ICHIKO AOBA – LUMINESCENT CREATURES

(LP, CD, Digital on Psychic Hotline)

On Luminescent Creatures, Ichiko Aoba follows up her 2020 breakout album Windswept Adan with another piece of timeless, gentle beauty.  We loved Windswept Adan, which explored themes of underwater natural beauty.  On that album she and collaborator Taro Umebayashi expanded her previously minimalist studio sound palette, and this time, largely keeping the team together, she further fills out the production.  In a stunning bit of alchemy, she manages to find a Goldilocks zone of expanded cinematic arrangements and production, while somehow retaining the sense of softness and intimacy central to her songwriting, playing and singing.

For instrumentation, we have Ichiko’s acoustic guitar, piano, chimes, field recordings and of course her lovely voice; plus contributions from other musicians including electric piano, celesta, synths, flute, harp, and a small string section.  Each track is tastefully put together and accompanied by perfect combinations of those instruments.  The album may have been inspired by the wonders of the titular undersea life and corals Ichiko observed while free diving in Japan’s Ryuku Archipelago, but to these ears, it’s like one long, continuous lullaby.  Her gentle, soothing, cooing voice and guitar and piano arpeggios wash over the listener like a peaceful analgesic remedy to a world descending further into chaos.  Do you have any stress in your life?  Putting on this album will make it completely vanish for 36 minutes, and leave you asking Ichiko “wait, play some more please?”

You don’t have to understand a word of Japanese, although all the words are in that language.  She’s singing poetically about the peacefulness and grace of the flora and fauna on a dive, and that’s enough.  There are a couple of brief interludes of chimes or nature sounds.  There are quiet tracks like “aurora” which feature little more than her arpeggiating acoustic guitar and harmonized vocals, where you feel so close you could be a step away.  And then there are lush, tastefully orchestrated tracks like “Luciférine” that work equally well as you imagine tropical fish dancing in shafts of sunlight coming through the waters to her angelic voice.

“pirsomnia” feature wordless vocals floating in an echo-laden wash of synths, again conjuring images of the gentle sealife drifting in calm waters.  On closing track “Wakusei no Namida” she uses the sound of the wind as an instrument behind her simple guitar and vocal while she sings about “the tears of stars” and “a melody of a million light years.”  The song and album conclude brilliantly with a single word (in Japanese) “Hello.”

Luminescent Creatures is as delicate and gentle as its subject matter.  Ichiko Aoba paints watercolors of impressionistic sound with her songwriting, playing and flawless arrangements and production.  Her soft, vulnerable voice holds the listener enraptured for its duration.  Don’t miss this one.

(Mark Feingold)

PANTOMIME HORSES - FOREVER POLYESTER

(Self-released LP)

Former Portsmouth bandmates in mid-90s pop band Candystash Tony Laming, Nigel Kirkby, and Rob Silber reconnected via e-mail and began the long-distance assemblage of bits and pieces of songs they created at home (Lincoln, Portsmouth, and Barcelona!) on a computer over a five-year period until Forever Polyester was deemed fit for public consumption. From three old mates who hadn’t set foot in the same location during the entire process, the album is amazingly cohesive and boasts influences from a musical map of the last 60 years with hints of Portishead, The Jam, The Church, Blur, Strawberry Alarm Clock, et. al. - literally something for every taste!

     Opener ‘YLF’ is a schizophrenic pop collage with Elephant 6 undertones (cf. Olivia Tremor Control) and little keyboard tinkles permeate ‘Plastic Glasses’ leaving a sunshiny smile in its wake. The autobiographical ‘Lily Molita’ relates the dreams and aspirations of a twentysomething daughter working in a nursing home during COVID, meeting a nice lad who sends her roses, getting a tattoo, and looking for something more in life than “curling up on the sofa.” Both dads and daughters of a certain age will certainly relate!

     ‘Paris Garden’ has such an engaging riff that it manages to lift a song with lyrics about sunken ships and suicide into a perfectly delightful pop tune and ‘The Figure Skater’ is a downtempo electropop dreamaway co-written with another Candystash bandmate Andrew Pipe. Television Personalities obsessives may hear hints of ‘Paradise Estate’ lurking within!

     ‘Morning Star’ is one of the best earwigs we’ve heard in years - the obvious single if they still did such things; you’ll be humming this one in your sleep and returning to it often. I hear more than a passing resemblance to Peter Gabriel in ‘Two Ice Cream Cones” and ‘Dressed Like Elvis’ cleverly nicks a lyric from ‘Wichita Lineman’ to good effect. We end floating in the cosmic debris of ‘Kryptonite’, meandering through outer galaxies that seemingly intercepted an eerie transmission from a shortwave numbers station a la The Conet Project. Silber encourages us: “Let’s be astronauts/On this filthy mattress/And dance with the Gods/Gliding with Persephone in this magnificent cathedral/Let’s pretend to be born again.” Thankfully, after all these years, the music of Tony, Nigel, and Rob has indeed been born again for us to enjoy.

