future someone asks me about this time now, I will have to say, 'I was not sleeping while this happened. I witness what is happening around me now, I recognise I am involved in it, I am part of it, I cannot deny it, and I am prepared to do something to make it better, and to change myself in order to do so".
The duo's music is more intense than "To Cy & Lee" and more obviously electronic than Danalogue's post-SunRa/AliceColtrane work with "The Comet Is Coming". Tracks are beat-driven, synths are used agressively and the music often sounds as if has been assembled from cut-ups, rather than developed organically. The sound iheavy with drum&bass and post-production, so requires a mind-shift at first, after coming to the record expecting continuity from the duo's previous work.
However, once re-oriented, the new work is complex and absorbing. It bears repeat listening and is at it's most engaging when the underlying heavy beats are overlaid by powerful melodies, as in the opening track "The March That Is Unstoppable" and "Sundance".
"I Was Not Sleeping" is further evidence of the broadening scope and possibilities for contemporary music in the UK.
Simultaneousy claustrophobic and ambitious, complicated and manipulated, it is a representative product of its time.
871 / Parallel
by Four Tet
Released 25 December 2020
Text Records
*****
Closing out this tragic year marvelously, Four Tet (Kieren Hebden) presented two new albums "871" on Christmas Eve and "Parallel" on Christmas Day. The former, which appears to be available only via his website and Bandcamp, was recored between August 1995 and January 1997.
The latter is available on streaming secrvices including Spotify.
"871" adopts an archival numbering system: each of the 20 tracks is named chronologically from 0000 871 0001 to 0020. This seems entirely consistent with Hebden's other work and his use of the Four Tet alias itself: last year he released an album under a name consisting entirely of computer wingdings. Musically, "871" is a varied collection that spans the spectrum includingg extended futuristic soundscapea (track 010 over 9 minutes), short strummed guitar recording (track 0003 75 seconds), brief industrial noises (track 009 00:32 ) and many points beside. Perhaps predictably, the results range from tedious to surprising, but it is always interesting, especialy that although these are formative recordings, they are eerily consistent with his second release, "Parallel" (and not only because this too adopts another numerical naming convention). Parralel opens with a long (almost 27 minutes in duration) album-within-an-album "Parallel 1", which contains many of Ebden's favourite ambient techniques. Parallel 2 is s pacy synthpop shuffle similar to parts of "Baby" from the previous rrecord "Twelve Oceans". Parallel 3 is very short but conjures a dreamy landscape and sounds as if it is lifted from a computer game soundtrack. It precedes the more substantial Parallel 4, which features Four Tet's trademark layering of synths, percussion, reversed vocal loops, bells and sounds. Parallel 5 runs less than a minute and sounds as if it is built up from the sound of chimes and Parallel 6, also short is a playful mix of percussion toyshop bells. A more downtempo, sombre tone greets us with Parallel 7 but a Balaeric dance pulse that would not be out of place in a Cafe Del Mar compilation emerges during Parallel 8. This is followed by the calm ambience of synthesised birdsong and slow piano for Parallel 9 that extends into a quiet, slow beginning of the albums finale, Parallel 10, which after fading almost to silence at the midway rerevives with solo piano, as if played in an adjoining parlour. Although just out, I've added Parallel to my 2020 Favourites because I'm sure that it will remain so, alongside Sixteen Oceans, for years to come.
Sixteen Oceans
by Four Tet
Released 13 March 2020
Text Records
*****
Sixteen Oceans opened with Fourt Tet's version of quirky synth pop - the frisky "School" - a bouncing keyboard motif jumping around above kick drum and percusssion. The opening half of the record is similarly bouyant - from the cleverly clipped vocal and drum pad samples on "Baby", through the moody "Harpsicord" and the lively "Teenagebirdsong".
The mood drifts progressively more dreamily into "Romantics" but busy percussion returns and then tuneful synths, with harp, acoustic guitar during the danceable "Love Salad", intensifying further for "Insect Near Phila Beach".
