Why Didn't You Tell Me? (Part Twelve)

 

Every once in a while, there is a particular piece of music that has been made specifically for you, and it feels like all roads have led to this point in time. This is very much the case with ‘Perseverance Flow’, composed by Joshua Abrams and recorded with his colleagues in the Natural Information Society. It is on record a 35-minute work, perfect as a single-track CD, and is essentially a cyclical rhythmic passage repeated throughout that time which, as you listen again and again, reveals infinite variations, imagined or real, with the percussion, bass, clarinet and wheezing harmonium working together to create patterns that are incredibly emotional, indeed spiritual and mesmerising. It is perfectly titled, as it is one of those recordings where it becomes impossible not to go with the flow, and before you know it you are dancing around the room, completely absorbed: “We dig repetition in the music, and we're never going to lose it.”

Why Didn't You Tell Me? (Part Eleven)

 

There can be something oddly pleasant about being discombobulated. There sometimes is a certain pleasure to be found in having one’s conceptions challenged. This may be particularly true of the arts. It may apply to times when your understanding about a certain sphere of activity is turned upside down and inside out. Just take, for instance, Brenda Ray’s Walatta which is one of my most-played CDs over the past year-and-a-half. It is a record around 20-years-old, but it is only relatively recently that I have been aware of it, and that was all down to a seemingly random Spotify recommendation, which in true try-before-you-buyify style made me rush to track down a physical copy.

Why Didn't You Tell Me? (Part Ten)

 

You know, recently, out of the blue, I received a Bandcamp notification to let me know there was a new release from Stacy Epps, her first full-length recording since The Awakening in 2008, a record which was a pivotal and I guess totemic set from the very early days of YHO. Thinking about that record seemed to whisk me back in time to the formative days here, which perhaps with the benefit of rose-coloured glasses did feel like a time of awakening, of opening up, perhaps a period of relative enlightenment, with Obama headed for the White House amid a sudden glut of young cosmic soul adventurers sharing often abstract, spiritual, fiercely independent music. Ha. All the way from ‘Yes We Can’ to ‘Oh No You Can’t’. What was it the man sang? “Once there was confidence but now there is fear / Once there was laughter but now only tears / Once there were reasons for our optimism / But now we're all drowning in a sea of cynicism.”

Why Didn't You Tell Me? (Part Nine)

 

There are some things about 2025 I would be quite happy to forget, events that leave me feeling cold inside, and there are some things from this year that I hope will be with me forever. I am pretty sure that seeing Bonnie Dobson perform on a baking hot summer’s evening on an old boat moored near Canary Wharf is something I will never forget, and I know that this is a memory I shall cherish. She was backed by The Hanging Stars (minus a couple, plus a few, apparently) who made a glorious chiming folk rock racket over which Bonnie ably projected with the grace and grit of someone far younger than her 84-years. It was an incredibly moving occasion.

Why Didn't You Tell Me? (Part Eight)

 

Some things are meant to be, it seems. Why else would there appear on the local high-street, in the depths of winter, a stall selling secondhand CDs at £2 a time? You’re hardly going to get rich that way, not round our way. And there were not too many records to set the pulses racing. A Soul Jazz CD, not the label but an excellent Verve Jazz Club compilation from 2006, and War’s The World is a Ghetto seemed to be about it, until in the last box there appeared a sealed copy of Always Sunshine, Always Rain by Spike and Debbie, from 2018, which piqued my curiosity and prompted me to take a chance.

To be fair, it wasn’t really a wild shot in the dark, as a quick shufti at the sleeve revealed it was credited to Spike Reptile & Debbie Debris, which suggested I would be on familiar ground, as it got me thinking of Spike Williams who had been in Reptile Ranch, part of the same scene in Cardiff the Young Marble Giants came through, and who was later in Weekend with Alison Statton. And it turned out I was right. Though I would be deducted points for not guessing that Debbie Debris was the Debbie Pritchard who sang ‘Simian’ on The Gist’s Embrace The Herd LP. Anyway, the Spike and Debbie CD turned out to be a rather wonderful thing, even if I was half-a-dozen years late in finding that out. I had absolutely no idea it existed.

Why Didn't You Tell Me? (Part Seven)

 

Dub is in the air, it sometimes seems. And on NTS, my radio station of choice, you never seem to be too far away from some variation on the dub template, which is a cause for celebration in these desperate times. Among the station’s residents is Jack Sapsed whose monthly All Fruits Ripe programme is usually a great listen and generally features dub in all sorts of mad varieties.

Back in February of this year his show ended with the More Rockers mix of Virginia’s ‘Rainbows’, one of my very favourite things in this whole wide world and one of the greatest examples of prime Bristol blues & roots from back in the day. On the same show Jack also played the Smith & Mighty mix of ‘Love to the Power of Each’ by Dub Ghecko, which completely threw me as it also featured the unmistakable vocals of Virginia. And it sounded amazingly wonderful, yet it was completely new to me. As someone who privately prides himself on knowing a thing or two about dubby downtempo music of the 1990s, that hurt!

Why Didn't You Tell Me? (Part Six)

 

I guess many among us can think of occasions when we have heard or read about a live performance and then let our imagination float free in a way that allows us to picture ourselves in that particular venue on a specific night. Naturally we will let the romantic in us take over, even if deep down inside our submerged realistic self will tell us we’ve got it all wrong. For me, The Way Out of Easy, that magnificent live recording of the Jeff Parker ETA IVtet, immaculately packaged by International Anthem, is the perfect example. In my wildest fancy I was there, standing at the front, nodding along ecstatically, grinning madly.