Oliver Wood Photography

Casey Benjamin with The Robert Glasper Experiment

A few shots from the excellent Robert Glasper Experiment gig on the 21st November at Band on The Wall in Manchester (UK). Solid and highly accomplished musicianship was guaranteed from this quartet of distinguished contemporary jazz musicians and a reverential (and typically civilised) audience contributed to an atmosphere of pure artistic enjoyment. The line up includes Robert Glasper on piano (keyboards), Casey Benjamin on alto, tenor sax and vocoder, Chris Dave on drums and Derrick Hodge on base guitar. Brilliant and faultless solos were provided by all too.

This line up features on the up coming album ‘Black Radio’.

It was great to be in Band on The Wall after so many years. My first visit since the legendary venue re-opened and now it seems to be hosting a very impressive list of musicians from the jazz, R&B, Soul and Blues genres.

Casey Benjamin with The Robert Glasper Experiment

Casey Benjamin with The Robert Glasper Experiment

Music of the moment

Dungen Skit I Allt and Laetitia Sadier The Trip

A musical interlude, two favorites or rather one favorite and one prospective fav for October 2010. I’m loving the new album by Swedish band Dungen, eclectisists,  post progers or just impossible to define?  Skit I Allt marks yet another excursion into a slightly more jazzy realm for the band though not quite as modal as some of their earlier albums such as ‘4’ which mixed full on jazz styles with more conventional rock forms and hinted at something more Soft Machine like. I love the qualities of good Scandinavian music and especially their angle on jazz and this psychedelic rock; it seems to have a totally unique character.

Stereolab’s front woman Laetitia Sadier has just released a new and rare solo project and again like much of the Labs best stuff this also seems to be in a limited edition with no download — yet? I have heard samples of a couple of tracks and it all sounds wonderfully pretty, just as I would expect!

St Peters Churchyard 16th March 09

Again we write with an almost empty head but it is necessary to make the obligatory seasonal entry. Things are still pretty much the same for yours truly and as previously mentioned there is a sense of a state of becalmed relaxation, which is very pleasant. Of course it will not, cannot last, as is always the case.

Spring has arrived in Prestbury and there is much joyful colour all around. Monday was exceptionally pleasant sunny, warm and still, just as springtime should be. Now of course this pleasant stillness and clearness of sky is just a seasonal lull, a glimps of a mini proto-summer before the depressing slide into sick climate syndrome and the grey, wet, flooded out reality of real summer months.

I spent much of the afternoon helping Rob to clear up around Ford House in preparation for a sale. Working out doors in the sunshine with Mr N talking cinema, jazz and philosophy is the closest I can get to a sense spiritual fulfilment in Prestbury. It is such a pity that the village has lost the opportunity for a proper community centre in Ford House, a proper ‘drop in’ facility with IT and all sorts of other free ‘community’ share-ins would have been quite nice really. Prestbury needs at least one institution based on socialist principals! I suspect that it is destined to become yet another highly expensive private property though.

Music of The Moment.

It’s music of the moment time, but this time it is a desire for something exceptionally rare that is unavailable as any kind of download.

Joyce & Nava Vasconselos Visions of Dawn

Again Mr Giles Peterson has introduced me to another rare gem of an album. Visions of Dawn was a collaborative effort between Joyce and Nava Vasconselos two significant artists in the 70s Latin ‘Western’ cross over mix-up – apparently. And of course it has attracted a lot of attention as part of my ongoing discovery of progressive 70s Latin Jazz, Latin Soul and Folk Jazz. So far I have only heard the song Chegada (last track on the album) but it was impressively atmospheric in that narcotic inspired way that is essential in all such matters. Lots of reverberating vocals, spatial guitar and distinctive and refreshingly unusual harmonies. I just love these chronologically retrogressive discovery adventures.

Not a huge amount to write about tonight but I thought I should make an effort to at least get one more entry in before the end of January, it is going to be a bit patchy.

I’m right in the middle of redecorating the kitchen at the moment and planning some very colourful experiments with traditional paint finishes and a fairly big dose of artistry. I have a crazy idea to combine a period specific Georgian artisan look with Matisse-like colour effects.