Then suddenly, it's as if the the DJ has left the stage. "Hi Hello" and "ISTM" each provide brief interludes (of 49 and 41 seconds respectively). A highlightsof the album, "Something in the Sadness" follows. It is a driving, 5 minute long keyboard romp, most of which sounds like might have been lifted from a Jean Michel Jarre album (until it dissintegrates into static at its conclusion). The party seemed about to be underway, however it is shortlived. The second half of the album is not a progressive continuation of the dance party. Instead, we are treated to a succession of soundscapes and recordings that, judging by the titles such as "1993 Band Practice" and "4T Recordings", may have been retrieved from the Four Tet archives - an earely premonition, perhaps, of "871".
These fragments comnbine to ensure that "Sixteen Oceans" becomes much more than a light synth pop confection.
Instead, it's another timeless ambient masterpiece from a genuine musical innovator.
Her Revolution / His Rope
by Burial, Four Tet, Thom Yorke
Released 11 December 2020
XL Recordings
*****
Her Revolution / His Rope is an early Christmas present from SunNeverSetsOnMusic's favourite team of ambient, but the mood is far from celebratory.
"Her Revolution" is a moody dreamscape built up from repeating fragments of sitar and muffled electronica, as if it is a lounge recording from a pasing Eastern pedicab, perhaps lamenting the temporal nature of love - but the lyric may also be metophor for the impact of the pandemic on our materalistic priorities.
She waits, she waits
Wily as a fox
She is watching us now
She will sell us out
Our treasure, our treasure
Cracks appearing at the centre
On a dying star
Breaking through the moonlight
A darling revolution
It is always in love
Cracks appear in the centre
While we go spinning
Walking offline
As wings up in the sky
Cheaper than another
We are breaking apart
Cracks appearing at the centre
She's on this revolution
At such a cost
Says all this revolution
How my wooden heart
It feels nothing
The musical pulse of "His Rope" is stronger and the narrative dark, but Yorke's lyrics do seem to hold out some hope for the future.
Here's the tiny piece of you I saved
I awake to the birds singing
I cut the rope
Step out
In an instant it's all over
I'm done
Here's the tiny piece of you I save
Just enough rope
Just enough rope
Sex and death
Total self-destruction
Turn your body over
To me
Still awake in the morning mist
Grant me some grace
Grant me some grace
You don't have to worry
Forgiven and forgotten
Move on
Herе's the tiny piece of you I savе
Maybe tomorrow
In another city
Where they don't know our names
Drips of honey
Eyes dilate
And losing our way
Between
Fugitive Light and Themes of Consolation
by Andrew Wasylyk
Released 4 September 2020
Athens Of The North
****-
Released in September on the wonderful Scottish label Athgens Of The North, Andrew Wasylyk's album Fugitive Light and Themes of Consolation is a beautful set of expressive musical esssays that relate to the light and landscape Eastern Scotland.
Rob St. John wrote ass follows for Wasylysk's Bandcamp:
"The record is threaded with the influences of people, place and musical lineages – David Axelrod, John Barry, Virginia Astley, Mark Hollis, Alice Coltrane – yet as with all of Andrew’s solo work it has a deft, clear voice all of its own. Recorded between Summer 2019 and January 2020, Fugitive Light… displays his talent as a multi-instrumentalist and composer: all hushed drum grooves, rolling waves of plucked acoustic guitar, cascading upright piano, Bob James-inspired Fender Rhodes, rippling clàrsach harp, and ECM-worthy electric guitar motifs. As on The Paralian, string arrangements are by fellow Tayside musician Pete Harvey, known for his work with King Creosote and Modern Studies.
This is a record scored through with patterns of light: the song titles evoke last sunbeams, the fugitive light of water, the violet hour of autumn, cemetery silhouettes, and the half-light of the moon; the arrangements aglow with subtle shifts of texture and refractions of melody. Fugitive Light… is an atmospheric (in both the sonic and elemental sense) evocation of the ebb of the world, something that Andrew describes as, “simultaneously about knowing loss and accepting love, the optimistic and the downhearted, where the lightness and dark gather together."