Addendum: The band released a final salvo ‘Five O’Clock Bluebirds’ [available via their website above] wherein Silber contemplates the sunrise, birds waking to a new day, night becoming daylight, environmental collapse, and other things passing through his head - life’s little conundrums that keep you company on that daily commute. All of this is set to another jangly pop melody that might actually make going to work a fun exercise!

Jeff Penczak

BRIDGET ST. JOHN - COVERING MY BROTHERS

(10” vinyl EP on Shagrat Records)

Oh, this is nice - a treat indeed for the ears, eyes and heart and one that’ll have your toes tapping too. Released by Shagrat Records, so you just KNOW it’s essential before you even hear it, the marvellous Bridget St John, singer and songwriter sometime of this parish (more specifically the Terrastock 6 festival in Providence, RI in April 2006) has selected songs to interpret by her “brothers in music.” The title refers to that fact that when Bridget started out in the music business in the late 1960s, she found herself performing on very male-dominated bills. Bridget soon proved herself their equal and her encounters with the likes of Michael Chapman, Nick Drake, John Martyn and Kevin Ayers led to lifelong friendships. All of them are now of course sadly departed, which makes this somehow even more poignant and special.

Side 1 features her stunning re-imagining of Michael Chapman’s ‘Aviator’, a personal favourite from his 1970 LP, Fully Qualified Survivor. Rather than a straight cover, this dramatic 10-minute interpretation which takes up the whole side features additional words by Bridget and accompaniment by our very own pedal steel guitar hero, BJ Cole. Side 2 opens with Bridget’s lovely version of Nick Drake’s ‘Fly’, from his 1970 masterpiece Bryter Layter. That’s followed by John Martyn’s ‘Head and Heart’ (from Bless the Weather) originally recorded as a demo for Bridget’s 1974 album Jumblequeen. To close, ‘Jolie Madame’ by Kevin Ayers, a French-language song which the ex-Soft Machine guitarist first performed on 1976’s Odd Ditties.

Right now, Bridget is undertaking a short tour of the American West Coast and will be back here in her native UK to play the “Folk East Festival” on 16th August and the Betsey Trotwood in London on 17th August.

(Phil)

EDISON MACHADO – EDISON MACHADO & BOA NOVA

(LP, CD, Digital on Far Out Recordings)

Another incredible “lost album” discovery from Far Out Recordings, this from Brazilian jazz drummer extraordinaire Edison Machado and his short-lived Boa Nova ensemble, a rich double album recorded in New York in 1978.  Machado (1934 – 1990) survived a military dictatorship, played with the greatest performers of Brazilian samba and bossa nova’s heyday, and contributed his own stylistic technique to music lore in one of those happy accidents that sometimes come with live playing.  Playing in a samba band in 1949, Machado’s snare broke.  Without breaking the rhythm, he commenced playing the ride cymbal with his right hand, while playing accents on the tom with his left hand.  It would become his signature style, known henceforth as “samba no prato” (samba on the cymbals).

After leaving the Brazilian Army, Machado cut his teeth in the 1950s playing in clubs in Rio de Janeiro’s Beco das Garrafas.  The locale was also known as Bottles Alley, due to residents of neighboring apartments tossing bottles down at the alley in protest of all the noise coming from the top rank musicians.  Machado worked actively in the 1950s and 1960s as both a leader of several innovative bands and as a sideman.  The 1970s and on were somewhat of a fallow period in his discography.  Machado fled the military dictatorship in 1976, having to sell his drum kit in the process.

He found a new home, both on his feet and musically in New York, with Boa Nova.  The sextette included Machado on drums, Steve Sacks on alto and baritone saxophones, Ion Muniz on tenor sax, Paolo Roberto de Oliveira on trumpet and flugelhorn, Mozar Terra on piano, and Ricardo dos Santos on double bass.  In 1978 they recorded this double set.  It may be six players, but its full, dynamic range can sound like many more people.  It has a Big Band aesthetic, and it’s full of thrilling samba and bossa nova inflections.  Each member gets to shine – many times – in the eleven tracks full of light and shade.  Unfortunately, the collaboration didn’t last, and this is their sole output (and we’re lucky to have it).

The tracks are a combination of new compositions by the members, plus others by Brazilian maestros such as Guilherme Verguerio, Aloisio Aguilar, and Dom Salvador, who collectively have written for Harry Belafonte, Joyce, Leon Ware, Arthur Verocai, and others.  I probably don’t have to tell you the musicianship is way off the charts.  These guys are smokin’.  Although there are fast, slow and in-between pieces, it’s the wild up-tempo samba and bossa nova rides that really get this writer’s blood pumping and feet moving.  Pieces such as “Janeiro,” “A Chegada,” “Constelação,” and “Ascensão” will blow your roof off with intensity, excitement and joy.

The obvious question to me is how could music this amazing have not been released, either in its time, or up until now?  The performances are uniformly excellent over two albums, brimming with brilliant, talented writing and uncommonly good playing.  I had the same incredulity at other recent lost album releases by Joyce and others.  All I can say is thank heavens for Far Out Recordings and all the other fine imprints out there doing God’s work.

(Mark Feingold)