Also been experimenting with the SoundCloud audio file-sharing site, which has now gone public, previously this site was a closed professional network for invited individuals only. I have just uploaded a simple speech recording, more as a test really and originally intended for my Face Book profile. I also have an idea to use the SoundCloud facility to host some additional sound recordings for my own site, if that is permissible? Well I did say it would be ‘patchy’

I’m looking forward to a cycle over to Timperley to see my brother and SIL soon. It will be my first proper long ride of the year. Round trip is about 36 miles and I really do need to get out with my camera again. I seem to missing so much of the day now that I have gone into nocturnal mode!

Music Of The Moment(s)

Milton Nascimento Clube da Esquina DJ Cam Lost and Found comp, Rasmus Faber Where we Belong

This time we have an odd but rather satisfying collection of albums (and tunes from albums) which range from the rare and characterful to the more lightweight and pleasantly intriguing.

I was quite excited to find Milton Nascimento’s rare 1972 Clube da Esquina album on Itunes the other week. Recent activity on GP has reinvigorated an interest in Latin Jazz with a difference. The 1972 Clube da Esquina album was the first to represent a certain transition in Brazilian music to the western cannon and it embraces a whole range of interesting modes including a very odd take on the psychedelic style.

DJ Cam from Paris is a bit more predictable but never the less I find a lot of his more ‘chilled’ and ambient stuff to be rather appealing, potential sound track material. He is quite well known thanks to Chris Morris’ extensive use of his music in the groundbreaking Jam TV series and Blue Jam radio series of the 90s

Lastly we have a very much more strait-laced artist in the form of Rasmus Faber from Sweden. I’m not hugely keen on most of his MOR dance stuff but do rather like some of the more Latin style tracks on this album which feature the vocals of Clara Mendes.

So that’s it for now, still feeling a bit down, odd and under motivated at the moment. Roll on springtime!

Here we are again, almost at the end of another year and yet, as ever, I just feel as though I have gone full circle and returned to a starting point of sorts, all grand designs on the new frontier seem to have gone a little awry this year. Maybe it has been daned in the stars (or what ever) that 2006 will be my year of “self-seeking” success and proper fulfillment, a time of revelations and possibly revolutions too no less. I’m definitely steering well clear of nonsense and tripe in 2006 that’s for sure; see previous entries. Yes indeed, I do really want to try to abate the trend for seemingly endless repetitions on this weblog too! I think I will also have to revise my theory on the prospect of odd numbered years being luckier than even numbered ones. Suffice to say that I do actually feel quite happy at long last, free to be myself, and again I’m calling the shots—hurrah!

I’m not quite so sure how this festive season is going to pan out yet, but it is more than likely to be a two date itinerary at best and definitely erring on the side of low key activities. A no money situation is partly to blame here though one does have to admit that the onset of a ‘certain age’ and the propensity to eccentric reclusion is not really conducive to social whirling; I’m in slow spin mode this year. Anyway, twirling hurts if you have a lot going on in ya head. One of my local establishments is doing an Irish themed New Years night complete with five piece Irish band—that will do me fine. Christmas day is the usual round of ineffectual “middle-class” chatter and jovial idealism with my jolly brother and sister-in- law and always culminating with a very good nosh/piss up so that in a nutshell will have to suffice.

Sometimes I feel compelled to use expletives in these writings for various emotive reasons, but I have to remember that my normal and quite robust Northern English vocabulary is not really appropriate to this website as a consequence of an incoming link from my local church. I am very happy for that mind, even as an agnostic, some would say Neo Pagan (which in fact I am) but dash it all sometimes I really want to fire off some high quality high impact cus words tha’ knows!

Many years ago Mark sent a burn of Pinback’s ‘Blue Screen Life’ CD, and for some reason which now totally defies comprehension this outstanding indie-rock trio seemed to go unnoticed. Recently I discovered it again, lost amongst a substantial collection, I’m now totally enamoured with the band and they are enjoying joint first place with Stereolab. I sent a copy to Kaz last week and she loved it too. I don’t know of any other outfit that sound quite like ‘Pinback’ though there are passing hints of vintage ‘Cure’ in those delectable baritone guitar sounds and very odd tonalities which are somehow wonderfully mellifluous in a very distinctive way. The band have perfected the art of semi heavy subtly in a way that the likes of the Chili Peppers could only dream of and now I know I have to get ‘Summer in Abaddon’. But how the hell can you improve on the perfection of ‘BSL’, apparently ‘SIA’ does—it must be something very special!!

Cycling mileage note to self: 5,362.4