Agora
by Bebel Gilberto
Released 7 August 2020
PIas Recordings
****-
Bebel Gilberto (daughter of Brazilian singer, songwriter, composer and "father of the bossa nova" Joao and Miucha, as singer in her own right ) has produced a beautiful bossa nova album that is steeped in the craft of the family business and released soon after the death of both parents (her mother in December 2018 and her father in July 2019) and her best friend (who suffered a fatal heart attack as she spoke with hin on the phone).
However, these personal tragedies don't oerwhelm the recording. Instead, its a sultry polished performance that is enhanced by the subtly varied production by Thomes Bartlett aka Doveman (Norah Jones,Florence & the Machine, Sufjan Stevens, St Vincent and others)
We Will Always Love You
by The Avalanches
Released 11 December 2020
Modular Recordings
*****
Following the overwhelming success of their 2000 debut Since I Left You, the expectations for each release by The Avalanches has been correspondingly high. It was 16 years before the follow up Wildflower was released and it was also outstanding, if not as groundbreaking as the first: by 2016 many other artists were using similarly advanced techniques of sampling and sound collage. Wallflower was more conventionally structured set of songs than Since I Left You, shocasing a stable of guest vocalists and rap artists. Still, few could match the Avalanches' exquisite blend of surprise, humour and musical breadth. With the new album, the Avalanches are joint by a cast of famous guest artists that includes, Blood Orange, MGMT, Tricky, Johnny Marr, Mick Jones (of The Clash), Leon Bridges, Neneh Cherry, Sampa the Great, Perry Farrell (of Jane's Addiction), Wayne Coyne (of Flaming Lips) and others.
Covers (EP)
by James Blake
Released 11 December 2020
Modular Recordings
****-
James Blake stands vocally naked on his astonishing EP Covers - on which he tackles a half-dozen exquisite songs by some of his heroes and contemporaries, frequently accompanied little more than a grand piano. Like Nick Cave's Alone at Alexandra Palace, the result is asn intimate recording that not only reveals the essence of these classic songs, but shows the emotional connection of singer to the lyrics.
Tracks include: When The Party's Over (Finneas O'Connell/Bille Eilish), Atmosphere (Joy Division), Never Dreamed You'd Leave In Summer (Stevie Wonder), Godspeed (Frank Ocean), When We're Older (Beyonce) anda version of The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face (Ewen McCall) that I'm sure Roberta Flack herself would applaud.
III
by Paul McCartney
Released 18 December 2020
Capitol
***--
Not that age is necessarily any excuse, but now 78 years of age, most of us would be happy to do what we do as well as Paul McCartney!
McCarney III is a lively set of pop songs, that follow his post-Beatles formula: clever lyrics, a touch of Everly Brothers here, some Penny Lane there, some off-the-wall guitar jamming and novelty (ie "Lavatory Lill" - an alternative to Polythene Pam, I guess).
The casually-strummed electric guitar of the long opening dersert-blues "Long Tailed Winter Bird" strikes a fear that there's trouble ahead; the Beck-like second track, "Find My Ways" is an improvement, but its mostly downhill from there.
The demands of age are such that the tender youthful voice of "Yesterday" has by now been displaced by a huskier one that sounds like Johnny Cash on "Women and Wives". The song seeks to deliver the wisdom of age too, but there's not much on offer except that "What we do with our lives Seems to matter to others" and "Every path that we take Makes it harder to travel".
As has been the dissapointment for much of his post-Beatles songwriting, the structures are robust but the lyrical content is shallow.
The naming of this album a successor to McCartney II (1995) seems unwise and to have limited the scope and opportunities. With 15 solo albums, 7 with Wings and 10 classical or electronic albums under his belt over the past 25 years, a more contemporary approach might have allowed him far wider range for expression.
The Bends
by Rosie Carney
Released 11 December 2020
Colour Study / Ultra Records
***--
Rosie Carney's "The Bends" is her singer-songwriterly re-make of Radiohead's second album (released 1995). This is a fascinating project that is sometimes powerfully effective of bringing the lyrical and musical elements of the original songs into view. Though arguably eclipsed by Radiohead's subsequent albums, for OK Computer and beyond, The Bends may be regarded as the best album of it's time - that of Brit pop - and a counterpoint to the musical aesthetic of the time. In Carney's new reading of the songs, Yorke's angst-laden falsetto is replaced with her warm, indie-folk delivery. Surprisinly, this rarely seems more like an anternaltive perspective on the songs, rather than at odds with the content . With a minimilist's approach to instrumentation and effects, the emotional range of expression is far narrower than Radiohead's original, but this is often replaced by a sensitivity that was not available to the band, and exposes the music's disturbing, dystopian themes.
Odins Raven Magic
by Sigur Ros (with Steindor Andersen, Hilmar Orn Hilmarsson and Mara Huld Markan Sigfusdottir)
Released 4 December 2020
Krunk
***--
Odin's Raven Magic is a 2002 orchestral setting to the Icelandic poem Hrafnagaldr Óðins.
The composition was a collaboration by Sigur Rós, Hilmar Örn Hilmarsson, Steindór Andersen, Páll Guðmundsson and Maria Huld Markan Sigfúsdóttir. It was premiered at the Reykjavík Arts Festival on 24 May 2002.
On this recording, Sigur Ros brings their unique and innovative musical approach to the interpretation of a traditional folk tale, rather than conjuring sonic worlds of their own. As a result, the musical themes are developed more slowly and with the extensive use of convetional opratic vocals, the early passages ("Prolgus" and "Alfoour Orkar") sound like Gorecki's Miserare. But the narrative advancers with the stirring third track "Dvergmal". "Stendur Aeva" features Sigur Ros' familiar soaring high falsetto vocals, with stings and operatic vocals rising and falling in support and is followed by a sucsession of quiter passages before a long finale "Dagrenning", which builds to an epic climax nerar the end of the recording.
Whether due to the subject, the collaborators or other causes this Sigur Ros recording doesn't develop clarity of expression that was so memorable in the group's early work (especially their 1999 break-out album Agaetis byrjun), nor the conventional Morricone-sytle head of steam one might have expected.
RAAZ
by Hooshyar Khyam, Bamdad Afshar
Released 11 December 2020
30M Records
*****
Launching a record label in 2020 is wildly ambitious by anyone’s standards. But for Matthias Koch, a music industry veteran from Hamburg, adversity is nothing more than a chance to do things a little differently.
Created to help artists from Iran reach an international audience, the birth of 30M Records is, without question, also a timely one. “I want to make it possible for Iranian musicians to release their music, especially in times of the US economic sanctions, and give them access to international networks,” Koch recently said. “I think Iran has a fascinating music scene which deserves a worldwide audience.”
RAAZ sees the imprint start on a high note. An eleven-track collaboration between composer and pianist Hooshyar Khayam and Bamdad Afsharit, it’s a palette-spanning feat that invites the listener, wherever they may be in the world, to check any preconceptions about what “Iranian music” means in 2020. Centering in on the music of Sistan and Balochistan, a large province located in southeastern Iran, bordering Pakistan and Afghanistan, RAAZ abounds with the masterful sound of artists in the element. Incorporating Gwati, a form of “healing music” in Iran, and melding it with a whole gamut of subtle production work and rhythmic forays, the past and the present - much like the global and the provincial - become as one.
Traditional vocals by two men and one woman take centre-stage throughout. Clocking in at nearly seven minutes, “Anthology” is a trance-inducing peak that wields repetition and deceptively complex melodic patterns in tandem. Opener “Ya'k”, meanwhile, has a quality of incantation, curveballing at every turn. And not least due to the touch of Afshar, award-winning cinema and theatre composer, the whole release packs an organic filmic quality that is increasingly hard to come by. Take closer “Noh” or “Seh”, with its dwindling string patterns and scopic ambience. Like many tracks, they brim with a Technicolour push and pull that rewards repeated listens. As the former fades out, bleeding from experimental patterns to a gossamer bed of near-silence, one almost expects credits to roll.
By striking a slick midpoint between elements of traditional Iranian composition and contemporary electronic trends, Khayam and Afshar have offered up a triumph. Meditative and celebratory in equal measure, it feels like the latest step in a much bigger journey - both generally and for 30M going forward. At a time when the country is making the headlines the fallout over the assassination of their top nuclear scientist, framed by the far-reaching fallout of Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew from the nuclear deal in May 2018, RAAZ is a singular opportunity to hone in on just one small part of what defines the forward-moving spirit of modern Iran. Here, its humanity and enduring relevance on the world-stage comes into ultra-sharp focus.
Review courtesy of Line OF Best Fit
Ludi
by Chassol
Released 6 March 2020
Tricatel
****-
French musician and composer Christophe Chassol’s newest project, Ludi is a musical film inspired by the novel The Glass Bead Game by German author Hermann Hesse.
It uses documentary film and animation techniques as well as special effects.
Ludi is about play, time and music as experienced by human beings and animals. Chassol, who has collaborated with Frank Ocean and Solange, has become known for “ultrascore”, a musical technique that can be thought of as harmonising reality but draws also from R&B, soul, jazz, funk, classical and electronic influences.
Review source: Rhythm Passport
Encounter
by Beyries
Released 11 December 2020
Modular Recordings
****-
With vocals that recall Stevie Nicks, Montreal, Quebec based artist Beyries works in familar musical territory throughout her sophomore album Encounter, yet at every turn she maintains the energy and momentum to make it a refreshing and entertaining discovery. Encounter opens with a pair of dreamy ballads but soon eveloves to include pacy R&B and Pop, all delivered with the support of superbly arranged soaring vocal choruses, strings, (especially) Beyries' confident piano and occasional French languge touches.
This is an album that seems to improve as it progresses and the familarity of repeat plays.
Safe from Me
by Laura Fell
Released 20 November 2020
Balloon Machni Records
****-
A psychotherapist by day, Laura Fell’s debut album, Safe from Me, is a search for answers from a woman always expected to have them to hand, and the self-punishing frustration that assumption brings.
Fell’s dedication to this journey of self-discovery was unquestionable from the off, so much so that her peers questioned her sanity.
Holding down three jobs to fund the record, Fell was determined that the songs would go far beyond their acoustic guitar genesis, assembling classically trained musicians to fully realise her vision.
London-based, Fell only started playing music at 25 when the poetry she had been writing for almost a decade began to feel more like songs.
This talent stretches throughout ‘Safe from Me’; Fell invites you to claw at the soil until you strike gold, and the meaning eventually becomes unearthed.
Source: Bandcamp
Deadly Hearts - Walking Together
by Various Artists
Released 6 November 2020
ABC Records
****-
Released ahead of NAIDOC Week 2020 and AUSMUSIC month throughout November, ABC Music/Universal Music Australia is proud to present Deadly Hearts – Walking Together, the third instalment in this popular series.
Previous ‘Deadly Hearts’ releases have focused on songs that are iconic to traditional Australian culture and identity.
This year, the reigns have been handed over to a new generation of storytellers, with the call for artists to take on a song that is iconic to them, a song that has inspired them or a song that holds a special place in their identity.
The response we received was nothing short of remarkable; from the pure electro-pop joy of Mitch Tambo’s Gamilaraay language version of Vanessa Amorosi’s ‘Absolutely Everybody’ to Miiesha’s soulful rendition of Brooks and Dunn’s ‘Neon Moon’ to Isaiah Firebrace & Stan Walker collaborating and covering the timeless Don’t Dream It’s Over originally by Crowded House, to the all-out metal madness of Southeast Desert Metal’s take on a Midnight Oil classic ‘Beds Are Burning’.
In short, it’s a celebration of music, culture, and identity, from the hearts and mouths of a new generation.
“Being asked to be on Deadly Hearts I knew I wanted to have my community involved as much as possible,” Miiesha said of her Deadly Hearts song choice. “We go mad for country music up here so picked one of our favourites ‘Neon Moon’ by Brooks and Dunn and got a Woorabinda Choir together to show off some of the deadly talent up this way!”
Other artists, like Mitch Tambo, took inspiration from the NAIDOC 2020 theme ‘Always Was Always Will Be’.
“ [It’s] the perfect opportunity to further your learning around the history of the peoples of the land in which you live on to not only equip and educate yourself but to play a part in the greater dialogue of all of us coming together as one to face the whole truth of our beautiful nation so we can journey together, healing and loving one another one step at a time,” Tambo said.
In a time where so many of us are isolated Deadly Hearts: Walking Together has managed to weave voices from all around Australia into one powerful release.
Deadly Hearts: Walking Together offers listeners the opportunity to hear DRMNGNOW recording out on country nearby Kaiela (Goulburn River) amongst the birds, the wind and waters, join Miiesha and the choir in Woorabinda and so much more without ever leaving their lounge room.
This is the modern sound of Indigenous Australia. This is the next generation of storytellers. This is Deadly Hearts: Walking Together.
Source: ABC
The Colour Of Intention
by Marcus Gilmore, Lewis Wright, Matt Brewer
Released 4 December 2020
Signum Classics
****-
Award-winning Vibraphonist Lewis Wright returns to Signum following the success of his recording ‘Duets’ in 2018, with a selection of new compositions this time performed with Matt Brewer (Double-Bass) and Marcus Gilmore (Drums).
“The Colour of Intention refers to the creative process itself: that in order to express yourself honestly in music, you have to generate clear intentions developed from thoughts and emotions which then colour the work rather than explaining every aspect of it. In the moment of performance, the goal then becomes to put all these previous investigations out of mind and exist in the present. The colour of intention is describing everything except performance; the slower processes of development, reflection and refinement and how they’ll seep, often unpredictably, into everything that ends up being realised. Working with Matt (Brewer) and Marcus (Gilmore) adds the last and most engaging dimension. How they interpret the music, interact and bring their own highly developed languages to bare, creates something that’s both a reflection of my intentions and also infinitely more sophisticated than it’s possible for me to conceive of. I think in this sense, human connection is the greatest element of what it is we do as musicians.” – Lewis Wright
.
Review source: Rhythm Passport
Ausecuma Beats
by Ausecuima Beats
Released 20 November 2020
Music In Exile
****-
Based in Melbourne, Australia, their name derived from their countries of their heritage and residence (Australia, Senegal, Cuba, Mali and Guinea), Ausecuma Beats are more than just a band, they are a philosophy. Led by master djembe player, Boubacar Gaye, the nine-strong ensemble, demonstrate artists coming together based on an idea - the idea of place, of transplanting cultural heritage into a contemporary city. Ausecuma Beats is people from all corners of the world finding themselves together in new environments, as a community.
On their debut full-length, Ausecuma Beats encapsulate the spirit of this unique band; each track showcases the different talents of each musician and sonically explores what is possible when we join together and celebrate our differences. Ausecuma Beats are more than just a band, they are a community, a family, a frame of mind.
“Our role is to develop a new style of music. To learn how to share with each other. The other guys learn a lot from me, about Senegal, my culture. I learn a lot about them, about Mali, other West African states. We work to lift each other, to learn from each other through music.
Each has a different mentality, a difference experience. Everyone has experience from their journey before they came to Melbo
Source: Bandcamp